FICTION | DYSTOPIAN
An Atmospheric Post-Apocalyptic Tale
Love triumphs in a devastated world
Reader: This story employs very dark and graphic imagery to create a sense of place and mood and to convey fear and desperation (and ultimately, hope).
I walk outside the farmhouse to the usual bleak scene. The air hangs heavy with the stench of death. A hundred cow carcasses litter the field, small mountains of rotting flesh.
Something happened two years ago, then everything started to die. Some say it was a pandemic, others a war with devious weapons. We don’t know.
It’s hard to know anything out here in the West Virginia woods. We heard no fanfare — no guns, no bombs —no nothing. Communications gave out and then the sicknesses spread and overtook us.
I stroll through the cool morning air. The rooster doesn’t crow because he is dead. Death clings to everything, like a sickly dew. But that’s not all. Up ahead is the assuring gurgling of the river.
Her tent is over by the bank, near some trees behind a small beach. I think she’s there, thank God — oh no, it is her mother! I can only see the hands but they are telling. Twisted, gnarled fingers reach out from the flap, grab some dead grass to pull herself out. The hag stands, wrapped in a bundle of filthy rags, a feeble, halting heartbeat at its center. She groans, tosses back her filthy, matted hair.
Her head creaks backward as she squints up at the steely gray sky. She winces, gripping her lower back in pain.
“What you want?” she says in a thick, raspy voice.
Before I can respond she says, “She’s not here. You’d better not come ‘round here no more, either. He’ll be back, he’ll whip you.”
“I know where she is,” I say, even though I don’t.
“Dirty boy,” she says and spits in my direction.
The hag smiles, a thin, crooked line, lipless, severe. Cheerful … her? I spin around, expecting the old man with the axe. Beware the blade! But only the forest stands behind me, a ghostly expanse of dead trees — blackened, broken spikes devoid of life, utterly still.
I wheel around, cautious of the old woman but she’s gone. I hear a shuffling around behind the tent’s sack cloth. Then a metal rod slides out of the slit. The shotgun barrel tilts down to point at my midsection.
I bolt, running up the path, brittle leaves crackling under my rotted sneakers. But not towards the farm, no. I need to find her. I must find her.
I whiff the familiar stench. But it can’t be cattle — they don’t wander this far up into the woods.
I follow the smell a ways off the trail. It grows so thick that I have to pull my shirt over my face. The buzzing of flies is deafening, the auger of nothing I ever want to see.
It is as I feared. A human body lies naked on a rock, definitely worked upon. Gobs of purple blood, everywhere. The fatty meat around the abdomen sliced out. The liver, gone. It is the work of the grisliest of the survivors.
Sunlight slashes off a V-shaped gash at the top of the skull. Probably the blow of a sharp object.
An axe.
The buzzing of the flies becomes too much to bear. I suck down some air behind my cupped hands. I can’t take the weight of these horrors anymore. For a moment I remember … the air that used to be — clean, fresh, benevolent. Then it turned to poison. Overnight, death grew and spread with dark and wild abandon until it laid claim to everything.
But some do survive. The insects live. The fish. Me. Why are some spared? Why am I left to wander in this hell? If there is a magic in my constitution then it is a magic to be dreaded.
I force my thoughts back to her. I walk until the sun has dropped down into the trees and my stomach churns with hunger. I perch on a boulder and pull a small can from my pocket. The label reads, “Delmonte Corn.” I must be smart. These random supplies are going fast. The animal people will live the longest, I am sure of it. But not long enough to see the food return. I pull up the tab and eat.
I continue up the path until the old shack stands before me. Where else would she come?
The interior of the single-room bears no hope, nor treasures — only bare walls, floor, ceiling. Everything has been scavenged. I pull up the edge of a wooden floorboard for no reason, I just want something to do. I crouch in a corner.
No stench of death assails this room, for which I am thankful. I am calm and I wait for her. My mind drifts, to the past. I venture a smile, and feel a softening inside. I recall summer days, softball games, roughhousing with my brothers, even milking the cows in the morning mist. Mom and Dad. I feel the tears coming. Thinking about this is stupid, I know. They’re gone. At least the animal people didn’t get them. I buried them whole and I know exactly where they are.
The last thing I remember from that time was my “surprise” birthday party. But I knew about it. I was going to surprise them with my own cake … Ah, it doesn’t matter. Hal had told me. He liked to help me because I was the youngest. He was going to teach me how to drive his Harley. I am about to cry again, so I’d better start thinking of something else.
I shake the stiffness from my shoulders. She will be here. I know it. I gaze out the window at the twilight sunlight flickering through the trees. I hear footsteps outside.
Heavy footsteps.
An explosion rocks the house and the door vaults from its hinges, smashing down onto the floor. A tremendous boot appears in the doorway. And there he is, the axe resting on his shoulder.
The huge figure of her father steps inside. He leers at me, crimson blood vessels pulsing on his forehead. Bits of food fall from his beard. He pulls his tongue across his lips.
“There’s somethin’ I can’t get enough of,” he says. “People like you, boy.”
He pats the axe handle and smiles, revealing black, rotted teeth.
I stand erect, gripping the edge of the wooden floorboard. The window is too far away to dive through.
“She wouldn’t want me hurt,” I say in a cowardly manner.
“I doubt she cares,” he says. “I killed her this morning.”
Killed her? I’m stunned. Waves of rage and adrenaline and energy and hatred surge through me. I am no longer afraid. I don’t care about anything. I prepare to lunge. I am not thinking about anything, especially not my death.
But he is fast. He leans forward to avoid me and pushes off on his back leg — but his foot caught in the slot where I pulled up the floorboard. He lunges but falls, landing hard on his face and chest, the axe skittering across the floor.
My body is acting on its own. I go straight at him. I find myself pressing on his back with my full weight, dead center of him. His arms flail wildly, reaching up for me. I know in a split-second I will be ejected. He is laughing! I have a moment to act and I feel no fear. With a clarity and certainty I know I will kill or be killed, here and now.
I reach my hands around his neck and lock my fingers under his chin. He tries to roll over but his laughing has weakened him.
With all of my strength I yank back. His coarse beard scratches into my palms. In the power of my grip his head bucks backward with a sickening crack. All of the tension leaves his body.
I drop the head. It thuds onto the floor. I roll off and pull myself up, exhausted, and walk out the door without even looking back.
The air feels so fresh. It’s truly amazing, like I have never breathed before. Dusk is giving way to night and I know must hurry back to the encampment. I have performed a service to humankind, whatever is left of it.
But she is gone. What will I live for now? How can I go on? At least, with this monster now gone, the forest is safer. But for what?
I hear footsteps approaching. I step back, afraid. A figure appears in front of me. I can’t believe it. “Hi,” she says.
I begin to sob, which weakens me. I fall to my knees.
“What’s wrong?” she says without fear, lowering herself to my level. Somehow she manages moments of cheerfulness in this living hell. “I was coming to meet you.” Tucked under her arm is a blanket.
“Your father…” I stammer. “He said you were dead.”
“Well,” she says matter-of-factly, as though not surprised. “I’m standing right here.”
“He tried to get me.”
“Are you hurt?”
I shake my head. “I got him first.”
“Good,” she says, gripping my arm, pulling me close. “He deserved it, for what he’s turned into.”
“He’s inside. I didn’t move him.”
She thinks for a moment. “It’s late. Let’s get him out and stay the night.”
“Okay.”
We walk into the shack and pull him out by the legs and drag him far into the dark woods. When we return, we talk for a while and then finally sleep.
The next day is sunny.
“Let’s leave here forever,” she says.
“Just walk away?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” Why not?
We begin up the trail and into the unknown. As usual, everything is dead.
But at least not us.
“Hey, look,” she says, pointing to a spot on the path before us.
“I see it.”
It is not much, but it’s something. I bend down to make sure it’s really there. In a small crack beside a dead branch, the nib of a new leaf has sprouted, a tiny rolled up green coil, cool and wet to the touch. I kneel down low and touch it with my fingertip, just grazing it. She sits beside me and takes it in.
“This makes me happy,” she says.
I smile and say nothing. I’m so glad.
We walk on, her words and that sight still in my mind. I don’t want to forget either one, and I won’t.
