M. Banner - Desolation

“The only reason you’re still alive is because we can’t find your ship yet and my idiot sons keep beating you senseless before I can get you to talk. But you seem good enough to tell a line of shit to my spawn, and now I’m plumb out of patience.”

She swung her arms and the knife around and up.

“Either you tell me where—”

Melanie plunged it upward deep into his throat. The rush of warmth over her fists and down her arms told her she hit the carotid. She watched the life drain out of his face. Feeling revived and stronger, she pushed up on the blade moving it closer to his brain. His eyes bulged, his mouth slacked, and a torrent of blood continued to pour out. His heart worked harder against his dropping pressure, until it spurted with each beat over her face. His fight over, still she drove her knife deeper until he was lifeless and she was holding up his corpse with just her grip on the knife. Releasing him, his body leaning into her, she was able to reach around to his key ring.

“Hey Pop, you all right down there?” yelled Chase, the near-eunuch son.

The key ring released easily and she found the right one quickly, unlocking her handcuffs. Then, she pushed his heavy body away. It slumped into the large puddle of blood around them.

A few tentative footsteps down the stairs, then Chase stopped and lowered his head to see an overturned lantern, casting light away from the woman and something else he couldn’t see. He took a couple more steps down.

She reached down and unholstered CH’s .45 Colt revolver, just like the one she’d learned to shoot on her family ranch in Wyoming. She jumped up, calmly held the revolver out steady, and cycled a round by pulling the hammer back, all while walking forward with deadly purpose. Without hesitation, she pulled the trigger. The explosion was followed by a hollow ringing, that oscillated with every beat of her heart.

Chase fell backward, either from the bullet’s heavy impact or from surprise, or both. His heavy frame slid down a few of the stairs and stopped. A small red circle grew on his T-shirt.

She scaled the steps two at a time, cycling the next round, until she was standing over him. She watched him stare past her helplessly, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His eyes held fear and the knowledge that his miserable life was coming to an end quickly. A stream of red ran below him and down the stairs. She had slaughtered enough animals on the ranch to know his death would come soon, without her doing anything to hasten it.

“How does it feel being the helpless one?” Her anger and hatred blasted out of her eyes. “This is because I didn’t get the job done the first time.”

Lowering the gun to Chase’s crotch, she looked one last time at his face, and just as he yelled “nooooo” she pulled the trigger.

A faint noise above, almost impossible to hear over the church bell ringing in her ears, told her she was not alone. Her head popped up and there was Butch standing in the doorway, holding a rifle at ease, his mouth agape. Before she could raise her gun, he dropped his, turned, and ran, his footsteps echoing throughout the house, up another set of stairs before a door slammed in the distance. No other sounds now but the ringing.

Melanie let go of the gun. It clacked and clattered before coming to rest at the bottom of the stairwell, spent of all energy like her. She collapsed into her palms, her withheld emotions breaking loose like a thunderstorm in summer. Her body shuddered in self-loathing for what she had been through and what she had been forced to do. She remained this way for a long time, until she was empty, forgetting that Chase’s blood collected around her. The red stream slowly ran down one step, pooled, and then ran down to the next. Finally, it surrounded her bare feet, its sticky warmth reminding her of what she had just done. She needed to leave, now .

She got to her feet, fetched the gun from the base of the stairs, and went back up to the landing and into the kitchen where she had been first held captive two days earlier. Other than Butch, who was probably in his room, the house appeared empty. Her backpack, uniform jacket, and shoes were in a corner of the living room, where the family apparently kept the ill-gotten gains they stole from neighbors. She slipped her bare feet, stained red, into her boots, relishing their feel again. Finding a new black tee that said Kimball Football from a large stack of clothes, Melanie swapped out her torn shirt, put on her uniformed jacket and checked out her other supply options, going from stack to stack, like she would in a regular market. Only here, she had earned unlimited store credit. She grabbed a box of granola bars probably pilfered from a nearby mini-mart and shoved them into her backpack with some bottled waters. Not wanting to spend another second here, she slung her pack over her shoulder, grabbed the gun, shoved it into her waistband, and walked out the front door to the street.

The green bands of the auroras had a magical feel tonight. A full moon’s light burned through some of the striations, creating a mystical aura, the green and white light illuminating her path plainly. She marched away from her captivity, relishing every moment of her freedom.

She was headed west. She was headed home.

Carrington was horribly ill, and he knew exactly when and why this happened. A few gulps of water from a stream yesterday was all it took. He wasn’t unaware of the risk, but he had little choice: he was out of water and food, all of it stolen by the highway robbers a few days ago. Without the purifying tablets, also stolen, every drink was potentially poisonous. Dehydration, made worse by his vomiting and a fever brought on by whatever bug he picked from the unfiltered water, was sapping him of energy. He bent over and dry-heaved once more, his body trying to expel what was no longer there.

He righted himself again on the trike, wiped his lips on his forearm, and continued to pedal. It took all his strength to go a few inches before his stomach convulsed again and he had to stop. He stayed bent over this time, exhausted and resting. He needed help soon. His chances of running into someone or some group that would render aid were minimal. The only people he had encountered were those robbers. He was thankful for the good fortune of finding the bicycle tire so quickly, and replacing the flat. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to travel this far.

The retching seemed to have passed, so he sat up again.

Looking up, he saw the town of Laramie before him, and surprisingly it looked like a fairly normal town, almost pre-Event. There was some obvious fire damage on the northern side of town, but very little elsewhere from what he could see. Maybe there was still some sort of community in Laramie, or even one person who would take pity on him. “Just a little farther now,” he told himself.

A faint sound off the road caught his attention. He stopped again—each stop or start took way too much energy.

“Hell…,” a soft voice called from a ditch.

Carrington struggled out of his seat and shuffled slowly toward the sound.

“Help,” the voice, decidedly female, pleaded again. Now, he could see a form: a woman, lying on her back, holding up a red-gloved hand.

He scuttled over to her and knelt. “I’m here. I’ll help you.” He inwardly snickered at this thought, as if he was in any shape to offer help to anyone, much less a half-dead woman. Check that, a mostly dead woman. Her face, hair, and hands were covered in blood, which had long since dried. That face might have been lovely at one time, but now it was puffy with inflammation and serious bruising, all of it screaming of a struggle. Dirt coated her clothes: unremarkable pants and a black high-school T-shirt partially covered by a jacket that looked as if it was from some official organization, but torn and so covered in grime, it was not recognizable.