Congratulations on Finding Your Dog!

You’ve been there for three days now, three days searching the ruins of Minneapolis. You crossed the river after your dog. It was the only thing you could think to do.

He left when you were sleeping, left you in the burned out shell of one of the schools in Groveland. You avoided the dorms; too obvious, too likely to be found. Instead you opted for an old function building, some sort of hall or chapel. It was concealed and open with plenty of ways out and plenty of cover from the weather.

Everything had gone well. In fact, you’d slept better than you had in weeks, slept like you were protected by something you couldn’t see. You dreamt for the first time since everything had happened. You dreamt of your wife and your daughter, safe and sound in Seattle.

You knew it couldn’t be real. If it had been real it would’ve been what was left of Seattle. But it still made you feel better.

But when you’d woken up Jacques, your dog, was long gone. Normally he sleeps right next to you, but normally you don’t sleep for more than two or three hours at a time. After six hours you wonder if he’d assumed you were and moved on.

But you hadn’t survived this long without learning something about tracking and come dawn you followed his erratic, soot stained little paw prints out of the building and west, away from the sun.

It was quiet at first. People don’t like to stay in the big cities anymore for the most part. Most of them are pretty picked clean and that’s where the Wild Ones like to spend a lot of their time. Something about them, about the residue of humanity, seemed to attract them and make them more comfortable.

But you’ve got a pretty good system for avoiding them. You walk carefully and slowly and you keep your wits about you. You know that most of them have a sort of ocular degeneration from the Blight, linked to the changes their brains go through, so they rely on sound to hunt for the most part. Wear soft shoes and avoid talking. Nothing that jingles, nothing that shines.

Jacques has helped too. He’s smart, loyal, and something about dogs keeps them at bay. The two of you had been together for five months and you’d only had to fight them once that whole time. That’s why you followed him.

You’ll move slowly. You and Jacques are both weak and you know it. You’ve barely been eating and when you’re in cities you do your best to spend as little time as you can in the noon sun so you’ve only got so many traveling hours in each day.

Still, you’ll reach Minne, or what used to be Minne, in less than a day. You’ll move confidently down sprawling, wide open roads without stopping to scavenge, tracing those paw prints.

But once you hit the other side of the river you started to run into Wild Ones and worse. People, normal people, who had decided to give up what made them people and live like Wild Ones, but smarter and more dangerous. You don’t run into a lot of them, but when you do its never good.

But this time you’ll avoid them. It means you have to move slowly, creeping block to block, but they’ll never see you. It’ll be working perfectly until you hit an old grocery store. Outside you’ll see a young man with a jagged mohawk, dressed in tattered rags. He’ll be petting a dog. That dog will be Jacques.

He’ll have a rifle on the ground next to him, propped up against a chair under an umbrella. The front of the store, however, will be decorated with corpses in varying states of decomposition. You won’t want to look at them but motion will draw your eyes.

Then you’ll realize that some of them aren’t corpses. Not yet anyway.

You’ll check your backpack. The .44 magnum will still be there, along with nine rounds of ammo. Jacques will look a little scared, like he knows something is wrong, but he’ll want to be there. He’ll want to be around a person.

You’ll just want your dog back. You’ll load the gun and check it, then check the pocket watch you took off your old boss. It’ll be a few hours before nightfall, so you’ll lay down and wait. No sense going in during daylight. You know there are more of them.

You’ve never seen fewer than a dozen raiders living together, but you think you can do this. Jacques is a good dog, after all, and it wouldn’t be right to let him get eaten.

Still, no sense making it harder than it has to be. The raiders look full, so there’s no rush, but the clock is still ticking. Good luck with what comes next, and congratulations on finding your dog.