by Shaw, Matt
Ignore it.
Swallow it down.
Keep the meat down.
You need the strength for whatever does come next.
What does come next?
I felt my eyes well up. Seconds later there were tears. Not just one. But many. And they all felt good. They all made me feel human.
But you’re not human anymore. They took your humanity away from you. They’re to blame. Not you. You are the victim.
I screamed again.
I looked around desperately. There was no one else around. No one to tell me where I was. No one to point me in the direction of the exit to this nightmare.
You can’t leave. Where will you go? You’re broken. You don’t belong in normal society anymore. You’re damaged goods now. You’re a murderer.
I staggered back towards the cabin where I first found my file. I opened the door and went in, letting the door swing shut behind me. The files were still on the floor where I had left them. I picked them up until I found my own file. Bits of my memory were slowly filtering back to me but I still didn’t know who I was. Not who I really was. Not without checking the name on the folder, and in the video footage that I had seen.
I flicked through the pages hoping to unlock more of who I was but nothing was jumping out. Just pages and pages of questions about why I believed I would be a good candidate for the programme (loyal, trustworthy, hardworking - standard answers given to impress a potential employer). Nothing about my real family. Nothing which hinted where I lived. Nothing of any use.
In a fit of rage I threw the file across the cabin. The pages flew out and spread themselves across the floor. I wanted to scream again but kept it contained. I was so angry but didn’t know who to direct the anger too. Was it them? Were they to blame? Should they be on the receiving end of it? Most of them here are dead and I don’t remember where I went for the initial chats and interviews. Was I to blame? If it weren’t for my initial greed I wouldn’t have even gone to the meeting in the first place. I’d still be at home, wherever that was, with my real family, whoever they were. And what of my real family? Are they looking for me? Are they out there somewhere, asking people of my whereabouts? Do they even care? Are they even alive?
Swallow the sick feeling down once more. Hold it in.
I dropped back down to my knees. I wasn’t sure where to go from here (again) and I was tired. My head spinning from the information gained and the withdrawal. I started to weep once more. I had just found out that the world had not ended and yet I had never felt so alone. Another tear spilt from my left eye. I wiped it away.
PART NINETEEN
Before
Dead End
I felt sick. The taste of human flesh fresh in my mouth. The iron taste of the blood which had oozed out, on the initial bite, seemingly tainted my tongue forever. But the thought of what I had done to the man was troubling me more. And the thoughts of what my sister and I had got up to, not forgetting Mother and I. Everything is wrong. I am wrong. I am damaged goods.
Father says help will come. He isn’t sure when. But what if it does come? Sister and I can’t continue the way we are, nor can Mother. And the others seem to have a taste for the flesh now. A wanting for it, almost. A need. Wherever we end up, when help comes, they – we - won’t be able to continue eating human flesh.
Mind you, would they want to change if there was the option for real food?
Yes.
With the bathroom door closed I looked at myself in the mirror. I look tired. And not just from a lack of sleep but, in general, I look shattered. A poor diet, lack of sleep, lack of real exercise and sunlight - all taking their toll on my body.
I put the knife down onto the side of the sink.
I had taken it from the kitchen when Mother and Father weren’t paying me any attention - which was most of the time. When I did so, my thought process had been clear; take it upstairs, go to the bathroom, run the blade down the length of my wrist, try not to scream out in pain. Wait as my life drains from my body. Slip into a peaceful sleep. It wasn’t the first time I had had thoughts of suicide but, even so, I still struggled with them. When I had taken it, my plan seemed so simple but now, now I’m here ready to do it, I’m not sure so that I can.
Fear of the unknown stopped me. Not knowing what was waiting on the other side, if anything. Was there a Hell? If so, I’d surely be going there for what I had done. Would it be worse than where I am? Could it be worse? My mind said ‘yes’.
I went against instinct and picked the knife up. I put it against my wrist and closed my eyes. My thought process being that, if I couldn’t see what I was doing, I wouldn’t be as worried. I pushed the blade down; hard enough to feel it against my skin but not hard enough for it to do any damage other than a tiny mark which would fade in time. I ceased the pressure and put the knife back down on the side, breathing heavily. I can’t do it. I can’t.
Fuck.
A knock on the door made me jump.
“I’m in here!” I called back.
“Hurry up! I need to get in there!” Father’s voice boomed from the other side of the door.
I picked the knife up and tucked it down my trousers carefully so only the handle was visible, and that I covered with my top. I waited a few more seconds and flushed the toilet so he wouldn’t question what I was doing in here and opened the door. Father was waiting.
“I hope you haven’t stunk it out in there!” he moaned as we crossed paths.
* * * * *
Now
Same story as before. I can’t do it.
I was sitting at the table, still in the cabin, with some scissors pressed against the pale skin of my shaking wrist. Adrenalin was surging through my body and yet I still couldn’t bring myself to pierce myself. Change of plan. I moved the opened scissors from wrist to throat. It might hurt more but I’m sure it will be over quicker. Drag one of the blades across my throat, hard, and job done.
I took a deep breath and pushed down.
I let the breath out and screamed, despite my throat being sore from the screaming already raged from my body. I threw the pair of scissors across the cabin. They bounced off the far wall and dropped to the floor. By the time they did so, I realised why I couldn’t bring myself to cut my own throat (pain and fear aside). Mother, Father and Sister. They’re still in there. I can’t leave them there. I can’t. It’s not fair on them. They’re victims, just as I am. They were created, just as I was.
I suddenly remembered the keys I had taken from the technician. I pulled them from my pocket. A silver key (which looked to be a house-key), a car key and a fob with two buttons on it (one to lock the car and one to unlock it). I dismissed everything else in the room and left the cabin.
Outside was unchanged other than the fact that the air seemed purer to me now. Previous thoughts of radiation in the atmosphere were gone. The sun was shining, the skies still blue. There were even some birds singing in the trees that were on the opposite side of the large wall.
I looked from side to side. Cabins everywhere. Not too far in the distance I saw what I was looking for: a row of vehicles parked up nicely in a line. I started to run towards them with hopes high. If one of these cars is the technician’s, if the key works...It would be so much easier to get back to the house. So long as I can find a way in, past the wall. Pretty sure ramming it would do nothing but crumple the front of the vehicle.
As I neared the cars I aimed the key fob and pressed the ‘unlock’ button. One of the car lights flashed. I couldn’t help but smile. It felt as though it was the first proper smile I had experienced for as long as I could remember; not as impressive as it sounds as I think about the memories stolen from me. I quickened my pace until I reached the car.
Please have petrol! Please have petrol! Please have petrol! All I could think as I jumped into the driver’s side and slammed the door shut behind me. I slipped the key into the ignition and twisted it. The engine spat into life as the petrol gauge moved into position s
howing how much fuel there was left in the tank.
A quarter of a tank.
Certainly enough to get me back to the house.
I crunched the car into first gear and instantly stalled the engine, unsure as to whether it had been so long since I had driven a car that the basics had escaped me or whether I had ever learned to drive in the first place.
Come on.
I fired the engine back up again.
Take two.
Foot on clutch. Select first gear. Find the biting point by slowly lifting foot off clutch. The engine chomped at the bit to make the car move. Biting point successfully found. Release the handbrake. All coming back to me now. Car moved forward slowly. Right foot puts a little pressure on the accelerator as left foot comes completely off the clutch. We’re moving. No stalling this time round. I smiled to myself. A job well done. And no one around to see the initial stall so - therefore - it didn’t happen.
I headed back down towards the wall. I wasn’t speeding but nor was I taking it easy. I slammed on the brakes only when I reached the sign I had seen when I first came over the wall. With the handbrake engaged, I jumped from the car and made my way round to remind myself of what the sign said.
A massive area divided into various zones. I wanted zone ‘B’ which was apparently directly behind the wall in front of me. It had to be anyway, regardless of what the sign said, for that was the one I came over initially. There were three houses marked out on the map. Surprisingly, considering how easily I had managed to get myself lost, they wouldn’t have been hard to stumble across had I stuck to roads as opposed to traipsing through the undergrowth and woodlands. I don’t feel stupid though. I had to stay relatively hidden. Couldn’t be sure as to whom or what I would have stumbled across on the open roads. The world makes for a scary place when you think it’s full of those things, looters and other survivors.
Knowing what I know now, it still makes for a scary place. To think there are monsters out there, in the real world unaffected by radiation and starvation, who would willingly put other humans what they have put us through.
I traced the outline of the wall on the map with my index finger but I found what appeared to be a gap in the structure. There’s my way in. And going by what I see here, it doesn’t look to be too far.
I couldn’t help but wonder as to whether this was the route we had used when we first entered the area. Did Father unwittingly drive us from here? Or were we dropped off somewhere inside of the zone where there’d be no danger of us accidentally doubling back to the campsite.
Not important.
I have a way in and - more importantly - I have a way back out.
Another triumphant smile as I turned back to my car and jumped in, closing the door behind me. This is it.
PART TWENTY
Before
To the House
Foggy eyesight prevented me from seeing who was man-handling me into what felt to be some kind of transport. They were putting a seat belt on me and trying to get my head to stay back but, despite my own efforts to keep it level too, it kept slumping forward as though the muscles in my neck were mush.
I heard a voice which I didn’t recognise. Female.
“This one is starting to wake up! Who has the tranquiliser?”
Another unrecognised voice answered, “It’s back in the van, I’ll go and get it.”
I tried to speak but felt myself dribble instead.
The female voice continued, “Be quick or else we’ll have to terminate this subject and go in with the three. How are the others?”
“Sleeping peacefully,” said another (male) voice, “the father should be waking up within the next twenty minutes, or so. Long enough for us to get them into position.”
I was trying to make sense of what was being said around me but couldn’t. I heard the words but they meant nothing to my confused brain. I’d felt as though I’d been hit by a sledgehammer or a bus. A throbbing in my head, arms and legs which refused to work and eyesight which refused to focus upon anything despite my best efforts and concentration.
The original female voice was still moaning, “I said we needed a double dosage to be safe. Didn’t I say that? The amount of money it has cost to get them to this level and for what? For it to be ruined just because we didn’t get the dosage right!”
A male voice told her, “Everything will be fine.”
“Well it’d better be because I’m not taking the fall if we have to terminate it here.”
“It won’t come to that!”
Someone was approaching from my right. Or was it my left? I couldn’t tell. Everything sounded as though I was underwater. Wishy washy.
“Here!”
Suddenly, I felt a sharp stabbing in my neck before a weird sensation of a cold fluid spreading through my body at the source of the injection(?).
Eyes heavy. Voices becoming more distant.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Now
It wasn’t long before I was speeding along through the woodlands, sticking to the roads to ensure I didn’t miss the house. I couldn’t help but think how easy the journey had been. I half expected to find the zone’s entrance guarded by people with guns but it wasn’t. It was just a gate system which was easily operated with the touch of a button. Two large, solid gates opened and then closed again as soon as your wheels passed over a pad on the other side.
Admittedly, I hadn’t seen a way of operating the gates from this side of the wall but that wasn’t important. There’d be other ways across just as there had been earlier, when I got across. Worst case scenario, we’d go over that way again.
My head was still pounding from whatever the main cause of the pounding was but it wasn’t bothering me as much as it once was. Not now I’m heading back to my family (not my family) with the news that the world hasn’t ended. Not now that I’m heading back to them the hero. The hero I had so desperately wanted to be the first time I’d left the property as opposed to what I did return to them as (a murderer).
My mind flashed back to the mist of blood which spurted from the man’s head when I removed the axe. My thoughts turning to my teeth ripping through the flesh we had cut from his body. My imagination causing my mouth to water at the mere hint of flesh. I shook the thoughts from my head and tried to concentrate on how Mother and Father would feel when I told them the good news about the world and that I know of a way out.
Everything will be alright.
Mother was behind me, in my mind, reaching around stroking my genitals as I pushed my foot down harder on the accelerator. In the real world, as I was driving, I felt a twitch from below. Ignore it. Besides - it’s not a bad thing...What Mother and I did. Nor was it bad that I lay with sister. They aren’t family. It’s perfectly natural. The rude thoughts were quick to be replaced by my mind. Replaced with images of what I had done to the technician back in the cabin. The killing. The feasting.
Damn you, I thought as I shook the thoughts from my mind once more.
Nearly home. I must be nearly home. Not my home - I don’t live here. I don’t. I live...I live...I couldn’t find my previous house in the various confused thoughts buzzing through my mind. My mind was too clouded with feasting, fucking and killing. What’s wrong with me? Nothing. Nothing that is my fault anyway.
Everything will be fine when I get Mother, Father and Sister and we all get out of here. Back to the real world. Back to our families...
But how can we go back to them when we can’t remember who they are? Will these thoughts ever come back to us or will we forever be plagued with reminders of the atrocities that we had done when we were living together as a family? These thoughts - the bad ones - are they so easily forgotten when we do return to the normal life or are these things you can never forget? I suspect the latter.
I slammed the brakes on and the car skidded to a halt in the middle of the road.
* * * * *
My Possible Future
Despite returning
to our own families when we returned to the ‘real world’, Father, Mother, Sister and I had all vowed to stay in touch. We shared a common bond (the experience we went through) and it was good, sometimes, to get together and talk about the days gone by. After all, we couldn’t forget them. They were impossible to forget. Ill thoughts which just fuelled unpleasant nightmares, disturbing our sleeps. We felt it was a good thing - to meet up and talk about them once a month, maybe a couple of times a month, depending on whether we could fit it into our schedules.