Dead State Design Update
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Imagine yourself outside your usual supermarket. It's the middle of a sunny day. There are only a few cars in the parking lot. You hear a lot of birds, but no automobiles, no people talking, no music none of the white noise that makes up the average human soundscape. It's quiet in a way that modern man cannot fathom, stripped completely of the drone of civilization.
The doors to the supermarket are open, but it's pitch black inside. You haven't eaten in over a day and you're pretty hungry, but there's something about the store that makes your heart sink into your gurgling stomach. There are other buildings, apartments in the area, but nobody around. It's been two weeks since you've seen a human being. You had a gun, but it's locked in your gun safe over sixty miles away, because you had to abandon your car when the traffic never cleared. All you have on you is the shirt on your back, a backpack containing nothing but an empty water bottle, and a wooden pole that formerly had a rake attached.
All of the sudden you see a faint shape at the entrance of the supermarket, just hanging out there. You can't tell if it's an actual human. The last actual human you saw took a shot at you, so you don't want to draw attention to yourself immediately. You've learned that it's better in general to stay quiet as a rule. That last gunshot you heard from the last actual human you saw brought out dozens of the dead from within those darkened storefronts and apartment buildings. Just the sight of them, the way their sun-ripened heads turn at you on their flimsy necks like you've hooked them with a fishing line, makes you want to instinctively run until you reach safety. But there is no safety no police stations, no military patrols, no house with loved ones to comfort you. You don't even know if your loved ones are safe. Sometimes you pull out your cellphone like a rabbit's foot, just to hold it and hope that someone calls you anyone just to hear a voice. But it doesn't even have any juice left it's a fetish now, nothing else.
The figure is still standing there, just out of the light a few feet inside the supermarket. Human or not, your stomach rumbles, and you realize that you need to get in there and eat something or you won't be able to keep moving. You start walking toward it, hand firmly grasping your stick, driven more by the instinctive need to feed than courage. As you close the distance, it hits you as a spring breeze wafts in your direction the cloud of rot overtaking your nose and making you gag. The shape moves forward and you can see its feet burs stuck to its pants and a nail sticking right up through the unlaced sneaker. It makes a loud, painful moan like someone choking on tacks and you freeze right in place. Then you hear more noise, behind the shape, weight being dragged on linoleum, metal being knocked onto the floor. Your eyes adjust as a cloud blocks out the sun for a second. There are a dozen bodies in there wobbling in the darkness - they are all moving toward you.
