Two Winters Past

EXT. PARLOR CITY. MORNING

SHANNON and RADDOCK walk past buildings with smashed windows and hanging doors. Improvised barricades cross the road. The wall was breached.

SHANNON: Zombies do this?

RADDOCK: (shaking his head) Army. They were gathering conscripts, and we weren’t willing to go with them.

SHANNON: The Army held together in a lot of places. Especially the mid-West, where the plague was slow. They’ve probably declared themselves a nation by now.

RADDOCK: These was on their way to Fort Drum. The ones that came in on the way to NYC already looted everything. They killed all the zombies, but they took all our food. Lot a people starved. We didn’t know these was friendly or not, so we were not letting them in.

SHANNON: They got in?

RADDOCK: They moved on eventually. Killed a lot of people. Killed the rest of the monsters. I haven’t seen a zombie this side of the river since they gone.

SHANNON: Is it true they just stand down there? You’ve got to show me that.

RADDOCK: I ain’t going down there.

Awkward silence passes a moment.

RADDOCK: Power has to come back at some point, right? Can’t just be gone.

SHANNON: Everywhere I’ve been, same problem. Power is gone, and the wilderness is full of zombies.

RADDOCK: Damn, I hate leaving Parlor City. I’d shit before I walked across the whole damn country.

SHANNON: I biked mostly. Bikes break or get stolen though, so sometimes you need to make do.

RADDOCK: What did you eat?

SHANNON: I’m enterprising. Also friendly. There are still people out there willing to help a stranger. Turns out the end of the world wasn’t as bad as everyone expected it to be.

RADDOCK: Except for the zombies.

SHANNON: Except for zombies.

RADDOCK: You go through the desert?

SHANNON: I should have camped in Arizona. I met a lot of people camping in Arizona. The zombies get parched pretty fast, and they don’t look for water until they need it. Texas and Louisiana were a fucking mistake. I’m lucky I got through there.

RADDOCK: Got to be a lot of perverts out there, huh?

SHANNON: There are places you don’t go, no matter how hungry you are.

RADDOCK: I see smoke. Let’s hurry.

RADDOCK starts running. SHANNON follows.

Continued tomorrow