Shadows of JiangXi

[Jansen]

Something cracked outside a few seconds later another crack. Marcia was awake again, having the gun ready to kill whatever would be out there. She turned the night vision googles on again and moved some of the wood she placed above her away, to see what happened out there. While looking around she couldnt spot anything that could have caused the sounds.

She slowly crawled out of the hole, trying to realize even the slightest movement, but there was nothing. Nothing then trees and darkness. She checked the radiation meter, it still didnt reach dangerous levels. She sighed "Guess I wont be able to sleep again... And its definitely good that I dont have a mirror here, wouldnt like to see myself right now...". She checked the direction and just wanted to start walking towards south as she realized a liquid dropping down in front of her.
She looked up and saw the pig-like animal she killed, but there was only a part of it left, hanging in the boughs. Then something started to move behind the corpse, a bird, a big bird. It just seemed to have been able to see her as well and jumped from the tree towards her.
She pulled the gun up and fired a half magazine into it and once it dropped to the ground she started to run into southern direction.

She kept walking and walking, until she reached the worlds end, at least that was what it looked like in the first moment, on a second look it was a big canyon, the other side barely visible. The sound of the jeep stilled filled the air, accompanied by a few gunshots.

Vargas tried to spot a way over the canyon, but it didnt look like there would be a possibility, it was too big and as it seemed very deep. "Thats a problem... a big one" She decided to walk into western direction to find a place where the canyon wouldnt be that wide. Walking in a distance of a meter, sometimes less, to the abyss felt strange, but she thought it would be better then ending as some monsters food.

Another one and a half kilometer was made as she saw a glow in the forest, a house and as it seemed one with fire in it. It didnt take her long to make the decision to look why this house had a fire in it, so Marcia sneaked into its direction. She was just about to look through the window as she heard a cracking behind her, then she felt a gun in her neck.

"Look what we have here... a visitor, isnt that nice?" The mans voice sounded slightly distorted. She remained silent as he implied her to go into the house where a small fireplace generated warmth and a bit of light. "Sit down!" The man clothed in rags pointed at a chair in the corner after he took her AK. "Nice weapon you have here... wont mind if I keep it?" The man laid his rifle on a desk and pointed the AK at her. "Now... why are you here?" She looked for a way to escape, but there was no possibility that wouldnt have ended with her being shot. "I take part in a Coalition survival training here." The man laughed as he removed the rags from his head, showing his skinless skull, the only thing that seemed to keep it in its shape were the burned shreds of muscles. "I dont need surivial training... I survive and thats it." He seemed to be interested in her suit and came a bit closer. "Now... you dont need this suit as bad as I do. So hand it over to me and I wont kill you." Giving the suit away would mean dying, she didnt want to die. "Could you give me something to drink? Then you can have it." The man laughed and walked to the other end of the room to pick the pot up from the floor. "They dont even give you wat..." Four pistol bullets finished his sentence. Marcia sighed as she stood up to get her AK back.

While walking over to the mans corpse she saw a few sheets of paper on the desk with the water pot. One of them seemed to be some kind of a hand drawn map. She looked at it for a few seconds and put it into her pocket, while looking at it she saw 2 small lines on over something that could have been the canyon. One of them was pretty close so she decided to move towards it. She left the house with a smile "Thank you."

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