I went out today.  I decided to go scavenging again for the first time since I got hurt, though thankfully my bum knee is on the mend so it only slowed me down a bit.  The redness and swelling have gone down finally.  Gonna have a real nice scar there.  Great.

I want to show them.  I want them to see that I can be useful.  That I can pull my weight.  Since the other day it’s all I’ve been thinking about.  So this morning when I woke, I grabbed on my gear which includes my handy dandy new bow and arrows that I made myself, thank you, and my trusty little knife, which I’ve carried with me since the beginning of all this.  My arsenal may be small, but it works for me.  I grabbed a bite to eat from the common room and made my way out the gate.

I’ve been looking a lot close to home and finding little to nothing, so I made my way further in to the city and ended up walking, though it nearly killed my knee, all the way to the bridge on the other side of the city.  It was a good run, considering I found a some things I think will be worth a fair amount of money for trading and I found my new little friend that I will keep close to my side at all times.

One of my favorite books growing up was called Hatchet.  Was about a boy that survives in the wilderness after a plane crash.   It’s a good omen maybe?  He was just a normal kid that managed to survive after everything that happened to become a decent woodsmen and in the end was saved.  So somehow it seems right to have found this one.  I think I’ll name it… be something silly to do that I can laugh about and no one else will get but me.   Or not… maybe that is just the concussion talking.

Ok, so now to explain the concussion….

On my way across town, I ran into two biters.  Just two, not like a whole dang horde or anything.  I just turned a corner and they were there.  I started to turn tail and run, but I just couldn’t.  I really think that everyone thinks I can’t fend for myself.  I stood there and watched them amble closer and closer to me, feeling my blood start to boil as I thought back to everyone in my life who had ever made me believe that I was incapable of doing anything I wanted to do and I ran at them.  Just out right ran at them.  Battle cry and all.  I don’t know what exactly made me do something so completely foolish, except maybe the rage took over.  The rage over losing my life that I had planned out so carefully for so long, loosing friends and family, losing my sense of who I even was anymore…. it all just boiled over until I was sitting on them, hacking them to pieces with my brand new toy.  Bits of rotten people rained down around me as I brought that hatchet down on them over and over again.  I went in to this zone where I didn’t care who heard me or saw me, I just needed to destroy them.  Destroy my demons to maybe.

This sounds good right? I dealt with them so quickly and so completely.  I saved other potential victims that might have happened upon them.  It should have been a good thing, but no sooner had I stood up and walked away from one victory I was greeted with more corpses walking my way.  It was that cop again.  The cop I couldn’t kill the last time I ran head long in to biters and chose to flee instead of fight.  Before I could even register that they were there, I was being shoved against a wall so hard it felt like my face cracked.  I can still feel the brick scraping in to my cheek, tearing my lip on a sharp edge.  Before I knew it I was on the ground, one of the biters on top of me doing his level best to take a chunk out of my hide and the other standing over him, grabbing at him as if to pull him off me for himself.  Thankfully the one standing committed suicide. Tripping over our legs as we both struggled to gain ground, he smacked his head on the brick wall and slid down, his head smashed open right in my view, the gush of rank fluids spilling out beside me, drenching my hair would have normally made me sick, but a bit I busy battling for my life.  Throwing up would have to wait.

Slime, yeah just no other good term for it, dripped out of the policeman’s mouth as it chomped viciously, so desperate to make me a meal.   Teeth snapping and grinding in a way that time slows down and all you can do for a moment is watch death edge ever closer. My hands were on his face, the skin melting away to reveal the bone beneath.  Flesh and muscles that would have once helped him eat, kiss, smile, speak… they were slipping and sliding down over my hands and on to my chest and neck, choking me with that stench. That horrible smell that I will be able to recall until I’m 90, should I get to live to that age. Meh, who am I kidding.  But it is a smell that will stay with me for as long as I live, I just know it.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I prayed.  I begged and pleaded for someone to happen along, to find me and save me, but my prayers were not answered.  No one was going to save me, but wasn’t this what I wanted? To show that I could save myself?

I knew it was time to take action.  I wasn’t just going to lay there and die.  Did not want to have them find my body later and someone say, “See I told you she was worthless.”  The hatchet had gone flying and I couldn’t see it anywhere. Then I remembered my little knife.  I shoved with all that I am, pushed until he fell off me and I was no longer pinned to the ground.  I jumped up and grabbed my knife from my boot and rammed it to the hilt right into his head.  It only took a matter of seconds, but he was dead.

I sat there for a long time on my knees in a pool of dead man’s blood until I was very close to busting out in laughter.  Why laughter? I don’t know.  Let the crazy get in?  Finally lost my mind?  Was either that or lie down and cry?  It doesn’t matter, I felt amazing.  I looked around at the carnage surrounding me and laughed.  I wanted so bad to show them, but I am not going to tell them what I did.  I know what I am capable of and that is all that matters anymore.  It was there, drenched in who knows what, my body aching and trembling that I changed.

Let them believe what they wanted.  Let them look at me however they choose.  In the end, I will survive.