The Trail to Nowhere

Lifty felt like he'd barely rested his head on the earth when he felt the flashlight shine into his eyes. Wincing from the light and more than a little annoyed, he grumbled and rolled to the other side in his sleeping bag. The light flickered off for a second and there was scattered muttering. Then it flickered on again.

"Lifty, wake up".

"G'way…lemme sleep…."

"Dude, wake up".

Swearing under his breath, he turned to the other side again and finally opened his eyes. It should have all come rushing back to him at once, but it really did. It came in quick shots like a slideshow. One shot was running out of the jewelry store with the alarms buzzing. The next was running through alleyways screaming and trying to get back home when the rain hit. Then there was the image of the clinic being burned to the ground like an enormous bonfire. And now, along with everyone else, he'd fallen asleep in that tent full of patchwork sleeping bags and that musty smell everywhere. Well, things could be worse, right?

"C'mon man, get up", the voice said. "We're loading up the van now and we're probably going to leave without you soon if you don't get your ass outside".

Turning back around in his sleeping bag, Lifty looked up and saw Shifty poking his head out through the flap of the tent. He was holding the flashlight in his hand, looking like it took all of his strength to carry it. Although the corneas of his eyes were slightly red from lack of sleep and his face was sweaty and tired, it looked like he was trying his best to give his signature smile. He wasn't doing a good job either.

"God damn it, bro", Lifty yawned. "If you're going to wake me up in the middle of the night, at least give me a warning next time. I feel like I'm about to pass out".

"It's not the middle of the night. The sun's almost up".

"No way. I-

"Just put your head down?" Shifty cut in. "That's how it feels for me too. I think I dosed off for about an hour. Sleep in the car if you want, but we have to get back on the road soon. Hurry up and get outside. And you really might want to get a move on because we heard thunder awhile ago".

For a second Lifty was thinking of yelling at him (something that he rarely had the chance to do) or at least getting into a good argument, but the fact that he really wasn't a morning person didn't give him much of an outlook on the situation besides a headache from sleeping on the ground. Crawling outside after his brother, he felt dazed by the sudden sunlight. With the sky a faint blue over the black trees and an orange hue in the distance, he reasoned quickly that it was the early hours; those hazy hours in the morning that he usually chose to sleep through. Everyone else had vanished from the clearing and had probably piled into the van. All that was left was a died-out campfire and a few soda cans. And there was only one other person left at their campsite besides them.

"Sleep well?" Petunia yawned.

She was taking down the girl's tent beside them as they walked out of theirs. For somebody so girly when you first looked at her, Lifty noticed that she was actually pretty tough. She was carrying two of the heavy tent poles over her shoulder and didn't seem to have a problem lifting up the other one. Out of everyone in the group, she was probably the best cut out for the adventure. That's probably why you've had a crush on her since third grade. Cute girl. Real cute. Too bad she probably wouldn't go for a thief....

"I feel like I was just run down by a train", Shifty said suddenly. "Sleep could have been better".

"Well, I think you're going to have to get used to it. Because I don't think tonight's going to be any different. I think I've got the tent covered here. Why don't you two go out and help Nutty and Flaky load up the car. A lot of that stuff we dug out of the trunk is heavy and I'm sure they could use some help".

"Are you sure you don't need some help carrying those tents?" Lifty offered. "I mean, they're kind of heavy and-

"I'm a big girl, you know", Petunia said. She wasn't smiling. "I can take care of myself".

The two raccoons left the campsite with the dusk sky towering over them. As they walked down the winding trail with the dark branches looming closer and closer to them, Lifty moved instinctively closer to his brother. It wasn't that he was a wimp or anything, but unlike his brother, he'd always felt family was important. Even if he hadn't had the most functional family in the world (their dad had been a raging alcoholic, their mother was unemployed and the two of them had turned into kleptos) it was still family.

And that was the worst part about being with Shifty. Even if he bossed him around, he couldn't bring himself to be angry at him. After all, practically from birth, he'd been the only person he'd had. The two of them had grown up together, blending into one single, smiling entity with only Shifty's fedora to tell them apart. The two of them had started stealing when they were young, usually getting caught and sent to juvie in the beginning but learning all the ropes as the years went on. Although neither of them would ever admit it, they were inseparable. And even if he bossed him around every dark of the week, he was still the closest thing to a friend that Lifty had ever had in his admittedly short life. After all, it wasn't like his brother was a bad person either. And this was a crying shame in his eyes, because all in all, Shifty really wasn't a bad person. He was over-controlling at times, but that was just because he was frightened of trusting people. And he just didn't realize that a cocky smile and stealing everything in sight wasn't going to get you by in life…

"This doesn't feel real does it?" Lifty asked finally.

"No", Shifty said. "No it doesn't. I wouldn't say it any other day, but I really wish we were home right now".

"Me too, man", Lifty responded. "Me too".

"Hey guys!" a voice called. "Hey guys, up here!"

"God damn it…." Shifty mumbled.

Walking slightly ahead of them in the trail was Cuddles. Covered from head to toe in dirt with a rifle slung over his back, he still greeted them with his cheerful smile that had made everyone in town either love or hate him. Almost everyone in the group had noticed that he was unnaturally unfazed by the situation. The idea of death seemed so far away from his goofy smile.

"Another day out on the road!" Cuddles said brightly. "Who's ready?"

Shifty glared. "Has it occurred to you that someone really needs to kick your ass?"

"Nope", Cuddles said not even the least bit insulted. "Not really. I really don't think I've pissed anyone off here. At least not yet". He paused for a moment. "So, what's up? Any weird dreams?"

"I really hate morning people", Lifty sighed. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"I'm just carrying the rifle back to the van and then we're off. Giggles and I only walked back about an hour ago so I really didn't get a chance to sleep. And you shouldn't put me down like that. I'm just trying to lighten the mood around here".

That was when both of them got a good look at his eyes. Instead of young and full of energy like they always were, they were practically pink from sleep deprivation and the lids half-closed. He looked like hell. And at the same time, he somehow find a way to smile.

"We'll fight about that later", Lifty said. "Am I still driving?"

"Looks like it. I don't think anyone else is up for it".

They only walked a few more minutes before they reached the rusty fence that opened out to the road. Considering how the last time they were there their group had been nine instead of eight, the whole situation couldn't help but a little bit unnerving. It was almost like watching a crime scene investigation. Stepping out through the fence's gate and looking out the road, they immeadidly saw the shadowy, bulky shape of the van parked just where they'd left it. Flaky was sitting against the door with Giggles at her side, carrying a small, blanketed figure in her arms which was assumedly Cub. Nutty was standing by the truck, loading up equipment with an exasperated look on his face.

However, none of that was what made the raccoons stare.

"They're dead…." Lifty said. "I mean, you really got them, didn't you?"

"I got seven", Cuddles said. "Would have been eight but one got away".

There were bodies of infected laid out all over the rolling landscape in front of the van. It was all too easy to close their eyes and picture Cuddles firing away with the rifle whenever one walked up on the horizon line. Some of their heads had been blown off, others shot in the stomach, but it was clear for one thing that all of them were very, very dead.

"That's messed up", Lifty sighed. "That's really messed up".

"No", Shifty said sadly. "It's survival…."

The three of them walked up to the van just as Nutty slammed the trunk. It was clear that his hyperactivity was beginning to kick back in. Twitching as he fumbled with locking the truck, he turned to look at them with tired eyes. The odds were, judging by what they'd seen so far, that his energy was going to burn out just as quickly as it came. His sugar highs usually didn't last long.

"There's no more Twinkies left", Nutty said shortly. There was a hint of frustration in his voice. "And…and he didn't even pack any chocolate. Not one piece of damn chocolate. I searched the whole trunk. There's none".

"We have other problems to worry about right now", Shifty said. "You packed everything?"

"Yeah", Nutty said. He locked the trunk with some difficulty. "Yeah, I did".

"Then we're set. Now all we're doing is waiting on Petunia".

"Then what?" Flaky asked. It didn't seem like a question. "What's after that?"

"Well, we could find some towns", Lifty answered hopefully. "There's got to be some hick trailer park somewhere on this road. And we could get more people".

"Do you know what they advertise Happy Tree as?" Cuddles scoffed. "I looked through one of the brochures in city hall during that field trip. It's the same kind they give out to real estate agents. They call it, "a peaceful town lost in acres upon acres of luscious forest'. But, y'know, with that out of the way I'd say civilization is right around the corner. Why don't you get on trucking?"

"No need to be a jerk about it", Giggles snapped. "Sorry, he's just a little tired. It's been a really long night…"

"Too long", Cuddles sighed. "I think I'm really getting tired now that you mention it. How'd you guys make it through the nigh-

"We're going nowhere!"

The voice was so sudden that it nearly made everyone jump out of their skin. Even Cub began bawling as Flaky rocked him back and forth and tried to comfort him. At the newfound voice, every eye by the van turned to Nutty.

His face that had been frustrated before now looked beyond annoyed. Back in town, before things had gone bad, he had rarely been seen unhappy. While his hyperactivity made him fairly annoying once in a while, he was ultimately a good person who most people got along with. But ever since the rain had hit, things had been different. The pressure of the situation was beginning to weigh in on him even more than the others for some reason. Out of everyone, he seemed the most afraid of death.

He looked around for a second, startled that he was suddenly in the spotlight. For a brief moment a slight smile even appeared on his face. But then that vanished and was replaced by complete frustration.

"What are we doing out here?" he yelled. "What's this accomplishing? We're just going to keep heading down the road until we die! This is hopeless! It's a mess! It's…It's…

"It's what?"

It was Petunia. She was walking out of the fence's gate with the tent poles slung over her back. Although her expression wasn't necessarily cold, she looked relatively interested in proving a point. More than anything, she actually looked entertained.

"Seriously Nutty", she said. "Tell me what it is".

"It's stupid!" he screamed. "It's just stupid! I could leave, you know! I could leave any second and all of you are just going to be alone here and be picked off like flies. I can't take this anymore! I've reached my breaking point, all right? I can't stand all of this if I know we're all just going to end up dead. And I can't stand people like you Cuddles; people who think everything's going to be okay. Want to know why? Because it's not! You're an idiot! You're-

Nutty's words were cut off by a fist connecting with the front of his face. His whole body twirled for a second before collapsing into the side of the van in a daze. Bringing his fingers up to his nose, he brought them back and stared down in shock at the warm, red blood trickling down it. Instead of watching him, everyone turned to see one of the last people in the group they would have expected to hurt anyone.

"You…you hit me!" Nutty yelped.

"I'm sorry", Giggles sighed. "But I think we can all say you had that coming. And you had no right to talk about him like that. Get up before or I'll do it again. Come on everyone, let's get a move on".

For a second he thought he could keep it all down. Maybe if he breathed slowly, control would come rushing back and that rising feeling in his stomach would go away. But it didn't. Hunched over in the middle of the trail and feeling like he'd just been hit by a truck, The Mole vomited and sent pasty, white food dripping down to the muddy ground.

He'd run through a lot. He'd run through that cramp, he'd even managed to run through that charley horse in his left leg, but he couldn't run through the fact that he felt like he was going to throw up at any second. He'd tried to ignore, but unfortunately, it had gotten the better of him. He'd run himself dry.

Trying to ignore the overpowering stench of his own vomit, The Mole did the best to get a sense of his surroundings. At least he was sure he was in the forest. There was no mistaking the whistling of the wind through the leaves and the sour smell the rain had left on them before it had drifted further up north.

The wind wouldn't stop whistling. It was mocking him, almost doubting him like the rest of them. Bent over in the middle of the path, The Mole grimaced and leant over on his cane for support. All his life, he'd had to dealt with people judging him because he was blind. The fact that he was handicapped seemed to put a giant, "feel sorry for me", sticker on his face. He hated it, especially the concerned looks he was sure he got whenever he walked down the street. Even though he couldn't see them, at least he could hear them. When he walked down the street with his cane tapping on the sidewalk, he could hear them whispering as he passed. Them doubting him as a person just because of a few defects at birth was awful.

But when it happened, he would smile, turn around and tell them that he wasn't blind, thank you very much. He was still perfectly aware of the world around him and just as capable of living a normal, healthy life. If you looked at it that way, he definitely wasn't blind at all. But on the other hand, there was no ignoring the fact that he couldn't see.

The Mole's stomach was rising again. Grimacing and feeling the stench already coming out, The Mole opened his mouth and threw up.

And the whole time he was completely unaware of what was eyeing him from the woods.

It watched its prey carefully. Gazing out at the trail, he mentally gauged the short distance it would be to run forward and strike. In one hand he drummed his finger against a loose branch that was drooping down. In the other, the hooked one, he scraped it over and over again into the tree's bark, getting a delicate hissing sound each time.

The island hadn't been that hard to leave. Only a few hours ago the acidic, orange waters would have burned him, probably destroyed his sanity, but that didn't matter now. Besides, his sanity was already destroyed anyway. So he'd wadded through the waters and gotten to the mainland. There wasn't going to be any hunts out on the open water, and all in all, he wasn't as thrilled about the great blue sea as he'd been before.

And besides, he couldn't even see blue anymore in the first place. Almost like hued contacts, everything had a hint of orange to it.

Looking out at the mole hunched over in the trail, a smile spread across his face. It would be an easy fight. The philosophies of hunters was to be the Venus fly trap and wait for the prey to come to you. And that was exactly why he'd been following the running figure ever since he'd seen him dashing through the forest. It was all instinct now. Instinct was good of course, but it didn't matter in the slightest when it came to what laid out on the open road. Survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. A few hours ago he would have looked at things differently, as actual beings instead of targets for murder, but his outlook had changed. The voices. They were the ones that were changing him.

Go out and get him.

No, I'm done, I don't want to hurt anyone else. Please get out.

Go out there and get him. He's weak. You'll like the feeling of it. You love it last time. You love the feeling of a good hunt. You're better than the rest of them. Go out and do what you do best.

I'm not better. My head hurts. Get out.

The voice didn't. So Russell walked out of the woods.

The Mole never saw the attack coming. Too busy spitting up vomit in the middle of the trail, he wasn't prepared for the sound of rapid footsteps rushing forward, almost like the clattering sound horses made at a racetrack. It didn't last for long though. More confused than frightened, he didn't even have time to react when the hook sliced itself into his shoulder. Howling out in agony, he fell to the trail as puddles of warm blood started to drip down his side. His head nudging to the side spasmodically, a wave of pain swept through him when he felt something as hard as bedrock. Your collar bone….

What had been confusion a second ago suddenly became complete shock.

Rolling to the side, he moved out of the way just in time to avoid another swing from the hook. He listened to the sound of it imbedding far into the ground, much farther than any hook should have gone. From just the sheer impact of it, his sunglasses went flying off his face. He didn't even think of trying to find them.

He should have been terrified and he knew it. The thing was obviously a monster and it obviously wanted to kill him. With his wound throbbing, he felt his shock melting away to sheer anger. If anything, he found himself getting more determined than he ever had in his life. This is it. Make it through this. You have to make it through….

Cradling his shoulder, he tried to steady himself up from the ground and didn't even get a chance. Before he knew it, he was airborne. Almost like he'd been seized by a pair of powerful horns, the creature swung him up from the ground, dug under his armpit and hurled him into the air. His body cart wheeled wildly through the morning fog rising over the trail, and for an odd second, he had the feeling he was going to be stuck in the air forever. He even felt that nasty roller-coaster tingle of free fall. But then the flight ended just as quickly as it begun. Flung sideways from the trail, he collided into a tree and started to roll down in a crumbled heap with his walking cane at his side.

"You'll be the second".

The voice was menacing and guttural, and worst of all, it was approaching him fast. He heard the awful slice of the hook cutting through the air, almost like he was trying to make a point. Dazed and trying to figure out if he was upside down or not, The Mole made a very quick decision. It was a fifty-fifty shot; one side was life and the other was death. He was taking a risk, but the way things were going, it was definitely worth a shot. You're getting out of this. Don't hold back.

Hopping up from the ground and holding his cane forward like a battle ram, The Mole ran forward and swung it without any sense of direction. He only ended up swatting at air and even felt another slice of the claw cutting through the air, getting even closer. A crunching sound of glass at his feet made him cringe. At least you found your glasses. Running like a hunchback from the blood loss in his shoulder, The Mole ran and swung.

And he got a direct hit too.

Although he couldn't see it, the blunt end of the cane burst directly through Russell's empty eye socket. There was a bone-shattering crush as it dug even deeper, widening the gap where his eye should have been like an expert stone carver. There was a startled howl, but amazingly enough, there was no scream. No agony. No pain. Jesus, is this guy made of iron or something?

With the small amount of energy he had left, The Mole thrusted the cane deep into the confines of Russell's skull. He howled in that indifferent scream again, more furious at being stopped in his path than being hurt. And then, with chippings of bone and rain water dripping out in small leaks, he thrusted the cane out stepped back. The odds had been in his favor this time. It didn't happen very often, but he knew from experience that luck was a strange thing. It only bent for certain people. And somehow, he'd put it in his favor.

"You have the league now", The Mole thought quickly. "and you who's going to make it work…"

There was no time to waste. Running away from the stunned sea otter, he took off down the road northbound. Arterial blood was pumping out from his shoulder, and by the feel of it, his collarbone had been banged up pretty badly. The complete shock of it seemed to have a way of soothing the pain. It still hurt, but if he tried just hard enough, he would be able to convince himself it was manageable. As he ran, he started screaming. Not just for the pain he was falling but everything that had gone on in the last twenty-four hours. The chaos. The destruction. The death. You're not blind man, you just can't see.

The Mole ran and didn't look back.

Watching his prey run down the road, the creature fingered with his messy eye socket and smiled. The human part of him was screaming in agony from the pain, but the other side didn't mind. To the evolved side of him, pain was only a minor inconvenience. It could definitely be dealt with.

Wrenching back his head, he poured a good amount of rainwater out of his head where it dropped out like a water funnel. He'd lost a good kill, but anything that had been lost could be found. The voices were telling him that. They were much more active now, and soon enough, they would take over completely and the part of the sea otter still clinging to his sanity would be gone forever. When that happened, things would get a lot easier. A whole lot easier.

The thing that had been Russell walked down that lonely stretch of road with his hook swinging at his side.

A/N: I was going to try for another update this week, but it looks like it's not going to happen since I'm going to be on vacation until Sunday. Sorry. :(