Clip 5 – Neighbors
The highway has a slight incline to it, but it's nothing painful. The exit ramp, however, is another story. I'm sure my face is flushed. There's nothing I can do about that, but I try to make sure to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. It's supposed to help keep your breathing steady, but more importantly, since it keeps me from gasping, hopefully Seven won't notice that I'm damn near ready to drop.
My pride is about all I have left, after all.
We hang a right at the top of the ramp and Evan begins pointing out features as we cross the overpass. I knew about the cities, of course, but not that I'd be expected to go there. One of the first things that everybody figured out after the dead started walking was that cities were about the worst places to be. "Crawling with undead," Seven says. Great. Just peachy, in fact. Because I really want to dodge hordes of undead while I'm scrounging for supplies.
Abel's well-situated, but New Canton's got them beat on location. Got us beat, I suppose; it sounds like I'm not going to be reassigned any time soon. Seven calls New Canton a "castle," but to be honest it looks more like a fortress. It isn't particularly pleasant to think that we're not on speaking terms with our nearest neighbors, especially since their arsenal probably dwarfs (WORD CHOICE?) ours by several factors of ten. I sure as anything hope they don't get it in their heads that Abel poses some kind of threat.
I wonder how long it's been since Scoobs got flattened. It's probably already been thoroughly scavenged, and I'm certainly not trained in forensics, but I've got to admit, I'm curious. The way Seven's voice kind of faltered when he claimed they didn't know what happened? Yeah. Maybe it's not 'curious' as much as 'suspicious.'
How was it that Scoobs burned so completely, but the fire didn't seem to have spread much beyond it? How was it that a group of kids that somehow managed to be self-sufficient for months was suddenly wiped out by a single random mob? But if it was something more than another random zombie attack, why would anybody target a bunch of kids?
My mind was going in what felt like a hundred different directions at once, and none of them seemed to lead anywhere helpful. Seven suggested we head back to Abel, and I certainly wasn't about to object.