Monday was our family dinner night, where a few of our partially alienated relatives where invited over for a delicious combination of reheated turkey sandwiches and freezer burnt corn on the cob. Tuesday was the unwelcomed spring cleaning afternoon, where we vacuumed and bitched about the unreachable cobwebs on the porch ceiling. Wednesday was a day of recovery, where we recuperated by watching stale chick-flicks with home salted popcorn.
Lead moved into the street, his old rifle in hand. In the clearing from the thick rubble, he looked skywards, where the grey ash swirled about. He loosened the grip on his weapon, as a small part of it moved aside, and a few beams of light glimmered through. He stared, his eyes squinting even at the bare, weak streams. For a second, he felt it, and he looked away, gripping his rifle with a white-knuckled intensity, slipping into the rubble again.
2 Months Later
My rifle is heavy in my hands, ready to poke a hole in any enemy I see. Enemy, or prey; the distinction has faded. Food is more than scarce, and the only way to eat is to kill. Suddenly, a rock shifted nearby, a beacon. Food! My stomach growled in anger. The ravenous, insatiable hunger clawing at my guts responded to that rock. I slip a bullet into the chamber of the rifle, pushing the cartridge into the barrel with the bolt in one smooth action. It was ready to poke a hole in my meal, to kill it. My 26th bullet was ready.
Around the corner, I snaked my eyes around. A person, a sane, breathing person. It was digging away at the rubble. She! She was a Scavenger, those other people. I stalked slowly, moving with the dead walls and rubble. She was beautiful. Another person, like me, a survivor of the holocaust, here, in this city. She was beautiful, like a fancy gourmet plate or a decorated bowl of stew. Her hair was soft, black, but mangled, hanging over her subtly lovely face that was stained by ashes. She was wrapped in rags and discarded clothes.
I stalked, hugging the wall and the shadows, a bedraggled ugly tiger, stalking the lone white swan. I moved closer. Food! She. I walked, slowly, ready to shoot, but also ready to run and hug and talk. A deer in headlights, a salivating tiger, closer and closer. She, It turned, looking surprised and horrified, and I squeezed the trigger.
An explosion of light, and the bullet ripped the air. She let out a scream,
(No! I shot her, no)
(Ha, that’s why they call me Lead)
and fell, and I ran up, kneeling down, ready to (prepare my meal) help her live. She was on the rubble, lying there, looking neither dead nor alive. She was hit on the arm; thank God it was only a flesh wound,
(damn, need to steady my aim)
she will live. The woman looked up at me. Her eyes were fatally disappointed and miserable. She wasn’t ready to die. My eyes began to water
(too bad you aren’t ready)
as I saw her. “Don’t kill me.” said She. Words! Someone talking to me! Not a bandit or a dead-brained degenerate but a woman who wasn’t angry but wanted to live! I pulled her to me and cried, crying tears built up from years in this corpse in New York.
