In older days Isaac (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/rcburner/BeretManphoto.jpg) might have enjoyed the stillness.  Out in the wilderness where technology still hadn't quite managed to touch, dark forests cast in perpetual night from the thick layers of foliage overhead.  It was an eerie sort of calm for a human to experience, to know one's own solitude.  To know that there are no rules, no governments, no morality.  Only survival, and death.  He'd always preferred hiking in the woods to hitching a ride on the subway to some dead end job that was ultimately as unfulfilling as any other before it.  But even the quiet was ruined for him now.  Earth was lost.  The silence was not a natural one.  It was as though the world had become mute out of fear; an emaciated wreck shivering beneath the floorboards as crisp black boots stomped overhead.  The forest was not still because it was sleeping.  It was still because it was dead.<br/><br/>He should have been morphed, but he preferred to walk on two legs whenever possible.  His humanity was the last thing the Yeerk's had been unable to wrest from him, and he'd be damned if he was going to spend the rest of his days shifting back and forth until animal instinct and human nature could no longer be defined as separate states of being.  In any case, it had taken him quite awhile to find some clothes that still fit his scrawny figure.  The wetsuit he wore beneath them was all he really needed, but the cargos and leather jacket were good for carrying small amounts of supplies.  And through it all he'd somehow managed to keep his weathered old hat, the last reminder of a past that seemed more and more unreal with each passing day.<br/><br/>The mountains were his ultimate goal.  There would be people among them, of that he was sure.  The peaks of the Earth were always the final havens of humans driven to desperation.  They had a power to them, ancient relics of the world that stood the test of time no matter what cataclysms were thrown their way.  They<em>seemed</em>safe, and that was enough for most people these days.  Normally he wouldn't be so eager to see anyone, but it had been literally months since he'd spoken with another human being.  He'd needed to start talking with himself just to keep his voice from fading with disuse, and it was beginning to wear on his nerves.<br/><br/>After several hours of walking he stopped, raising his gaze slightly to stare off into the dark.  A small noise in the distance, indistinct.  Isaac waited breathlessly, every muscle in his body coiled and ready for flight.  Some part of him was screaming to change, but he ignored it for the moment.  Better to wait patiently than jump the gun.  The man slowly maneuvered his way behind a tree, pressing his weight against the rough bark and canted his ear to one side.  Listening.  Waiting.