<span style="color: #FF0000">Chris bear crawled through the forest underbrush, sinking his palms and feet into the ground rather than stepping on it. He had his bow on his back and a knife in hand, ready for things to get ugly despite knowing that in all likelihood, they weren't. It's not that people weren't assholes; that much, at least, the movies had gotten right. It's just that, for all the "sleeping with one eye open" attitudes everyone had nowadays, no one really expected to be attacked or ambushed or robbed by a single person. Being alone had been, at least up to now, very advantageous.<br/><br/>The crackle of the campfire ahead was interrupting the words of the people gathered around it, so Chris scooted a bit closer, positioning himself where the flames least cast out their light to.<br/><br/>"How much longer do you think it'll be before people start doing this?" asked one of the five men before him. <br/><br/>There was a brief silence of voices, a moment when you could only hear the crackle of the fire and the occasional munch of teeth on flesh. Whatever they were eating smelled odd, pungent.<br/><br/>"I don't know," another man finally said. "There probably already are others doing it. But the sooner we start the better off we'll be. We'll figure out how well it can sit in our stomachs. We'll figure out the best plans of attack. We'll stockpile food before it starts to run out."<br/><br/>There was another silence of fire and chewing. One of the men stared into the fire, his fingers fiddling with the food inside his can. Chris found it strange that he wasn't hungry enough to be devouring it.<br/><br/>"I don't think I can do it," he said.<br/><br/>Everyone stopped eating and turned to look at him.<br/><br/>"Come now," the second man to speak rumbled, throwing a stick at the man playing with his food. "Think of all the shit we've seen already! You really think we're any worse than the thieves that rob people at gunpoint?"<br/><br/>Chris' hand tightened around his knife.<br/><br/>"Maybe not," the man said, putting his can of food down. "Maybe we're not worse. But we are bad... and that doesn't sit right with me."<br/><br/>The man who hadn't said anything spoke up. "Bad is about as entry level as it's going to get nowadays. We might have to do a lot worse in the coming years just to survive." He looked up from his food to stare at the dissident. "IF you want to survive." He opened a scraped up cooler and drew a long, dangling object from it. Chris stared at it, trying to figure out what it was. It bent oddly about a quarter of the way up as the man tossed it into the fire. It landed with a thud before beginning to sizzle, and the human arm finally took shape in Chris' eyes. His eyes widened, his nostrils flared, and his mouth opened slightly, but he made sure to keep quiet.<br/><br/>"Not sure that I do," the other man replied. He stood up. "I... I need to leave."<br/><br/>The man who threw the human arm into the fire drew a gun from his pants, cocked it, and pointed it lazily in the direction of the other man. "Can't let you do that," he said in between a mouthful of flesh.<br/><br/>Chris had run into plenty of horrible people up till now. He had stolen from them and sabotaged them in a myriad ways already. Up till now, however, he hadn't felt quite so sick of humanity. He hadn't felt like he could just send an arrow through a man's skull and be okay with it. And before he had any more time to think about it, he lined a shot up, pointed it at the cannibals' leader's head, took a deep breath, and let the arrow fly from his tensed bow. Blood spurted from the man's skull, almost without a sound, and he fell forward, nearly touching the fire. Chris had no idea what his face looked like.<br/><br/>The men all turned towards him, squinting their eyes to find their assailant, but Chris had already scrambled away, and now he stood up and ran in earnest, not knowing whether he was being chased and not caring. He ran like he had never ran, a run that perhaps wasn't his fastest but where every step felt like a thunderous slam of cinderblock against concrete, where he could feel the blood coursing through his veins and arteries, where he could hear his lungs expanding and contracting. Perhaps he was crying, but he wasn't sure.<br/><br/>The rest of the night was hazy. He remembered slamming the door of his car closed, he remembered the sharp screech of his tires as he peeled away into the road, and he remembered the glow of trees lit up by his car's lights. He remembered the cool scent of grass by his face, he remembered lemongrass and an old bottle of gin in his glove compartment, he remembered stumbling through empty streets at the crack of dawn, and he remembered a doorway with the words "SURVIVOR INSIDE" plastered on it.<br/><br/>He woke up thinking that perhaps it had all been a nightmare, but he was clutching a half full bottle of gin and was staring up at the same muddy sign he fell asleep to. A bit of the panic from the previous night set in as everything rushed back to him, but he controlled his emotions to a mere bubbling sensation right below his chest. He wasn't sure where he had left his car, but it had to be somewhere nearby.<br/><br/>He looked at the sign again, unsure of whether or not he should investigate. It seemed like a trap waiting to happen, and he wasn't fond of the idea of walking straight into it. He began to scour the perimeter, looking for booby traps or people hiding. Everything seemed clean and quiet. He wondered if he had really stumbled upon a safe area. There was a backdoor which seemed ajar slightly, and he peered inside. There was a girl there, sitting with her eyes closed and a bow on her lap. Chris raised an eyebrow despite himself, then drew his own bow and pushed the door further open. He didn't point it at her, but he held it at the ready as he walked inside the house.<br/><br/>"Yo... was that you who painted the shitty sign outside?" he asked, a note of genuine curiosity in his voice. It sounded strange to hear himself talk to someone. He could almost hear the desperation in his voice for this person to not be a psychopath.</span>