Slowly We Rot Read Online Free Page A

happen.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

5.
     
    Nothing happened.
              Noah got antsy after
sitting as close to completely still as possible for well over an hour.  New
doubts about what he had heard began to seep in as the minutes crept by with
excruciating slowness.  He began to toy with the idea of poking his head back
outside to take another look around, only this time he would take the rifle
with him.  If anyone really was out there, maybe seeing the weapon would make
whoever it was think twice about bothering him.  Despite his fear, the idea was
not without allure.  He was tired of sitting here in the dark.
              But Noah stayed where
he was.
              He sat there and
thought intently about the situation, those new doubts festering and growing
stronger the longer the silence stretched out.  He had been certain of what
he’d heard prior to locking himself in the cabin, but now he was revisiting the
idea that the sound had been produced by an animal or perhaps even some kind of
insect.  Maybe his perceptions had still been off a bit after all the weed he’d
smoked before his long nap.  He seized on this idea with fervent intensity the
moment it occurred to him.  It was much more comforting than the notion that
some mystery person had been observing him from the woods, presumably even
before he’d regained consciousness.
              But the idea didn’t
really hold water.  His weed was potent stuff, but there was no way the buzz
would have lingered so long after his last inhalation.  He had to grudgingly
admit the sound had been no pot-induced aural hallucination.  But he remained
unwilling to let go of the resurgent idea that he’d misinterpreted an animal
sound.  There were animals capable of mimicking sounds made by humans.  Hell, maybe
someone’s pet parakeet had flown the coop years ago, back sometime around when
everything went to hell, and had only just now made its way to Noah’s part of
the world.
              Noah nodded.
              This was an actually
plausible explanation for what he’d heard.  It certainly seemed more rational than
the idea that some crazy person was out there in the woods.  There was just one
problem—Noah didn’t really believe he’d heard a parakeet, or any other kind of
animal, for that matter.
              There was a girl out
there in the woods.
              A laughing, mentally
unhinged girl.  How or why she’d come to be out there didn’t matter.  And he
was definitely right to fear her.  No normal person would announce their
presence that way.  Years after the end of the world, “normal” was a more
relative term than ever, but there was no way that taunting laughter had come
from someone who wasn’t mentally bent in some way.  The girl might yet turn out
to be harmless, but Noah thought it wise to assume otherwise until he was
proven wrong.
              More time passed, maybe
another full hour, in absolute silence.
              Noah’s restlessness
deepened.
              At last, unable to take
sitting there any longer, he slipped off his boots and rose from the chair to
creep slowly across the hardwood floor to the window by the door.  In the event
whoever was out there had come closer to the cabin, Noah didn’t want her
hearing his footsteps.  Letting out a breath, he slipped some fingers between
slats of the window blind and parted them wide enough to peek outside.
              There was no one on the
porch, and the light from the moon was bright enough to see that the clearing
was empty.  He turned his head side to side, taking in as much as he could see
of the surrounding area.  Carrying the rifle with him, he made a circuit of the
entire cabin, peeking out every window until he was certain his visitor had not
come out of the woods.  There was no one in the garden out back,