Chapter Two: Peregrination
The crunch of snow, grayed by soot, under her worn boots created an andante tempo as she tramped along the road beneath the snowdrift. Sara pulled her gloved right hand meticulously from its home in the pocket of her winter jacket up towards her face. She adjusted her scarf, attempting to protect her features from the malicious wind, as quickly as possible before jamming her hand back into place. She lifted her head from its shelter between her hunched shoulders and craned her neck. All around her were lofty conifers, effectively blocking the majority of the wind, but even with their assistance, Sara knew she needed to find shelter soon. The only thing she had encountered so far was the rusted remains of a tandem bicycle and the occasional frozen "dinner" for the feral. She had yet to see any effective means of protection from the elements. She looked forward; hoping against hope that she may see some salvation. To her listless delight, she could determine a cluster of what seemed to be rusted cars near a bend in the road up ahead despite her deteriorating acuity. This would only provide enough shelter for a short period of time, highwaymen commonly frequented these ragtag formations in search of tactless travelers, but it was better than trying to tough it out in the wilderness.
Snow covered the road she traveled on in a thick ashen blanket. Sara tried to deter her mind from what had caused these particles, but she could not hold back the visions of cities, towns, people, flora and fauna being razed as they filled her mind's eye. Fire was indiscriminate after all. Its burning temperatures could sear flesh in an instant, yet its gentle warmth was one of the few reasons Sara was not frozen to the worm-eaten floorboards of some abandoned homestead.
"We humans once had a love affair with fire." Sara thought as she shook her head, trying to clear her head of its morbid fixation. Trudging onward, she tried to keep a positive mindset as she estimated how far away she was from the collection of vehicles. However, she knew that if she kept this pace she would not make it in time for a significant amount of rest and so she sped up her gait. As she tried to lose herself in the monotonous sound of her steps to keep her attention away from her surely frostbitten appendages, she heard another noise break this pattern. She shifted her head towards the source of the noise and her gaze fell to her own feet. Stuck underneath the heel of her right boot was a paper, fighting tumultuously against its captor. Curiosity filled the void in her mind as she bent down to free the item. Before looking at what she held in her gloved hand, she swept her view around the surrounding area. She jogged off of the road in search of its origin, speculating that this could insinuate other persons nearby. She advanced further from the street as she noticed, to her right was a green object sticking out of a snow bank in a lackadaisical manner near the edge of the adjacent forest. She focused on that object alone, thankful that it was on her favored side, and came to a conclusion as to the object's identity.
The snow neighboring the object, which she had discerned to be a military issue duffel bag, had been flattened by the paws of some creature, scraps of the object's green material and conspicuous red stains splayed about the area. The side of the container, or what was left of it, was lying in tatters and its contents had been spilled onto the snow. Sara assumed that this paper had come from this bag; she returned to the false safety of the road, sincerely wishing that whatever had caused this mayhem had left the area and was slightly less sanguinary. She redirected her concentration once more to the piece of paper and, after adjusting the sunglasses precariously placed upon the bridge of her nose, began to read the faded text neatly printed upon it.
The paper before her was an advertisement for a survivalist class located in the city of Baudette, Minnesota, a city that she had passed through a few days ago when she crossed the International Boundary. It was bleakly designed, the majority of it monochrome with foreboding words boldfaced in an exaggerated manner.
"They didn't need much else," Sara surmised as she scanned the ad swiftly, "Anything claiming to help the masses survive was enough to grab anyone's attention near the end, even Tegan."
With a quick flick of her wrist she cast the paper aside and began her trek once more as nostalgia recalled memories to the forefront of her mind.