Red Dawn Hunting

This is a post-apocalyptic story told through the eyes of a young child.

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

-Carl Gustav Jung

R

As he listened to the desert winds whispering amongst themselves through the jutting ruins of sun-bleached monoliths, his blue eyes glued to the withered mirage before him, he decided that he would probably wear his bandanna after all. Pulling his glance away from the image, he instead focused on soaking the thin square of fabric in what little water he had left and wrapping it carefully around his receding hairline. His stomach growled at him again in yet another menacing protest of craving hunger, to which he couldn't help but smile in his own dry manner. It was by no means a smile born of humor - he actually felt his gaunt face and cracked lips form into something more like a grimace - though he could accept the dark, M*A*S*H-like witticism about it. Maybe it was another example of that feeling that the Grown-Ups would've called irony.

As he meticulously fitted the bandanna atop his balding scalp, positioning just right so that the precious moisture wouldn't evaporate in the sterile heat of the unforgiving sun, he found himself diverting his attention span back to the shadowy figure in the jagged shard of glass. He would often dwell upon it with a waning hint of his original childish curiosity, staring blankly at it hours at a time, struggling in vain to understand the puzzle behind it's blinding glare. He still remembered the expedition when he found the odd treasure as if it were only yesterday...or rather, not so much as found the shard as smashing it off the rusting carcass of a '78 Dodge Challenger. He was still amazed by what a simple chunk of asphalt could do if thrown the right way. It was the last time he could remember actually laughing...like sands through the hourglass, indeed.

He held the reflective piece in his scrawny hands carefully, even tentatively, in a similar fashion he'd assume a Grown-Up would hold a Baby. He gazed down upon the glass shard with an intensity well beyond his years, completely unaware of the drops of salty water carving clean trails down his dirty cheeks. Had another human being been present during his search, he or she might have possibly compared him to the egotistical youth Narcissus, whom had perished longingly from such an obsessive glance upon his mirror image, but the lonely child had no room in his life or his heart for such petty burdens as vanity. He always figured that's how wars get started.

Besides, he never really paid much attention to the fatigued person looking back at him from what he had taken to calling his looking glass, but rather to the strange riddle etched upon it's cracked surface. He had retained some skill in reading even before it all happened, yet the meaning of those dusty scratch marks was still lost, still a complete mystery no matter how many times he scans over the ancient letters. Ever since he obtained the toy the hard way some three days prior, he spent a large portion of his time attempting to solve the riddle, and every time the answer floated just out of reach. He read it again for nobody to hear, as if this time, he would discover it's hidden secret.

OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE LARGER THAN THEY APPEAR.

“What does it mean?” he croaked again, ignoring the sun, the winds, the ruins, everything but the cryptic passage written before him. He crept towards the verge of tears again before he finally given up for the day, placing the coveted puzzle almost reverently back within the front pocket of his tattered knapsack. The secret meaning, which plagued his young mind like one of the wandering ghosts, would have no choice but to wait until tomorrow to be played with again. Right now, he had to focus his remaining time on the everyday chore of survival.

Without hesitation he packed what few possessions he managed to collect, arming himself with his beloved Swiss Army knife, and continued walking along his southeast trail along the dead fissures of the 101, heading deeper into the still heart of the paradoxically-named City of Angels.

U

The sun was seeping into the vintage point of the western horizon, and it's nothing short of an understatement to say that he went through some serious hell crossing through the demolished segments of the Hollywood Freeway. On several occasions he nearly caught his death as it pursued him towards sudden drops to the unforgiving concrete rubble below, or into the dead chassis of rusting mechanical beasts, or, in one eventful moment, leading him straight into a migrating pack of squirming, viscous rats. Children just can't catch a break in the big city, it appeared. He actually never felt smaller in his life, not since...

He shook the unsettling thought aside like a soiled rag and continued on his way. He kept his red-sheathed blade in his shaking right hand at all times now, the one guardian angel he could truly trust in this desolate urban jungle. He didn't have the same thirst for vermin blood, anyway, if only because drinking the infected blood had made him queasy and almost made him vomit away his precious liquid. Better left for the buzzards to sort that one out, if the other rodents hadn't already. Speaking of blood and death, he was getting really hungry now, and it was more luck and, dare he think it, a miracle that he'd made it this far to begin with. Of course, this was a horrid memory from the day before he found the treasured looking glass.

Hell, he was already suffering through the beginning stages of heat stroke and dehydration before his exodus from everything he knew, his bandanna having dried up completely multiple times, and once again not too long ago. Really, if it hadn't been for his supernatural luck and the suitable crevices he found for shelter and shade along his lonely journey, he'd probably be just another sack of dried jerky ready for the rats or for the dogs or vultures or for whatever rabid predators were out there to snack on. Or worse, he often thought on his travels.

So there he was now, hiding in the makeshift refuge of underpass shadows, tucked beneath one of the intact sections of Highway 101 which still stood on reliable pillars, huddling against a corner like so many vagrants and winos and drug addicts he'd seen here before from the relative safety of a school bus window. Abstract and sometimes obscene murals of graffiti still lingered along the concrete walls and underbelly, faded with age but still visible under the filtered light of the desert sun. Beer cans, wine bottles, hypodermic needles and even a mummified copy of Hustler littered the dead brown grass here and there, just some of the relics he found (and stayed clear of) from America's greatest achievements. He considered the idea of staying here until the cold desert night, if only for a temporary rest, perhaps even using his bandanna to condense the moisture and add to his dwindling supply of drinkable water, but in the end he decided against it. He was already risking rabies, tetanus and who knows what else, the last thing he wanted to do was accidentally poison his very finite water supply with some kind of lethal venereal disease.

Besides, there were too many ghosts here.

He thought about breaking out his looking glass again before leaving, if only to find a small sense of solace within it's cryptic riddle, but the goosebumps collecting on his back and the hairs standing on the nape of his neck proved too much to bear. The bleached skull he suddenly found next to him stared hungrily at the bony child with it's empty, merciless sockets. The left temple was a spider's web of deep fractures, unnaturally concave in the semi-darkness.

He knew then. He had to leave, now. Right now.

Without a second thought, without even a proper rest, he nearly bolted from the cursed shade and continued to wander south, pulling out of the slight turn in the fractured, empty road into what was once the business-oriented Vine Street.

K

Even in his miserable, dehydrated state, he had to admit that the half-collapsed structure of the Capitol Records Building was still quite a sight to behold in this metropolis-sized graveyard. He spotted the dilapidated landmark the instant he started down the silent ruins of Vine Street, just beyond the piles of rubble from other, lesser-known buildings. He took particular notice, and therefore particular care, to avoid the rust-coated skeletons of unlucky cars, some of which still had skeletal hands gripping the steering wheels, sticking to what remained of the sidewalk as often as humanly possible. The relentless wind, hissing like a treacherous serpent, was his only companion, whispering through the newborn alleyways and the brittle leaves of dead palms. The occasional sighting of traffic lights, or at least those that weren't bent like awkward metal pretzels or missing altogether, seem to glare at him menacingly with their three dark eye sockets, and he shuddered from what they reminded him of. Pieces of flying debris still rolled across the empty street and beyond like modern-day tumbleweed composed of plastic and paper, bounding aimlessly across the sun-baked asphalt. The distant remnants of the once-familiar skyline and cityscape shimmered in the unnatural heat, fusing into the distant mirage until it warped the very fabric of reality beyond.

He wanders on in his growing hallucination, shambling defiantly towards the memorable remains of Capital Records.

The building was possibly designed so that it's characteristic awning were to resemble a shining stack of phonograph records during it's golden heyday, emphasizing the vital importance it held in the country's growing music industry; nowadays it hardly resembles a half-eaten stack of pancakes left to wilt and rot in the unforgiving heat of the radiating sun, with it's relatively sturdy echo chambers and foundations left naked to burn. The smooth metallic walls that were once polished until they shined like a star going supernova in the night was now less than dull and listless, even now crumbling bit by bit, piece by piece, deteriorating into worthless rubble before his very eyes. Even the dark plastic of the Plexiglas windows, an artificial addition thought to last forever, were already crumbling into shapeless lumps of grotesque gray sand. The wreckage was all that attributed to this once-grand landmark located at the ancient intersection between Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard.

Quite amazing what the history of Man has left behind in the dust.

He had no idea how he possibly made it this far, thinking this to himself unbelievably as he settled himself in the shade created by the destroyed pinnacle of the former tower. It could have been any rundown junkyard or empty shell of a building, or it could have been yet another baffling example of his absurd stroke of luck, but at this point he really didn't care either way. There were other, more important things taking up residence in his young, tortured mind.

Water, of course, was the first of many.

The absence of ghosts, of course, was a close second.

Or vice versa, he thought, and despite his horrible condition he was utterly surprised to find a small grin of pride forming on his face from remembering something from Latin class. Hell, he was even more surprised, almost frightened, even, when he heard the hoarse, dry hissing of his own laughter out-loud. This in turn made him laugh even harder, lingering on becoming convulsive or, God forbid, cataclysmic. At that, he laughed so loudly it almost sounded like a strangled bark, and at that moment he sobered up just long enough to realize that he was nearly coughing his battered lungs out of his scraped esophagus.

He was so focused upon catching his breath, he didn't even notice the pool of dark-red molasses dripping out of the corner of his cracked lips, nor did he notice the dark shape standing in the near distance, silhouetted perfectly against the blood-red rays of fading sunlight. By then, he was so far gone that he didn't even notice everything suddenly blacking out into oblivion.

m

The apathetic moon was beginning it's waning phase again, a dark sliver of a crescent forming on the celestial orb far into the vintage point of the night sky. The moon looked down upon the sprawling ruins of the world indifferently from the roof of the heavens, accompanied by the presence of the brilliant yet impossibly cold stars. There were no clouds to shroud the view of the entities above, nothing at all which would've held back their cold, piercing glares from becoming witness to the unfolding horrors of the night.

A small sandstorm was summoned by the constant presence of the howling winds, accidentally providing the perfect cover for the rhythmic footsteps of the approaching figure. It walked with the unnerving stealth of a stalking cat, obsessively careful of avoiding the rusting skeletons of the old world littering the desolate road of Hollywood Boulevard. It didn't even notice as it crunched a brittle skull into rotting calcium powder under it's worn leather soles, it was so quiet. Nothing, not even the bright gaze of the moon or stars above, could have penetrated the layers of black cloth which covered it from head to toe, nor could they have seen it's eyes through the polarized lenses of it's protective goggles.

Even if the child had been awake, hydrated and on full-alert, it was doubtful that he would had seen the shade shambling ever closer to the intersection and the desolation of the Capitol Records Building. But it saw him clearly enough, seeing the small, malnourished form sprawled unnaturally against the destroyed pinnacle that once stood atop the lost world building like an obscene phallus rising towards the polluted sky. As it crept ever closer, salivating from it's sick, herpes-coated mouth, glaring hungrily at the defenseless figure with soulless eyes, it's thoughts were consumed by planning on just what to do with the boy, on how useful to it's needs and survival he would be when it snatches the child in it's merciless hands. How very useful, indeed.

The only saving grace for the small child, disturbingly enough, was his recurring nightmares. Without even so much as the battering of an eye the child screamed like a tormented banshee into the darkness, his pain and fear echoing across the twisted wasteland of destroyed buildings and merciless desert. He wasn't even conscious enough to notice his own thrashing spasms of horrifying misery or the eerie screech he delivered into the endless night, much less aware of the danger he would've dealt with the hard way had the terror not occurred any sooner.

Needless to say, even this sadistic stalker of lost souls was taken by complete surprise, damn near incredulous by it's would-be prey's sudden outburst of pain and suffering. The hunter is not supposed to be surprised, it thought hurriedly, staring wide-eyed at the possessed child as if he were the poster-child from The Exorcist. Had it stayed just a moment longer, things might have gone differently, and one more story would've ended here amongst this morgue of deteriorating rubble. Instead, trusting it's abstract, predatory instincts to head for cover, it turned tail and hobbled back into the distance, vowing even as it faded into the fabric of the ever-present darkness, to bide it's time.

As if calmed by the hand of his guardian angel, the child stopped his screaming and thrashing, and returned peaceably to his silent slumber. He would never know just how lucky he was this macabre night.

6

The moon's cold reign watched over the retreating night until it too was banished by the rosy glow of dawn. It was only when the first rays of sunrise cast down upon him that he woke up from his vivid dreams. Usually he would feel an insatiable sense of depression whenever he woke up in the wastes of the so-called “civilization”, but today, oddly enough, he felt different. Perhaps this was in part due to Homo sapien's uncanny ability to adapt to new environments, but he was certain that something else was at work here, even though he didn't have the slightest clue as to what that would be.

Maybe it was a good night's rest, he thought only briefly before shrugging the thought entirely from his conscious mind. He had bigger priorities to focus on as it was. Of course, water and ghosts were in the forefront, leaving far too little room for the imagination to wonder.

“S**t,” he uttered, not caring about using the curse word out-loud (it didn't really matter, anyway), thinking over the hazy events of yesterday's sunset. It was then that he realized...again...that there was no water, nor did he ensure any means to collect it. He put his hand to his forehead, and that was when it dawned on him, the memory which now came back in full. He was going to use his bandanna! He was supposed to have arranged his thin cloth to collect the condensation of the desert night, it was his own adopted daily ritual, one of the last things he still remembers about Mom and Dad. And now...

“S**T!!!” he screamed to the dead, empty city, not caring that anything (or anyone) might hear him, not even caring that yelling that single profanity caused him to go through another coughing fit that took nearly five minutes to settle back into his usual rasping breath. He didn't have enough water to produce tears in expression of his sudden anger and stress. He didn't even have saliva left in his dry mouth to swallow the misery building inside his aching head. He barely made it to this run-down wreckage from the hellish 101, hallucinating like one of those dirty New York hippies he'd seen from the old news footage of Woodstock. He didn't, nay, couldn't continue another mile even if he did have more water than the last remaining pitiful drops left in his plastic bottle.

Oh, to hell with it, he decided, and before he could stop himself he tore open his knapsack and grabbed the crumpled bottle with steel fingers, draining his last morsels of the life-sustaining liquid until the next nightfall. His sudden thirst was so great, in fact, he barely noticed the red molasses sliding from a fresh cut on his hand, nor the same red sludge glistening on a corner of the looking glass...or at least not until he decided to tuck the empty bottle away.

This was enough to catch his attention to the mirror, and without a second thought he carefully, almost gingerly, retrieved the glass and studied it once more. The riddle was still intact:

OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE LARGER THAN THEY APPEAR.

What are you trying to tell me? he thought desperately.

Before he answered his own question, he heard something behind him...just the faintest movement of sand and rubble. A rat, perhaps? Had they followed him here already? Perhaps he was just being paranoid again.

That last glimmer of hope was quickly extinguished when he looked back into his looking glass. He only had enough time to glimpse the reflection of a dark shape materializing from nowhere before everything suddenly went black yet again.

His last thought that lingered in his subconscious was that the shape looked awfully human.

!

He was able to hear before he was able to see, and the first thing he heard was Jim Morrison. He was singing “People are Strange” out into the vistas of the dead city...although now he doubted it could technically be called dead now.

“People are strange, when you're a stranger...”

When he was finally able to open his bruised eyes, he could just make out the fact that, wherever he was, he was most definitely not in Kansas anymore.

“Faces are ugly, when you're alone...”

He appeared to be in some large, elaborately Oriental lobby, a surprisingly intact room compared to the various piles of wreckage he'd been renting space in these last few weeks. There were even posters still hanging off the faded walls like prized animal skins, depicting some weird, otherworldly picture or another that had since lost all meaning.

“Women seem wicked, when you're unwanted...”

Where am I? He asked himself, not expecting a proper answer, of course. He was never in any building like this before, neither before nor after the infamous Event to end all events.

“Streets are uneven...when you're down.”

So, needless to say, he was scared out of his wits when someone actually answered for him. He would've pissed himself had he had any water left in him, and that's actually saying something into the ether.

“You're in what remains of the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre,” snarled a quiet, almost human growl. It came from somewhere just out of his line of sight, yet sounded so disturbingly close. He didn't even what to know how it just happened to have read his freaking mind.

“When you're strange...faces come out of the rain...”

“Welcome to Hollywood, child.” It chuckled maniacally, it's words purposefully intent on making him scared and uneasy at the same time. He was starting to get the feeling that he was trapped in a spider's web, a feeling that repulsed him more than he would've thought possible.

“When you're strange...no one remembers your name...”

“Who...who are you?” He choked. What are you? He thought dazedly, not caring at this point if it could read minds or not. It might have been an odd stroke of coincidence, anyway. No need to-

“Who or what I am is none of your concern, little boy,” it snickered from somewhere behind him. Miraculous beads of sweat streamed down his bald forehead where dark-blonde bangs once hung. He realized that this...thing...meant to do him ill, playing with his fragile eggshell mind like a cat toying around with the doomed mouse before it delivers the final killing bite. “Just relax...”

“When you're strange...when you're strange...when you're...STRANGE...”

The haunting honky-tonk rhythms of The Doors was abruptly cut off, and his mind inexplicably started to run wild and rampant...or even more so. Almost as a minor side-note he noticed that there must have been a cassette player set behind him...well, that and a heavy, presumably disembodied breath down the nape of his neck. It smelt of death and decay and something even worse that he couldn't quite name off the top of his head. His nerves screamed in silent terror when he felt the strong hand of a man clamp onto his bony shoulder.

“Relax, little eloi, this will all be over with soon...” it chuckled, releasing it's claws from him just as suddenly as the crushing grip they made. The cat was just starting to have fun among the spiderwebs. “Just...relax...”

M

The man-thing remained silent after telling the scared child to relax, so silent in fact that the child was almost convinced that it had simply left the ancient lobby. It's movements were as eerily stealthy as a phantom, it's instincts as sharp as a dominatrix's whip, and it's intents were even worse still. It left the helpless youth to his racing thoughts, a small, dark grin playing beneath the boils and the thin fabric of it's makeshift burka. It wanted him to take his sweet time, preferably to observe every single last detail of his final resting place. It wanted him to study the Oriental-style textures of the remaining walls, the rusting gong sitting in a forgotten corner, the thickening cobwebs growing from the shaded sections of ceiling planted by generation after generation of increasingly bold spiders. Most of all, however, it wanted him to look upon the small collection of pre-Event movie posters hanging proudly like the taxidermy heads of fierce beasts now long gone from this Earth.

These were chosen specifically by the former movie critic to marinate the child and other people of the past with the savory taste of fear. On this end, it worked better than expected. Hell, the kid wasn't even tied up to anything because it best suited the young lad's critical state of dehydration. He hardly made any resistance when it dragged the semi-conscious child down the tainted ruins of Hollywood Boulevard to this once-proud landmark of cinema.

It still remembered him from before...back when there was a small pack to protect him from the dangers of the brave new world. It shan't matter now.

It's hideous smile deepened until it resembled a wicked slash of a steel blade etched into the bark of a gnarled oak tree. It laced it's crooked fingers together like a villain from a James Bond movie, and held it's wretched breath like an antipodal Buddhist in meditation. Behind it's coveted polarized goggles, salvaged from the then-freshly gutted body of a former Army draftee,it's cold, dead eyes glowered with the hungry fires of Hell. It burst into silent laughter when it realized that inflicting it's mental torture was giving it the familiar sensation of a serious hard-on, laughing in it's deranged mind even harder when it remembered back when this kind of act would've been considered both illegal and immoral beyond the grace of gods and men.

Not that it mattered to it or the Los Angeles community of olde when the occasional prostitute or lost child went missing here and there. The only difference now, other than the infamous Event, of course, was that it now had free reign and no consequences to speak of.

Any survivor can account to this...if they were still around, that was.

It nearly laughed out-loud, but years of heavy discipline had made it hold it's vile tongue. It figured that the child should be broken by insanity and fear any second now, knowing in that little reptile part of his brain that something was seriously amiss among the unearthly silence. Oh, if only it could see his face, see that delicious expression of pure horror dawn upon the baby-blue eyes when he sees that most prized poster in particular. It wanted to see him remember. Alas, it will have to do without. It had the mouse were it wanted him, and all it had to do was add the final seasonings to it's meal.

The time was almost here. It needed some music to feast to.

Just then, the morlock drifted without a sound towards the dusty Stereo 8 tape player, fiddling with it's private collection until it found exactly what it wanted, and inserted the custom-made cartridge carefully, almost lovingly into the ancient relic of dead yesterdays. It caressed the PLAY button, and the ruins of the lobby were suddenly consumed with the wail of synthesized trumpets and electric guitars. The cursed song blasted out into resonating echoes until it burst through the ruins of Grauman's Chinese Theatre and into the endless, urban desert.

The song in question was “The Final Countdown”, one of the greatest hits no one has ever heard of, by the little-known Swedish rock band, Europe.

“It will all be over soon...” it whispered playfully, pouncing like a Xenomorph upon his next victim.

[

Thinking that the monster, or man, or whatever it was had finally left the room, the first thing he tried to do was move, or at least struggle out of his bounds...only to realize the no bounds were actually holding him. He had lost almost all feeling in his bony limbs, nearly passed out a few times during this horrible captivity, yet somehow he just knew. That idea alone, to know that he was free to leave anytime, to know that should have filled him with renewed vigor, had instead disturbed him beyond comprehension.

Why would he...it...not tie me up?

He struggled to move his limp arms and legs, forcing every ounce of strength left in him to get up from the sandy tile floor. It was to no avail. He was trapped by his own exhaustion, held captive by his own dehydration and hunger and loneliness and fear. He was trapped.

And then it hit him. He knew. He knew exactly why it made the possibility to escape so easy. It didn't tie him up on purpose because it knew that he couldn't move. It knew that he was on the critical side of potential death by heat stroke and water loss and God knows what else. It's using his own crippling fatigue against him, held down solely by his own aching body!

Why? Why is it doing this? Why would this thing...this man...do this?

He desperately wanted to scream, to cry for help, for anyone who would be out there, someone who would care. Mostly he wanted to scream out of fear and pain and hatred he felt for the world for doing this to him. But in the end, the last bit of rationality kicked in, and he didn't scream. In fact, he barely took a breath. He figured that, in some dazed and confused theory, that it wanted him to scream, wanted him to wail and beg for the only mercy left for him: death, the sweet release. He didn't, nay, wouldn't, give this damned fiend the satisfaction it craved. He was beyond determined to refuse the vampire his pain and blood for it to feed on. This eloi, as it called him so easily, will not go down without a fight.

I just need more time, he thought, challenging the Fates themselves to deny him just this much. The eternal, cosmic powers had caused him so much turmoil, so much hardships and tragedy, and now here he was, and all he was asking for was just a little more time.

The Fates, whom have always enjoyed the little game they called irony, had decided to grant him his wish in the worst form they could possibly imagine.

He was indeed given more time, precious time that could still spare him yet...but there was still something...off...something that still nagged in the back of his mind. He wondered for a second as to whether or not that thing could still be eavesdropping into his most private thoughts right now, but he shook the petty mind-game aside and focused on moving his arms and legs. Whether or not it could read his mind like a worn-out book, he still played it safe, terrified but letting just a small hint of his damaged inner child look upon the walls of his spacious prison with pure curiosity.

The posters in particular caught his eye, wrinkled and revered like ancient parchments. There were five or six of them that he could see, none of which held any real meaning to him anymore...that is, except for one. There was one which glowed with an evil importance, one that brought the rush of ideas and memories he'd worked so hard to forget, reviving that fateful day which had tortured him all these days and weeks since he found himself alone in the brave new world.

It was half-black, half-white, shaping the silhouette of a menacing figure with glowering eyes, armed with what looked like a large pistol. A name was etched in bold, blood-colored letters at the head of the poster, dominating the feeling of dark vibes which spread goosebumps across his sunburned skin and froze his thick blood into solid ice.

It simply read: AL PACHINO SCARFACE.

And on the bottom, written in the same blood-colored text: COMING SOON.

He was speechless, everything but this poster fading away like so many mirages before. No...it can't be...

Without warning, the eerie silence was shattered by the sudden burst of odd-sounding trumpets. They were playing something like a mock rally call, something that sounds weirdly...80's. Whatever “80's” it was, he knew he never heard anything even remotely like it, not even from before the Event or the monster.

“It will all be over soon...” It was so faint he thought at first it was just his addled mind playing tricks on him.

And then it hit him.

“It will all be over soon...Mordecai,” it hissed mockingly. He could feel it's foul breath inching ever closer to his jugular, picturing the rotted remains of it's jagged teeth tearing through his throat...or worse.

“Sooner than you think.”

N

Everything went to hell pretty fast after that.

“What are you?!! Why are you?!!” He even startled himself with that firm, angry yell. He was also very shaken by the fact that, in some abstract way, he did know. He couldn't put it in words, but somehow, he knew. He knew, in the same way which this demon somehow knew his name, something which he himself had long since forgotten.

It wasn't as startled by the child's scream as it was last night, but it was still enough to make it pull it's corrupted head away from his sudden thrashing. Even now, it still had it's smug, evil grin playing upon it's hidden horror of a face. “I am simply your escort to pain and pleasure before you too shall burn into the fiery depths of Hades.” It quietly slipped it's way back towards the prized 8-track it stashed in the shadows, adjusting the volume to a level where the child would be unable to think properly. In a quiet voice that sounded almost human, it gleefully hissed, “Quiet now, you little b*****d-child, this part of this '86 greatest hit is key to the buildup.”

“We're leaving together...but still it's farewell...”

For just a split second the boy was dumbfounded. '86? What?

The thing only hissed in what he guessed was it's unsettling laughter.

“And maybe we'll come back...to Earth, who can tell?...”

His survival instincts, sharper then they've ever been, even sharper than all those weeks of nightmares and pain out in the lifeless desert, guided him towards salvation. At the very last second, utterly flabbergasted by the sudden rush of what he'd later learn was called adrenaline, he regained the power of movement and leaped out of the way just as a wicked crack of the air itself blasted where the midriff of his spine was not a second too soon.

“Damn!” it growled, aiming the lethal barrel of his salvaged piece towards where he had leaped. “Little rusty, is all.”

“I guess there is no one to blame...we're leaving ground...”

Another monstrous blast resonated across the solemn width and height of the Oriental mausoleum, shattering the section of linoleum where he stood not a moment before. He wanted to get the hell out of here, no sane human being would want to linger in this monster's deathtrap. Even if it meant perishing out in the unforgiving wastelands, that was still far, far better than perishing here in the hands of a homicidal madman. He found the door just as another deafening blast made him topple over, his left leg screaming in unspeakable agony.

“Leaving ground...will things ever be the same again?”

It chuckled at his vain struggles with open amusement. “There's no hope here, boy,” it sneered, walking deliberately towards the wounded child, the ancient Colt .45 locked and loaded for the final curtain. “You'll find that I hold in my hand the only means of escape...”

“It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN!”

“Al Pachino Scarface,” he muttered in a hybrid voice of deep-seated hurt and righteous hatred. He stared coldly into the polarized goggles and merciless barrel that both once belonged to his Father. “I never forgot what you did to my Family...what you did to me!”

It could have killed him here, as it had done with so many wanderers before him, as it did to so many people even before the Event. It could have ended yet another life and done what it likes to the fresh carcass afterward, but when it heard the child speak up against it, it became rather intrigued by the dark meaning behind those words. So he does remember, it thought, smiling sardonically inside. This should make it all the more...interesting.

“The FINAL COUNTDOWN!”

“So soon to blame the messenger, boy,” it yelled over the renewed trumpet solo, glaring upon the frightened, hurting child with something far beyond mere lunacy. “Don't you see that I'm as much a servant to consequence as Stanislav Petrov was in his fatal mistake on Oko? Or with Reagan’s Greek Isles fiasco? Surely D.C., Moscow, and the world would've been spared their Judgment Day had it not been for that simple ideal of consequence, had they stopped to consider the simple rules of cause-and-effect. A real Able Archer 83, if you will.” It could see in an instant that the wounded child didn't even have a single grasp of understanding within his tortured animal's eyes, and smiled darkly with something not unlike prideful superiority.

“But really,” It continued, taking another casual step towards the iron stench of blood. “It all boils down to the repetition of history, which shan’t bother either of us with relevance at this point, yet even now, in this dead, worthless planet, it still governs our actions to this very day.” It leered at him purposefully through the thin fabric of it's makeshift burka, and he could have sworn he saw it's sick, malignant eyes brighten with memories past. “I'm sure your Mommy or Daddy might have told the both of you that, one of these days, perhaps when you were older...or perhaps,” It was literally holding back a bark of laughter with it's free hand, aware that the child's blood had reached the boiling point.

“Perhaps they never will.”

He was blinded with those racing memories which haunted him for so long...the destruction...the screams...the bloodshed...all of it, orchestrated by this heartless, soulless, evil m**********r here today. Al Pachino Scarface, he spat the hated name in his mind, paying no attention to the throbbing pain in his leg nor the paradoxical music nor anything in this world other than the monster who destroyed everyone and everything he'd held so dear to his heart. It was safe to say that the child was no longer completely sane, even before the massacre.

Today, at this hour, he lost his mind entirely.

“OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE LARGER THAN THEY APPEAR!!!” Mordecai screamed. As if by some unbelievable miracle, he stood defiantly on his busted leg and faced his demon for the first and last time. It stood there, momentarily surprised by the sudden outburst of gibberish, it's infected mouth quivering in disdain, it's ghoulish trigger finger itching with the happiness of a warm gun. Before it could raise the deadly barrel of the ancient Colt .45 to blast apart the child's head, Mordecai stepped forward and slapped the gun...his Father's gun...out of the murdering scavenger's grasp, where it skittered across the echoing hall. He barely noticed, much less cared, that Scarface was more than twice as tall and many times stronger than he was. All he needed was a distraction in the form of a precise, solid punch in the thing's gut.

Had it been prepared, things might have taken a different path for this sadistic master of the house (and indeed, it was thinking just now of such a path) before it lost it's breath and a new path was chosen for it. It's phlegm-soaked roar, truly something which not even the worst of men could mimic, overpowered the very senses as it focused all it's attention on regaining it's predatory momentum.

"It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN!!!” The Stereo 8 was still playing this whole time, completely ignored by the only two physical beings in the large room until now, at this very second.

Just as it caught it's breath and vowed to tear the child apart limb from bloody limb, there was a single booming sound, and completely by accident the otherworldly song was permanently stopped. The two figures stood for a moment longer, glaring at each other in the deafening silence...and then, quite suddenly, the taller figure looked down, and fell to it's knees.

It clutched at it's bleeding guts with pale, boiled hands, snarling and growling like an injured pit bull, it's hidden eyes widened with a hint of disbelief. It could feel the stale desert air breeze through the large hole through it's back, right where it's intestines and kidneys were not a moment ago.

Mordecai just stood there, his intense blue eyes covered in mist, the smoking gun held tightly in his shaking hand. He, a mere child, was just as wide-eyed and surprised, if not more so, at the result of his first shot.

It looked upon it's last quarry not with a painful grimace, but with a sly grin. Even now, as it writhed in it's own blood and gore on the linoleum floor, surrounded by the destroyed ruins of Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the ghosts of those it had met before this petulant orphan, it still had the audacity to laugh.

“You think that this deus ex machina saved you, boy?” it whispered init's dying breath. The demon's eyes glowed a fiery red that not even the goggles could shroud. “You think that this is the only form I have, the only world I have...” It chuckled softly, menacingly, until dark red splotches started to stain the fabric over it's horrid mouth. It's rasping breath was slowly fading away into hoarse whispers, while Mordecai continued to stare impassively over the mortally-wounded figure, the monster of his nightmares.

It laughed again, softer this time. “Do what you will, you little b*****d...it doesn't change a damn thing...even now, I know that I shall live on forever, while you shall be destined to rot out in the vast fields of death, while the rats and buzzards shall pick at your forgotten carcass.” It turned it's gaze so that the two were looking deep into each other's souls, metaphorically speaking. “And by then, we shall meet again...Mordecai...”Without warning, it clawed the stolen goggles off it's face and pulled it's burka down until it's entire head was completely revealed.

Mordecai looked back into the horrible abyss of it's lifeless eyes, studying it's gruesome facial features. The thing's expression was so horribly wrong that it defied all logical description. Just yesterday he thought he would've ended up dying in utter terror and madness from such an unholy sight. But today...today was a new day.

Without flinching even once, the young man named Mordecai limped closer to the wretched fiend, and in a voice that was almost at peace, he whispered, “This is for my family.” A final booming noise resonated across the dead theater's lobby, and the monster's evil gaze was no more.

“May you all now rest in peace.”

z

Three weeks had passed since the young man had left the horrors of Los Angeles behind, and his eyes fell upon his next meal. It was a jackalope, a large one resting in the shade of a broken radio tower. The chiseled lumps of it's keratin antlers identified the odd-looking rabbit as an older member of it's recently-evolved species, and a fat, juicy one at that.

Mordecai took another sip of water from his Thermos, relishing the sweet taste of the clear liquid as if it were a mixture of ambrosia and nectar. Since his departure from his near-death experience at what used to be Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the resourceful lad had discovered a treasure trove of food and water (and none of that irradiated s**t, either...well, most of it, anyway) within Scarface's secret quarters and elsewhere on his adventures to get the hell out of the cursed city. He still remembered how he came across his first treasure trove, shortly after the painful struggle of making his own rough draft of a tourniquet with his trusting bandanna. Lucky for him the worst he endured was only minor tissue damage, or what seemed like minor tissue damage...he reflected only briefly whether he would've survived at all with just one leg in this brave new world.

Probably not. Thank God for mutations.

Anyway, as it turned out, that sadistic son-of-a-b***h was also unusually greedy, hoarding every last morsel of subsistence and supplies it had salvaged from it's unfortunate victims, leaving their soiled, mutilated bodies to rot while it feasted upon their hard-earned means of livelihood in this unforgiving land. It had somehow even gotten it's mangy paws upon a highly-coveted bottle of hydrogen peroxide, which ended up burning his wound with brief pain like radioactive hellfire...something he knew all too well about. It had hardly used any of it's piles to survive, oddly enough (since there was more than enough to last anyone several lifetimes...huh...), so he happened to help himself to anything he could carry off in his battered school knapsack and payed respects to those who had gone before him and who may come after him by leaving the rest.

It might have been stupid and downright suicidal in the long run, but there was no way in heaven or hell or anywhere in between he would let another person go through what he did the hard way. Who knows, perhaps someone else after him might actually find his beloved looking glass someday, of which he'd long since lost to the solemn towers and shifting sands. He still missed it dearly, but not as much nowadays. Not since he solved the riddle on that fateful day.

He contemplated all of this as he spied on the jackalope, watching as it's golden fur blew in the desert winds, twitching it's long ears in constant anticipation of danger or food. As he gazed hungrily upon the mutated lagomorph, he realized that he was going through another state of irony; in this case, it really was a “kill or be killed” situation. He really did try to be more righteous about the whole slaughtering of prey business, he really did; after all, the last thing he wanted to be was another morlock raider killing the innocent for petty supplies, or in the case of Scarface, just for kicks. Yet in the end, as his once fresh supply of canned goods dwindled, he found that he wanted to keep going, even if it meant killing some defenseless animal here or there to sustain himself. In retrospect, he accepted the whole “survival of the fittest” as just another means of truckin' on...though it still disturbed him, in some small way, all the same.

I'm not gonna turn into a morlock in due time, am I?

He never had a proper response to this troubling question. He usually just pushed it into the broom closet of his mind...

Not the broom closet! Definitely not the broom closet!

He hated to think of the place where he'd hidden on that horrible day, during that red dawn so very long ago. So instead, he tried to focus on bagging himself some breakfast with his Daddy's old Colt .45, praying to his guardian angels to watch over him until the day he sets off on his final journey to join them. Hopefully he does good enough in his trials of life to earn such a beautiful gift, such a light in this dark tunnel of existence. He took careful aim, moving as silently as a Los Angeles ghost, his finger held lightly on the trigger.

“Don't fear the Reaper,” he whispered, unaware that he was humming the Blue Oyster Cult song under his breath. His trigger finger tightened. The blast was horribly deafening, thundering across the ruined land as the rising sun sent it's red dawn hunting along the endless skies, and further beyond, traveling to realms which we as mere mortals could not possibly comprehend.

Today was a new day.

Author's Note

I'm very interested to know what the readers have to say and think of this short story, just one of many to come.