Jake approached the house cautiously. The front window was shattered, but it was impossible to know if it had happened recently. Houses in this area were generally abandoned… unless they were not.

The front door was locked, and there appeared to be no other intentional point of egress into the structure. With a hesitant sigh, Jake glanced back at the broken window. He couldn’t know what was hidden inside. Still, days had passed since he’d had a decent meal. He had no choice but to risk scavenging the empty structure.

As he approached the broken glass, Jake notched an arrow to his bow. He was fortunate. On his last attempt at an ammo raid, he found the compound bow tucked in the back corner of a warehouse. Now that bullets were becoming harder to come by, an old-school bow & arrow was one of the better forms of self-defense.

As Jake carefully stepped through, the shards crackled under his feet. With the noise, a rustling out of a darkened hallway caused him to go on full alert, drawing back the arrow and swiveling to see what caused the disruption. A racoon stumbled its way into the light and ran across the room. Jake, realizing there was no immediate threat, slowly eased the tension on the bow.

The room where Jake was standing appeared to be the living room; bookshelves were sitting in various corners, their contents strewn all over the floor. Clearly this house had been picked over, but it was impossible to tell when it took place. He first ventured into the hallway where the racoon had been hiding, finding 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchenette. In the bathroom, he found a medicine cabinet. Most of the contents had been picked through. All that remained was a half-empty bottle of aspirin and some band-aids. He quickly pocketed both.

Next he moved to the kitchenette. There wasn’t much to search here; just a few cupboards and bins. The only item of value he found was a canister of salt. “Damn,” he said to himself. Over the past 48 hours, his stomach had become his primary motivation. This made his failure on this raid feel especially disheartening.

Then Jake thought of the raccoon that had startled him on his way into the house. “Well,” Jake thought, “I guess its time I figured out how to field dress a raccoon.” He made his way back to the entrance, keeping an eye out for his prey.

As he came back into the entryway, Jake was alarmed to find a man standing outside the house watching. Jake instantly went on alert, drawing back the arrow and aiming center mass. As the two stood there staring at one another, Jake paused to look over the man. He was about 6’2″, slightly taller than Jake, with a scraggly beard and tattered clothes. In his right hand, he carried a machete. In his left, a pistol. And the pistol was pointed at Jake’s chest.

“What’cha got there?” the man barked, using the machete to point at the bag in Jake’s hand.

“Nothing,” Jake replied slowly. “Everything’s been picked clean.”

“Yeah, right”, the man replied. “I saw you go in, and now you’ve got something in your bag.”

Jake had been scavenging long enough to know there was no peaceful way out. This man saw Jake as a threat; another person fighting for the limited resources that remained after the Collapse. At first, people had pulled together to survive. Over time though, the scarcity drove many of the once peaceful enclaves to violence. This man started this interaction by brandishing a pistol; he had no intention of letting Jake live.

The only question Jake had was whether or not the man’s pistol was loaded. Every so often he found a raider with a working firearm. Yet, poor rationing of ammunition after the Collapse had turned most guns into little more than blunt objects. If the pistol was unloaded, Jake had the advantage with his bow. If not, Jake was as good as dead. And the machete prevented him from making a run for it.

“This doesn’t have to go down like this,” Jake called to the man. “I’m just passing through. I will move on, and you can act like i was never here.”

The man still did not fire his pistol. “Just toss me the bag, and then you can go,” the man responded. This was unusual, as raiders tended to strike first to keep the upper hand in most interactions.

Jake was becoming more confident that the gun was no more than an empty threat. To test his hypothesis, Jake took a step towards the man. The man promptly raised the machete in response, cementing Jake’s theory. At this point, the two men were about 10 feet away, well within range of the pistol. If the gun was a danger, the man would’ve already fired.

“Listen,” Jake said. “I’m walking out of here, and you aren’t getting my supplies. You can either step aside and let me pass, or I shoot you and walk over you writhing in pain.”

In response, the man let out a low guttural bellow and lunged towards Jake with the machete. Jake quickly released the arrow, which flew towards the main and struck him square in the stomach. The impact stopped the man in his tracks, stunned by the fiberglass cylinder now featured prominently within his torso.

Jake took this opportunity to escape the house. As the man stood gaping at the protruding arrow, Jake rushed toward him. He tackled the man to the ground and knocked both the machete and the pistol from his hands. The raider struggled, but clearly the tremendous pain negated whatever fight he had had only seconds before. After about less than a minute, Jake had managed to get over the raider and out the window.

Jake’s first instinct was to run, but after starting down the drive he doubled back to the house. The raider whimpered on the ground as he tried to pull out the arrow. He didn’t even seem to notice as Jake approached. Jake knelt down to pick up the machete, which was no more than 3 feet from the struggling raider. Before the Collapse, his first instinct would have been to help, to find a doctor or someone who could save his pathetic life. Now, this raider lay dying on the floor, a fate caused by Jake himself, and the man might as well not have been there at all. The harshness of the world post-Collapse had hardened Jake to something unrecognizable.

The raider continued to cry as Jake walked away. He didn’t care. Now that the adrenaline was starting to subside, the hunger returned. “Now where did that damn racoon run off to?”