(Zeslinry)
I'm getting thinner, but not in a very good way. I continue walking on that cold road, mostly empty.
I stepped aside another oddity, growing tendrils out of bulbs. It had grown lettuce looking leaves, only pale white and blue like some marine animals. Things like that continue to unsettle me.
I think I'm encountering less of them though lately. Thankfully I'm getting closer to the area this hopeful map carried me toward.
I find a city like many others. Standing still now, all too quiet and still over the horizon.
I clench the straps of my backpack a little tighter and make my way there. I'm a little low in optimism lately.
I pass by impromptu graves and tombstones along the way. This is already looking grim.
I enter the empty streets that have the same sorts of marks I had left behind. So it was the same here. So far inland.
Maybe it really happened everywhere sadly. But my stomach churns in pain, making me think again.
As silent and peaceful this city appears to be, I'm still concerned. But hunger now pushes me to take some more chances. So I head inside, looking for food, and maybe another place to mark on my map.
~
I pass by collapsed streets and wrecked constructions sites. It makes the city a little more of a three dimensional jungle. I don't find any survivors whereabouts here, but the traces they left evacuating are numerous.
I notice how the undergrounds and anything below the surface level is shrouded in sulphuric looking mist. I'm not going down there. And I'm not staying long enough to check if something alive below there sometimes resurfaces. I don't want to know.
I find some food that hasn't spoiled yet. I barely prevent myself from eating too much at once. It's painful to be forced rations.
I sigh, sitting in a living room I invaded at random.
There's still some water in that building. I use it to wash and go to the toilets like normal.
I make a fire as night draws near, but camping in an industrial building far away from the weird underground fumes. I check the few maps I've found, but no other has these marks.
However I found near here a military vehicle that had some papers left. A regiment code, referring to another area.
So I'm checking by fire light where that could refer to. I'm not sure if that was still in use by a legitimate army corp. But whatever forces were out there, that might be worth a check next. I think they were a little further away from there.
I hide below my blanket and shiver my way to sleep painfully.
Sadly I'm woken up not long after by the noises of pipes bursting somewhere.
I discover outside quite the lights show.
As I half feared, something weird do come out from the underground at night.
Not predatory monsters though, but the green fluorescent mist itself. It's phosphorescent looking rather, rising in glowing fumes all over the city in random shapes. It's altogether terrifying and rather beautiful. As if these sentient smokes were rising up above the city in night flames, to dance or catch something feeding them in the air.
I watch these things for a few minutes, ready to run away at first, and then relaxing... These things are like new plants, now blooming perhaps?
I uncork a bottle I had found along my venture in town and pour myself a glass.
This night show is the first truly nice looking thing I've come around so far. I wouldn't get any closer nonetheless. I'm glad I'm far enough from these, whatever they are.
I sigh a lot and eventually manage to sleep a little nonetheless.
~
I leave the city a little more eroded on the next day. Things decay faster when these acidic fumes rise.
What happened to this place...
To the world?
I pack what's still edible that I could gather and resume my scavenging.
I spend another day trying to pluck what hasn't spoiled yet from this place.
I really will need to find a place where I can grow enough food when summer comes. I won't be able to find enough just gathering spoils at random like that every year.
I make do eventually, and even manage to leave with a car that works. It stopped in smokes and burning fumes a few kilometres later, but that was better than nothing.
I look at the open and silent road. A few more days of walk across this gentle countryside. Until the end of Winter.
Toward the next chance of finding a little more but death and leftovers out there.
A military site hopefully will have a little more.
With some luck, maybe there were even prepared for whatever happened. Someone must have been somewhere...
I go around a village shrouded in more toxic mists the next day. And I reach eventually this other dot on a random map.
~