Author's Note: Another story to add to my collection of apocalypse-based stories and poems. This one is a little less action, a little more reaction, if you know what I'm getting at. Feel free to say what you feel about it. I plan on taking an excerpt from this story and put it in with my writing audition portfolio, so please, review hard. I need this thing spick and span by the weekend.
But, as always, enjoy the story.
Watching my feet and being careful not to step on a dry piles of leaves, I slipped silently through the unfenced backyards of quiet houses. The houses were, in all truth, crypts, filled with the quiet lives of hollow corpses. The wind stirred nothing despite being so brisk that it cut through my coat as easily as if I wore nothing but fishnets and pants that had been through dozens of blenders.
Silence couldn’t even fully sum up the mass of weight it seemed to hold over my head: the sound was just dead, sucked through a hole in the sky, and dissipated into the universe; not just silenced.
The weight of my rucksack—that heavy weight which caused me pain every now and again, and yet made that pain able to keep me connected with the world and reality—that weight on my body made my shadow which followed me each careful step by each careful step look hunchbacked, and the added bulk of my coat made my shadow look like a dark, mad scientist’s assistant, who answered as Igor or Mr. Hyde and fancied himself the life of the dark, out of judgment and out of unforgiving light. Everything I wore that distinguished me, even if only a little, making me seem more mean and invincible instead of weak and vulnerable, seemed to have character of their own. My rucksack with it’s comforting pains; my coat which was even more one of a kind before life changed so much, with it’s green leather outer and plaid inner; even my combat-black boots had been so ingrained with sand instead of polish that now they wouldn’t be able to even pass for gray.
I looked around a lot as I walked, keeping a weathered eye, making sure unmoving things remained unmoving. Eventually I noticed that my gaze had stuck to those cryptic houses of forever gone rural suburbia. The thought of the bodies inside those houses should have made me stop and shiver, but the time for reflection had long passed by me without so much as a look over the shoulder. It was common ad and understood fact by now: the living lived outdoors, the dead lived indoors.
But even with that knowledge, things still appeared more eerie than normal. The area I was in was somewhere around central Oklahoma (I never read the sign telling a town’s name as I went through for fear of bad dreams). There was one long, five-lane highway that ran through the town and led off into many smaller one-lane roads like dozens of tributaries feeding into one great, lazy river. The town itself was surrounded by forest, or at least what might have been considered forest in central Oklahoma: pines, blackjacks, cottonwoods and the like. There must have been tons of cottonwoods surrounding the town, because the air seemed so livid, each gust carrying this it a flurry of snow-like fluff that just floated about lazily until it finally met the ground, drifting to final rest.
The neighborhoods were small, normally consisting of four or five houses per neighborhood. Nobody had a fence, which made me guess that the local dog catcher would have been very friendly and poor, very mean and rich, or nonexistent at all. Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter now that I think about it; chances are, if he was real, he’s in his own crypt of a home right now.
There were also many creeks in these neighborhoods, one of which I was walking next to on my right at the moment. It was dry and silent instead of babbling and gurgling noisily with running water like it might have in summer. The masses of trees (even out here, where the trees thin out and give way to fields and pastures, there were tons of cottonwoods) all rimmed either side of the creek, bare of leaves and looming, creating light shadows that barely effected winter’s already night-like day. They reminded me of sentinels or guards trying to stand at attention, but still swaying from fatigue from the harshness of the task that’s passed and yet still at hand.
Each step I took made only a soft crunch as the dead grass was crushed underneath my boots, but other than that, everything was still dead silent. Something inside me wanted to well up and grow, wanting to escape and break the fragile silence like blown glass. Shutting my eyes tight and pausing my steps, I stood still like one of those people who used to pose as statues; still yet moving; lifeless yet vibrant; hard yet soft.
I screamed and shattered the silence with a vengeance.
It felt better than I thought it would. That growing sensation that welled up inside me, that great mass, being released and ridding all my pent up stress and hardship and morose made it almost worth possibly letting every raider or tacker within a mile radius know that I was here.
I moved my feet faster, letting no more sound give me away, making me swift, silent, and invisible. There was a break in the trees ahead and to my right, going straight into the creek. As I grew loser upon it, I found that it didn’t offer entrance into the creep, but rather made entrance to a little land bridge that crossed the dead creek. There was another neighborhood on the other side, more crypt houses with more hollow bodies inside. I slowly made my way across.
Only halfway through did I finally register the sound of leaves being shifted around and crunched noisily yet discerningly. I stopped and looked around, yet it was in vain, for no matter where I looked, my sight was greeted by another wall of trees and their gray shadows.
The sound surrounded me, engulfed me, wrapped me in swaddle and smothered me. It came from nowhere yet everywhere. Crunch, shish, crunch, shish, stop. Crunch, shish, crunch, shish, stop. Louder and louder it went until finally I bolted out of the two-sided hallway of trees and onto the grassy the clearing on the other side. The sound was still gaining, louder, louder, until I finally turned and faced the bridge, six-shooter in trembling hand and eyes going back and forth as rapidly as my heart rate, which was like a metronome going at a thousand beats per minute.
Something was there, something was moving, something was making sound, breaking fragile silence, wanting something, something. The trees swelled as if ready to vomit up whatever was making the horrible sound that reverberated and became lost in its own prison. Yet still nothing came out besides sound. I watched and waited, waited and watched, knowing something was coming, but now knowing when…
Until darkness finally released the source of the noise.
It looked like a big, short-haired cat. A mountain lion I finally realized. It had crawled up from the creek onto the bridge and stood there, looking back first, then turning its short black-striped muzzle towards, it stared me down with almond shaped eyes. Its yellow fur seemed too short for the season and I began to wonder why fear wasn’t creeping its spider-like fingers over my mind. Surely something that big needed lots of food, and surely I was considered lots of food. But something kept my hands from trembling, something deep within those almond eyes, and I didn’t understand it until finally I saw what the mountain lion had stopped for: three tiny lion cubs crawled up onto the bridge with their mother lioness, each making clumsy yet entrancingly graceful steps around the trees to match with the lioness. My hand lowered and replaced the gun into my coat pocket and the lion and I continued to stare at each other.
I’m not sure when the mother mountain lion left, for I was totally lost in time to those almond eyes, but I know that no matter what, she never would have attacked me, for we both shared a commonality, one that made us equals and the same on the food chain: motherly love. Although she had her children, and mine were long dead, she could still sense that universal togetherness that all mothers of all species feel at some point; she knew my hurting and understood that I’m merely trying to remain alive to remember and to find hope.
I felt as if I was in a daze for a while, even as I walked. Images of my children flitted effortlessly through my spaced mind. I could picture them so easily, even now with them gone for so long. No pictures remained of them; the pictures burned along with my children in the tacker-caused house fire. That made my memories even more vital.
Slow and tactful, thoughts mingled with memories, striking their normal low blows at all the guilt-filled spots in my heart. What if I hadn’t set my gun down in the kitchen? Or gone outside to pill the water pail? Or left the lantern so close to the window? Would my boys be with me now? Or would they still have been killed either way? Tears streamed freely down my cheeks, cutting through the thin layer of grime and dust from my travel and exposing soft white flesh. A hot burning could be felt from the left pocket of my coat, as if the revolver residing inside understood my guilt and knew how to resolve all my inner conflicts. With one eyeless socket and happy-trigger, it would make everything go away. It’s just right there, in the left pocket, a load of twisted, burning, melting metal and lead, smiling with its single, hollow eye socket, waiting, waiting, knowing…
No, stop, not here, not now, not ever! My eyes squeezed tight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I can’t die, not yet. I’ve to carry on, got to remember. Got to live. Memories may be all I’ve got left, but by God they will get me through. Hope breezes through the memories, I’ve just got to focus harder, breath deeper, catch the scent.
Eyes opening slowly, mind feeling cooler and heart tame once again, I turned away from the place where the mother mountain lion had been on the land bridge, facing the road again. There was a big country-style house to my right and a curve of more trees to my far left, telling me that there was a bend in the creek. There was something off about the curve of trees, though; something daunting and looming over my mind, yet minuscule and hard to catch.
I walked to the road and continued on my way. Where, exactly? Nowhere in particular, honestly; just a place where there were real people, and not savages, like the raiders and tackers. Especially tackers. They were possibly the worst types of rovers alive. Of course, there are many different groups of rovers and all of them do things differently, but the basic ideas are all similar: walkers, like me, are the more or less “good” left in the world, meaning nothing to now one and only looking for a place where life was picking up its broken pieces; raiders could be considered the proverbial “middleman”, being nothing more than common thieves or muggers or rapists and having enough sense to compromise for someone’s safety; then there’s the tackers. Like how walkers are the “good” that’s left in the world, tackers are the “bad” left in the world, the cowboys wearing black hats and riding on black horses. Tackers are almost always apart of a bigger group, typically comprised of people who have completely lost their minds. Religious freaks, bankers, cops, teachers, business owners, almost anybody who was closely connected with the old world. They broke along with the old life, holding on for dear life, thinking that it wasn’t real.
Tackers killed whoever didn’t do as they said, or sometimes they would even kill you if you did as they said. If you were a man and they captured you, the entire group might kill you, doing it nice and slow, I’d guess, then they would roast you on a spit over a fire for their meal, or if you were lucky, you became a slave, and even then, they’d kill you as soon as you did something against them, whether intentionally or not. Now, if you were a woman, you got it slightly easier: they would merely rape you a couple dozen times then rent you out to other tackers they met along the way.
Tackers took my boys’ lives, so, as guessed, they were on my short list of enemies.
Rocks flew away from my steps, pulling me back to the world, realizing that I was dragging my feet. After readjusting my bag on my back, I lengthened my steps, moving faster along the long road. I looked too my right as I passed another house, this one smaller and yellow, yet still country-styled as the other behind, back by the bridge. It was directly across from the curve of trees, and as I gained upon it, that same twinge pulled me back, seeming to have a stronger grasp on my actual being, faltering my steps until I stopped. Something was wrong. I haven’t felt like this since the fire…
A loud yell broke the silence.
“Get her!”
Three men materialized from the curve of trees, each wearing some form of make-shift armor and carrying blunt objects for weapons like bats or pieces of lead pipe. Another man ran around the from behind the curve and onto the road. He looked much like the other three men, but instead of a blunt weapon, he held a sub-machine gun. Surprise gripped me for only a moment before instinct sent me spinning on my heel in the direction of the yellow house, only to be greeted by yet two more men with blunt weapons. The man on the road with the sub-machine gun, whom I figure was also the one that yelled earlier, started strolling easily towards me, practically cackling as he spoke.
“You’re not going anywhere, little missy. Make any sudden movements and you’re gonna look like Swiss cheese.” He patted his gun as if it were a small pet. “You’re now the property of Brutus.” Grinning with awful yellow teeth, gun held threateningly, he advanced still, motioning for the others to circle as well. That hot, burning piece of metal in my coat practically begged to come out now and plug these idiots, but both of my hands were frozen, waiting for my brain to analyze what my eyes and ears were experiencing.
Then what could only be explained as the universe cashing in an IOU occurred.
A big yellow blur burst from the trees and tackled the gunman to the ground with a hard thud and crumble of tiny pebbles, roaring horrendously as its fangs sunk deep into his neck. Having been caught off guard, the other men turned and raced towards their leader, blunt weapons raised high in the air to defend as they could. It was that moment when my hands reacted. Grabbing my revolver, I repaid the mother mountain lion as she protected me by protecting her.
First shot: dead center of his stomach; his guts were practically air-borne.
Second shot: off the side of his head; made the side of his head look like an explosion of bright white and crimson red.
Third shot: through the rib cage; the guy fell to the ground, coughing up the blood that had replaced the air in his lungs.
Fourth shot: chest hit; a hole appeared in the guy’s chest where his heart should have been.
Fifth shot: left eye; the bullet traveled straight through the guy’s left eye and out the back of his head, carrying with it a spray of gray matter and bone that reminded me of water drops hitting water.
I had no more shots left to take, though one more bullet remained in the chamber. The gunman had stopped making noises or twitching sometime while I was shooting his men down. The mother mountain lion, now streaked in red and having it drip from her muzzle, turned to face me, engulfing me again in her almond eyes.
“Thank you,” I said aloud, meaning not just for attacking the gunman, but for everything, whether she understood or not. She made me realize more than I thought I ever could, helped with the weight of my guilt, even if it was done so indirectly. I knew that that weight of melting, twisting metal would no longer try to burn holes through me or stare me down with its hollow eye socket. My memories would remain to carry me out through to the end of my journey.
I’m not sure exactly when, but when recognition returned and I could see the world, the mother mountain lion was gone, left to go take care of her babies. I wish I still had my babies to take care of, to hold, to love. Their memories will still blow gently through the space of my mind though, and that should hold me through…
I continued walking.
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