Disclaimer: The author does not own any of the characters from the Twilight novels and movies, which will be barely recognizable here. He does, however, own the fuck out of this plot.

My entry from the Red Eyed Edward Contest, which took SECOND PLACE in the public vote. Y'all rock. NOTE: Minor edits have been made.

Chapter 1

The bearded man stood on aching knees and heard the pop of his joints as he flexed them against their will.

He looked at the cloudy sky, glad for the cover. He removed the black leather jacket he wore and felt a chill that raised goosebumps on his forearms between a dizzying pattern of jagged purple scars.

Black crust that had caked between his fingers flaked off in chunks as he flexed his fists, still stiff from the night before. The muscles in his arms tensed and let go, over and over, until his hands felt strong again.

He removed the filthy T-shirt that clung to his body, and then the socks, tennis shoes, ragged jeans and underwear.

He stood naked on the riverbank, all muscle and scar tissue and blunt ends.

Purple scars defined his face, more so than the beard. One ran from his left ear and along the contour of his cheekbone, down to his chin. Another crossed his forehead and disappeared into his eyebrow.

His entire torso was a horror. Criss-crossing his enormous muscles was a pattern of scars that went from his back to his front, across his ribs and chest. The scars were so brutal they could only have been inflicted on multiple occasions; to have suffered such trauma in a single event would have killed any man, even one like him.

Many of his scars had healed crookedly, making it seem as if the world looked upon him through a cracked window.

He dipped his hands into the stream and rubbed them together underneath the gentle trickle. He bent and brought a handful of cold water to his mouth, to the beard that had been there since the end of days, and he rubbed vigorously. Red streaks dripped from the long, wiry hair, so he repeated the process until the water ran clean

He sat on the damp ground and reached for the worn tennis shoes he had been wearing for the better part of a year now. He carefully filled the socks with rocks and tucked them inside the shoes, then wrapped that with his old T-shirt and pants. He put more rocks into the legs of the pants and tied them together, making sure the package was secure.

It sank when he threw it into the cold water. It would do no good to leave evidence behind.

He dipped his feet into the water and felt relief. He smiled, and he closed his eyes and enjoyed the rare moment. He waded in, despite the chill, and felt the kind of calm he had not experienced in ages. The icy water felt good on his skin; it took the itch away from his scars, if only for a moment.

Soon, he was standing on the bank and allowing himself to air dry. He pulled a fresh set of clothes from the tree branch he had hung them on after washing them in the stream the night before and put them on. He loosened the laces on the combat boots he had placed on the riverbank, first the right, then the left. He placed his right foot in, pulled the tongue taught, and tightened the laces just so. He tied a tight double knot and looped the extra lace behind his ankle, tucking it into the top of the boot, and finally flipping the top of the sock inside-out so it covered the top of the boot and the laces. He repeated the process on his other foot, pulled the cuffs of his pants over the boots, and stood tall to test them out.

They would do.

He put his coat back on and prepared for the day's journey. North, away from the city.

He double-checked that his only possession, a fragile piece of paper tucked inside a yellowing Ziploc bag, was secured in his new backpack. He tightened the straps, clicked the safety clip together across his chest and adjusted the pack so it was taught. He reached behind him to be sure he could easily get to the knives he had placed in the side pouches.

Again, perfect.

He spun the knives, which he had already cleaned and oiled, so that the blades were facing behind him, spun them again, and spun them again. Satisfied, he slid them back into the slots. He repeated this process several times, as if he were practicing.

He stood there a moment, savoring the peace that would end soon. Before this, he had not eaten in seventeen days. He would not go that long again, no matter what it took.

Survival trumped peace.

Looking over his camp to be sure he had not missed anything, he noticed that he had. He walked to the edge of the forest and pulled a low-hanging branch from a tree, snapping it off cleanly. He ran the branch roughly over the footprints he had left by the riverbank until they were gone, and he tossed the branch in.

He paused before performing his one remaining task. He closed his eyes and took in the day. The sun shone through the clouds, catching the copper-brown color of his hair.

Soon, he walked to the corpses at the edge of the forest, and he wondered not for the first time this morning what the young couple had been doing out here alone. Empty backpacks, good quality clothes that were much too big for them, authentic military combat boots.

And they had guns.

An M-16 that looked to have come straight from a U.S. Army base, and an M9 Baretta pistol. But there were no bases around here, at least none that he hadn't already explored and found devastated.

The guns frightened him. No one had guns anymore, no one had ammo. And yet, their clips had been full when they'd taken the road that had led them to him. Once he was done last night, the man had tossed the weapons into the stream.

He knew he was lucky to have found the young couple, in any case, even if they weren't much of a meal. All skin and bones, as they say. But blood is blood, and theirs would keep him alive.

For now. If he could figure out where they came from, perhaps for longer. Maybe even a long time.

The truth was he didn't know how long someone like him could last without a fresh meal. He was becoming desperate, fitting for a desperate age but no less worrying. Could he go three weeks? A month? It didn't matter. More than two weeks begat weakness, and weakness in this world was a death sentence. So he fed. He fed on rare stragglers, like this young couple, and he fed on families holed up in the wild. In the early days, after the rebellion, he had fed on large groups that thought they were safe on former military bases, on bands of travelers, on men and women and children. He fed on what he could find, and he did so without apology.

They were responsible for this.

The supply of humans was dwindling now though. The rovers were all but gone, hunted away by men like him. The campers in the wild, if there were any left at all, had nowhere to go. Move or die was the rule. The groups that populated prisons, military bases and the like were targets for the hordes. He could not go up against the hordes alone.

But he knew that if he did not change the way he did things, if he did not do it soon, he would die. He considered joining one of the hordes, but couldn't bring himself to do it. In the end, though, he knew he might not have much choice if he wanted to survive.

It was a curiosity, why he chose survival. Why anyone did. Giving up would have been easier. "Extinction is the rule," the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. "Survival is the exception."

Little had Sagan known.

But those were thoughts for later. Now, he had to dispose of the two corpses.

He held the dead man's bare feet in one hand and cut the rope that secured him to a strong branch and placed the body on the ground. He did the same with the female's body, then picked up the soup cans he had carefully placed last night and finished off the last of the blood that had trickled out. He threw the cans into the stream and picked up one corpse in each hand. He carried them into the forest. The stream would not do for this task. The bodies would float, and they would inevitably come to rest against a rock or an overturned tree downstream, and then the hordes would come. They would come and they would find evidence that someone had been here, despite his efforts to hide it, and they would track him and they would find him.

This is how the world worked now.

So the forest. He walked slowly between the trees, careful to avoid any established walking path as he ventured in.

He came upon a massive oak tree and set the bodies down. Scavengers would find them here, and they would pick the bones clean, he could disappear again.

-30-

A/N The Extant was originally written in five sections, but it posted to the contest page as a oneshot, obviously. I'll be posting it as five chapters, one per day.

- Cracked