It had been 2 years since the start of everything. Clay had been making his way through the town, looking at the long dead remains, nothing but bones holding down scraps of weathered fabric that had once been clothing that had been torn and ripped off of the bodies as the dead fed upon the living that they caught. He passed by a tree where a dried up husk was clinging to a backpack with one hand and the other hung open. There was a revolver that had been dropped right below the hand and it was in bad condition. It had most likely been laying there for close to two years. Clay continued on his way after looking at the dead person in the tree, hoping that there was something still left in this town for him to find. 

Clay hadn’t eaten very well in a couple of days. He wasn’t in danger of starving, but he was going to start becoming less effective if he didn’t get some food into him. He had a few teabags in his pack and a can of fruit. It was pears, which he really didn’t like, but he would eat them if it came to it. He was hoping that there was a few cans or something in a store.

There was a shop with its gates down behind the glass. Clay took a little leather pouch out of his pocket and pulled out slender, metal objects. He picked the lock on the glass door and then bent down to pick the lock on the gate. He kept stopping and starting, looking around, making sure that he wasn’t being snuck up on. He pulled the gate up and stepped inside. He turned the lock on the glass doors and pulled the gate back down, securing it. He lifted his bat and quietly made his way through the store, chicking the back, and the bathrooms. 

The store would have smelled like rot at one point, but now all of the rotted fresh items had dried into nothing in the dry air of the closed up shop. There were still plenty of options left in the store. He very nearly cried when he saw the amount of food that was left. There was a car in the parking lot. He thought that it would be worth a try to get going. It would make it easier to take the contents of the store and possibly find another store. He told himself all of that, but honestly, he was just tired of walking. It was becoming harder and harder to wake up in the morning knowing that he was going to have to walk for the entire day and barely make progress just to get to somewhere that he would have to leave the next day and repeat everything all over again. The routine was starting to wear on him.

The store was decently protected he could stay there for a while, given the dead stay away. If they surrounded the store, he would be trapped. Trapped like that idiot in the tree. Trapped like so many others that thought staying closed up in a building was the safest bet. Movement was life. Staying on the move was the only thing that had saved Clay for this long. 

But he was so very tired.

Clay rolled up each gate, taping newspaper and paper bags to the windows before rolling down each gate back into place. He would stay for a little while. He couldn’t face walking again, not for now. A rest was what he needed and the locks here were tough. He could even block the back door to keep people out. 

A meal of canned meat, boxed pasta, and a sports drink made him feel like he could take on the world, after sleep that was. He unrolled his sleeping bag and inflated his pillow, setting up behind the counter. It was time for a nice, long, sleep… And maybe a smoke. It had been a long time since he was able to indulge that habit.