Solitary Confinement

The next day, scouting on top of a hill, Willem spotted a large mob of zombies milling about in the barren fields below. Curiously, he studied their empty, dull faces through his spyglass. He watched as they staggered about, going no-where in particular. Other observers might be wondering why the zombies weren't hunting or looking for signs of people to feed on, but Willem knew that they were completely mindless. Without any prey to stagger after, they didn't really have any purpose at all. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to be one of them, one of the mindless horde, free from responsibility and free from sanity. He longed for freedom from duty, freedom from reason, the freedom to act on impulse. Every day he would wonder if today was the day that his quest was over, if today was the day that he could let go of all his responsibilities and be at peace. This concept also kept him awake with fear at night, for he knew that for most wizards, your first day of rest is the day that you die. He only hoped that someone whom he had met along the road, or maybe one of the villagers he had saved, would remember him for his bravery or his good looks. He wished that the Academy hadn't been obliterated by Hellfire. He wished that the world would just go back to the way it was. But this was going to be a long, lonely day, and for Willem, there was much worse down the road.
Being alone with your thoughts when you're a wizard can be quite dangerous. After all, with the wrong thoughts a wizard can kill. Willem had not seen a living person in over four days now, and it was starting to take its toll on him. He caught himself talking to the sand, the grass, or to no-one at all. His mind would wander back to the things he'd seen in the last month, the acts of evil and mindless destruction that he had witnessed. These sights only strengthened his resolve for his quest to stop the apocalypse, but at times he felt as though that day had already come and gone. “Maybe nobody's left,” he thought to himself. “Am I the last living person ever?” His sense of duty faltered. “If I'm the only one left, then I wouldn't have a quest anymore. I'd be free!” But wouldn't he have failed his quest if that were the case? Was he really that desperate for respite that he wanted failure? He worried that his inner dialogues had become those of a madman.
As he came out of his daydreaming, he looked ahead at the swirling sand on top of the dusty road. Were times ever going to be as good as they were, or had those times ended long ago? As if in answer to these dreadful thoughts, a wagon trundled up the road ahead, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. It was not alone, though. From behind it, a crowd of people appeared with more wagons, stumbling over each other in their collective drunkenness. Willem looked for a place to hide, but the foliage had been torn up by the trampings of the Bacchae. Willem noted that this could probably have been left as a warning, but that this information wasn't very useful for avoiding the problem he had at hand.
In the end, he just decided to stand off to the side of the road and just let their troupe pass by while he sat under a cloak of magic. But as they began to file along the road, he realized that he was standing in front of over a thousand people. They came in by the hundreds, spilling off the road, yelling and whooping, some of them stopping to drink or play. What kept them going in such a state of excitement was a mystery to Willem, but he tried to make himself as small as possible. They couldn't see him, but if they touched him, the game was up.
“The problem with being invisible is that you're still solid. Avoiding people who can't see you, especially when you're in a crowd, can be somewhere between taxing and impossible.” -Mage's Manual, pg. 5598
He wasn't able to make much headway past the tide of restless people that surrounded him at all sides. Seeing them fight was alarming, and he could feel a brawl was going to erupt at any second. As the crowd slowed and their rage collected, a small, stout man began pushing a skinnier, taller one in the middle of the crowd. The taller one growled and showed his fangs, then pounced. A fountain of blood erupted from the small one's neck, and the victorious tall one pulled back with a smirk dashed with crimson. This fight was over, but the surrounding crowd was overtaken with bloodthirst. They began laughing and whooping like a pack of wild dogs. Some others began fighting, and crowds surged around them.
Willem took this opportunity to slip into a wagon and steal some supplies. If escaping had to wait, then having dinner couldn't. In the end, the only food that he found to eat was a deat rabbit. It was raw, but a large chunk of it had been bitten off already. It would make good stew, if Willem could cut around the tainted parts. He exited the wagon and decided that it would be better not to tempt his luck with the other wagons and just to leave the train behind, so he skulked past the rest unseen into the dark.