Saturday, aug 6, again

The sundress clad leapfrogger waited for its target to leave its shelter. It expected them any second now, as it heard the footsteps getting closer. What it didn’t expect was the crowbar that hit it in the back or the boot that proceeded to stomp its neck multiple times until its head bent at a weird angle. The last thing the leapfrogger heard was “oh the turn tables…”

Aside from the counter ambush on sundress sally, the trip back to the residential area was uneventful. Well, it was Uneventful until Mal came across one of those gated communities. Wait, GATED community, oh no. Mal grimly grabbed their crowbar and started towards the gate under the impression that since this was a gate, it wouldn't hurt to try to break it.

Unsurprisingly, the crowbar didn’t even scratch the gate because it was a mechanical metal gate, what did they expect to happen? Intelligence and wisdom are different things, but it could be argued Mal had neither. What they did have was a concerning ingenuity and practice in some unsavory fields. Practices like how to jury rig a car to start. Which is what they did.

After finding the nearest car, picking the lock with their knife to turn the lock, and the thinnest Alan wrench to push the pins, they found out it was out of gas, which was probably why it was there. Shrugging, they searched for another car.

Luckily? They were able to find a car with fuel. And to sum it up, they locked the acceleration pedal, tucked and rolled out of the car in an angle, to minimize injury and crashed the car to a gate as safely as they could. As safe as it was it still hurt like hell though.

Looking at their work, Mal could proudly say that not only was the gate broken, but it was either the wrong one or not what that cryptic message meant. Either way they were both immensely proud and disappointed at the same time.

Not wanting to go near the broken gate with the messed up car still driving against it, creating the smell of burnt rubber from the friction of the tires and road, Mal hopped the 4 foot wall and approached the nearest house for “looting time”

under the belief that doors are for nerds, Mal pried open a window and crawled through. The first place they went was the kitchen to grab canned food and water, which they promptly shoved in their bag, they also replaced their dulled knife for a new one.

As they went to the next room, they were stopped in their tracks when a man brandishing a baseball bat and a woman with a coat rack primed like a war hammer. The man quickly shouted “Ayo, what the fuck you doing in my house, you little shit”

Mal was caught like a deer in the head lights for a couple of seconds, before jumping out the nearest window, glass and all, vaulting the yard fence, and getting the fuck out of dodge. They had found a settlement.

Even after absolutely ruining their chance for trading and internet, Mal was thankful for one thing, those people didn’t have a musket for home defense. It would have been the moral high ground to warn the settlement about the things at the nearby plaza, but Mal was Mal so that didn’t even cross their mind. Nor did any thoughts about the consequences of their actions.

Consequences like how the sound of the car breaking the gate attracts a lot of attention including the infected leapfroggers who were now on their way to check out the cool noise, which was at the settlement, that was full of common folk who never fought or were prepared for something like leapfroggers, and now had a broken gate with a car as a ramp inviting them in. And it’s all thanks to Mal, who has no idea what horrors they have just wrought. Oh, and the collision probably heard that car too.

Saturday night, 2067, still August 6

Mal, blissfully unaware, had set up a new home about 1.5 miles (or 2.4 kilometers for the metric folks) away from the settlement, in the basement of a house they made sure was empty this time. As for why they chose the basement, Mal has always liked subterranean spaces because they make them feel safer.

After the nightly ritual of barricading the hell out of every entrance or access to the basement with chairs from the kitchen and hammering nails into wood boards they found in the garage, they began to settle down and doing more recreational activities like decorating the basement.

But just as they started decorating their new airbmb, a message appeared before their eyes. A message that made them fall on their ass with surprise and curiosity.