Slowly We Rot by Bryan Smith

more
unsettling.  He was, after all, headed out into a world blanketed with the
corpses of billions.  There would be more remains and he wouldn’t always be
able to turn away from them.
              He winced at the way
the old backpack’s aluminum frame banged into his back as he continued down the
steep slope of the road.  Several times he reached behind him to grab onto the
bottom bar in an effort to keep it from doing that.  It helped, but holding
onto the bar also became tiresome after a while.  He resolved to exchange the
old pack for one of the newer, more ergonomic ones at the earliest opportunity,
even if it meant resorting to robbing the dead.
              The road continued to
sharply twist and lead him in a steeply downhill trajectory, requiring him to
hang onto the backpack’s bottom bar almost constantly.  It wouldn’t be so bad
once he reached something like level ground, but for now dealing with it was a
tedious exercise in endurance.  His annoyance level was enough that he began to
consider stopping for the night after walking barely more than a mile down the
highway.  He might have strengthened his resolve and pushed on for a while
anyway if not for the impending approach of full dark.  There was hardly any
light left in the sky, the last faint traces of dusk fading rapidly.
              Deciding to stop was
the easy part.  He’d set off late in the day, with no real expectation of
getting very far before nightfall.  Tomorrow he could rise early and work at
finishing the trek out of the mountains.  Unless he found a working vehicle and
acquired gas to drive it—unlikely—the march westward was going to take a very
long time, possibly several months.  Nothing he did tonight would shorten or
lengthen the journey to any significant degree.
              The more difficult
aspect of stopping was where to do it.  He couldn’t pitch his tent right in the
middle of the road, despite the extremely remote—approaching zero
percent---possibility of a vehicle coming along to run him over.  There was
just no point in taking the chance.  Besides, he would feel too exposed.  He
was on the verge of deciding his best option would be to hop over the guardrail
and set up camp in the woods when he discerned the shape of another vehicle up
ahead.
              This one was a vintage
VW van, a relic from the 60’s or 70’s that had achieved antique status long
before the apocalypse.  Unlike the truck, it was no burned-out hulk, nor did it
appear to have crashed.  Except for the multiple flat tires, it looked almost
roadworthy.  Or so it appeared at a distance of more than twenty paces in the gathering
darkness.  When he got closer, Noah examined the van’s exterior more closely
and noted a pattern of bullet holes zigzagging along one entire side of the
vehicle.  Someone had fired on the van with an automatic weapon, expending a
lot ammunition in an apparently determined effort to kill its passengers.
              Curious, Noah
approached a blown-out side window and peered inside the van, grimacing as he
spotted at least three sets of skeletal remains, all clad in the tattered
remains of rotting clothes.  Judging by the awkward positioning of the remains,
these people had died in contortions of agony.  Given the many bullet holes,
this was a logical enough deduction.
              Noah had hoped to find
the relatively intact van empty, thinking it might serve as an acceptable
temporary shelter for the night.  But there was no way he was sleeping in what
amounted to a tomb on wheels.  Unless, maybe, he worked up the nerve to drag
the remains out of the van.  A shiver of repulsion went through him at even
having entertained the idea.  These people, whoever they’d been, deserved
better than being dumped by the side of the road like garbage.  This was their
final resting place.  Disturbing them would just be wrong.
              Setting up