by R. M. Smith
The Pacific rift was the only section of the earth that remained in orbit. Its depth held the core of the earth. The other rifts began to drift out of the earth’s orbit days after the split was complete.
The Atlantic rift was the second of the three. It sank slowly at first. Within days it literally dropped out of orbit. For some time, survivors watched the split drift away like a fading moon in the early morning light. Lights from some cities still could be seen at night – or perhaps they were enormous fires. The oceans on the section poured over the edges like gigantic waterfalls.
Some people called it beautiful. Millions died as the atmosphere dissipated on the Atlantic split. Some were even lost to space as gravity dissipated as well.
Not much was known about the Mid-Eastern split. However, it covered the eastern half of Africa up into the southern half of India over to the Philippines and down into Australia. It was the smallest, and the first split to fall into space.
We drove back toward the pharmacy. Pete giggled when we went over the ripple in the road. It made his stomach tickle.
Mindy held her forehead. She didn’t like it at all.
At the pharmacy I jumped back through the broken window. Inside I grabbed more prenatal vitamins and also some vitamins for morning sickness. As I headed into the back of the store, I noticed that some stuff had been moved. A small cart full of empty shipping boxes had been knocked over. A shelf next to it had been knocked loose and all of the stuff on it was now spilled on the floor. I also saw drops of blood trailing around as if someone was looking for something and they were bleeding as they searched. The trail stopped near a display of bandages. An empty bandage container lay on the floor.
I put the stuff we needed in another plastic bag and left. I didn’t want to hang around in here. Who knew if this person was still around?
Quickly, I hopped back out the window. I didn’t think I needed to tell Mindy about my findings.
As we drove, Pete sat back in his seat with his seatbelt on. He watched the scenery go by. Suddenly he sat up “There’s McDonalds” he hollered.
The golden arches were on the right side of the road. The sign had fallen over.
“Oh no,” Mindy said sadly. “It looks like it’s closed.”
“Awww,” Pete said.
Several blocks further, there was a Buccaneer Food Store on the left.
“Wanna try there?” Mindy asked.
“Ok,” I said. “But you guys stay inside the car.”
I parked the car in a stall close to the front door. There were other cars in the parking lot, too. Some of the light poles had fallen over.
“Be careful,” Mindy said.
“I won’t be a minute,” I said.
The parking lot was covered in glass. It looked like most of the windows of the store had been shattered.
Stepping inside, a sickening odor caught my nose. My gag reflexes kicked in. I figured it was probably the smell from of all of the meat that had gone bad.
The back of the store was dark. I thought I could see barrels back there, maybe some tables and something swinging in the dark. The only real light was coming through the front broken windows. Toward the front of the store I could see that the shelves were looted – basically empty.
Something told me to get out of here. It wasn’t a voice – it was my instinct screaming GET THE HELL OUT!
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement.
Turning my head to look in that direction, the side of my head was slammed hard by something that felt like a ton of wrought iron. My vision blacked out.
I tried to gain my balance, but dizziness took over. I fell down.
I tasted blood as I passed out.
I woke up slowly, disoriented.
I had no idea where I was.
There was a fire in a rusted metal barrel next to me. The fire was putting off light but not much heat. All I could see was an orange halo around the fire. It was very dark.
I was still in the store.
My arms were asleep and achy. All of the blood had rushed out of them. My face felt sticky from dried blood.
I could hear crickets singing out in the dark…and was that a dog barking far away?
My hands were tied above me. The rope tied around my hands was also looped around the hook of a chain hoist. I was hanging three feet above the floor. I couldn’t feel my feet. I was numb.
I was also naked.
Slowly turning my head I looked around.
My heart sank.
Mindy was next to me. She was naked, tied to a chain hoist like I was. Her face was bloodied. Her hair was matted to her head with blood and sweat.
I tried to whisper to her but I couldn’t. My mouth was gagged. I grunted at her but she didn’t look up. My voice was raspy. I was thirsty. Her head was hung down like she was asleep or passed out…
…or dead.
I looked around for Pete.
I couldn’t see anything beyond the glow of the fire in the barrel – except for a table just out of reach of the fire’s light. There was something lying on the table. I stared at it in the fire light. The light moved as the flames danced in the barrel. It looked like something wet or shiny was under the thing on the table. It was blood. A lot of blood.
There were bottles on the table, too. They were dirty, covered in dried bloody handprints. They were half-filled with sand or salt and had no lids.
I grunted at Mindy again, this time a little louder. My throat felt like sandpaper. She didn’t move.
I tried to swing my body toward her. As I did, I felt my ribs crack. Pain rocketed down my side. My body was stiff. I must have been hanging there for hours.
My body turned a little bit as my swinging stopped. I was able to see what was behind me. There was a man sitting in a chair. He had the chair tipped back so that it was leaning against a wall. He was asleep, maybe dead – or he had his head down.
He was wearing dirty jean bib-overalls covered in dried blood. He had a thick long filthy dark beard. He also wore a red bandana.
As I hung there, I continued to slowly turn. I turned to face a man standing right next to me. His face was about even with my belly button. He too had a dirty dark long beard and a red bandana.
He was looking at me. He asked “What happened to your cock?” as he looked at it. “Did somebody cut it off? Did you get it sewn back on?”
His voice was deep, almost guttural. He was hard to understand. His breath smelled of rot.
The guy in the chair stirred. I heard the chair clunk back onto the ground as he stood up. He walked over and stood next to the other guy. They both looked at my cock.
The one from the chair said “Maybe she sewed it back on for him,” as he poked a thumb over at Mindy.
“Maybe…” the other guy said. “Looks kinda professional though to me. Maybe he’s a doctor and did it his self.”
“Or the bitch is a doctor. Be good to have a doctor around.”
“Bitches aren’t doctors,” the first guy said. “They’re only nurses.”
The guy from the chair walked over to the table. He passed it, fumbled around with something in the dark, and lit another barrel on the other side of the table. More light illuminated the room.
Pete was on the table.
Both of his arms and legs had been cut off. A hack saw was lying on the table next to his lifeless body. The bottles on the table were Lawry’s cooking seasonings.
The man walked out of the second barrel’s light. Another barrel lit further away.
This light illuminated another person hanging from a hoist. It was another woman; tied up, naked and gagged as well.
Then the man walked into the center of the room. He lit a propane barbecue. A small severed arm was lying on the grill. The fire from the barbecue started to cook the flesh on the arm.
God please, let this be a dream, I thought. Please, let Rachel show up. Please. Mel, anybody…
The room started to smell of burning flesh. My gag reflexes kicke
d in again.
“That smell make you sick?” the guy still standing next to me asked. “Don’t worry, you get used to it.”
“And it don’t taste bad either,” the other guy said as he turned the arm on the grill with some tongs.
“Tastes like chicken,” the guy next to me said. They both laughed. He grabbed my leg and turned me to face him. “But girls taste better,” he said still smiling. “You ever eat a cooked pussy?”
I didn’t acknowledge him.
He punched me right in the stomach. I felt vomit try to come out but it didn’t.
“I said did you ever eat a cooked pussy?”
I shook my head no.
He laughed. “Once you’ve had it, you never go back.”
The other guy laughed. He picked up the leg on the barbecue with the tongs and flipped it over.
Mindy coughed through her gagged mouth.
Both of the men looked at her.
She looked at me. She was crying.
“She looks like she wants to tell us something,” the guy at the barbecue said. “Dane, let her down.”
Dane, the guy standing next to me, walked behind Mindy. He pulled a chord attached to a piece of wood. Mindy started to lower to the ground. When her feet hit, she jerked them up like they hurt. Dane continued to lower her. She was not able to stand on her own. She collapsed onto the dirty floor.
Dane stood over her. He untied the gag around her mouth.
She cried out loud, weeping loudly. “Dan! They killed Pete! They made me watch while they cut off his legs…” She burst into tears. She looked from me and then back up at Pete on the table. “Oh Pete,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Dane said. Lady shut your pay hole.”
She looked at him with a feverishly angered look.
“They’re weak,” the guy at the barbecue said. “Let them all down. Give them a break from the ropes.”
“You know Bart don’t like us doing that…” Dane said.
“He ain’t here. Do it.”
He went behind the other woman. He let her down, loosened the bindings on her wrists and took off her gag. She collapsed onto the floor.
Next, he let me down and took off my gag. He didn’t loosen my bindings. It took every ounce of my strength to remain standing. I wasn’t going to go down. I wasn’t going to let these bastards think that I was weak - even though I was dying to just lie down and cry.
Dane changed my mind, though. He kicked the back of my shin with some heavy steel toed boots. I went down. There was no escaping it.
I was able to crawl over to Mindy. I held her as she wept.
The guy at the barbecue went over to the other woman. He grabbed her by her long black hair and dragged her over to us. She was screaming as he dragged her. He let her fall down in front of us. I saw that her back was covered in straight-line bruises, as if she had been beaten with an iron rod.
“It’s fucked up, I know,” he said. He walked over to the chair that Dane had been sitting on earlier. He dragged it over in front of us, much like he had just dragged the woman across the oily dirty floor.
He sat down on it, leaning forward with one hand on one leg.
“My name is Dane,” he said. “The other guy is Jace. We’re going to eat you.”
“You’re a fucking son of a bitch,” Mindy sneered at him as she got up on her elbow. “You killed a little boy! You cut off his arms and legs!”
“And his little cock,” Dane said. “Don’t forget about that! It was chewy but still tasty, though.”
Mindy fell back onto the ground crying.
“You’re next,” he said pointing at the other woman.
“Please,” she begged. “Please let me go. I’m trying to survive just like you are.”
“Oh?” Dane asked. “You eating people to survive too?”
“There’s food out there,” she said. “You just need to know where to find it.”
“Why should I spend days on end looking for half-rotted shit food when I have good people like you coming around? It’s like I’m in a god-damn drive-thru buffet. People come by here a lot…and I pick and choose what I want to eat. People are the best food left out there…” He stopped for a second, and then added: “Except for the niggers. They taste like shit.”
“I know where there are warehouses of food. Frozen food,” she said.
“Frozen food isn’t good until it’s thawed.”
“That’s what fire is for you dumbass,” she said under her breath.
“Yeah, and I’m going to cook your pussy real soon. It may be frigid now, but soon it will be all warm and buttery.”
“Fuck you,” she said turning away.
He grunted. He grabbed her by the hair again. As she screamed, he dragged her over to a different table. Mindy and I couldn’t do anything. Our legs had no strength to stand up. We couldn’t go defend her or help her.
Dane held her down on the table. Jace held her arms back.
Why holding her down with one hand, Dane undid the clasps on his overalls. They fell to his feet. He wore no underwear. He shoved himself between the woman’s legs, raping her.
She screamed, begging them to stop, telling them she knew where they could find fresh food, but the men didn’t listen. They brutally beat her and raped her.
Afterward, out of breath, Dane pulled his overalls back up. He buttoned them. He came back over and sat in the chair again in front of Mindy and I. “That’s what you get when you mouth off,” he said.
I asked “You eat your own cum? In the pussies you cook… is that what makes them taste all buttery?”
He backhanded me. The slap was strong enough to send me flying onto my back. I felt fresh blood start to pour out of my nose.
Jace came over, too, buttoning up his overalls as he walked over to us.
The woman lay on the table, humiliated, broken.
“It makes you feel like a strong man, doesn’t it,” I said, talking through my bleeding mouth. “Makes you feel strong cooking little boys and beating up on women…but you’re a fucking worthless stain of shit. If you need to cut someone up, do it to me you fuck!”
“As you wish,” Dane said. He looped my tied wrists back over the chain hook, quickly grabbed the hoist controls and lifted me up into the air. Mindy was begging him “Please No Please.” He went back to the table where Pete’s sawed body laid. “Where’s the fucking hack-saw?” he yelled.
“Here,” the raped woman said. She was standing behind him, her face bruised, bloodied. She had untied her bindings. She held the hack-saw tightly as she quickly sliced through his bearded neck.
Dane spun around totally off-guard when he heard her voice. This allowed the woman to quickly saw deeply through his throat. Dane went down into a ball on the ground as his head rolled away.
Jace was in dis-belief.
With every ounce of strength, I pushed myself forward on the hoist. It was enough to kick Jace in the gut. This caused him to stumble backward. He lost balance, pin-wheeled his arms, and went ass-first into one of the burning barrels.
The barrels were 55 gallon drums. His weight carried his ass half-way down into it. He was stuck.
The fire burned him right in the barrel. He was unable to get out.
He screamed like a little girl as he burned.
The woman went over to the hoist controls. She let me down.
Then all three of us just lay on the cold cement and cried.
We had to leave the building because the smell of Jace burning got too strong. We all helped each other crawl/walk out to the front of the store. Our bloody footprints followed us out the door.
The car sat exactly where I had parked it. I painfully climbed behind the wheel while Mindy slowly got in front with me. The other lady lay down in the back seat.
It took some time, but we made it back to the house around midafternoon.
Even though I didn’t want to, I stopped at the pharmacy. Painstakingly climbing through the broke
n window, careful not to cut myself on any of the leftover glass lying around since my shoes and clothes were gone, I grabbed several boxes of pain killers off a shelf near the front of the pharmacy.
Back at the house we all went to bed to sleep off our pains and sorrows.
She told us that her name was Liz Carter. She had been an owner/operator of a Kroger food warehouse in Houston. She was a very professional woman.
We all sat around the living room of our house, mending. There was nothing really to do other than sit there. Moving hurt our bones. Our muscles ached.
Most of my pain was in my upper arms, and I’m sure the ladies felt that way, too. Who knew how long we had hung from the ropes?
It was two days after our escape. Thankfully we hadn’t eaten all of the fish. I painstakingly cooked some patties on the grill. We each had bottles of water to drink.
I told Liz everything that had happened to us.
Mindy asked Liz “Why did you stay here? Wasn’t your home in Houston?”
“It was,” Liz said. “But my mother got sick shortly before the world ended. I took a few weeks off to come stay with her up here, to watch over her, take care of her. I would take her to the clinic for her appointments; make her meals. We would watch TV together. She liked the soaps. She would do a lot of knitting. But then her health took a bad turn. She fell sick with the flu or something similar to it. She never got over it. One of her doctors said they thought she might have had a slight stroke as well. She died during my second week with her. I called work, told them. They told me to take as long as I needed to get things done. I set up her funeral and all the arrangements. Two days after her funeral I was cleaning her house, going through her stuff and the whole house shook. I mean, it shook hard! It knocked the fireplace off the side of the house! Outside, people were screaming. Fires were burning. For a while I thought the whole town was going to burn up but thankfully a line of thunderstorms came through and knocked the fires down. All of mom’s neighbors were killed. For the longest time I thought I was the only person left alive, but then the stalkers came around. They were so scary and so relentless. I hid in mom’s cellar. I never knew she had canned so much food! I stayed there, eating the canned beets, the bread and butter pickles, the cucumbers. I really have no idea how long I stayed there. It felt like forever because I never saw much light. I slowly made my way outside. All of the stalkers were gone – and you told me they all went to the northwest for some reason?”