by North, Geoff
The glass in the window frame had been blown in to that room as well. The drapes had burned away but the flames hadn’t taken anything else. It would’ve been a mercy if the house burned to the ground. It would’ve saved her from hours of suffering. A small round table was sitting in the room’s center and two chairs were tucked up beneath it. A bowl had shattered to the floor depositing the last bits of an oatmeal breakfast against the yellow tiles. Dust and ash had settled over every square inch of surface in the modest little kitchen. Angela tried the sink faucet, but it only groaned back at her. She grabbed a plastic cup from the floor, rubbed the ashes off against her equally filthy dress, and went to find the bathroom.
Angela wondered along the way how old the lady sitting in the armchair was. She had obviously been living on her own for some time, subsisting on very little and managing to get by. Old folks liked to display family pictures on the walls; there were at least a dozen more in the short hallway. But she hadn’t been too old to have her family ship her off to a care home. That had to put her somewhere between sixty-five and eighty. Angela would’ve have been just like her in another twenty or twenty-five years if the bombs hadn’t wiped all the houses and care homes away. She would’ve collected an old-age pension and dined alone on oatmeal breakfasts until someone deemed her even to useless to do that.
The washroom taps grumbled back at her and the bathtub moaned its protests as well. The toilet bowl was empty, so Angela lifted the tank cover away from the back. Bone dry and stained brown at the bottom. The old lady was going to die in complete and utter agony.
Angela remembered the single bottle of pop she’d stolen the day before. She checked the pockets of her dress and found a few globs of chocolate bar stuck inside their wrappers. The drink must have fallen out while I was sleeping. She moved quickly back to the living room and found a man standing over the old woman.
Chapter 8
“Hey,” the stranger said.
“Hey,” Angela answered back. He wasn’t a man, she realized. He was as big as a grownup, but the voice was young, and his build was slim. He was a teenager, probably fifteen or sixteen. A grey hoody was pulled up over his head, but Angela could see the long strands of greasy black hair poking out around his neck. The boy stared back at Angela with dark, guilty eyes.
“Starting to think I was the only one.”
Angela was gripping the plastic cup too tightly. “Pardon me?”
“The only one left… you know, like the last man on earth.”
What was he doing in this house with Angela and the old woman? “You… You’re the first person I’ve seen since… well, you know… since it happened.”
He moved towards her a half-step. “Yeah, what the fuck was that all about? Did we like get hit by an asteroid or something?”
Angela leaned up against the open doorway leading into the kitchen. Whoever the boy was, he didn’t keep up on the world around him. He had no clue what had happened, or how much the planet’s governments hated each other. She tried to control her breathing, not wanting to reveal to the teen how scared she was. Somewhere in the back of her terrified brain she realized the old woman had finally gone silent. “It was a bomb. Nuclear. They’ve probably dropped them all over the continent.”
He stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. He never blinked. “We got nuked. Yeah, I wondered that, too. Fuckin’ shame.” He glanced quickly at the woman in the chair. “Too bad about that old lady. Was she your mom?”
“My mother died years ago.”
“So then you don’t who this is. You came in to like take stuff?”
Angela could feel the hard plastic in her hand starting to squeeze in. Any more pressure and the cup would snap into a dozen sharp pieces. “I used the couch, stayed the night. I just needed somewhere to sleep.”
“You trespassed.” The boy came closer. She could smell liquor on his breath. Now probably wasn’t the time to tell him he was too young to drink. “What’s your name?”
“Angela.”
“We have to stick together, Angela. We have to be a team and take care of each other.” He reached up and rubbed his dirty knuckles gently down her throat. The fingertips settled at the top of her chest. “You don’t got to be scared… I won’t let nothin’ bad happen to you.”
Angela turned her face away from him. She looked down and saw the old woman sitting perfectly still. Something had changed. The knitting needle was no longer melded between her fingers—it had been stuck deep into her throat. The glass finally splintered in Angela’s hand, she pushed the teenager away and made a run for the open window.
He grabbed at her hair and yanked her back towards him. “What’s your fucking problem? I’m trying to save your life.”
He backed into the overturned coffee table and they both tumbled onto the chesterfield. Angela felt one of his arms wrap around her neck. The other hand left her hair and started groping between her legs. He was trying to pull her dress up. Something hard and warm was pressing up against her panties. My God, he’s going to rape me.
She gasped through the choking pressure. “Please… don’t do this…you don’t have to do this.”
“Just you and me,” he whispered back. “There ain’t no one else. I’ll take care of you.”
A part of Angela wanted to stop struggling. Let him do what he came here to do. He’s young. It will only take a few seconds. She could see the charred corpse through her flailing legs, four inches of white knitting needle sticking out from under its chin. This wouldn’t end with just the violation of Angela’s body. He would do more to her. She could feel something warm and wet in her hand—the plastic cup fragments. She worked the pieces in her fingers, settling her bloody palm around the longest shard. The boy’s forearm was crushing Angela’s windpipe, dull yellow stars were swimming before her. She tried pleading with him one last time. “Let me go… I won’t tell… anyone.”
His hand was digging between her legs, his nails cutting the insides of her thighs. “I know.”
Angela swung her arm back and drove the plastic shard somewhere into the side of his head. The bone of his skull was harder than the plastic. She scraped down and it caught in the soft flesh of his ear. The teenager howled and the pressure around Angela’s neck lessened. She planted an elbow into his nose and pushed herself free. She tried for the window one more time, but her foot caught on one of the coffee table legs. Angela fell sideways, and the woman’s corpse broke her fall.
“Fucking… bitch.” He was coming at her again, one hand cupped over the ravaged side of his head.
She wouldn’t make it outside in time, and even if she did, there was nowhere to run, no one to call for help. Angela was on her own, and she would need something a lot more effective than a broken cup. If she could make it to the kitchen—find a knife or something else sharp. His hands were in her hair again, dragging her back to the chesterfield. Angela reached out for the last weapon in arm’s length. She pulled the knitting needle out of the woman’s throat and drove it towards the chest of her attacker. There was a moment of resistance, and then a soft popping sensation as the needle’s end punctured skin and sunk between two ribs.
The teenager released her and stood straight up. He stared dumbly at Angela without making a sound. Two seconds later he fell back onto the chesterfield, like a tree falling in the forest. The needle had been far more effective than the plastic shard, and Angela’s best guess at where his heart was had been spot on.
I killed him… Oh dear Lord, I just murdered another human being. She tried reassuring herself that he would’ve done the same to her. He had already proved himself to be a killer. The needle sticking up from his chest had ended two lives; it would’ve been Angela’s body lying there—after being horribly violated—had she not beat him to it. Still, the guilt pushed its way back in, overriding the logic of what she’d done. She had told him her name, but never asked for his. I stabbed a man to death without even allowing him to tell me who he was. Angela looked away from
the unmoving form and saw the church bell through the window opening. It sat there on its pile of holy rubble, leaning precariously to the north, like a big, black head tilted to one side, staring back at her. Judging.
You messed up bad, girl. It was her step-father again. She had wondered where he had gone in the last twenty-four hours or so. Not only did you take a life, but you killed a man. Jesus on a stick, girl… what the heck were you thinking?
“He wasn’t a man, and he tried to… he was going to hurt me.” She couldn’t say words like rape or molest to her step-father. Those were ugly, ungodly terms, and they were even worse coming from the mouth of a girl. “He murdered the owner of this house—stuck a knitting needle through her throat.”
It didn’t give you the right to do likewise. You did some awful sinning back when I was around, but this takes the cake, girl. How are you going to explain yourself at the pearly gates? How are you expected to meet your mother and me in the kingdom of God with that sin resting on your shoulders?
She tried to block out the weighty questions and concentrated on the boy’s dead body. She hadn’t asked him his name, but perhaps there was another of finding out. Angela tapped at his dirty sneaker and drew her hand away quickly. When the foot didn’t move, she tried it again, like poking a seemingly dead animal and waiting for it to lunge back to life. She knelt beside the body, finally convinced its lunging days were over, and slowly began searching through the front pockets of his black track pants. He was still warm but would cool soon. His limbs would stiffen. She was responsible for that. Angela Bennet. For all she knew, he may very well have been the last man on earth. Perhaps he had been sent to repopulate the world, and she had ended his holy mission. No. He killed a helpless woman. He would’ve killed me.
You don’t know that for sure. And even if he did have murderous intent, it still doesn’t make what you did any less forgivable. You killed a man, girl… killed him in cold blood without batting an eye.
There was a bit of loose change in one pocket, a half pack of cigarettes and lighter in the other. Angela had made it this far in life without smoking, she wasn’t about to start now with the world burning all around her. She would have to turn his body over to see if he had any identification in a back pocket. He was surprisingly light, but it didn’t make the grisly task any easier. There was no wallet, no identification. It didn’t much matter anymore; Angela went instead for the revolver handle sticking up from the pants waistband. The gun was dull black and cold to the touch. And it was heavy, much heavier than she expected a revolver would weigh.
Don’t even think it. Put that gun back, it doesn’t belong to you.
“I’m doing what you always wanted me to do, Dad.” Angela dropped the weapon into the pocket of her dress. It pushed down on top of the squished chocolate bars. She could feel the pressure of it pulling at the dress collar around her neck. “I’m not going to rely on others. With this I can protect myself… I can warn bad people away without hurting them.”
Killer.
Angela gnawed at her lip and crawled out through the window without answering. She moved in the opposite direction of the church, her eyes now unwilling to look back upon that bell. Dad’s right. He knows what I did, and he knows what I am. God knows.
You’re darn-tootin’ he knows. You ever stop and think in the last few days why you survived the blast? Don’t go believing for a single second it was some kind of divine intervention… Just the opposite, girl. It was Jesus-justified damnation. The only ones left walking the earth now are the corrupt, the sinful, and the lazy.
Angela let him go on while she made her way further into the suburbs. Surely more people had survived the attack. Most of the houses had been blown off their foundations, but a few were still standing; those nestled behind larger buildings, behind the churches, the shopping centers, and schools. Where had everyone gone? Why were they hiding from her?
Maybe they know what you’re packing in that dress. Maybe they know you’re a murderer.
Far away, a dog started barking. It sounded hungry and afraid. With no owners left to feed them, she wondered how long it would take before the animals turned on the remaining humans. Angela picked her way through back yards where green grass had turned to ash. She knocked softly on doors, but didn’t enter without permission. Trespassing was a sin—she’d learned that lesson the hard way. Stealing was another matter. Angela had taken what didn’t belong to her but had justified in her mind that it was alright to do so. It was only borrowing after all; she would pay it all back. She entered the North Kilpatrick Shopping Mall through a blown in display window of a sports wear store. This would be a good place to find something better to eat other than candy and soft drinks. And if there was anyone else to find still living, this was the place for that, too. She remembered the familiar radio ad—fulfill all of your shopping needs at North Kilpatrick Mall, where friends meet, and families grow.
Where were all the friends and families now?
People had been there since the bomb had dropped. As she worked her way from the sports store into the main plaza, Angela could see where they’d looted and ran. Most of the damage inside hadn’t been caused by the shockwave. Thieves had been busy smashing display cases, stealing cell phones and jewellery—for all the good it would do them. But where had they gone? She began to think that she’d wasted too much time cowering beneath her desk. The survivors had already found one another and moved on.
There was a bad smell in the air, like spoiled food. It got stronger as Angela made her way past the abandoned and emptied stores. There was a big Hudson’s Bay outlet at the end of the walkway. Maybe she would find someone there. The smell got worse. Angela had to plug her nostrils as she entered the store. And then she found the people she was searching for. Hundreds of them.
Dozens of display bins filled with clothing, cosmetics, shoes, and earrings had been pushed up against the far walls, leaving an immense space for dead bodies. Angela prayed that someone had gathered all the store mannequins and placed them there as some kind of sick joke. But even a shopping mall the size of North Kilpatrick didn’t have that many display mannequins to spare. These were people—men, women, and children—and they had been slaughtered. They had been herded into this open space and shot down. A few had gaping holes in their chests and stomachs, most had taken it square between the eyes. Angela was standing in the outer edge of an immense pool of blood. She stepped back and tried to wipe it away from the bottom of her shoes along some cleaner sections of white tile.
She started to gag and turned away, reaching for the gun in her pocket. She ran back the way she’d come, gasping for cleaner air and finding none. Angela staggered to a bench and vomited into the potted plant sitting next to it.
You don’t have much of a stomach for this kind of thing, do you?
She wiped her lips dry against her sleeve. “Shut up, Dad.”
There was a toy store in front of her. The windows were intact, and the contents on the shelves seemed untouched. Nothing of value to thieves and mass murderers in a toy store. Angela would be safe there. She could hide along the narrow aisles and gather her thoughts amongst the dolls, teddy bears, and video games. She entered, holding the heavy gun in front of her, wagging the dull black barrel from side to side. “If anyone’s in here, don’t get any ideas. I can defend myself. I’ll shoot, swear to God, I’ll pull the freaking trigger and end your life.” Angela had started to cry during the last part of her shaky warning. She had never held a gun in her hand until a few short hours ago, and she wasn’t even sure she had the strength to pull that freaking trigger.
She heard a soft padding sound coming from the back of the store. Moments later a red rubber ball rolled up to her bloodied shoes. Angela wanted to scream and run, but she held her ground. She aimed the gun down the aisle and carried on. “I’m not fooling around here. I killed a man this morning with a knitting needle, and I’ll kill you, too.”
Angela moved further into the shadows. She stopped in
the corner, bracing her back up against a display of jigsaw puzzles and pre-kindergarten picture books. The gun was becoming too much in her hands, the barrel end starting to droop down at the floor. She took a deep breath and crept towards the back room door.
EMPLOYEES ONLY the sign read above. Dirty fingers shot out from within and wrapped around her wrist. The gun fell, and three more hands scratched at her arm.
Angela was dragged into darkness.
Chapter 9
“I know you’re hurting.” Hayden pressed the rifle barrel into the back of the man’s neck with more force. “But don’t try anything stupid. We have a place just west of here, an area that survived the worst of it. I can help treat those… burns of yours. Get some food and clean water into you.”
The man released the boy’s shoulders. He tried turning his head, but Hayden kept it in place with the rifle. He spoke. “Hayden? Oh my God… Hayden Gooding, is that really you?”
Hayden kept the gun stuck into his neck and reached around for the boy’s hand. “Come back here, Nicholas. He won’t hurt you.”
The boy did as he was told. He went and stood next to the big man. Hayden pulled the rifle away and stepped back, pulling the child along to a safer distance. “Turn around, let me get a better look at you.”
The burnt man shifted sideways on his knees until he was facing them. The hair on his head had been fried away, the skin melted into his skull red and brown. The flesh of his right cheek was gone, leaving behind a gaping hole of gums and teeth. The rest of him wasn’t any easier to look at. Most of his clothes were missing, and every square inch of exposed skin was blistered over and raw. But through it all, Hayden had recognized the man’s voice, as rasping and weak-sounding as it had become, he knew the man kneeling before them. And the man knew him as well.
“Jake?”
Jake nodded. “Been walking for days… heading north, trying to find others.” He reached for Nicholas, and Hayden pulled the boy away. “I never thought I’d see him again. Thank you, Hayden… thank you for saving my son.”