[AoS] The Valley of the Shadow of Death (open)

The shell of Lizzy now known as Melody was out looking for food. It seemed that was all she did nowadays. The effort to leave her safe spot took so much. Melody felt like there were always eyes on the back of her neck. The area she traversed at the moment was full of rubble. It was like death walked through this area of New York, but that’s how almost every part she had been in felt right.

Sadly, there was not much wildlife in this area, but Melody was always on the lookout for rats and bugs. She never knew when she would find a food source. Out of the corner of her eye, Melody saw a slight movement on the ground – she assumed it was a rat. Following the motion she spied the four-legged creature as it scurried underneath a large pile of rubble. Under there, Melody had no chance of retrieving the rat even if she used her high-pitched scream.

This angered Melody, and it bubbled up inside her. Her fists balled up and she struck the ruined wall next to her. This created a chain reaction and some rubble from above began to fall. She had to jump out of the way to miss the rubble. Well there goes that food, she thought as she sat there looking at the concrete that almost crushed her.

Melody couldn’t sit there forever though. Daylight was burning and her stomach was growling. It was a typical feeling with the scarcity of food, but it was a need that Melody needed to fulfill. As she walked down the cluttered road, she heard someone speak. The presence of someone sent fear and slight panic into Melody’s head. Very rarely she encountered people, so out of precaution, Melody clutched her pocketknife tighter in her hand. Sometimes it was kill or be killed, and Melody did not want to be killed.

She peered around the corner to see the stranger. She was a female, and looked like a slightly petite at that. The woman had a bow and arrow; Melody made note of this just in case it would come to a fight. What struck her most was that the woman didn’t look like she was hunting. And she looked… sad as she stared down the road.

That was when Melody lost her balance. She was leaning on the rubble too much and it gave. She fell and the pocketknife in her hand flew through the air and landed in plain sight of the strange female. Melody knew her position was given away, but she needed that pocketknife. With a scared, feral look in her eyes, she darted to her pocketknife hoping and praying that an arrow would not pierce her heart. Melody grabbed the pocketknife and glanced at the woman who must have seen the wild, pitiful look in Melody’s eyes.

The arrow that stood at Melody’s feet was a warning – a very strong warning. It sent chills through her. That arrow could have done it. That arrow could have ended her life. Melody just stared at the brunette woman and internally thought about what death would mean to her. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It would mean no fighting to find rats or any scraps of food; no worrying about who’s watching every move you make; no, well, anything. Even as Melody thought about how nice death might be, something in her screamed at her to not give up.

The strange woman warned Melody that she wouldn’t miss if she made any “hostile movement”. She wasn’t sure if the stranger was telling the truth or not though. Clutching the pocketknife in her fist, Melody called out, “How do I know you speak truth?” Ever since she left the life of Lizzy behind, Melody had difficulty trusting people. It became easier to just put up a wall. If no one came in, she wouldn’t be hurt.

Her eyes darted to her surroundings. There was a possibility to run out of the situation if she ran behind herself, but with the stranger having a bow and arrow, there wasn’t a guarantee that she would be unscathed. No, the best thing for Melody to do right now was stay exactly as she was: crouched on the ground clutching her pocketknife just in case the stranger goes against her word.

The strange woman pointing the bow and arrow warned she wouldn’t lower it until Melody put away hers. There was no way to have a guarantee that she wouldn’t be hurt. Blind faith was all she could go on. It wasn’t something she could give, but it was all Melody could do for the moment.

Reluctantly, Melody closed the blade on her pocketknife and stashed it away in her pocket. It was close enough where she could pull it out if she really needed it, but it was still further than Melody would have liked it to be. Besides, if she really needed to, she could send pain coursing through her body with her scream. The arrow might pierce her heart before that, but it was better than nothing.

Her gaze never left the strange woman as she put away her weapon. She forced herself to be ready just in case there was a hint of betrayal. “Mine’s away. You do the same,” Melody called to the brunette. However, there was no time for her to act upon Melody’s words. A noise appeared behind Melody and it was second nature for her to spring up, slightly crouched, pulling her pocketknife out while facing the noise.

Behind the rubble appeared a savage man. He had a long black mane and a thick beard – most likely hadn’t cut his hair since New York went up in ruins. All he wore was remnants of a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, but what frightened Melody the most was the long, sharp knife he carried in his right hand. It looked like an old kitchen knife. The man stared straight at Melody while he slowly approached. He had turn into the worse of them all: a cannibal. He must have been starving, but Melody wasn’t going to let her body become someone’s dinner.

Melody slowly backed away toward the strange woman. There was that intuition that she wouldn’t want to be eaten either, and if the two of them worked together, there was a better chance of survival against a large man. “I don’t like this, but let’s work together to get out of this mess,” she hissed at the woman. “Can you shoot him with one of your arrows?” Melody’s pocketknife wouldn’t do any good against a kitchen knife and she wouldn’t be able to take him on in close combat. The arrow was their best option because she didn’t want to use her high-pitched scream unless she really needed to.

The woman sent an arrow flying toward the man, but instead of hitting his chest, it hit his left knee. This was not going to be an easy battle. Melody cursed under breath. It didn’t even cross her mind that the wild man could be a mutant – and that’s including the fact that she was one herself!

>> “Looks like we’ll be here for a while.”

Arrows were out of the question for killing the man, and Melody certainly couldn’t run up to him and stab him while his kitchen knife loomed over them. And who knew the extent of his mutations. Obviously he could either create some sort of force field to protect himself or could redirect airborne objects.

An idea struck Melody. She didn’t want to be forced to this, but she didn’t see any way out. She was a sitting duck there otherwise. Arrows wouldn’t pierce him, but her high-pitched scream would work.

“Plug your ears. You won’t want to hear this,” Melody muttered to the brunette woman. She didn’t check to see if the woman did what Melody warned her to do, but took a deep breath and focused on the ding of two glasses hitting each other. It was easy for her to imagine the noise because she thought about it so frequently. Melody plugged her ears and as the man began to rush the two women, she screamed.

She screamed her high pitch so loud that the man dropped his kitchen knife and fell on the floor clutching his head. The sound wouldn’t stop and it pained him. He began to writhe in pain as Melody casually walked up to him, kicked the kitchen knife away, and stared at the hairy man. She had no love, no kindness for the man; only hatred was left for him now.

Melody stopped her scream. The man was still clutching his ears trying to make the ringing go away. The pain he just felt was terrible and the remnants of it still went through his body. She simply pulled out her knife, clutched the hair on his head and in a smooth, simple movement, slit his throat.

Blood gushed everywhere, but Melody didn’t care. He was dead, and couldn’t kill her. Also, the blood would be a nice attraction for any rodents in the area. And where there are rodents, there is food. “Good riddance,” Melody said at she spat at the corpse.

She then proceeded to picking up the kitchen knife that lay wasted beside the body. “This will be much easier to hunt rats with.” It needed a little cleaning, but it was much sharper than the pocketknife she carried around.

Melody briefly forgot about the brunette until she mentioned that spreading out the blood would help attract more animals. Although she should have been concentrating on the woman with the arrow pointed at her, the promise of food because of the freshly spilt blood overtook Melody as her mouth began to water at the thought of a nice rat or two.

She didn’t sense any misleading intent in the woman’s advice, so Melody decided to follow the advice. With her newly acquired kitchen knife, she cut out the blood-soaked shirt of the corpse in an attempt to spread the blood. She dragged the shirt over to various rocks nearby, leaving a trail of blood in its path.

When she was satisfied with the blood trail around the area, she looked at her work with hungry eyes. If this didn’t attract any source of food, she didn’t know what would. Until the rats had enough time to sniff out the blood source, Melody needed to get her mind off of this possibility of food. She then remembered the brunette, and quickly set her gaze on her only to see an arrow staring back.

“I suppose you hunt,” Melody called to her. “How else would you know about the blood?” Her grip tightened on the kitchen knife in her right hand. There was nothing to keep the two females from attacking each other anymore, and now that the stranger saw Melody for what she really was, she didn’t trust the brunette’s words more than she had to. Finding out about mutant powers was a dangerous thing. She figured if she attempted to converse with the archer, then maybe an arrow wouldn’t pierce her heart. Whatever the case, Melody did not want to relinquish her grip on her kitchen knife.

So the stranger didn’t have to hunt. Well bully for her. Hearing about having enough food for her… family irritated Melody. She wished that her life was all roses for herself, and she didn’t have to hunt. It wasn’t. Melody clutched at her stomach at the thought of real food. She couldn’t imagine what it tasted like. It was hard enough to imagine anything besides rodents and bugs.

Thinking about her thin memories of real food also brought her back to her old life. She remembered eating turkey, potatoes, and apple pie on Thanksgiving with her… family. It hurt to remember them. She was no longer the same girl anymore. Melody had to shake the thoughts away before they incapacitated her.

>>”What I said before still stands: You put the knives away and I’ll do the same with my bow.”

The archer’s statement forced Melody back to reality. Lizzy was a part of the past. Right now, Melody’s goal was survival. She looked down at her bloody kitchen knife and then back at the bow. Could she trust her? The brunette hadn’t shot her yet. Even though she knew Melody was a mutant, she didn’t shoot.

There weren’t a lot of options once again either. The easiest one would be to do what the archer said and put away the knife. There was the slightest hesitation, but Melody placed the kitchen knife on the ground beside her and put the pocketknife in her pocket. She didn’t want to place the kitchen knife in her sweatshirt backpack because it might poke her, and it wouldn’t really fit anywhere else.

“That work for ya?” Melody hoped the stranger wouldn’t mind the knife on the ground. She could deal with it right there, and there wasn’t really anywhere else to put it. After motioning to the archer to return the motion and put down her weapon, Melody continued to stare at the arrow that gazed upon her.

The stranger put away her bow and arrow just as she promised. This made Melody relax a little to see that she kept to her word… so far. Melody didn’t expect that she would ever be completely relaxed, but that was her persona nowadays. It still felt slightly odd to not be clutching her knife, but that was because she half expected another crazed lunatic to come barging in again.

>>“Did you live in this area before the explosion?”

It was a simple question, but it flooded memories into Melody’s brain. Family dinner. Playing the guitar in the subway. Running around in the park. The last hug she gave her mom. The explosion. Returning to her old apartment. Sobbing over the loss of her parents. Everything came back to her just in that little question. Melody stared in the stranger’s general direction, but her mind was far away from the current situation. She croaked, “Yes.” It was all she could say at the present time.

More and more, Lizzy kept reappearing in her head. Melody didn’t want that part of her back though, but every time she stuffed Lizzy back, the memories would flood out harder the next time. Now, the memories gushed out. The emotions overtook Melody as she fell to her knees under the weight of everything her mind was going through. The emotional weight transferred to physical weight, and it just became too much for Melody.

Tears began to flood from her eyes as she knelt there and continued to think about her life as Lizzy and her life before the explosion. They were uncontrollable, and Melody couldn’t get a hold of her mind. Everything just hurt too much.

She then remembered the stranger watching her. By this point, it might have been mercy if she just shot her with an arrow. Happy memories felt like thousands of knives. Melody was an uncontrollable, emotional wreck, and she knew it.