Page 25 of Camriel
Chapter Fourteen
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VICTORIA’S STOMACHgrowled loudly, complaining about how much energy she’d been burning through.“I hear you, but I don’t want to,” she said, scowling at the road ahead.She maintained her steady jog, knowing she would come across some stores soon enough.Her gut growled again and she heaved a heavy sigh.
So far, she’d run about a hundred miles in the past two and a half days.By the time she stopped for the day, she would be halfway to her destination.
“That’s if I don’t die from starvation first,” she muttered.
Spotting some buildings clustered together ahead, Victoria slowed to a walk.She’d learned to scout first before searching for food.Sure enough, she sensed people before she heard them.
Victoria veered off the road and cut down a side street to circle around behind the stores.“Rats,” she said when she saw several men and women guarding the rear of the buildings.“It looks like I’ll have to break into some fudging homes and look for food,” she figured glumly.It was much faster to raid convenience stores, but people were getting wise.They knew they had limited provisions and were starting to hoard them.
She gave the stores a wide berth and hurried away from the townsfolk.Doors were standing open in every house she passed.
“These scavengers have been fudging busy,” she figured out loud.They were systematically cleaning out each home they came to from the looks of it.“So much for my grand plan to find everything I need during my journey,” she complained.
“Look!”she heard someone whisper hoarsely from half a block away.“Someone is creeping around our town!”
Victoria didn’t let on that she’d heard the guy.There were too many townspeople for her to take them on alone.Not even her trusty sickle would be able to get her out of a jam of this magnitude.Her only option was to hightail it out of there and hope they didn’t give chase.
Turning the next corner, Victoria sprinted for all she was worth.She left the two dudes who’d spotted her far behind.Twenty minutes later, she had to stop for a rest.The good news was that the houses in this area didn’t appear to have been looted yet.Choosing one at random, she headed around to the back.The rotting remains of what looked like a labrador lay next to the moldering skeleton of a human.
“What the fudge happened between those two?”she asked, stepping around the mess.The dog had a knife sticking out of its exposed ribs.It appeared the man’s throat had been torn out, going by the stains on his shirt and the gaping hole in his neck.Not even the rain had been enough to wash all of the blood away yet.
The answer to their animosity became clear once Victoria let herself in through the unlocked back door.She found photos of the pooch and its former owners all over the house.In every photo, the man was glaring at the animal and the dog was giving him the side eye with its upper lip lifted.The female in the images grinned as she had her arms around both of them.
“I bet his wife was raptured and those two idiots lost their shiz and fought to the death,” Vic figured.Now that the mystery had been solved, she opened the pantry door to forage for food.“Bingo,” she crowed quietly when she found plenty of canned food inside.“Old people always stock up on canned goods,” she said.They’d been in their sixties from the looks of it.In her experience, the older people got, the more crap they stored in their pantries.
She carried an armful of canned fruit into the dining room and proceeded to work her way through it.Victoria appropriated a can opener and utensils as well, so she could take some of the food with her this time.It seemed wise to carry more supplies with her, just in case she ran into more trouble scavenging along the way.The only problem with that was that the weight might slow her down.
“You should have learned how to drive,” she scolded herself.It would probably be easy enough to drive an automatic car, but the idea freaked her out a bit.“What if I drive around a corner and crash into a pileup?”she said.“It’s not like someone can call an ambulance for me.”
Victoria had never had a problem being alone before, but her solitude was starting to bother her.She missed the few wrestling friends she’d had back home.They used to catch up a couple of times a week to gossip about work.There was always drama going on between the contestants.
“I don’t miss having to wear so much makeup or the stupid costumes,” she said, then spooned more pears into her mouth.The TV interviews and promo shoots had also been a pain in the azz.People sometimes recognized her outside of work, but she looked very different with a bare face and wearing normal clothes.
Filling her stomach, she made sure she didn’t overindulge.The last thing she needed was to eat too much and throw it all back up again once she started running.
