Cursorial 

The man stood next to the abandoned car. He watched the charge on his phone slowly tick upwards. He knew he would have to get a new one soon. The abused battery on this one was about to give out; he was sure. The light on the makeshift charger blinked happily to let him know it was still working hard for him. He decided to walk back to the doorway of the house and wait there. Waiting for the battery to charge had become a part of his routine weeks ago.

At first, he thought that the loss of cell signal rendered phones useless, but then he realized they could still pick up GPS signals. He kept everything on the phone turned off except for what was necessary for the mapping applications.

During his time waiting for the batteries to charge, he gathered his thoughts and took in his surroundings. At this point in time, he was on the front porch of a small suburban home. He could imagine that it was a nice place to live when there were still people there before the disaster. He could imagine that there were kids riding scooters or playing catch up and down the street, but then he realized kids quit playing outside a long time ago for the most part. He let himself daydream though. It kept him from going insane.

The man also took the time to make sure the cloth on his shoes was still wrapped firmly around them and the strings were tied so that he could remove them at a moment’s notice.

He leaned out from the doorway to look at the light on the charger. It quit blinking and remained a steady color, informing him that it had done all it could. Walking back over to the car, he glanced up to the sun. Probably about five PM. It would be dark soon. He couldn’t rely on the phone’s time since the signals that kept them synced were nonexistent.

He unplugged the charger and dropped it back into his bag and placed the phone in his coat pocket. Letting the hood of the car slowly back down, he let it come to a rest without a sound. The man glanced up and down the neighborhood street and decided to check the inside of the house.

He wished he was able to let the phone charge while he was inside, but if the creature was near and heard anything, he would have to leave the phone and the charger behind while he made his escape. That was a risk he was not willing to take. He figured he had at least a day’s lead on it, but he wasn’t certain.

The man tried all the doors and windows and found none unlocked. He wished badly that he could simply break the glass or kick in a door, but the sound would be too loud. He moved on to the next house. The same bad luck awaited him. The man didn’t know how to pick a lock, and was afraid of making any noise. He tried a third since he had let the phone charge.

He came to the seventh house and found a side garage door unlocked. He unholstered the small pistol and let himself inside. The garage was full of junk. He seemed to remember a muscle car in the driveway of this house, but he had stopped noticing unimportant details such as that. It was amazing that people kept expensive cars out in the open and worthless items locked up. He started to rummage through some of the items in the garage when he saw a stack of boxes that looked like it could easily fall. He decided not to search any further and tried the door to the house. It was unlocked as well.

Stepping into the grimy kitchen, the first thing he noticed was the massive pile of dishes in the sink. The acrid smell hit his nostrils with unrelenting force. He nearly dry heaved. Pulling his shirt over his nostrils, he continued into the living room. There were empty pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table and an overflowing ashtray next to them. Cigarette butts littered the table and the floor next to it, with burned spots in the carpet completing the scene. There was a sheet draped over the couch that appeared to be hiding the filthy couch more than protecting it from anything.

He made his way down the hall, passed the bathroom, and came to two bedrooms. He looked to the left. It looked like it had belonged to a child at one point. He turned to the one on the right and saw something both relieving and terrifying. An open gun safe with rifles and pistols stacked inside and the source of the stench in the house lying next to it with a hole through the skull. This time he did dry heave. He took several deep breaths through his shirt as he looked away and let his heart rate fall again. When he composed himself, the man closed one eye toward the body and tried to only look at the safe. He was successful, and fortunately once he was in front of it, the door blocked his view of the corpse.

Upon closer inspection, there were only two rifles and three pistols in the safe. He picked up a black, semi automatic pistol that seemed to hold the most ammunition. He looked at the two rifles and saw that one had a magazine, and the other had none. The latter appeared to be a hunting rifle, while the former looked to be a military-type rifle. He took the military looking one and pulled out the magazine, inspecting the bullets inside. The man wasn’t familiar with firearms, so he took it into the living room and sat on the couch, inspecting it for several minutes. Once he was satisfied that he knew how it worked, he removed one of the bullets, about the size of his index finger, and went back to see how many were in the safe that matched. To his surprise, there were two more magazines full of them and several boxes. He dropped all of it into his bag. He also found an extra magazine for the pistol and an extra box of ammunition for it.

Returning to the living room again, he unloaded the magazine and counted twenty rounds. He replaced the magazine into the rifle and slung it onto his shoulder. It was of considerable weight and he knew it would take some getting used to, but the safety it would afford him was worth it. He had come across a few gun safes before today, but they had all been locked, and there was no way for him to open them. Guns weren’t common in this part of the country, so he counted his blessings and moved to the next house.

The man decided that the next unlocked house he came to would be his lodging for the night. He was becoming quite hungry, but he didn’t find any food in the house that wasn’t spoiled or eaten by mice or bugs already. He exited the house and pulled his shirt down from his nose and took a deep breath. He had seen similar ends of life in other homes. This one hadn’t even been the worst. He had found one that appeared the entire family had ingested some sort of poison at the same time and died near the dinner table.

At the next house, the back door was unlocked. It led him directly to the kitchen and living room area. There was a hallway that led to two more bedrooms that he checked before doing anything in the kitchen. He looked through the cabinets and found a sizeable stash of canned goods. He pulled down a can of black beans and one can of corn. He carefully set them down on the table and removed a small survival-style can opener from his bag. He opened the can of corn first and ate it.

He explored the rest of the house while the corn digested. There wasn’t anything else of interest except some antibiotics in the bathroom cabinet. The label identified them as bactrim. If he remembered correctly, bactrim was something called a “broad spectrum” antibiotic that was excellent for killing infections. Unfortunately, there was only half a bottle left, but he estimated it would be more than enough to fight off one bad infection. Maybe two if he caught them early.

The man removed a sheet from one of the beds and cut it into one-foot-wide strips. He wrapped them carefully around the rifle to avoid blocking where the empty shells were ejected and the line of sight between the front and rear aiming posts. He wrapped the cloth tightly with paracord and made sure the knots wouldn’t come loose. Once he was satisfied that the gun wouldn’t make much noise if it bumped into something else that was metal, he pulled the magazine out and peered into the chamber to see if there were any bullets inside. There wasn’t, so he let the bolt of the rifle slide back forward. The man aimed down the sights at a picture hanging on the wall in the living room and pulled the trigger. Click. He nodded, satisfied. If he was honest with himself, it could have been a terrible trigger and he wouldn’t have known.

He returned to the can of beans and took a little more time eating them, less hungry than when he ate the corn. There was a good variety of canned goods in the cabinet, so he dropped one or two of each kind into his bag.

The couch in the living room looked comfortable and the man dropped onto it. Indeed it was. He made sure there was nothing near the couch that could be knocked over or make noise. He took off his bag and set it next to the couch along with his newly acquired rifle. It was dark by this time and sleep came quickly.

---HOURS---

He awoke with a start. It was sunrise. He sat up quickly and pulled his bag onto his shoulders and slung his rifle. He exited the house and began walking east, keeping close to the house fronts. Soon, he came to the end of the neighborhood to a main road. There was a large field in front of him that stretched out to both sides. On the side of street he was on, backyard fences stretched in either direction. He had come from his right, the west, the day before. He turned left and stayed near the fence. The leaves on the trees were beginning to fall off of the branches, the temperature was getting cooler, and he was starting to bundle up more and more.

The creatures eyesight was not very good. He knew that. He wasn’t sure about smell, but it’s hearing was incredible. The man couldn’t think of an explanation of why the creature was able to pick out certain sounds among others, but it could. It was either hearing, or something closely associated with hearing. He couldn’t be sure. No one could have been. It was completely new.

The man tripped on a rock, causing a scraping sound against the concrete. He froze. He listened for a few seconds, then continued to walk carefully onward. He took the rifle off his shoulder and held it in his hands. He knew it didn’t help him stay quiet, and it might not even kill the creature, but it made him feel better. He wasn’t sure why, he had only shot a pistol a couple times. He probably couldn’t even shoot the rifle accurately, but he wouldn’t find out until it was probably too late.

A few hours later, the man stopped behind an old wooden fence near the back of a grocery store. The grocery store was between him and where the creature was last known to be, so he felt safe for the time being. He used the can opener to pry open some canned peaches. He ate them in only a couple minutes, drank the sweet nectar, and dropped the can onto the grass on the other side of the fence. He took a drink from his metal canteen and decided he would need to boil more water tonight.

---DAYS---

The man strode across the storefronts in a stripmall on the crossroads of two main streets. He constantly was looking all around him, making sure the creature wasn’t near. Sleeping the night before had lost him a considerable amount of time and distance between him and the creature. It could be as close as a four hour walk behind him now. He would probably walk all night. He hated walking all night, but he had done it several times. If he did, he could sleep again the night after that, or maybe in the afternoon if he walked quickly. Walking in the night was really the best time anyway since the creatures eyesight was so poor. Walking in the day simply gave it’s bad sense a little extra advantage. He hadn’t been too concerned about that, however, since the creature was much too far to see him anyway.

What he wouldn’t give for some meat right now. He longed for some beef or chicken. Right now, a squirrel would satisfy his craving. He decided to remove the small air-powered BB gun from his backpack and keep his eyes open for small game. The sun was beginning to set again, so if he found a squirrel or rabbit, he may be able to cook it over a fire in a building so that the light didn’t escape to the ambient surroundings. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to cook something so small, then he could eat while he walked. Water. The man swore. He had forgotten that he needed to boil water as well. When he came to a water source, he would make that a priority instead. Maybe he would find some distilled water at a grocery  store or gas station soon. He was getting closer to the center of the city, so he should be able to find some without too much difficulty. He decided to keep his eyes open for some meat and gather some water soon.

---MONTHS---

He finally reached the east coast four months ago. There was a small garden that was thriving in the backyard of the house he had taken up residence within. Tomatoes, yams, peppers, beans, and even corn as difficult as it was to grow, was spreading like wildfire in the little garden. He had gained an incredible distance between the creature and himself and he was confident that it was far enough away now that it wouldn’t be able to track him. Still, out of habit, he kept a bag and his rifle ready to go with the essentials that he would need to survive another escape like the one he had performed months ago.

There were a great deal of trees at his current location, and squirrels were abundant. He still didn’t kill very many. He would kill one every few days and eat it, but no more than that. He didn’t think that he would be upsetting the ecosystem if he killed more, but he was still conscious of his footprint on the environment around him. A vegetarian diet is mostly what he consumed. There were canned goods that he was able to find in nearby homes that he utilized as well. He planted several fruit trees, but it would be years before they produced anything. The berries he planted would only take a couple years, but he was still a long wait away from seeing the fruits of his labor.

The man squinted toward the sun. It was beginning to become hot enough to make him sweat profusely as he worked in his garden. He bent back over and kept pulling the weeds out of the area where he  planted his food. He wasn’t sure how to utilize the weeds as fertilizer, so he simply tossed them in a pile that he would sprinkle rock salt on to make sure the weeds didn’t spread. He  came up with the idea of using rock salt about two weeks ago when he found a can of it in a pantry several houses down the street. Anything else that was plant-based waste he would toss into a pile and cover it with a tarp, in hopes that he would be able to use the material as fertilizer the next year. He wasn’t familiar with farming practices, how to best grow food, or fertilize it, but he remembered a few things from high-school chemistry that seemed to be enough to make the garden thrive.

He didn’t know how to preserve food, so he simply saved what he thought would work for seeds for the next year and buried them. One thing he did know is that the earth was normally cooler than the ambient air during the summer and warmer during the winter. He reasoned that the best way to preserve seeds would be to bury them wrapped in some foil that he found in the house. He saved several plastic bags of seeds in his backpack, just in case he would have to move spontaneously. He didn’t like to think about having to move again, but not considering the possibility and not preparing for it would be foolish. The man made sure that he kept packed everything that would help him survive a two to three month journey.

He sprinkled a tiny bit of salt on a large tomato he had just plucked from the garden and took a large bite. Some of the juice ran down his chin and he leaned forward to avoid it dripping onto his shirt. He tapped the salt shaker softly to sprinkle just a tad more onto the open part of the tomato and took another bite. It was delicious. He had a few friends at his job that would give him a hard time for bringing a tomato in his lunch and eating it like an apple, but he didn’t care. They didn’t know what they were missing. All that “I like ketchup but not tomatoes” was heresy. That was a long time ago. Or at least it seemed to be. He managed a smile as he sat and leaned against the brick wall of the house. For the first time in awhile, he was able to rest. He closed his eyes, not caring about a thing.

When the man awoke, it was dusk. He worked all day in the garden and time must have gotten away from him. He glanced from side to side and pulled himself up. What difference did it make anyway? He could pull weeds tomorrow. They wouldn’t sap enough nutrients from the soil in one night to kill his plants. But still, he worked a couple more hours and pulled weeds until he could no longer see what he was doing.

---MONTHS---

The spring and summer had proven to be productive. He harvested a great portion of what he planted several months before and after eating the fruits of his labor, he felt stronger than he had in a long time. The temperature was beginning to level off and he was starting to look at different seeds that would grow better in cooler weather with less sun. He noticed that the plants that grew best in shade or less sun had much larger leaves like cabbage and lettuce, while the plants that needed more sun like tomatoes and berries had smaller leaves. It made sense because plants relied on photosynthesis. The plants that had evolved to use less sun had larger leaves to soak up as much of the cosmic rays as possible, while the plants that had evolved in sunnier areas or times had smaller leaves since they were accustomed to getting as much sun as they desired.

Once the tomatoes had started growing in the summer, the squirrels began to assault his plants perpetually. He ate squirrel at least once a day. There was only one air canister left for his gun though. He was sure that he could find some more at a sporting goods store that was nearby. The man decided that the next day, his priority was to find additional air canisters for his BB gun. BBs themselves were not an issue. He had obtained a small canister that held over a thousand and had dumped them into a small plastic bag to avoid making noise. He had at least eight hundred left. The man knew that BBs would probably be the prime tool for hunting meat and so he used them sparingly, and only when he was confident in his shot.

---WEEKS---

The man was beginning to think that the creature had found another trail to follow. Another poor soul perhaps. Or maybe an animal that was fleeing for it’s life. A coyote would probably be able to make it quite some time. A wolf would be able to flee as well. The man was human, however. He was not nearly as adept to his surroundings as he had once been in the world before. It was a different time now. Perhaps this time had always been coming. There was no age or era that lasted forever. He studied history in casual curiosity, but still he knew that ages ended and eras either came to a tragic climax or a flickering, anti-climactic close. Perhaps he was one of the last ones of his age. There was no way to be sure. He did know, however, that it was his responsibility to try to survive. His species counted on it. Maybe he would find a colony of humans. Although, with only one couple, humanity was still doomed to die. He wasn’t sure how many males and females were required for a successful repopulation of the species, but he was sure it was over a few dozen. Mostly females if he wasn’t mistaken. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t make it that far.

---WEEKS---

It was beginning to cool again. On the east coast, it was much colder in the winter than where he was from. He collected as many seeds from the plants he had grown that summer and placed them in a watertight bag. There were plenty of seeds at the store, but he did know that fresh seeds always germinated more successfully.

The man sat in the living room with the fire in fireplace warming him. Nights routinely dropped below freezing now, and the days were getting noticeably shorter. There was a bookshelf in the other room that he had been reading from during the summer. He was almost done with the ones that looked interesting. He could probably find more to read in one of the houses onthe street.

The man came to the last page, and after about half a minute, closed the book and set it down next to him. It was a sad book. It was one of those books where you finish it, and you don’t want to do anything else the rest of the day.

He sighed and stood up to make his way toward the front window. The house was on the outside of a corner, so you could see up and down both ways of the street. It was dark and gray, very overcast. The clouds moved in earlier that day. Down the street to his left, leaves tumbled across from one side to the other, and to his right, leaves tumbled down the street away from him. They seemed to just keep going until they came to the dark shape at the end of the road.

The man’s blood ran cold. His heart rate skyrocketed. He panicked for a moment not knowing what to do. He tried to push the fear away just long enough to think straight. He pulled on his boots, tossed the bag of seeds into his bag, a few cans of food, and a few other essentials. He pulled on a coat, gloves, and hat. The man ran back to the front window. It was closer. He swore. How had it found him? He hadn’t seen the creature in over six months!

His rifle was leaning against the back door and he scooped it up as he ran out into the back yard. The man stopped. Could he kill it? He was paralyzed with indecision. He turned back and ran into the house, through the living room and opened the front door. When the creature saw him, he sped up slightly. He was within one hundred yards now. The man took a knee, squinted down the sights, and pulled the trigger. Instant pain slammed against his ears followed by the sound of nothing. A couple seconds passed and a loud ringing emerged from the silence. He blinked hard and held his ears for a second. His left one hurt much worse. He realized he was kneeling right next to a brick wall. The man cursed at himself and moved up past the wall and fired again. The sound was still deafening, but the pain in his left ear didn’t flare up as bad.

The creature crumpled to the ground. It was still crawling toward him. The man took another shot. This time he saw black ooze spray out from behind where the bullet had impacted it’s head. It had to be only fifty yards away at this point. He could imagine that the loud rifle was nearly paralyzing to a creature so sensitive to sound. The creature didn’t move any more.

The man blinked. Was that all he had needed to do the whole time? Surely, it couldn’t be so simple. He stood up threw his rifle onto his shoulder and looked down at the creature in the middle of the street. The stiff spines poking out of its back twitched slightly in the wind. The body twitched. The man jumped. Then, he laughed at himself for being startled, realizing it was just a death throe.

The creature’s arm moved slightly. The man eyed it carefully. One of the legs slid along the ground and then back to its original position. He couldn’t believe it. There was no way. The bullets he had used weren’t small. They were big ones. They should have killed it. The creature tried to lift its head several times and finally succeeded. The man swore its mouth twisted into a contorted, mocking smile. He spun on his heels and sprinted back to the house in terror.

---WEEKS---

He hadn’t seen the creature for almost a month since he had shot it in the street. The man had lost a lot of weight being on the run again after having been able to settle down for a few months. How long would this go on? Surely there was some way to kill it. When the soldiers shot those five at the beginning, he thought that they had just missed a vital organ or something. But they hit exactly where they needed to. The creatures were just able to survive somehow. It was inexplicable.

He slowly turned the rabbit’s corpse on the spit over the fire. He always made a fire in a building over tile or concrete so that the creature wouldn’t be able to see the light from it or hear the crackling it made with damp wood. The flickering flames cast eerie shadows on the wall in front of him. He was in a small store in a strip mall. It looked like it had been some sort of ice cream shop. There were freezers toward the back that he was sure would render the air inside unbreathable if he opened them due to the spoiled dairy inside.

As cold as he was, ice cream sounded delicious. He didn’t eat it very often before this, but now he craved it. Peanut butter cup and mint chocolate chip were his favorites when he did have some. He remembered his mother would take him to a store similar to this and he would get a double dip with the two flavors when she let him. If he only was allowed a single, he always had a difficult time deciding.

He tried to pull his coat tighter, but it was already zipped up and he was as warm as he was going to get. The fire couldn’t be made any larger without burning the building down, and that would defeat the purpose of making it inside. There were a few embers that already made him nervous, but each one had burned out before they touched anything flammable. He stopped watching them as they floated up and just stared at the fire.

The flame spread slowly over one of the branches. It was relentless. Slow. All consuming. It changed whatever it touched. The wood sat still as the hydrocarbons in it and the oxygen in the air were transformed, released heat, and formed carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and some water. Once the flame  sucked the fuel out of the branch, it left behind gray ash. The floor around the fire was beginning to blacken.

The rabbit looked like it was getting done on the outside. The man took a knife and carefully cut away a slice of meat. He inspected it for a moment. Satisfied, he popped it into his mouth and chewed. It was delicious. He cut off several more slices until he began to see undercooked meat. Rotating the rest of the rabbit with one hand, he dropped the chucks of meat into his mouth with the other. He chewed the meat slowly, savoring the flavor.

The man knew he needed to rest. He was walking south, hoping to arrive at a more temperate climate soon, but knew he would be in the way of hurricanes in the future. That wasn’t something he could worry about now. Maybe the storms would drive the creatures off. Then again, they had made it through the midwest part way through storm season just fine. He didn’t think he would be able to shake them. His whole life would be trying to escape. He could shoot them all he wanted, but it would only slow them down a little. Bullets couldn’t set them on fire and he couldn’t get close enough to… An idea came to him. He decided to stay here. He would start his garden again in the spring, if he survived that long. He would need to gather supplies. Several key instruments to help him with his plan…

---DAYS---

He had been at the small strip mall for almost two weeks. It was situated near the edge of this particular town with forest nearby. The woods provided him with plenty of meat for him to gain strength and weight little by little. He used the pelts to line his coat and pad the shoulders to make him more camouflaged when he hunted. He looked like a furry football player because he had so much cold weather clothing and hides seemingly piled on.

From the roof of the strip mall, he saw the creature through his binoculars. He could barely see the shape shuffling through the snow because it was so far away, but it was unmistakeable how it moved. He was ready though. His heartrate still shot up and his hands became sweaty. He moved to the edge of the roof and knelt down. He made sure there was a round in the chamber of his rifle and flicked off the safety. It took about two minutes of eternity for the creature to get close enough, but it was finally within the range the man was assured he would not miss. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, peered down the sights, and lined up the bullet trajectory with the creature's head. He pulled the trigger as steadily as he could. BOOM.

The man dropped his rifle and slid down the ladder into the foot-deep snow. Awkwardly rushing toward the temporarily lifeless body, he removed the small axe from his belt and closed the distance between him and the creature. He removed his pistol with his other hand and shot another round into its head. As soon as he replaced the pistol, he raised the axe over his head and brought it down on the creature’s neck. It sunk deep and black ooze squirted up and landed in the snow, staining the landscape. The creatures eyes shot open for a moment and it began struggling to breath and rasping. The man had to act quickly before it healed or did whatever it did to survive. He shot the creature in the head again and brought the axe down repeatedly on its neck. The head was severed and he unstrapped the canteen he had filled with lighter fluid from his belt. He dumped the entirety of it onto the creature's body and lit a match. As soon as he dropped it, flame roared up from the corpse. He watched it start moving for a moment and felt his heart sink. It stopped moving, however, and eventually the fire went out.

Several hours passed, and the man was content that the creature was too damaged to return to life. The lifeless head sat in the center of the roof. A trophy for his kill. He had rabit that night and slept better than he had in awhile.

---DAYS---

He had killed his fourth creature that day. His arms were sore. The man had killed at least two every day for the last week. They were coming more and more often. He never imagined there would be so many. His gunshots must be drawing them in. He had no choice now though. The gun was the only thing that allowed him to disable them long enough to decapitate them. He discovered that the fire wasn’t necessary though. The twitching that the first one exhibited after being decapitated was just the result of random muscle spasms. Others did similar things after losing their heads, but they never recovered.

---DAYS---

The heads were piling up in the corner on the roof top. He must have killed nearly thirty by now. The man was tired. He hadn’t slept more than a couple hours a night. His muscles were sore. His head was cloudy and he had begun to lose weight again.

He found more ammo for the rifle, but only two boxes, and he nearly used all of that. He had a full magazine for the pistol. There were seven creatures on the ground below him. There was no way to kill them all. Several more emerged from the trees behind the strip mall. He wasn’t even sure if he had enough ammo to simply disable all of them momentarily. There was no way to fight them with the axe, their arms were too long. He was surrounded. The man dropped down and sat against the wall on the roof. He shot each creature as it climbed up the ladder until his rifle ammo ran out. He probably only shot two or three that kept recovering and climbing back up. He checked his pistol. The magazine was full. He double checked.

As the creatures kept climbing up he lazily shot each one in the head. BANG. Three rounds left. BANG. Two rounds left. BANG. One round left. One of the creature’s heads rose above the wall as he climbed up the ladder. The man put the gun to his own temple and pulled the tr-

The End