Snake

By the time Lucas opened the bunker door, a world with shades of gray and black assaulted his eyes, even the sky, which he remembered as blue, was gray. Fallen trees, destroyed bushes, what was to be a forest was now nothing but wasteland; definitely a sad scene. As he recalled, the bunker was located somewhere near the border between Bahia and Minas Gerais.

He's never been to those states but he knew their location, however he didn't have a map or GPS now. It would be great if he could go back in time and watch some shows on how to survive in the woods. As he didn't know which direction to go, he just walked north based on the position of the sun and thus entering deeper into the northeast region of Brazil. He was very lucky to find a wristwatch in the bunker, which helped him easily determine north based on the position of the sun.

…

In a gray desert with some sparse shades of green, a young man of almost 1.80m and with some visible muscles, walked. He was dressed in a dark red coat, had a backpack on his back, wore jeans and tight janitor boots. In his hands were two knives, one bigger than the other. If you looked at them closely you could see that they were stained with blood.

This young man was none other than Lucas Tavares who had been walking for more than 4:00, on his watch it said 5:00 in the afternoon. He stopped for lunch approximately two hours ago and continued his walk. His goal was to find signs of life (friendly) or a road that would lead him to some city, but as the bunker was far from any human settlement he took a while to find a road and when he finally found it was close to 8 pm.

Finding the road, the young man walked beside him, hoping to find some traveler who would extend a helping hand and help him. Amazingly even after walking for so long, his body showed no signs of fatigue and Lucas attributed this to his immense regenerative power.

After a few more kilometers of road he began to see some change in the terrain, it was gaining some shades of green closer together. Trees and bushes began to appear, their bodies exuding life and health indicating that not all trees died.

Out of curiosity, Lucas approached a tree to analyze it and try to find something. However, his curiosity led him nowhere, it was just any tree; dismayed, he returned with his walk.

After a few more hours, approaching midnight, Lucas decided to set up some shelter near the road and wait for dawn to resume his journey. He looked for a relatively tall tree that had thick branches, as they would allow him to sleep without falling, and soon found one that met his requirements.

He climbed the tree, hung his backpack on a branch, and settled down to try to sleep. Before falling asleep, he tried to reanalyze everything that had happened so far. His father's death, the fight with the insect woman and the mutant man; he realized that in both fights he could have done much better if he made the right decisions at the right time.

In the fight against the insect woman, he made two serious mistakes. The first was to approach something or someone unknown without due care and the second was to prepare at least a simple battle plan that had variants in case something unexpected happened. In the fight against the mutant man, your last move was definitely the best choice, so why not make this move your first and last?

He would have saved a lot of blood and pain if he thought more about how to fight. After these considerations Lucas decided that he would never again approach something unknown without due care, nor fight without a battle plan, if possible. After all, if someone hid and attacked him without noticing there was nothing to do, so the plan had to be done at the time of the fight.

Now that he had reviewed his fights, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. His sleep wasn't the best as he was constantly freaked out in the middle of the night. The reason for his frights was his almost falling from the tree. The young man was definitely not used to sleeping on a tree branch where he was supposed to keep his balance even in sleep.

The day dawned, the sun changed its predominant color from black to a yellowish white, removing some of the melancholic tone that always existed. Over time the land was warmed by the sun and a young man lying on the branch of a tree finally woke up.

His eyes had extremely obvious dark circles and were half closed, it was evident that he didn't sleep well last night. After all, waking up several times in the middle of sleep because you feel like you're going to fall is not a pleasant feeling.

Lucas definitely woke up on the wrong foot, he didn't get a good night's sleep, but that didn't stop him from continuing his quest for life. Hours and hours passed and the environment did not change, the tone continued to be a mixture of yellow sunlight and the gray coming from the air contaminated by the radiation of the recent war.

His routine continued like this for another two days; walking, eating, sleeping and occasionally looking for clues to what might have happened to humanity during all this chaos.

At the end of the second day, when he was looking for another tree to spend the night, Lucas passed a large boulder about ten to twenty cubic meters. This huge stone had a strange color, it was a dark green, giving a nice contrast to the gray terrain. He walked over and studied the stone, hoping to find something interesting.

At that moment, a rattling sound surrounded the ears of the young man who was studying the stone, he then quickly backed away from the boulder and held his knives tightly. He was now with a different mindset, instead of taking a risk looking for the source of the characteristic sound of a rattlesnake, he quickly backed away and something moved behind the rock, its movement was unmistakable, it was crawling along the ground as it moved its body in waves, it was definitely a snake and as Lucas suspected it was a rattlesnake.

His body was brown with some dark green spots and others completely black. Its teeth were jutting out and on its extremely sharp points, drops of an exceedingly bright and bright green liquid were falling.

Young Lucas gulped as he knew he should fight for his life. After all, the rattlesnake was already one of the fastest before the mutation and now, being mutated, it would definitely have some improvements. He tightened his grip on the knives and stared at the snake, analyzing what he could do to survive this situation, his concentration never reaching such high levels before!

Suddenly, his eyes glowed a white mixed with red that gave him a certain demonic aura.