The cold wind pushed against him, mocked him, and Marc ignored it as they moved up the last quarter mile of very steep hillside at a quick pace. He looked down at the big wolf. "Hell of a start to the day, Dog."
The animal looked up at the sound of his voice, and then went back to smelling the bare, damp ground, heeling as if he were a well-trained pet, though one could see at first glance that he wasn't.
Where to go next was the most pressing choice at the moment. Marc wasn't worried about losing his supplies and transportation, though he would miss the thick sleeper tonight. The rest of his preferred loadout was in the kit slung over his shoulder. Physically, he could do just fine alone, he always had. Mentally, things were more complicated. He didn't really like people, didn't need them most of the time, but he did need a goal. The urge to serve was still there, and that, he couldn't do by himself.
He had a good idea where many of the survivors had gone, the heartbreaking notes and letters on cars, doors, and blowing with the wind, were everywhere - and they pulled at him. After the first dozen, Marc had forced himself not to read anymore, knowing if he did, he would spend the rest of his life trying to reunite these broken American families.
Most survivors had gone to ground. Caves and sewers were the most mentioned, but flooding and collapses made that feel like a bad choice to the Sergeant. Even if the flooding missed them and the cold didn't freeze or starve them, the poisons now circling the globe were just as big a threat above or below the surface. How long would a contaminated planet allow them to survive no matter where they were?
He had slowly moved northwest, checking places like White Sulphur Springs and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, hoping to find recent signs of normal (what a joke!) life, but Marc no longer expected to find large groups of people trying to rebuild together. It was more than just the awful devastation that made him think so - it was what he didn't see.
The world felt and sounded empty. There were no noises other than the wind and the water, not a single human voice or life continuing in the same American tradition, and he didn't see the bastards who let it all happen, either. The government was still not in attendance, and the people Marc had served for all those years would never sit idly by and let the survivors have control of the topside, poisoned or not.