A light frost coated the ground for miles around as the first of the soft flakes of the coming storm drifted down to earth. The bristling pine needles of the trees swayed back and forth with each gust of wind as Tanner sat on his knees listening to the insignificant trickling of the water rushing down stream. His light coat, a camouflage patterned piece of clothing slightly contrasting with the faded blue of his torn jeans and the deep black of the hiking boots on his feet, failed to keep the bitter wind out entirely as winter tightened its hold. The silent breeze blowing through the calm forest numbed his face almost as much as the landscape around him had numbed the man himself. Unable to move he knelt there amid the carnage, taking in the sights of one more senseless massacre in a world on its last legs.
It had been a war. What looked like a war at the very least. Frozen corpses dotted the riverbank in various states of decay. Several of the bodies had been shredded by automatic weapons fire, displaying the grisly effects of assault rifle wounds for all to see. Eerily preserved by the cold, several of the bodies continued to writhe and twitch, trapped in a dark place between life and death. Some of the dead, the truly dead, still clutched weapons in their hands, weapons they would now never part with thanks to winter's chill. The faces of the bodies were twisted in expressions of anguish and pain. One or two wore looks of content and peace that sharply contrasted with the horror they were surrounded by, as if death for them had been a release, not a curse.
Of the countless dead around him only two of the bodies interested Tanner. One was a young woman, hair tied up in a dirty bun, laid out on the sandbar in the middle of the water. Tanner had already ensured that she wouldn't remain as one of them. From the pocket of her jacket he had extracted a worn book with the woman's name, Beth, on the cover. He tucked it away in his own pocket with a quiet tear and searched the rest of the killing field until he found the second body.
The man's face was pale with faded and dull eyes that had once been a bright green. The dark leather of his jacket let him stand out from the rest as he dragged himself toward Tanner, swiping his clammy hands through the sharp air between the two. The word "Defenders" on the back of the man's jacket was unfamiliar, but even then Tanner knew the face of Conner Bryant.
He was one of them. A walker. It hit Tanner then, a naked and relentless realization. He was too late.
He had failed.
He made a promise to a dying friend to make sure that Conner lived. After over a year of searching high and low, pursued by the dead, shot at by bandits, all the times he'd nearly died by thirst and hunger alone, this was where it had all led to. The end of his journey, a mound of frozen corpses at the side of some unimportant, no name river in the backwoods of North Carolina.
What was it all for? His group was dead. He was the only one left. Out of all nine of them it was Tanner, the one who deserved to live the least, that ended up surviving the longest.
Conner's corpse continued to paw at him ineffectually. Without being completely aware of what his body was doing, Tanner rose and strode around behind his deceased friend. The knife at Conner's waist slid out of the sheath easily enough and to Tanner it had all the weight of a feather while he placed the tip at the back of Conner's neck and angled the blade upward.
It was several seconds before he could manage any words. "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen, Conner." The subdued tone of his voice only carried his words a scant few feet, but it was enough. If anything of Conner remained inside this monster, he would hear Tanner's choked, watery words. "I… just, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean for any of that to happen. None of it."
Conner's body growled, snarling at him with an intense hunger as the flakes of snow began to pile together and from a blanket over the ground. The feral noise felt like an accusation. "I didn't want to bring Lynch down on all of you." Tanner shivered at the thought of that man and his heart, coated in an ice colder than any natural winter. The words were difficult to say as they came. Each needed to be forced out with a strength that Tanner knew was waning. "Fuck, man, just…just why? Why you and not me?"
Eyes closed and teeth clenched, Tanner put pressure on the knife and slid the blade upward. Conner's corpse momentarily convulsed, letting loose one final hiss, before it went limp and fell to the snowy ground.
Tanner reached out and respectfully slid the dog tags off from around Conner's neck. The metallic identification tags glinted in the dwindling light and made a distinctive clinking sound when he shoved them into his pocket next to the other, older pair.
With weary a sigh that made him sound decades older, Tanner slid the knife back into Conner's sheath and stood on two trembling legs. The now truly dead eyes of his friend melted a guilty hole in the back of the man's head as he wordlessly strolled over to another corpse and bent down. This body, frozen solid, was actually dead. The bald man had been shot cleanly through the head, dead center, an execution. His blood had seeped down and soaked his black leather jacket inscribed with the words "Plastic Toys" before drying as brown stains that would never be removed. Tanner's hands went to the rifle next to the unfortunate soul, half buried in snow, and scooped it up. Gripping the bolt action weapon in one hand and extracting the hatchet from his belt with the other, Tanner set his eyes upriver and put one unsteady foot in front of the other.
The wind picked up, easily slicing through the feeble protection Tanner possessed as he made his way up the river. A solitary figure on one last walk through the wilderness as old man winter bore down on him with a vengeance, preparing for what he deserves to finally take him.