15 Apples

Mark didn't have much to do apart from setting the trap, and that alone already took him a lot of time, thus he rested and warmed himself a bit against a rock, because this night he would still need to sleep in the hole, just to be sure.

...

In the next day,

"The heck?" said Mark aloud, caught by surprise when inspecting the trap he put the in the previous day.

The trap was now in pieces. He was not sure what went wrong, but he was damn sure he had set-up the trap correctly.

Mark grabbed the bandage used as rope and inspected, 'What is going on?', the bandage had a small and thin but clean cut on it, it was not like an animal had bit the bandage while trying to escape, it was more like if someone had used a knife to cut it, it was a clean cut, not one an animal could do.

'A mutated animal? one with an ability to cut things?' Mark was trying to figure things out, the animal was caught by the trap, that alone was great, because showed that there were still small animals around, but the animal escaped by cutting the bandage used as a rope.

Mark put the bandage aside and crouched on the ground to search for the animal tracks, but found nothing. 'That means the animal is very small, probably some kind of rodent,' thought Mark.

'The worst part is that I don't have any spare bandage right now, not that it would work with this thing. I must go check the trucks. They must have a few metal strings I can use. I doubt this mutated animal can cut metal,' thought Mark while kicking the remains of the trap and walking away.

Mark was already a few steps away from the trap, then suddenly turned back, grabbed the used bandage in the trap, put inside his backpack, "I guess old habits die hard" and resumed walking in the direction of the trucks.

...

One hour later, by the edge of the forest,

'I still don't see any wyverns in the sky,' thought Mark while looking up.

He was there looking at the sky for five long minutes already and was still not convinced that was safe to go to the trucks that were two miles ahead.

"Arghhh, I hate this, I hate it!" shouted Mark, because he hated to force himself to do things, he didn't see anything that showed it was dangerous, but his quirks gained by surviving in the apocalypse kept screaming on the back of his head to not go.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" shouted Mark, and began to crawl toward the trucks. Yes, crawl. Mark decided to crawl for 2 miles, two long and tedious miles crawling.

...

Two long hours later, and with his knees hurting, Mark finally reached the first vehicle, the tank.

The tank now was just a huge pile of metal painted in red in some spots.

'Maybe I can find some metal strings here,' Thought Mark, already checking the tank, for his surprise, the tank was not that damaged as he initially thought. The exterior looked like it was smashed by two giant hammers, but once he found a hole to the interior, it was actually in good conditions.

Mark went inside the tank and to his surprise he didn't find any bodies there, not even bones or blood. 'Did they leave the tank?' asked himself Mark, then he saw a small hatch on the bottom of the tank. 'Is this an emergency exit or something?' Mark didn't know that tanks had something like that.

Mark moved closer to the hatch, and pushing it open, he saw three dead bodies under it, but the bodies were not mutilated nor were they bitten or something. They were almost intact, expect for a small hole in the head of each one.

'Did they kill each other? Or did they... ohhhh' Mark finally understood what happened. They saw they were losing the tank and tried to hide below it, but once reality hit them, and they saw they could not live for much time because the beasts would never stop trying to kill them, they choose to end themselves.

'I guess it was better than to be eaten by those dammed beasts,' Thought Mark, but refrained from saying something aloud, and just closed the hatch again.

Looking around inside the Tank, Mark quickly found a metal string. It was the one used to pull the superior hatch from inside to quickly close it. Mark grabbed his knife and removed the two screws that held the metal string.

Mark looked around again to see if the tank had anything useful but found nothing much, they had used all the ammo, Mark checked the sniper rifle by the side and even that one had no more ammo, Mark could not even use it, because sniper rifles had a higher caliber than normal rifles.

Thinking about ammo, Mark remembered the people who had died in the trucks. 'They must have some ammo in them' and quickly left the tank.

...

Searching in the dead bodies of the soldiers around the trucks, Mark found one army ration, one apple and enough bullets to fill three rifle magazines, he also found a few clean clothes he could use later, it was all as Mark expected, except for the last dead body he found, because that dead body had a white coat, "What is a researcher doing here?"

Mark was already turning away to search for food inside the supply vehicles but suddenly something came to his mind, "A researcher going to another base?", then quickly grabbed the dead body backpack and opened it.

"Another apple, good." said Mark, already feeling happy. Fruits were something rare on the apocalypse, not because it was hard to find, but because everyone wanted it, and also, they went bad quickly.

Mark put the apple in his backpack and continued to search the research backpack, until he saw what he was almost salivating to find, a folder.

"Confidential - Project M," said Mark aloud, reading the only description the folder had.