The After/Life (The After/Life Odyssey)

by Vardan Partamyan

  Another step forward and I was standing next to the car. The dog was looking at me, ears sharpened, still growling quietly. I holstered my gun and sat down cross legged. The dog barked once and was quiet again.

  “Now, my thank-god-you’re-not-a-mutant four legged friend, in a situation where you cannot get anywhere on foot and no means of public transportation are working, you need to look for an alternative. The car you are sitting next to is that alternative. And I need it. In fact, I need it so much that I had to kill your previous owner to get it. I am not very proud of what I did but something tells me that he wouldn’t just give it to me and I couldn’t hitchhike either because I believe it is, sadly, an extinct tradition now.”

  I reached out for my pack - the dog tensed noticeably. My movements were slow so as not to waste the results of my diplomatic effort. A quick shuffle through my few belongings revealed what I was looking for. I took out a black plastic bag and extracted a small piece of dried meat. The dog stood up when it saw the food.

  “OK, dog, I don’t know what abomination this meat came from but it’s definitely edible. After all, I’ve been eating this for some time now and, well, I still don’t have a sixth toe growing on my foot. So fetch.”

  I threw the meat to the dog. It caught it in the air and gobbled it. Another piece followed. Five minutes later, the dog was chewing happily. It had successfully devoured about half of my supplies. I slowly got up, took a step forward and reached out to pat the dog. There was some growling but the dog was obviously too busy eating and I was able to pat its rugged head.

  “There you go. Good boy. So we are friends now.”

  The dog swallowed the last piece of meat and licked my hand. I smiled. For a second, I was taken back to my first day in the School and Mr. Z, the school cat - my companion on my first tour of a place that would become my home for too long…

  The door of the car was open - I looked in and met the unseeing stare of the dead driver. The bullet had hit him squarely in the chest. The man showed no traces of mutation, the first human that looked normal in this god annihilated land (and I killed him). I quickly searched him and found a whole arsenal of weapons and ammunition – the man was definitely not a pacifist. The music kept streaming from a strange device planted next to the car panel. I switched it off. I looked at the driver’s face - tanned and covered with thick stubble, he looked like an outlaw from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. His unseeing eyes were looking up into the sky he could no longer see – an expression of melancholy forever imprinted on the death mask. I shivered. Forcing myself to calm down, I reached for the driver’s door, opened it and pushed the corpse out. It rolled down a small sand dune and came to rest at the bottom - unseeing eyes fixed on the sky – looking for a meaning or a rain cloud, perhaps (neither is there to find, old buddy). I got behind the wheel and almost cried out – it was my reflection in the mirror…for a second I thought it was him – the dead guy, back for a last round of applause… Looking closer, I started to recognize myself – Nad Raven under the layers of stubble and tan. It was me – then again, it was not. There was significantly more white in my hair and a long horizontal scar crossed my right cheek – a souvenir from a particularly nasty encounter I had during one of the first days outside. The changes didn’t stop there - there was something in the eyes – something predatory…

  “Hey, boy, jump in. It’s about fucking time we hit the road before I go crazy studying myself.”

  The dog obeyed – a second later it was sitting on the back seat, its tongue out, eyes flashing merrily. It was ready to go... So was I...

  To be continued...

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  Also by Vardan Partamyan:

  I, the Provocateur

  http://www.amazon.com/I-the-Provocateur-ebook/dp/B00D8K7SOU

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Excerpt