by Paul Tassi
“Take them,” he said.
The infantry began marching toward the group with the Captain walking slowly behind. Out of his spotted vision, Lucas could see the horrific scene unfold, and he was powerless to stop it. Everyone looked surprised to see the soldiers advancing, and no one even had time to scream before the troops unloaded their weapons into them. Lucas tried to cry out, but his voice had vanished. After the initial blasts, the popping of gunfire started to die out. From his vantage point on the ground, Lucas saw them beginning to pick through the bodies of his companions.
Struggling against pressing unconsciousness, Lucas forced himself to his feet, his vision still blurred and head throbbing. He crouched behind the vehicle, out of the sight of the Captain and his troops, and began to hyperventilate.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Patting up and down his body, he only found his knife. The Captain had stripped him of his primary weapon, the Remington, which was now slung across the man’s back. He was shouting orders to the other infantrymen. Two more shots rang out as a soldier finished off someone who wasn’t quite dead.
Lucas looked up to the gunner on top of the vehicle and made an adrenaline-fueled decision that would have seemed insane five minutes ago. He scrambled up the back of the transport, almost losing his grip because of how much his head was swimming. When he reached the top, he drew his knife and without stopping to think, launched himself at the gunner. The soldier was taken by surprise and couldn’t react before Lucas pulled his chin to the left and plunged his blade into the right side of his neck. The man gasped and sputtered as blood filled his esophagus, and Lucas pulled him up and out of the turret station and sent him cascading over the side to the ground. Lucas took control of the .50 caliber, and caught the eye of the Captain.
“Oh . . . shit.”
The Captain dove to the ground as Lucas opened fire on the soldiers looting his comrades’ bodies. The heavy gun tore through them like paper, limbs were ripped away from torsos, chests and heads erupted as no amount of body armor made a bit of difference with a gun of this size. Lucas steered the barrel down toward where the Captain was crawling toward the vehicle, but the angle was too severe and the turret wouldn’t point that low. The Captain reached the front of the transport and pulled himself up. He fired a stream of rounds from his rifle, which caused Lucas to duck inside the vehicle to avoid losing his head. Inside, he found himself staring at the driver, who had a stunned look on his face as he found his gunner had been replaced by an enemy who had just butchered his squad in front of him. He drew his weapon but Lucas grabbed the gun and shoved the man’s hand into the side of the seat.
The pistol fired, and the round ricocheted throughout the armored vehicle, hitting nothing, but making Lucas’s ears ring loudly. He kicked the soldier in the face, and his broken nose caused him to lose his grip on the gun. Lucas pulled it away, quickly fired it, and the man’s brains were plastered across the inside of the windshield. Behind the mess, Lucas could see the Captain staring at him with a look that went past hatred, all the way to insanity.
Pushing off the rear of the driver seat, Lucas slid to the back of the transport, where he scrambled to find a handle for the rear door. It was a latch that swung upward and, on its forceful release, Lucas tumbled out onto the asphalt. His gun slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the pavement. He reached for it, but it was immediately kicked away by a combat boot. The Captain rounded the rear of the truck and pointed an impressive-looking assault rifle at Lucas. Just as he pulled the trigger, Lucas sprang at him from the ground, catching him in the midsection. The shots went over Lucas’s back and he felt a hot singe as one grazed him. The pair of them hit the ground and began wrestling on the asphalt. Lucas’s muscles strained as he clasped the rifle and had to use all his might to keep the barrel from pointing at his face. The Captain’s back arched in pain as he was ground into the shotgun still slung behind him, and Lucas used the brief distraction to smash an elbow into the man’s eye. The Captain lost his iron grip on the assault rifle for a split second, and Lucas seized the opportunity to wrench it around so it pressed on the man’s throat. Both of them were in a significant amount of pain and surging with adrenaline. The back and forth with the rifle seemed to last hours, though in reality it was only a few seconds. Lucas looked into the Captain’s icy blue eyes and saw his furious stare begin to soften. His grip weakened and the rifle dug further into his throat. Lucas mustered up all his remaining strength into one giant surge and thrust the gun downward until he heard a sickening crack. The man’s eyes went vacant.
Lucas rolled off of him and gasped for air. The clouds above were swirling, and they seemed to be even darker than usual. He looked over at the lifeless Captain and breathed a huge sigh. His hands were bleeding from where they’d dug into the metal rifle, and there was blood streaming down his face from his initial head injuries, also caused by the gun.
He picked himself up slowly and drew the Captain’s rifle as he walked past the dead transport driver and toward the pile of bodies further up the road. When he reached them, no one was stirring. None in his group and no soldiers. The hot winds whipped through the empty landscape around him. He was alone.
He decided to take the Captain’s uniform, as his own clothes were streaked with blood. Also, he figured that it would make him all the more imposing as he continued his journey down the road. Soldiers weren’t to be trusted anymore; they were to be feared. And Lucas realized he needed to be feared. This was not the same world any more.
He looked at the dog tags that read “J. Stanton, USMC” and he put them around his neck. The boots were close to his size, but when he put his foot in one, something felt odd. He reached inside and pulled out a photo. It was of a beautiful young woman with platinum hair and green eyes. She was biting her lip softly, and her blouse was unbuttoned to show just enough cleavage to allure without being overtly crass. A former flame? No, a ring both on her hand and the Captain’s said otherwise.
Was he just trying to get home too? Is this what you had to become to survive?
Lucas looked at the mass of bodies around him. He turned the worn photo over.
John,
Make it back to me, I’ll be waiting.
All my love,
Natalie
Lucas placed the picture gently on Captain John Stanton’s lifeless chest and folded his hands over the top of it. He hoisted the assault rifle upward for inspection. It was in pristine condition with a magnified scope, dual clipped magazines, and a host of other attachments that Lucas couldn’t identify. He buckled his new belt, which was loaded with clips, and turned west, looking down the scope. Pulling back, he held the gun out in front of him. NATALIE was crudely etched into the rear stock, either as an identifier, or a reminder.
If Natalie had helped John survive this long, perhaps she could help him as well.
10
Asha sat quietly after Lucas’s story ended. His voice was dry from talking for such a prolonged period and he reached into his pack for some water to ease his cracked throat. The blood had finally stopped spilling out of the cannibal and had seeped into the rug and floorboards around him. Natalie lay dead in front of him, her journey finally at an end. She had protected him to her last breath.
Finally, Asha spoke.
“Soldiers were the worst of them.”
She was sitting cross-legged on the corner of the bed, not minding the dried blood staining the sheets inches away from her.
“I remember early on, a brigade told me to come with them to safety. Within an hour, they were rummaging through my bag and trying to rip my clothes off.”
“How’d you get away?” Lucas asked.
“Nothing quite so Rambo as your story, though I did pull a pin on one of their vest grenades and got the hell out of there.”
Lucas was hardly surprised to hear she’d experienced something similar. After the war, the shell-shocked, battle-hardened soldiers took advantage of their positions of trust and power, and Lucas
had many more run-ins with them after his first encounter. It had helped he was dressed as one of their own.
“Population reestablishment zones, the secretary of education as president. You know that’s all bullshit right?” Asha asked.
“Of course, though I kept hearing some variation of that lie among survivors. Sometimes it was to trick, sometimes it was to give hope. Either way, it was cruel.”
Whatever had happened to the government during the war and shortly after was never made explicitly clear, but in a few years it became obvious to those who remained that a dying planet had no need for leadership as it marched toward its end. Lucas was sure there had been some squabbling among the remaining politicians and military brass in the immediate aftermath of the creatures’ departure, but once every day became a fight for food and water, the regression into animal nature was swift. Wolves might have pack leaders, but they don’t have executive, judicial, or legislative branches. That was as much leadership as there would ever be again. The headless chief a few miles away in town was a monument to the kinds of rulers that still existed. And even they would all be gone soon.
“Well that’s a shame about poor Natalie there, but at least she died doing what she loved,” said Asha.
“I suppose,” said Lucas, but it hurt that his trusted companion was lying mangled in front of him. He got up from the chair and slung the gun over his back once more.
“You’re keeping it?” asked Asha.
“I’m not convinced she’s shot her last clip yet.”
The huge gash into her middle said otherwise. Lucas knew it, but didn’t care.
Asha had a sudden realization.
“So if you’re not a soldier, what did you do then . . . before the war?”
“Nothing that mattered.”
After clearing out the mansion’s latest resident, the move-out process could begin. They’d have to find a balance between items they needed and what they could actually physically carry back to the ship in the cart. Lucas found the chair he’d been sitting in while telling his story to be quite comfortable, so he hauled it down the stairs. There were a few flecks of cannibal blood that had reached it, but he figured he would be able to rub those out.
Rather than take entire beds from the numerous guest rooms they discovered in the house, they just took the mattresses and piled sheets and blankets on top of them. They added a pair of small end tables, an oak desk, and another two chairs. The expedition was turning into an Ikea trip.
Lucas made his way to the library and pulled out as many English-language books as he could find from the shelves. Thumbing through the titles, he found a few he recognized, The Brothers Karamazov, The Iliad, The Picture of Dorian Gray. He had to chuckle when he found the full set of Harry Potter books on one of the lower shelves. His son had always sworn by them, and Lucas remembered seeing pictures of him from Halloween wearing thick round glasses with a jagged scar drawn on his forehead. His grin turned sour however, once he began reflecting on his lost family again. He hastily threw a few books in his pack and the rest he scattered loosely on the cart outside.
After finishing with the library, he had to hunt through the house to find Asha and finally located her back in the master bedroom. She’d torn all the sheets off the bed and dumped them on the dead cannibal on the ground so that only his feet were poking out. On the mattress she’d thrown a huge number of different outfits, pulled from a walk-in closet at the rear of the room. Clothes. He’d forgotten what it was like to even have new ones. Over time, he’d gone through a few different sets, but always came back to his military gear.
“Absolutely atrocious taste,” Asha said as she noticed Lucas standing in the doorway. Lucas knew little of fashion, but the dresses she lay on the bed did seem rather loud, with severe lines and vibrant colors. And though she may have had a modeling career once, Lucas couldn’t imagine Asha reverting back to couture gowns and cocktail dresses in their current conditions. Rather, she was pulling the plainest items she could find, which included jeans, slacks, shorts, T-shirts, and tank tops. A few pairs of boots and running shoes were strewn nearby. Anything with heels had been tossed haphazardly in the corner.
“The ‘his’ closet is over there,” she said as she motioned to a mirrored door on the other side of the bed. Lucas stepped around the pile of bloody sheets and looked inside. Row after row of suits, ties, and dress shirts were items he would never again need. A few tuxedos and even a kilt were at the very end of the closet, which was larger than his first office. Like Asha, Lucas began to hunt for ordinary items and found a large drawer of boxers, socks, and undershirts, all in shades ranging from white to gray to black, that would be a welcome addition to his nonexistent wardrobe. He grabbed a few pairs of pants, and though he couldn’t decipher the Norwegian sizes, the waist and length appeared comparable to his own dimensions. A black thermal jacket was his last acquisition. It seemed silly, but it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared for anything.
As he exited the closet, he rounded the corner and was caught off guard. No cannibal greeted him this time, but Asha was standing with her back toward him, wearing nothing on top and revealing a canvas of tan skin. A few white scars distracted from what was otherwise an appealing sight. She flung a dark blue T-shirt over herself and turned toward him without a hint of embarrassment on her face.
“A little baggy, but they’ll do.”
She held up a rather large red laced bra.
“I don’t know how this woman walked without falling over. Lucky guy, I guess.”
She dropped the bra and pointed to Lucas.
“Anything good?”
“Good enough,” Lucas replied quickly as he stuffed the clothes into his pack with the extras draped over his shoulders. What he’d just seen was probably the most pleasant scene he’d come across in years, though Asha would likely cut his head off if she knew he was thinking that. He put it out of his mind and continued with the task at hand.
The final room they discovered was one they’d hoped to find. Covered in layers of dust, a brightly painted child’s room sat unused in the far right corner of the second floor, almost touching the mothership. The collapsed ceiling had made the door stick shut, and it took both of them to smash it open. Perhaps it was why the area seemed like it hadn’t been touched in years. The pristine room was somewhat off-putting, a remnant of a far happier time. It was unclear what had happened to the family that lived there, but the reality that there were no happy endings in the current climate made Lucas a bit sad for them.
Inside the room they were able to find an intact crib, and the shelves were lined with children’s books and stuffed toys. A relief, since Lucas had worried Noah would be forced to play with shell casings or alien power tools with nothing onboard remotely appropriate for a child. They threw everything in the crib and together carried it down the stairs where they perched it on top of the cart.
The way back was the hardest trip they had to make all day. The furniture, books, clothes, and assorted other trinkets vastly outweighed the initial weapon haul, and they had long ways still to go, having come all the way from the mansion. The path back was on a slight slope downhill, which made it easier, but they had to remain vigilant so the cart didn’t gather too much steam and roll away from them. They periodically stopped to rest and drink water. Lucas opened up another can of tuna and split it with Asha, who downed her half in seconds. It wasn’t much longer now until they’d have to test the merits of Alpha’s “nutrients.”
During one of the rest periods on the way back to the ship, Lucas and Asha wandered down a side street to stretch their tense muscles. With Natalie out of commission on his back, Lucas had turned to his recently acquired sawed-off shotgun as his primary weapon. Granted, if anything attacked him from more than ten yards away, he’d be in trouble, but Asha would be able to handle anything at range. He hoped.
They approached the remains of a burned down building, completely in ash and ruin. It must have been made entirely out of wood, a rari
ty in the mostly stone town, and there was too little of it left to deduce what it might have been.
But something caught Lucas’s eye. A skull. Not an unusual sight here. But this one, it was small. Too small.
“Oh god,” Lucas involuntarily exclaimed.
Asha stepped into the ashes and began loosely kicking around rubble. Another skull, and another, attached to tiny skeletons. Lucas put it together.
“Barna, barna,” he said.
The old woman. She was trying to free the slaves in the church to help her save the children from the burning nursery across town. She pleaded with Lucas to help her do the same, but he didn’t understand. But Alpha understood, which is why he remained silent. He must have known Lucas would want to go off on a hero’s quest to save the children.
Lucas looked around. They were so small. Not one of them could have been over three. In their own twisted way, the cannibals really were trying to start some kind of reborn society. A nightmarish one to be sure, but one that involved procreation.
The woman was likely kept alive as a caretaker, and after receiving no help from the three of them at the church, she went to the nursery to rescue whoever she could. And she saved Noah, bringing him to the only place that seemed like salvation. The ship.
Asha agreed with Lucas’s analysis of what had happened, though was additionally disgusted by the rape that had assuredly produced all of these children in the past few years. Lucas felt a rising anger toward Alpha, as he’d purposely left them in the dark about what the woman was telling them. They could have saved all the children had they known, not just one. Lucas felt sick as he surveyed the ashen graveyard.
They returned to the cart and spent the next two hours in silence pushing it through the loose sands of the bay. When they reached the Ark at last, Lucas didn’t stop to unload; he marched straight into the engine bay.
“There were others, Alpha,” he said sternly.
Alpha was tinkering with the white core and his mechanical fingers continued to work even as he turned to face Lucas.