Epoch

Earth: 2034

The dry, dead landscape exists. Distant windstorms kick up dust devils and everywhere else, sand floats through the air like snow. It is realized that this bleak sight could use moisture.

Gargantuan masses drearily waft through time and space with no real goal to arrive at. They open up and drop a yellow tinted solution. The low, incessant drone of millions of droplets smashing into the ground follows.

A rancid odor permeates the air. The steel skeleton of a structure sags before the doorway, rapidly corroding over the years.

The rain falls faster.

Water unable to be absorbed into the parched earth rises and revives dead streambeds. The violent flash flood of acid washes away anything misfortunate to be caught in it.

And yet a balanced ecosystem still exists, despite the bleak surroundings, with hunters and hunted, much as before. But since before, many of the hunters have become the hunted, and a few of the hunted became the hunters.

- - - - -

Annaliese and I sit in our hut, the rain profusely falling outside. She is holding an opened, half-eaten can of chili in her lap, staring transfixed out the window. I watch her; it sorrows me that I can do nothing to leviate her pains.

“We’re low on food and supplies,” I tell her. “Tomorrow I’m returning to the valley; I leave first thing in the morning. I believe I can still salvage more from that Quonset hut.”

She sat thoughtfully for a minute, twisting her can in her lap and staring at it, then up at me.

“I’m coming with you,”

“No! It won’t be safe, for the baby I mean, and I couldn’t bear for you to get hurt again,” the journey had been tragic enough the first time.

“John, you are the only man I have ever loved, and seems ever will. I don’t want to lose you; I, I can’t stand being away from you, not knowing if something is wrong. Last I let you out on your own, you rolled a rock, pinned yourself and when Saber and I found you, ‘they’ were readying for the kill.”

She paused recalling the incident, I begin to say something but she cuts me off, ”you don’t honestly think I’d stay behind while you’re out having all the fun, do you?!”

“God woman, why must you be so difficult?” I shout.

Coolly she responds, “I am coming, and you can’t stop me.”

I glare at her, “Fine, but when the baby is obvious, you will stay home.”

“It’s only been three months, I’ll be fine,” she closes her eyes and smiles brightly.

We hear a happy bark sound from inside the adjacent storage shed. I open the door and the energy that is my dog bounds in. At my feet, he drops a dead rat carcass.

“Oh,” she gasps. I step back.

“There might be more, stay here!”

I turn for the door. Annaliese stands to follow. I abruptly turn and face her.

“Ann”

“John”

“I said stay,”

She pauses, “You may be my husband, but I am your wife. When you realize that there are two of us in this relationship, then I might consider your opinion,” She half walked, half skipped past me and through the door, winking to me as she passes.

I can only smile; this was the girl I fell in love with, before, before it all happened.

One rat is harmless, but in a multitude, they can devour everything in a single night, this includes a person. And they rarely live alone.

The hunt was fruitless, in the hour we spent kicking crates and lifting pots, we found no trace of a rat. Still, as a precaution, Ann took handfuls of rice, the last of our stores, and sowed it around the room.

- - - - -

In the morning, we arose early and gathered what few provisions we could. Ann put on a brimmed hat to shade her face. With a happy and energetic dog in the lead, we set out.

The barren landscape lay, wide and yellow, cast in twilight. An eerie silence engulfs the panorama of dirt, rock and sand in the soft wind. In the distant horizon, the skeletons of trees long dead stand as a reminder of before.

I walk beside my wife, admiring her and the backdrop privileged to have her in it. Unlike me, she has not suffered any major physical mutations from the radiation in the aftermath. I, on the other hand, have a left arm more than two inches longer than the right. Although, she did, at 20, already have strands of grey in her red hair.

She notices my stare and smiles. I quickly look away at the distant horizon again.

“We should be there by dusk, if we can keep this pace.”

“That’s good then,” was all she had to respond.

We continued our trek in silence.

- - - - -

Ann is hugging Saber’s neck, restraining him from the chase. It was just a single deer, a doe, grazing nearby between two dead trees.

Bark! Bark!

“Saber! Shut up!” I say quietly but with intensity, to get my point across to him, Do not catch its attention!

Too late. The doe looks up. Ann and I freeze. She turns her head and stares directly at us; she blinks. Suddenly it bares its teeth and squints.

It was on us in a flash.

Pounce.
Smack.
Crunch.
Scream.

It all happened so fast. The doe scampered to us, landing on top of Ann. Saber jumped atop the animal. I came in soon after with my hunting knife. It bit down into her shoulder, saber bit into its neck and I stabbed it in the side.

The monster then turned on me. Try as I might I could not throw the creature. Saber jumps from its back and comes back in from the front to grab the jugular. Ann runs up to pry the now dying animal from me.

We are both breathing heavily. “You… still wanting… to come?” I say between breaths.

“You know me… never a dull moment… Wouldn’t want to… miss anything.”

Sigh, “Okay… we cannot carry the whole thing… so help me.” I kneel beside it and pull out my knife.

It suddenly kicks. Ann jumps back, saber barks and I reflexively stab at it repeatedly like a mad man. The deer’s leg extends strait out and falls limp on the ground. “Here,” I toss my other knife to her, she and I cut out several clean pieces of meat, saber munching on our scraps. We stayed as long as we dared, gathering enough to fill a pocket in my bag.

“There’s bound to be others,” Ann reminded me, as we are packing the last of the meat. “We should get moving.”

“Right”

Sure enough, we were not yet out of earshot, a loud baying sound and a growl. I turn to see four deer scavenging; a buck, two doe and a fawn. They were happily cannibalizing their fallen comrade, nipping at each other over the scraps. It is a dark world we now live in.

We continued up the hill.  “It has to be this way,” from the top of the hill, I look around for where the hut should be. I start walking that direction.

Ann laughs. “No, John, wait no!” she catches me and pulls me back. “Last I remember, it is just around the corner, this way,” she turns and runs the opposite direction.

I sigh; even saber goes to follow her. I run to catch up with her. She is usually correct about directions anyway. We round the bend, bickering back and forth about miniscule things, as any married couple should.

We come around the corner. Nothing is there.

“Wait, wait,” I back up, pulling her with me. Saber looks to us confused but comes quietly; he then gets distracted with nearby smells. “I didn’t see it,” I tease.

“Just come on,” Ann finally says, dragging me with her.

We go around again; there is something there this time. I cover Ann’s mouth but cannot react beyond that. She grabs my waist and buries her head in my chest; we are now side-by-side, hugging and waiting.

The short, stout man squatting, not ten yards from us, scrapes around the ground with a bleached white bone. Behind his bushy mane of red hair, his beady black eyes focus on what he is doing. He then stands to his full height of about four or five feet. He is naked except for a furry loincloth, leaving his tan and leathery skin exposed. Oddly, he appears to have no chin and only four fingers.

Then he notices us.

He drops the bone, it clatters on the ground; I know we should probably react but I am frozen in place. He starts running, running at a pace Ann or I could never match, with eyes only for us. Suddenly something rushes from my left, we are struck with a hard blow and carried through the air several yards, just then the red demon flies past where we just were.

“If you value your lives, run!”

Ann is up first, she runs, I stand just as my dog rushes past, runs ahead, turns and barks at me to hurry. I hurry.

“Faster! Once he realizes us it’s over, he can out run the both of you!” I see that beside me, beckoning me onward is a boy of about fifteen or sixteen.

He runs ahead, to Ann. “Just around here,” he says. He then runs ahead, Ann easily keeping up, and round the corner. Suddenly something hits me.

I am on the ground, sliding to a stop before the danger is recognized. The man is on top of me, pulling my hair back and holding a crude dagger at my neck. A loud whoop sounds from behind me and another comes as a reply. He has his friends with him.

I swing around and throw him from me, simultaneously pulling my knife. I never realized how strong they were; as I go to stab him, he simply grabs my wrist and curiously removes the knife from my fist. He cuts his index finger on it and becomes scared; he calls the warning to his friends.

I go to pull out my spare knife but realize that Ann still had it. I was in trouble. “Hey! Help!” was all I had time for before he was on me again.

He manages to stab me in the leg and grab my throat, suffocating me. “Hey! Hey! Over here!” The boy is to my right, jumping up and down to distract the little man. He hops off me and slowly walks to him. The boy jumps over him and skillfully stabs him in the back of the neck.

“Leave it!” he scolds me as I try to retrieve my knife.

The boy, realizing I am hurt when I cannot get up, swears and supports me. Around the corner we go, at the last minute I see others arrive. The others look at us then to their fallen brother. They all instantly turn on him. The last I see is one jumping high into the air, a crude knife of his own in hand, just about to land, and he looked hungry. I am thankful to have not had to see that.

Inside of the hut, the boy closes the door and lights a lantern. “What were you thinking, being out there at this time, don’t you know they travel through here every fall?”

“I don’t know, we were just heading this way to salvage this hut, we didn’t know someone lived here,” I explain.

“I just found it the day before last; I realized a tribe was coming through so I needed a shelter.
And yes, there is a lot of stuff in here.”

Ann appears beside me, “Who are you?”

“My name’s Matthew.”

“Anyone else with out?”

Reluctantly he said, “I used to be in a coven of other survivors.”

“Others? There are others!”

“Were, they all died, including my brother. We joined after the rest of our family died, then a large group of the bestial found us.

“Bestial?”

“Those people! It’s the Latin word for animal, our leader decided to give them a scientific name, Homo Bestial he called them, and it stuck ever since. But enough about me, who are you?”

“I am Ann, and this is John. We’re both around 20 years old, I think, and we’re married and expecting.” He politely congratulates us.

After we are done acquainting with each other, we have a meal. I was right; there was plenty of food left from our last visit. We found several soup cans, popped them open and cooked them on a small emergency stove we found.

Matt, once fed, talks more liberally. “I do not remember much of the world before. I was an infant when it all happened. My elder brother took care of me. When I got older, no one was willing to talk to me so I really don’t know the story.”

I speak, “I’ll warn you first, a few years back we stumbled upon a small collection of books and newspapers, so I could ramble on about this topic.  Well, I’ll just summarize.  Roughly eleven years ago there was a nuclear war and some virus mutated from it, as well as them and everything else that is wrong with our world. They were immune to it and most of us were not.  It killed off most of us and they stepped in to replace us, as natural selection mandates.”

Bang! Something rammed into the door.

I hobble to the window. About twenty of the people he had called the bestial were surrounding our encampment. They all had the same rust colored hair and no taller than five feet at most. Men and Women alike circle around the Quonset hut and all chanting the same thing, in their own language.

“What makes them so different?”

Matt walks to the window, standing beside me. “When we split, however it happened, we kept our intelligence, they became faster, stronger yet retained no intelligence, they also became carnivorous, uhh, that means they only eat meat.”

“I know what carniv-” he began before a Bang! and Rip! were heard. They were working on the door, trying to get in. One of them found purchase in the crack between the double doors. Several more joined in and began to peel the door open. Good thing it was bolted shut in several different places.

I dig through a box on the shelf, pulling out a long butcher’s knife and a regular hunting knife. I throw the butcher’s knife to Matt. Ann removes her knife, takes her hat off, whips her hair and tells us to get ready. Matt nearly jumps from his skin.

“She has red hair!”

“Yeah, so?”

“They have red hair!”

“That doesn’t matter, she’s one of us. She’s human. Now c’mon, we’ve got a more pressing issues,” I turn to look at the door again.

He looks uneasy but at least he is settled enough to fight.

Crack!

The first one got in. “Haiyah!” it seemed appropriate to add sound effects at the time.

But he, no, she, no… It was no match for us, we took it down the instant its feet touched the ground.

Another entered.

Dead.

This was quite easy. Then they ripped the door off its hinges. Now nothing stopped them from entering. We could kill a couple but as one goes down two replace it. There is nothing it seems that we could do to stop the looming carnage.

I stab one in its chest, remove the bloody knife and elbow the bleeding man so that he fell into a woman behind him. He is impaled on a spear she is holding. I quickly look around and realize roughly ten remain.

“Keep going! They’re going down fast! We’re going to pull through!”

I succeed in slitting the throat of one but then I shift legs and collapse.  I’d been standing on my one good leg, but instinctively   I fall on my side and a strong pair of jaws clenches down into my wrist.

“John!” Ann screams.

She runs to me to chase off the beast. She trips into me and another is on top of us. They might be stupid and have no strategy, but their brute strength and numbers made up for that.

Matt, occupied with his own problems, could not help us. It was up to us, me, I was responsible, it was my fault this happened, I should not have let her come, I should have been more careful, I should be able to save her. I will…

I turn to punch the closest one, it catches my fist and glares at me maliciously, and then the elbow of Ann strikes the side of its head.

The battle rages on, with more casualties on their side than ours. If we were the attackers rather than defending, I would doubt our seeming success. Finally, the last of them crawls into the shed; why did they continue to come if they knew they would just die anyway?

“Matt, careful!” He was getting cocky and over confident with himself.

“I’m fine,” he calmly retorts.

It jumped toward him; one behind him arose and leaped for him as well. He seemed to sense where they were, his maneuver was quick and effective and ended up with one dead and the other pinned under his weight.

I took the time to clap, even in these conditions. “Well done, I’m impressed.”

Ann knelt down beside one. “This is wrong, these were sentient beings.”

“They’re savages, they’d kill you without thinking twice about it!” Matt responds.

“Let’s at least do something for them.”

I suggested that we collect as much as we could, from the hut. Saber reappears, his front right leg has a large bite in it, but that is trivial, it would heal. When we had gathered as much as we dared carry I say, “Now burn the building.”

Ann insists on doing it. She lights a strand of cloth and gently tosses it onto a pile of hay in the back. We watch the smokestack as we leave. Even while passing though the dead forest again I could see it.

Was the trip worth it? Yes, we got what we came for and more. I never realize how much I love her when at peace, being near death can always rekindle a relationship. I look to her, she looks at me and then she smiles, laughs and hugs me; I hold her to me and kiss her gently. I drop my pack so I can hold her close.

“Oh, gross!” Matt protested.

We both look at him, expecting some other danger; he is just watching us, smiling. “I’m kidding, we just should continue, that’s all.”

Ann and I touch noses and laugh.  Hand in hand we continue. No matter what happens, we still have each other, and soon another would be joining our ‘happy’ little life.  (I use the word happy loosely)  Ann felt the tiniest sensation in her womb as if the baby agreed too.

Author's Note

This is the complete story, there is no follow up.