One would imagine that after months,
years, or even decades that we'd have gotten used to this. The
bullets screaming far beyond our post and into the never ending abyss
beyond us. I suppose that to an extent we have done just that.
Families no longer duck for cover.
Families no longer cower in fear of when they will lose their mother
or brother. Instead, they simply go about their business as usual,
and yet, the bullets still whizz past into the abyss.
In a society that picks around the
bloodied apples to find an untainted one, a society that admires when
a building only has one hundred bullet holes in the outer walls, a
society that finds it more abnormal to hear that you've went a week
without losing someone you know then it would be little more than
obvious to state that hardships are simply a way of life.
And yet here I am, again, carrying away
another dead body from outside my front door. Carrying it around to
the back, where places have been strategically designed to extract
the lifeless corpses by specially appointed military personnel. You
know the ones – the ones freshly recruited and sent into the city,
having never seen the atrocities that have become such normal life.
I can remember a time before, though.
A time in which the city hadn't been ravaged by greed, by the
strongest enforcing their survival on those of us who would rather
think about a way to make tomorrow a better place. Speaking such
things out loud, today, would lead to a public hanging.
Still, I enjoy talking to the freshies.
I enjoy hearing about their tales of life beyond the death. And
this is why I carry the dead now, at dusk, with the little remaining
sunlight bursting through the remnants of buildings and illuminating
the dulled browns of the sand and the buildings that look as though
they are apart of the ground.
“Good evening,” a freshy says with
nothing but trembling nervousness in his voice.
“Another one to add to the pile
here,” I push the wheelbarrow with a full grown woman, beyond
skinny and frail from the lack of motivation to make it outside for
food.
Of course, the government does
everything it can to ship as much food to us as possible. It is
there for the taking, but in order to obtain it one must dodge the
metallic shards flying through the air so fast they cannot be seen.
Some try it, usually the young and fast teenagers. Sometimes the
elderly who have lived beyond their years and have decided their
sacrifice would be worth it if only to save their children.
“So... Where... where did you get
this un?” A strange accent, one I had never heard before.
“Out front of my shop. They post up
down the road and wait for people to try to get into my shop for food
and shoot them dead as they are walking in. I took the door off to
let them get in faster, but then they stopped coming in all together
– said it didn't make them feel safe to have it open like that –
so I put it back up for them.”
“Strange...”
“Where you from, kid?”
“What is left of the USA.” The
USA, much like here, was torn apart when both sides of the political
spectrum let things get so bad they declared war on one another.
Eventually there wasn't much left other than burnt down cities with
two capitals on each side of the country. They simply declared it a
draw, threw down their guns, and resorted to cyber warfare to sway
support. They are still equal, but most of their citizens don't even
have a computer any longer so it ultimately ends up being the rich
arguing back and forth while every one else signs up for wars they
don't understand. Just to keep food on their plate.
“Is it rough over there, too?”
“I thought it was. Until... well...
I got here...”
“Yeah, things here are pretty bad.
Get up closer to this wall. You're out there making yourself the
perfect target.”
“Thanks....” His tone still shaky,
like a glass of water in the middle of an earthquake.
“You get used to it. Say, you and
your compadres want something to drink? Eat, perhaps? When was the
last time you had a decent meal?” I was unlocking the back door
and opening it up, holding it open so as to entice them on in.
“Don't worry, I've got a deal worked out with both sides. They let
me by for the most part. Can't say the same about my customers, but
you'll all be safe.”
“Fuck yeah!” Another freshy jumps
out of the truck, a sharp, tall girl who looked to be all of 19 years
old at most. “I ain't eaten nothing good in a week.”
I prepared the two of them their meals,
even threw in a couple glasses of the best wine I could muster up –
admittedly, it wasn't anything of quality, but no one ever complains
about wine after they've endured a week or two here.
The meal with an equally unimpressive
bowl of pasta with some very bland type of white sauce. I did manage
to get a shipment of Parmesan Cheese in. It adds just enough taste
for it to be considered the best bowl of pasta in the city. That's
what the sign on the wall says, anyway - “BEST PASTA IN THE CITY!”
“This tastes like shit compared to
back home.” The female freshy piped up after devouring half her
plate of food.
“Well, you're not quite home now, are
you?”
“No. That's not what I meant.”
She interjected quickly. “I mean, I just miss home. Fuck, man.
I'm sorry.”
“It tastes better than I thought it
would...” the young freshy, still timid and fearful, said.
“Look. I don't get my choice of
ingredients. I do the best with what I've got. Here.” I hand
them each a plate of a jello-like dessert.
“No thanks!” they both said
quickly.
The sound of their truck, still parked
out back, fires to life and takes off with tires squealing.
“Hey!” the female freshy says while
attempting to lift from her chair. “Is that... is... that...
our... truck...?” Her body falls limp, first hitting the table and
then plummeting to the ground.
The male freshy's face had already
landed square on top of the table.
I picked up the phone and dialed a
series of numbers until the ring started. “Hello. Got a couple
more.” I hung up the phone.
-Dustin S. Stover
