Dead World by Nicholas Woode-Smith

Author:Nicholas Woode-Smith [Woode-Smith, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Warpmancer Press
Published: 2020-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14.

Hunger

“You see it?”

“Yeah.”

There was joy in Treth’s voice, and I was glad. All I could feel, besides the ache in my legs and my parched throat, was relief. It was still a long way off, but we could now see it. Lady’s Wake. Our destination. And I was able to muster up some sense of accomplishment, despite only seeing the peak finally stick up over the horizon.

It had been over a week, give or take, since I attempted to kill myself. The zombie bite had left a scar but, luckily, I had not shown any of the symptoms of necroblood sickness yet. Would be very anticlimactic if I came this far to die of fever.

But while I was still relatively healthy, I couldn’t help but feel dirty and thirsty. There was very little water on the road eastward. It seldom rained and, when it did, I could only refill my bottles for a day or two’s worth of water. I should have searched Concord for more supplies. More bottles, jars, waterskins…anything. I could have possibly found more food if I looked hard enough. The dogs had survived for a long time. That meant there was something to eat around there. But it was too late to think about that now. I was countless kilometres away from Concord. And Concord was the only other city I knew about in this now defunct grand duchy. Treth didn’t mention any other towns and, even the ruined villages had been replaced by empty fields and sparse thickets and forests by the roadside. And, eventually, even the road gave way to what could only generously be called a dirt-path, already conceding ground to the grass and foliage.

Treth’s mood improved as we left the evidence of his dead civilisation. He was almost back to his demeanour when we were in the forests. These places of nature must be better for him than the ruins. They were always natural and didn’t represent any sort of loss. If anything, perhaps it presented a comforting consistency.

“Where do you think the horde has gone?” I asked, standing still and staring at the peak of Lady’s Wake.

“Gods be damned if I care,” Treth said, cursing in a rare bout of overt blasphemy. “They’ll roam the world for all days. And better that they roam as far from us as they can.”

“They looked to be heading south.”

Treth rolled his eyes. “And we’re heading east. No point worrying about the dead. The destination is what matters now.”

I frowned. I got the feeling that the dogs in Concord had given Treth some hope that there may be some survivors in Lady’s Wake. He said that it was an unassailable fortress. But even an unassailable fortress needed food. And we didn’t know how long it had been since Treth had left this world. Assuming that time worked the same here than it did on Earth and that he had immediately come to me after his death, then it had been around three or four years since the fall of Avathor.

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