This morning's prompt is 'hearth'.

What can I do with Thursday's prompt? A face a place, something good something bad and and something ugly.

Hearth and home, home and hearth...

'Heather's Hearth and Home' was ripe for ransacking, Brenda decided. She and Ben had found it in the local book and as they scouted it out, things seemed promising. It was locked up, there wasn't much damage other than a single crack in one plate glass window and there was no activity. Around the back the rear door was secure but there was a pickup, abandoned and grisly, up against the wall. Ben went up on the cab from the pickup bed and peered in a window.

"I've got movement- shit!"

"Occupied?"

"Well, they got up again..."

"How many?"

"More than one. Hard to say. The window's dirty."

"Pass." Brenda shook her head. "Only two of us and an unknown number of them. We were just window shopping anyway..."

They went around front and on down Main Street and now there were a half dozen in front of the windows.

"Good call," Ben commented. "They don't look chewed up."

"Died of hunger and thirst, probably. I've seen it happen, people got 'treed' somewhere and they never went away."

"Until they died."

"Yep." Brenda made a face. "You run or you fight, you don't wait for death. Death is cruel and patient."