The night before
In the middle of the woods sat a large cabin, and within that cabin sat Paul.
He sat alone cleaning his gun, as he had every day for the past year.
He still couldn't believe it had already been an entire year since he had torn down everything his former boss Conejo had built before killing him.
He had torn down every inch of the cartel operation that had once been, and it had been massive.
So massive it still brought him nightmares.
His former boss Conejo had spread everywhere, like cancer.
He was in politics, military, CIA, FBI, Media, anything you could think of he had the connections.
Key word being 'had'.
As everyone who had worked for Conejo was now dead, by his hand.
He left behind enough bodies to fill a few lakes.
The chaos, the killing, it had started to get to him, he started to like it.
And that scared him. So after taking down Conejo and everything he had built he secluded himself away from other people.
He thought of it as some form of punishment, as if that could right all the wrong he had done.
Taking another sip of whiskey, Paul sighed before inserting the magazine back into the pistol.
"Hm?" Paul froze and listened as he heard a strange noise that stood out from the usual noise of nature.
It wasn't a food truck delivery day.
Standing up, Paul quietly exited through the back door of his cabin and walked into the tree line before stealthily wrapping around to the front of the house while making sure not to step on any twigs or fallen leaves.
"Grr!"
Paul watched as a young boy about twelve years old came stumbling out of the forest tree line before falling onto his knees and crawling forward, a desperate panic for survival on his face that he had seen in many before.
"No.. mom..Sh" The boy mumbled something while desperately digging into the dirt.
Confused on who could be chasing this boy into the woods, Paul looked up, his eyes widening a little after catching a glimpse of four human figures with whitened eyes and bloody mouths.
They were definitely human or at least had been, but they seemed out of it as they growled almost animal-like and clacked their teeth together.
Maybe some kind of fucked up cult. He had seen worse.
Seeing the four almost on top of the boy, he decided to step out of the tree line while calmly raising his silenced pistol.
"Dad.." the boy called out while reaching toward him.
Psst!
Psst!
Psst!
Psst!
Four silenced shots sounded out in the dark forest, and the four bodies dropped, each with a bullet to the head.
"Hahhh." Paul raised his pistol to the side of his head while taking in a deep breath to calm himself.
It felt so good after so long.
The sweet pull of a trigger and the sound of a body dropping was like morphine entering his veins, it was a fucking rush and if he didnt control it he would want more, and more and more.
Letting his gun hand fall to his side, he walked over to the boy and saw that he was fine, just passed out from dehydration and exhaustion.
He was more curious about the four people he had just killed.
Walking over to the first body, he examined the face of the person and saw that the flesh was fairly intact, though it seemed to have already been rotting for hours despite having been killed seconds ago.
And when he felt the body, the temperature was very cold, not something you'd expect from a fresh corpse.
"Hm?" Looking over at each body, Paul realized that each of them had sustained something similar to a bite, with one having its entire stomach torn open.
'Some kinds of virus spread by a bite, maybe? Unless these guys just have a bite fetish.'
Hearing a few coughs, he stood up and saw the boy was awake and looking at him.
"I'm Carl, I got lost. Can you take me back to my mom?"
Paul looked down at the boy and felt a headache coming on.
He didn't know how to take care of people or comfort them, let alone kids.
'I'll just let Tanner handle this when he delivers the food in a month.'
Making a get-up gesture to the boy, he started walking back to his cabin, sighing he realized it was going to be a long night.
Little did he know…