As hard as I tried to stay awake, around two in the morning my eyes began slowly drifting shut. I fought to keep them open but the more I fought them, the heavier they seemed to get. Finally I couldn't fight it anymore and I fell into a deep sleep.

I opened my eyes again. The world around me was pitch black not even a single star shone in the sky.

I had no physical sense of my body, it was like, a spectator to a film. A door suddenly materialized in front of me that seemed to emit a faint light, it was the only thing visible in the gloom.

Without any control of the action I seemed to move towards the door which swung open by itself as I neared it.

On the other side of the door was a shopping mall, bustling with hundreds of people, colorful and full of life. The shops were brightly lit with neon signs and people walked to and from each one, some alone, some on cellphones, some in groups of friends or family. Everything was just as I remembered it had been almost five years ago. The liveliness, the soft roar of hundreds of people talking all at once. I could even smell the signature smell of a mall; new material smell mixed in with a bit of chlorine from a fountain that was nearby.

Suddenly, the door behind me slammed shut. Instantaneously every person in the mall stopped in place and turned their heads toward me. In the blink of an eye the scene changed completely. One second the people in the mall were human, and in the next second they weren't. They were zombies with flesh that was rotten and clothes that were stained and torn. The roar of voiced talking that had filled the air was replaced by the thunderous sound of hundreds of zombies groaning all at once. The brightly lit mall had changed as well and now looked run down and decrepit. The storefront signs were busted and the displays were all ruined and picked through.

I tried to move but I had no control of my body. I was forced to stand frozen in place as countless rotten hands reached to grab be and devour me whole.

I bolted awake, sides heaving and sweat running down my face. By then, the sun had risen higher in the sky fully illuminating the world around me. Andy was still sleeping on the other side of the clearing. There was nothing out of place around me and I slowly began to drag my mind out of sleep and into the waking world.

When I was fully awake, I mentally slapped myself for falling asleep when I was supposed to be keeping watch which is something I hadn't done in years. I slowly stood up and walked over to Andy. He hadn't moved at all since he had fallen asleep last night. His shirt was still covered in blood none of it seemed to be fresh. I lightly shook his shoulder to wake him up.

"Hey Andy," I said. "Come on, wake up."

Andy groaned softly before his eyes opened just a crack. They were clearer than they had been the night before, and he squinted up at me.

"How do you feel?" I asked him

He blinked slowly before sitting up, his face twisting in pain as he did so "Like shit," he said in a rough voice that sounded like he had damaged it by yelling.

"Well, you look like shit," He still looked pretty bad, though the bruising on his face and arms had gone down somewhat. The swelling on his lip had also gone down a bit and there was a thin trail of dried blood that ran down from the cut above his eye but, other than that, he looked in somewhat better shape.

Those Raiders really must have put him through hell but I wasn't about to ask him about it. If he wanted to talk about it, he would, but I didn't want to force him to bring up the memory off it. Some people, myself included didn't like to dwell in the past. The past held pain and misery. "We can stay here two days max, and rest. After that, we'll need to keep moving," I told him, calmly. "Those Raiders aren't going to let us just walk away especially after we...I killed one of their own. They'll come looking for us."

Andy's eyes widened slightly when he heard me say that I had killed someone.

"Don't look at me like that," I snapped at him. "He was a Raider. Don't tell me that you feel sorry for them, especially after what they did to you."

He shook his head, but instead he asked my something I never expected him to.

"Did you tell them...about New Eden?" He asked.

"What?" I thought, caught off guard. Of all the things he could be worried about, he was worried if I had told the Raiders about New Eden.

I shook my head slightly. "No, I didn't tell them anything."

Relief washed over his face and I saw him visibly relax. "Thank you,"

"For what? Not telling a bunch of Raider fuckers about a safe zone that I've only heard rumors of?"

"Yes," he said but didn't say anything else on the matter.

"Is that all you're going to say? You're not going to say why it was so important that the Raiders didn't find out about New Eden?"

Andy shrugged slightly and winced. "It doesn't matter anymore," he said tiredly.

I was starting to get really annoyed that he wasn't telling me anything. If he wasn't going to tell me what I wanted then I had no reason to be here. I might as well make use of the situation. If we were going to stay in one place for more than a day it was a good idea to try and scout out the area. We couldn't really afford not to be aware of our surroundings.

"Besides," I thought. "I could hunt for some real food while I'm out."

Without a word to explain what I was doing I walked over to where Andy and my packs were, and picked up Andy's bow looking over it briefly.

"What are you doing?" Andy asked.

"If you're not talking I'm going to go do something useful. Besides, I haven't had real meat in over two months. I'm going to try to hunt without using a loud, zombie attracting gun." I hesitated. "That is if you will let me borrow your bow."

"Do you even know how to use that?"

It wasn't a no so I took it for a yes. "I won't learn if I don't try," I said as I worked. Once I had everything together, I stood up and faced Andy. "Stay here. If someone comes here, yell loudly. If you hear me yell, don't come after me."

He nodded, his eyes looking more and more tired as time went on. "Okay then."

I hesitated before leaving contemplating whether it would be alright to leave Andy alone in his condition.

"He can take care of himself," I reasoned. "He's been doing it for five years now after all." Reassured by the thought, I turned on my heel and headed into the trees. Is wasn't long before I had gone out of eye and earshot of Andy and the camp. I slowed down and placed each step carefully and silently avoiding sticks and dry leaves as much as possible.

As I walked I began to hear the sound of running water and I followed it to a small stream. A brown bushy tail waved out from a patch of long grass. A squirrel. The only time I had ever shot a bow was long before Day Zero at a summer camp but I remember the basic motion of it. I pulled an arrow from my pack, notched it and raised the bow, pulling the string back so my hand lightly touched the corner of my mouth. I aimed down the arrow so that the tip was pointed at the squirrel and released the string. The arrow buried itself in the ground several feet to the left of the squirrel which promptly ran up a tree and began chattering at me angrily.

"Yeah, shut up," I said.

I walked over to retrieve the arrow, pulling it from where it had embedded itself into the dirt. Then, I looked around for something I could practice my aim on and spotted a large maple tree to my left.

I notched another arrow and took aim. When I released, it embedded itself in the trunk of a tree to the left of the maple tree.

"Alright, more to the left" I muttered aloud.

I grabbed another arrow, adjusted my aim and released. This time, I managed to hit the tree I was aiming for but the arrow was all the way to the right. If it had been half an inch more to the right it would have missed the tree entirely. It took about two hours of practice before I could consistently land the arrow relatively close to where I was aiming for. By that time my fingers were aching from pulling the string back over and over and my shoulder was sore. I was nowhere near as good as Andy but I was good enough to take down an animal. But only if it didn't move.

I walked over and pulled the arrows from the tree and returned them to my pack. It was another fifteen minutes before I spotted a rabbit, hopping about in the sparse foliage looking for food. I held my breath as I took aim not, I didn't want to make any noise that might scare the rabbit away. The string of the bow began to dig into my fingers as I continued to hold it back, watching the rabbit, trying to get the best shot possible. When I couldn't hold the string back any longer, I released the arrow. It flew straight and landed in the rabbit's side. The rabbit let out a loud squeal and tried to run but only managed to flop on its side.

I rushed over to the rabbit, the bow still in my hands. By now, it had given up on trying to run. It lay on its side, blood matted the fur that surrounded the arrow, deeply embedded in its stomach. Its sides were bobbing up and down rapidly and as I neared it, it squealed again, kicking at the dirt, trying to flee. When it's efforts did nothing it gave up, staring at me with pure terror reflected back at me through black, glassy eyes. I hesitated. The fear I saw in the creature's eyes was the same as what I had seen on countless people in the past. It was the fear that only comes to one when they knew that they were about to die.

"I'm sorry," I said to the rabbit. I pulled my knife out and knelt down beside it. Its legs twitched like it tried to run again but I could tell that its strength was fading. I reached out a hand to lightly touch the rabbit. Its fur was warm and soft. It kept its eyes trained on my and I held it's gaze as I grabbed my knife from my belt, placed it on its throat and pushed. Almost immediately the rabbits breathing stopped and it's gaze went glassy and distant. I sat there for a moment my hand still resting on the rabbit's fur but it wasn't a rabbit anymore. Whatever made it a rabbit had left leaving a body made of meat and bone behind. Without much thought to it, I pulled the arrow out of the rabbit's side and wiped it across the ground to clean off the blood. Then, I lifted it up, holding it by it's back legs, and started back the clearing where I had left Andy.

It took me half an hour to find the camp again and when I stepped back into the clearing again, I noticed that Andy had barely moved all since I had left him even though I had been gone for a good three hours. He was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. I cleared my throat loudly and his eyes opened slowly.

"You're back," he said.

"Yep."

"Did you catch anything?"

I held up the rabbit, holding it by its neck.

He simply nodded without saying a word. He didn't have the usual enthusiasm that I had come to know. As much as I hated overly happy Andy, I realized that I hated depressed Andy even more.

"You said you used to hunt, right?" I asked him.

"Yeah."

"So that would mean you know how to skin an animal, right?"

He nodded.

I walked over and held out the rabbit to him. "Here, take care of this while I get a fire going."

Andy took the rabbit from me and I turned around to search the trees around the clearing for dry wood. By the time I had gathered as much wood as I could carry, Andy had skinned and gutted the rabbit. He had draped the fur over a branch and had tossed the entrails and feet somewhere into the woods. All that remained of the creature was the meat and bones.

I opened my arms and the firewood I had collected fell to the ground. Andy was leaned up against the tree again and he watched me as I worked, pain and fatigue still visible in his eyes. I arranged the large sticks of firewood in a sort of teepee and filled in the spaces between them with small twigs and dried leaves and grass. I then slid my pack off my shoulders and rummaged around until I found the flint and steel that I had looted it from a sporting goods store a few years back.

I struck the steel against the flint creating sparks that flew every which way, but none of them caught on any of the tinder. It took a few more strikes before a spark finally landed on one of the bunches of dry grass and began to smolder. Fire starting was something I prided myself in being able to do, not as many people as one might think, know how to use a simple flint and steel. I leaned down and gently blew on the smoldering ember, trying to coax a flame. The gentle movement of air from my breath provided oxygen to the ember and soon the whole bunch of grass was aflame.

I leaned back an admired my handy work. I looked at Andy and saw that he had taken one of his arrows and skewered the rabbit through. He slowly got to his feet, rabbit in hand. It was obvious that he was still in pain from the day before.

"Won't it burn?" I asked.

He shook his head. "The arrows are made of aluminum. The feathers might burn off, but those are easy to replace." He limped slowly around the clearing looking around as if trying to find something.

"What are you looking for?" I asked rising to my feet.

"Forked branches. We can set the rabbit over the fire like a spit." He stopped walking and leaned down picking up a long branch that ended in a V shape. "Like this one," he said showing me the branch.

I scanned the ground near myself and spotted a stick that looked similar to the one Andy had found but was twice as short.

"This work?" I called over to him.

He glanced up from his own search and nodded. "Yeah, that works. We'll just have to break this one so it's shorter."

"Here let me do it," I said walking over to him.

I dropped my own stick near the fire and held out my hand for his. He looked relieved that I had offered. I held the stick so that the forked end was up and the other end was resting against the ground. I stomped hard on a spot halfway up and the stick broke with a loud crack.

Andy was kneeling next to the fire and pushing the stick into the ground so that it stood up on its own.

"Oh, I get it," I said bringing the stick I had just shortened over to the other side of the fire. "I never knew what these things were called. Besides, I usually just stick the whole thing straight in the fire." I stuck the stick into the ground at a distance I thought would be far enough from the fire that it wouldn't burn but close enough that the arrow could stretch between the two sticks.

"Yeah, my dad taught me this when he taught me to hunt. He said that any good hunter should know how to cook his own catch." He laid the arrow with the rabbit between the two sticks and sat back.

I couldn't think of anything to say so I drew my legs up to my chest and watched the flames dance across the firewood. I imagined that the flames were putting on a performance, swaying and flickering across the stage, it was almost hypnotizing. A log shifted and fell sending up a stream of glowing embers. Every once and a while Andy would turn the rabbit so another side could be cooked.

For the longest time, we sat in silence, watching the fire, waiting. Then Andy spoke.

"What do you miss the most? From before all this started."

I sighed. "What everyone misses, I guess. I miss the feeling of being safe"

"Yeah," He said. "That was always nice."

The conversation fell quiet after that. The only sounds were the chirping of the birds and the crackling of the flames. After a good ten minutes, Andy lifted the rabbit off of the spit. The arrow was a little blackened and the feathers had singed off but it was otherwise still intact. Andy stuck in into the ground.

Five minutes later it was cool enough to eat. We didn't have any silverware or plates so we just tore off bits of meat straight from the rabbit. The meat was greasy, warm, and delicious and in only ten minutes we had picked the bones clean.