The SS crawled along an old, derelict street carved out of a forgotten city in the festering corpse of America. It barely crawled it's way through the heavy snow which had fallen the night before. It pulled to a stop and the driver's side opened slowly. Owen stepped out of the vehicle, pistol in hand. Within the SS, Lady and Rudy fought for positioning between the front seats. Owen closed the door over to shelter them and approached the trunk, of the car, silenced pistol in hand.

He grabbed a black backpack modified with a quiver of arrows which he fixed around his shoulders, a compound bow, and a long range rifle.

He opened the car door. "Come," he said softly. Lady and Rudy struggled through the leather seats. Rudy forced his way through first and Lady eagerly followed. Owen slung the rifle over his right shoulder, opposite the quiver, forcing a tight fit over a the backpack. He adjusted the strap and closed the door over gently.

"Stay close," he whispered sternly, and the twins got close to him. They knew the drill. Keep a tight formation, and quietly alert him of any activity they picked up via nose or ears. They were also trained to discretely lead him to identified activity when commanded to do so. It was a good system. Reliable, effective. The three of them had become an alpha predator in the post-apocalyptic ruins of America. They were roughly three years into the crisis. There was nothing left but strongholds, colonies, settlements, and the wasteland. Owen travelled the wasteland, where other people were rare. Looters and stragglers like him were the only living breathing homosapians you encountered out here. Those types of people were easily eluded, or otherwise ambushed and ironically looted. It came down to necessity. Owen didn't want to kill anyone, but neither did he want to be around or trust them. He had learned to shut off his conscience and pre-crisis moral compass fairly quickly. Killing that man in a Kentucky stronghold cemented that change within him. In that moment, he gave up all hope in the rest of humanity. From then on, he knew as far as people go, he was alone.