Dying Humanity

by Sourav Deka

  “I own this place. Who are you?”

  “I am Ross, this is my brother Aaron, this is Rowena and,” I picked up Luke. “And this is Luke.”

  Jonas smiled at Luke. “I also had a kid,” he chuckled. “Hey Luke, come…………” he gestured to Luke to come to him.

  Luke grabbed my hand tight. He was scared, even though Jonas was trying to act friendly, his face frightened him.

  “No need to fear me,” Jonas flashed a wide grin. “Come on, I am a good guy.”

  Luke looked at me. I nodded. I knew I didn’t have a choice. It won’t matter if I tell Luke to not go. So I played along. Luke walked up to Jonas. He picked him up and made him sit on his lap.

  “Are you hungry?” Jonas asked, holding his arm.

  Luke nodded. “I want a burger,” he said.

  Jonas smiled and looked at his men. “Bring him a burger.”

  One of Jonas’s men left the room to bring a burger.

  “All those people, you all live here?” I asked.

  “No, only my people,” Jonas said. “From today, you all will work for me.”

  “What?” Rowena raised her eyebrows.

  “Yes, we are growing food here, harvesting rainwater, and also dug a couple of wells. We are starting over after all the chaos happened.”

  “What if we say no?” Aaron said.

  Jonas half smiled. “You are going to die if you are on your own. We all need to work together, kid. We have to start a new civilization.”

  Aaron raised his chin. “We can take our chances.”

  I looked at Aaron and shook my head lightly. Aaron shrugged by seeing my response. I looked straight at Jonas. “What would we have to do?” I asked.

  “Ross?” Aaron’s eyes widened. “We can’t trust him. His men killed their own people just because they couldn’t catch us.”

  “I know, but the world is not the same as it was before. We need food, water, we have to survive. We won’t survive on our own for long. You have seen what happened everywhere.”

  “We can. We will grow our own food. Not everything is destroyed. We will scavenge. We can survive.”

  “Most of the houses, shopping malls, stores are destroyed,” Jonas said. “There has been a war, Aaron. People got crazy and burned most of the places.”

  I looked at Aaron. “We can survive here,” I turned to Rowena. “What do you think?”

  “They got doctors too. Jonas is right, most of the places are burned,” Rowena said. “We should take our chance here.”

  “What do we have to do?” I asked.

  “You will have to work like the people outside,” Jonas said.

  “Work like?”

  “Like farming, chopping wood, cooking food and all that stuff.”

  It was a nice place. We have seen the farms outside. They were trying to survive. I thought we could live there and start over. They had guns so we would have protection. Jonas and his people were trying to restart the civilization. I knew Aaron didn’t trust him, but we wouldn’t survive outside not without food, water or any other resources. Jonas’s camp had all the essential resources, we needed this.

  “Where would we live?” I asked.

  “Outside,” Jonas said.

  Aaron’s forehead creased. “Outside, in the open?” he said.

  “Yeah, you can make your house if you want,” Jonas gave a half shrug. “If you get some extra wood.”

  I looked around the house. “So in this big house you live alone?” I said.

  “No, my men live here too, my inner circle.”

  “This is a very big house. All your workers can live here.”

  “Do what you are asked to do? Don’t advise us,” Stan said in a heavy voice. He was standing beside Jonas.

  “But……………”

  “You want to live here, you have to earn it,” Jonas said, pointing his finger at his people. “These people earned it.”

  “How?”

  Jonas half smiled. “Keep up the good work. I will tell you if I find you all worthy.”

  He seemed like a dictator, but for now his camp was the best option for our survival. Despite his orders and rules we had to keep our mouth shut and follow it. We needed to eat. Going against his rules and orders won’t be a best idea. We needed to survive.

  “Can we get some food? We all are hungry,” I said.

  The man who went to bring burgers for Luke came and gave it to Luke. Luke’s face glowed. He hasn’t eaten well in days. He quickly grabbed the burger and started eating it.

  Jonas looked at me. “Come on, lunch is ready. I still have a lot to know about you,” he said. “We will talk while we eat.”

  We all went upstairs. A girl wearing a brown jacket and jeans was serving dinner in a room. There was a big table in the middle surrounded with chairs. The windows were closed. Sunrays were passing through its glasses and providing the light we needed in the room.

  “Sit,” Jonas said, pulling out his chair.

  “Where is Keith? Can I see him now?” Rowena asked.

  Jonas smiled. “Don’t worry, he is fine. My doctors will take good care of him. Stan will take you to him after lunch.”

  She nodded.

  We all sat at the dining table and began to eat. They had chicken wings, burgers, tacos, salad, grilled potatoes, bacon, cheese and some sandwiches. We haven’t eaten well. Three days ago we ran out of food, we were barely surviving. Thank god, we came here. We were starving. Even the normal food tasted like the tastiest food in the world. We were so hungry that we wanted to eat everything they put on the table. Aaron ate like an animal. He tried to keep his gaze away from me and focused on the food. He wasn’t ready to stay there but the food made him forget everything.

  “So Ross, tell me more about you,” Jonas said, grabbing a chicken leg piece.

  “We were in school when all this happened,” I said, biting a sandwich. “We escaped and stayed in my house until we ran out of food, and then your men found us.”

  “You are lucky that they brought you here. You can start over. The world is doomed,” he inhaled deeply. “We all have to start over.”

  “What about you? What were you before this mess?”

  “I was a criminal.”

  I froze, a piece of sandwich got stuck in my mouth but I gulped it down.

  Jonas smirked. “Don’t be scared. I am not evil. I just can’t forgive people for their sins.”

  “Sins?” I gulped again trying to clear my throat.

  “Yeah, you know when people do bad things, they should be punished,” he grabbed a burger. “There should be no mercy.”

  “How did you escape from prison?”

  He laughed. “Did I say I was in prison? I was a criminal, that doesn’t mean that I was behind the bars, Ross.”

  “So the cops never caught you?” Aaron asked, chewing his chicken wings.

  He shrugged. “They couldn’t. They had nothing against me.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I used to smuggle drugs, guns and all that illegal stuff.”

  “I told you. We should leave,” Aaron whispered to me.

  “Your brother doesn’t like me, Ross,” Jonas looked at Aaron and smiled. “You don’t have to fear me boy unless you cause any trouble for me.”

  We all kept quiet for a couple of minutes and kept eating our meal.

  Rowena finished her lunch and looked at Stan. “Take me to Keith,” she said.

  “Wait, I will go with you,” Aaron also finished eating and wiped his mouth with the napkin on the table.

  Jonas looked at Stan and nodded signaling him to take them to Keith. Rowena and Aaron went with Stan to check up on Keith.

  I picked the cheese on the table and tasted it. “Do you know about Ambrose?” I asked. “The one who made the reanimation drink and created this problem.”

  “Everyone knows him,” Jonas said, picking up a taco from the plate. “That bastard destroyed the world. He has to fix this.”

  �
�Fix?” my forehead creased. “This can’t be fixed. A lot of people died, most of earth’s resources are exhausted. How can this be fixed?”

  “He is the one who caused this mess,” he took a bit from his taco. “He has to fix it. If he can bring back people from death, he can undo this.”

  I gave a half shrug. “How can it be undone? This already happened.”

  “I have him, I will make it happen.”

  “What?” I put my fists on the table, my eyes widened. “You have him? Where?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see him,” I clenched my fists. “That piece of shit killed my parents.”

  “No,”

  “Why?”

  “I want him alive. He has to fix this,” he picked another taco from the plate.

  “He doesn’t deserve to live,” I pounded my fists on the table. “He killed my parents,” I said in a heavy voice.

  “Hey, calm down,” he narrowed his eyes. “Don’t forget, you are in my place.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “You can’t. He has to fix what he has done, after that you can happily kill him.”

  “He can’t fix it, Jonas. He just made a reanimation drink from the seeds I found.”

  “The seeds?”

  I nodded. “Yeah the immortal drink.”

  “You found the seeds?”

  I widened my hands. “Don’t you watch the news? With the help of those seeds he did some experiments and created that juice which brought back people from the dead.”

  He sighed. “If he made that he can make anything. I need him to make something that can fix anything, not only dead people, everything like houses, crops, anything that is destroyed.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way, Jonas. The man who made the seeds took the help of a witch. There is no science here, only magic. We lied about it to the media, told them that it was a new scientific discovery or else who would have believed that it was created by magic.”

  “Ambrose made the reanimation drink from your seeds,” he said. “That was science.”

  “Yeah, that was,” I gave a half shrug. “He got lucky.”

  “He needs to get lucky again,” Jonas smirked. “I will make him.”

  I pressed my lips. “Let me see him. I can help.”

  He chuckled and chewed his taco. “I am not stupid, Ross.”

  “Please, I……………….”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “But I can help. Please I need to see him.”

  “I said you can’t.”

  “No, I need to. I need to see him.”

  “Stop, you can’t. Don’t ask me that again,” he glared at me. “You are not seeing him. Eat your food, you and your friends are here to stay,” he gazed into my eyes. “So don’t make me angry, it doesn’t go well.”

  I wanted to kill Ambrose, but I had no choice. Jonas won’t tell me where he kept him. The way he glared at me wasn’t a good sign. I couldn’t go against him just because he was keeping Ambrose. He had an army. I couldn’t make him my enemy. We saw what his men can do. He will kill us in a blink of an eye and won’t think about it for a second. He provided us food and shelter. I should be thankful to him and keep my voice down, so I controlled my feelings and quietly continued eating.

  CHAPTER 9

  Two months passed. Keith got better. His leg healed but he couldn’t walk faster. Jonas made him rest for a couple of days and then made him work with us. We work all day in the scorching heat at the farm growing crops and taking care of them. Our whole body gets covered in sweat. We get tired at the middle of the day when the sun is right up at our heads, our body aches but we had to keep working. We had to follow Jonas’s orders. Jonas’s men always watch us standing at the edge of the farm fields. If anyone one of us stops and sits down to rest for a couple of minutes, they come with their guns to threaten us. No one liked their rules, but had to endure it for the food, water and the security they provided. We had to sleep outside with the other workers, it doesn’t matter if it rains or hails, we had to stay outside in our tents and live like homeless people. Jonas was like a dictator. He made us work for him and in return he gave us enough food and water to survive. Everyone resented him but we didn’t have any choice, we had nowhere to go and needed to survive. We needed food, water, it was not enough, but it was enough to survive.

  I wanted to find Ambrose on my own, but I didn’t know where to start. I told Aaron, Rowena and Keith about him. Aaron and I used to sneak out at night to find Ambrose. He thought Ambrose was inside Jonas’s big home as the workers were not allowed to go inside. For many nights we observed the guards and studied their routine and one day we sneaked into the house to see if Ambrose was inside somewhere. We checked every room but still he was nowhere to be seen and came back to our tent disappointed.

  The moon was shining high up in the sky along with the stars. We sat down outside our tent.

  “Where the hell he kept him?” Aaron said.

  “He is not in the house,” I said. “Maybe he has some other places too.”

  Aaron nodded. “Did you notice, some of the jeeps leave in the evening?”

  “Yeah, and they come back next morning.”

  “They have another place that we don’t know about.”

  “We have to follow them.”

  “No, we can’t. They go in jeeps. It’s not a car that we can hide in the trunk.”

  “They cover their face with bandanas. We have to disguise ourselves and go with them.”

  “But……..they will know…..” he stuttered.

  I rubbed my nose. “We will take down some of them.”

  A line etched between his eyebrows. “What? If Jonas finds out, he will kill us.”

  “Don’t you want to kill Ambrose?”

  He clenched his jaw. “I do.”

  “Then let’s do this.”

  “But you are the one who agreed to live here,” he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “If we make Jonas our enemy, it won’t go well.”

  “I begged him to let me see Ambrose, but he didn’t listen. He thinks Ambrose will make something that can fix everything.”

  His forehead crinkled. “What?”

  “Yeah, you see how stupid that is?”

  “He is dangerous, Ross. You have seen what his men do. They are all crazy. I didn’t want to stay here but you…………….you…….didn’t listen.”

  “I know. But we needed food,” I looked up at the sky. “I am thinking of leaving this place,” I sighed. “I made a mistake, Aaron. He makes us work the whole day, gives us a little bit of food. We won’t survive here for so long. When we will become weak, he is going to kill us anyway.”

  “But you said it yourself. We won’t survive out there. We will need food, water. I know Jonas is not giving us enough and making us work like dogs but at least we are surviving.”

  I grabbed his shoulders. “Think about this, Aaron. How long can we go on like this? Can you live like this your whole life working for him like a slave?”

  Aaron gulped. “We will be sick in months if we go on like this.”

  “We will. I thought this would work,” I looked down and shook my head. “But it won’t.”

  “But how will we survive if we leave?”

  “We will grow our own food. We will steal some seeds,” I said.

  His forehead furrowed. “Are you crazy? It may take months to grow.”

  “I know. We will steal enough food to survive till then, and I am sure there will be some shops that aren’t completely destroyed.”

  “But it’s a big risk. He has a lot of men.”

  “I know but we can do it, Aaron. We need to tell Rowena and Keith about this.”

  Aaron paused for some seconds. “Ross, think about this,” he said.

  “I have been thinking about this for a couple of days. We can’t live like this,” I shook my head lightly. “We can’t survive like this. We can’t.”

  Rowena and Keith came wi
th some fruits. They sat with us. We told them about our plan to escape from Jonas’s camp.

  “What? No! We can’t survive outside,” Keith said. “We will die out there.”

  “You are okay with all this?” I said. “Jonas is making us work like hell. He made us slaves.”

  “We don’t have a choice, Ross,” he took a bite from his apple. “This is an apocalypse now.”

  “But we can escape from here, Keith. We can grow our own food.”

  “What?” Rowena raised her eyebrows. “No, we can’t. Even if we escape this camp, Jonas will hunt us down and kill us,” she said.

  “We can’t live in fear, Rowena,” I said. “We can’t live like this. If we keep going like this, we will be sick in months and he will kill us anyway.”

  Keith massaged his forehead. “I don’t want to die again,” he said.

  “I know. But this is possible. We can escape if we plan it properly.”

  Rowena crossed her arms. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Some of the jeeps leave in the evening. We have to take down some of Jonas’s men and disguise ourselves with their clothes. Then no one will recognize us. We can take their jeep and leave.”

  Rowena chuckled. “It’s not that easy, Ross.”

  “Yes, it’s not. But if we work together, we can do it.”

  “Think about this, Ross,” Keith said, chewing his apple.

  “I made up my mind. I am going to do this,” I said. “Aaron and Rowena, you two stock up some food somewhere. Keith, observe the jeeps and the people who leave in the evening. We need to know who leaves when, so that we can take out only those who leave in the evening.”

  “What are you going to do?” Keith asked.

  “I am going to stock up some weapons. We will need it.”

  Rowena’s eyes widened. “Weapons?” she said.

  I nodded lightly. “Yeah, I have seen the armory inside. There are two guards protecting it.”

  “You can’t get the weapons Ross, it’s too risky,” Rowena said. “If Jonas finds out, we will be dead before we leave. We don’t need weapons. We just need to escape.”

  “I will handle it. You all just do what I told you to do.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Be careful,” Aaron said.

  “You too,” I said.

  For days Aaron and Rowena kept stocking up food while Keith looked at the jeeps leaving every evening. Stocking up food was hard so they did it in small quantities. They hid all the food in the warehouse a mile away, very few people go there. No one suspected us as we did it at night. I was trying to find a way into the armory, but the guards always stay in their place. After four hours another two guards come and take their place. It was hard getting past them. Luckily, Jonas and his people had no idea what we were doing. We all kept it quiet, not even the workers knew what we were up to.