Shadows of JiangXi

[Jansen]

Marcia woke up in 'her' basement, she had no idea how long she slept, but she was sure that it was long enough. Much longer then in the past days. She took a small sip of water and then removed the crowbar and opened the door. The rain stopped and even a bit of the sun was able to break through the clouds. She could see the big city more clearly now.

She smiled as she started walking, maybe the town would be a bit more friendly then the rest of this planet. After around two and a half hours she left the last trees behind and walked into the mostly destroyed suburban part of the city. She wasnt able to spot one single intact building here, most of them seemed to be destroyed by explosions.

She checked the radiation meter, it was reaching dangerous levels at this place. "The impact must have been somewhere here..." There was no urge to search for it, at least not from her side. It would just have been too dangerous to get too close to the hole.

Her thoughts circled about this town, it must have been a nice place before its destruction, she imagined how children played on the streets. A image that was destroyed when something black at a wall caught her attention, it had a humans shape, so she pulled the gun up. But upon closer looking there was nothing that would be alive, it was just a shadow. A human must have been at exactly this point when the explosion ended his life. She felt a few tears running down her face, but there was no more time to think about the people, when one of the former residents ran towards her.
The figure still had a human like appearance, but the skin had a dark grey color, the eyes seemed to be filled with blood, no hair left. She aimed at the humans head "Stay there!" The being continued running until there wasnt much more then 5 meters between them. Two shots and then silence, the being was killed.

"I told you to stop... stupid thing." She followed the road she was on until she reached a building that could have been a church, now it was missing the roof and the church steeple. She giggled "Not even faith can resist the power of nuclear mass destruction." Near the church she spotted something that could have had been an office, or a police station. It was hard to tell what exactly it was without any signs on it.

Entering it wasnt hard, there wasnt even a door left, she looked around, maybe there were some informations about this place, but except for a sign near a door with the words 'Wan i nu - New Huang Zhou Bank' She sighed " Well lets enter this persons office." The only thing not broken or destroyed was a solid metal shelter closed with a padlock. She took the pistol out and fired one shot on the lock, nothing happened. The second shot destroyed it and she opened the shelter. Except for a few documents, which already lost all colors on them it was empty. "Great... munition wasted for nothing."

She left the building again, but while walking out she saw an old car, some pieces were already lying next to it because of the rust, that didnt spare the car. Even the key was still in it, so she tried to launch the engine. Nothing happened. She tried it again and yet again, nothing. And then she realized that the street was going downhill in front of her, so she tried to push the car down the hill. The car slowly started moving, getting faster and faster. Now she had to run in order to still sit into the car, she had a few problems with finding the slot for the gear, but as soon as she found it, the car jumped slightly and the engine was running, leaving a small black cloud behind her.
She drove down the hill and then into the southern direction, hoping that the car wouldnt run out of fuel anytime soon. She tried to slow the car down a bit, but then realized that hitting the break wouldnt do anything, because of the pedal that just left the car through the ground.
She shruged, not being able to stop would mean that she would reach the destination faster.

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