A Good Ending

Junkers and Junkies
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

- H.P. Lovecraft ( Call of Cthulhu )

I’m working on a story. The premise is Lovecraftian, but I would like it to have the absurdities of a Vonnegut story. I’m thinking of ideas for an eldritch horror that would be scariest to me. Lovecraft loves to describe a world in which the gods are so indifferent and uncaring to our suffering and that is his concept of supreme horror. I think I can one up him in this aspect. A world ruled by gods who view us as insignificant pests can be scary, but I think living in a universe where the gods are dimwitted and cruel seems more frightening to me. Looking at the scorched earth and crumbled pavement around me, I can belief this to be the retaliation of a supremely stupid eldritch horror.

I have the body of the story down and now I just have to think up a good ending. Here is a little advice for those seeking to perpetuate the dying art of literature; a good ending should catch the reader unaware, but make them realize that this was what the author had been building to all along throwing out tiny allusions and foreshadowing towards the end all throughout the story. A good ending is achieved when the reader sits down afterwards and tries but fails to come up with a better ending of their own. I am hoping to make just that type of story.

The body hung limply in the air. Every now and then, a breeze would blow through and turn the corpse slowly in the air. He had been stripped down to nothing by whoever had done this to him. The body looked like it was only a few days gone. They had carved into his chest the words, “Junkers.” I paused for a moment to wonder if it was meant as an attack on the Junkers or if the Junkers had meant it as a signature for one of their numerous crimes. The perpetrator could have been a little clearer with their intentions.

I go on the assumption that I was in Junker territory. It is the safer of the two assumptions to make. I crouched behind a burnt-out car and scanned the desert lands around me. I saw no signs of anyone watching me, but that doesn’t mean that there was no one out there. I’d survived this long by being cautious and clever. I don’t get into gunfights over foolish things. (Although I do carry an old weathered desert eagle .44 Magnum.) I don’t eat food that looks expired and I move around without drawing attention to myself.

Everyone has their story about the end. Most know it from word of mouth as the first generation to experience it died in the chaotic days that followed. I wasn’t there myself, but almost every one’s story has a similar theme. There was an explosion that lit up the night sky. It reduced buildings to rubble and burned people alive. In the following days, many governments and factions made a mad dash to use their bombs. The world was riddled with towering infernos of death and radiation. Those are the stories that keep getting passed down to us. I have only had one opportunity to see the clues for myself.

There was a world-weary man wandering a broken asphalt road with a cart that was covered up with a tarp. At first I thought he was carrying supplies, but he wasn’t acting like he had anything of value and didn’t even have a weapon to defend himself. When I asked him what he was carrying, he calmly told me that he was carrying the history of the world. It was a bullshit answer, but after agreeing to help him walk to the next town he agreed to show me his ‘history.’

Beneath the tarp was a decrepit old woman. At first I thought she was dead and I was dealing with another psychopath, but then she turned and shielded her eyes from the sun.

The man spoke proudly, “She was there at the big blast. Go on, ask her.”

I knelt down and looked at this elderly woman who looked like she couldn’t have been a day under one hundred years old and asked, “What was it like to see fire in the skies?”

She looked at me for a moment before screeching, “The cakes will be burned!”

I looked at her in confusion before asking her, “What was the world like before all of this?”

“The cakes will be burned!”

I looked at the man with the cart and said, “She has dementia. I doubt she even knows where she is.”

The man scowled, “Damnit Hilda! Stop saying that and start talking. How the hell are we to sell admissions to your story if you keep blathering on about your stupid cakes?”

“How do you even know she was there at the blast site?”

He set down the car, stepped up next to the decrepit woman, and pulled up her sleeve, revealing burn marks in a cross-weaving pattern. They trailed up and down her arms and if I had to hazard a guess, I would assume they covered her entire torso. He said, “As far as I can tell, she was wearing plaid when the bomb fell and the flash reached her.”

I brushed that memory aside along with some strands of my overgrown hair. The last time I actually had the opportunity to see it, my hair looked like a bird’s nest stuffed with brown twigs. Actually the last time I caught my reflection was a few weeks ago as I picked through the ruins of an old hotel on my way towards the coast. I came across a mirror in one of the rooms and my first reaction was to draw my revolver at the unfamiliar face, thinking it were another person. I’m not bad looking; average really. Although some people say I don’t show a lot of emotion in my face, I like to be hard to read.

My tendency to lose focus and get lost in memories is going to kill me one of these days. I haven’t let it kill me yet, but it’s still early. I heard them before I saw them. One of them was actually kicking a can as they walked. I dropped down to the hot and broken asphalt and shimmied underneath the car. I reflexively held my breath and stilled my body. They were coming my way and I didn’t know if these were the people who hung that man naked and carved “Junker,” onto his chest or not. I rather not find out either way. The sound of their approaching grew louder.

They walked right by the car. The one in the lead kicked a can of spam and it clunked along the road. They were talking really loudly and doing nothing to conceal themselves. I counted five pairs of boots. They walked slowly and seemed to be meandering around. One pair of boots stopped at the car and my heart skipped a beat. Had I been discovered?

He grunted to the others, “Gotta drain the main vein, catch up with y’all in a few.”

He clearly had some respect among the others as he received grunts in affirmation and they continued walking. He moved towards the hanging body and gave it a spin. It twisted and turned, he punched it back and forth a few times in an effort to amuse himself.

The man was dirty and covered in sand that stuck to his sweaty and grimy skin. I reasoned that he was on patrol or they were looking for something or someone and had been out in the desert for a few weeks. He’s wearing beat-up clothes and his boots were a size too big. They clunked and shifted as he walked back towards the burnt-out car I was hiding under.

I wondered what he was doing until I heard the sound of liquid hitting metal and trickling down to the road below. He heaved a sigh as he relieved himself and I watched in disgust as the dark yellow liquid began to flow towards me. I steeled myself and fought the urge to gag as it came into contact with my shirt. It smelled and I wanted nothing more than to crawl out from under the car. I only hoped the urine didn’t soak into my clothes and dirty my pad and paper.

He stopped pissing and turned to face his buddies. His body shifted as if he was looking for any signs of them. Once he felt comfortable that he was alone, he dropped down to his knees and fished something out of his pocket. He grabbed a nearby rock and began to grind up the pills. Once he was satisfied with his job, he lowered his head to snort them. In doing so, his head was low enough to see me and we actually locked eyes for a second.

He was one second too slow. My hand shot out and grabbed him behind the nape of his neck. Before he could scream, I pulled him towards the car with all my force. His head thudded against the metal with a sickening crunch. I am not sure if I just scrambled his brains or broke his vertebrae. He fell to the ground, twitching spasmodically. He shuddered for a few seconds before he stilled. He was dead.

I crawled out from under the car and quickly rifled through his pockets. I turned up nothing, but a butterfly knife that was too dull to be of any use. I decided to head off the road before any of his friends decided to come back looking for him. The guy I had killed was a Junker and I am pretty sure his friends were too, which had put me in dire straits. I didn’t want to have to deal with the others. I walked out onto the sand and begin heading north.

That man was a Junker. They called themselves Junkers because their main base of operations was an old junkyard and they liked to think that they ‘would junk you up if you messed with them.’ Everyone called them Junkies because they have a real substance abuse issue. Their leader/dealer did nothing to curtail the real substance abuse issue his group had. I think he allowed it as a means of keeping his men pliable and up for anything. It is truly shocking what people are capable of doing when their brain has been rotted away by years of drugs. The substance of choice varied from Junker to Junker, but the popular choices were stimulants, depressants, and psychotropic drugs. The later two really impaired their abilities, but their constant fixer state of mind made them wild and unpredictable, a dangerous combination for those packing heat.

I remember one time there was this Junker in this bar. He’s twitching and picking at his skin. Kept complaining about the bugs, problem was that there weren’t any bugs in the bar. He’s cranked up on something. He got it in his mind that the bartender had a hive in her skin that was in reality just a pimple. He’s so convinced that he drew a switchblade and began carving into her face. He thought obliterating it would get rid of the bugs in his skin. It took five men to restrain him and two were mortally stabbed in the attempt.

As I walked, I pulled the notepad out of my chest pocket and inspected it. Luckily, it wasn’t too stained. I just needed to leave it out in the sun for a few hours. I had been using this notepad as a means for writing my story. The first couple of pages were reserved for skeleton notes of plot points and the other pages were for the story itself. I am not quite as prolific a writer as Elison, Lovecraft, or Campbell, but I do have my fair share of ideas. I fill up notepads with stories that I store in my knapsack. This latest one might just be my magnum opus.

I scribbled ideas and concepts in my notebook while I walked through the desert. It’s hard to believe that a bomb dropped decades ago would still be capable of inflicting such damage on the land. The initial blast seeded the ground with radiation and caused this desertification. The plants withered and died; they were unable to pollinate or spread their seeds so the land began to erode and eventually became this desert that we live in today. I think that’s what happened at least, I have no way of really knowing, but with my limited education; it seems like a likely result after the bombs fell.

I was so caught up in my thoughts and scribbling that I barely noticed the clothes-wire. I ducked under it and began to weave my way though the sheets and clothes. There was a small shack a couple of yards, but like many of the other houses, it looked like it has been abandoned and fallen into disrepair years ago. I continued walking until I heard the shotgun cocking.

“Take another step and I ruin my bed sheets by blowing through them to waste your sorry ass.”

I slowly raised my hands and told her, “I don’t mean to cause any trouble, I am just passing through.”

She cocked her shotgun again, which was foolish because it had already been pumped so it now ejected a shell, I guess it was for intimidation purposes.

“You armed?”

“Who isn’t?”

She paused before demanding, “Throw your gun on the ground.”

I blew my breath out in a long exhale and answered, “Not going to happen.”

She snapped, “What?!” In the time it took for her to respond, I drew my .44 and pointed it at her shadow through the bed sheets.

I told her, “I am not going to drop my weapon and I hope you will keep yours up as well. I want to have this talk on even grounds. I am just passing through; I would like a place to stay for the night. I have some things to trade for that privilege.”

I watched her shadow lower her weapon and I paused a few seconds before dropping my magnum. She stepped forward and pulled the sheet away. She’s an older woman. If I had to guess, I would say she was around sixty years old. Her hair was beginning to grey, but her face showed enough wrinkles and crow’s feet to indicate she has dealt with a lifetime worth of stress.

She asked the question, I’ve heard all of my life, “What do you have?”

I respond with the answer I’ve given all my life, “Not a lot.”

She smiled at me and said, “I think we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

I was immediately wary when she began cooking a meal for us. I wasn’t concerned she’s going to poison me or anything like that. I just had the sinking suspicion that the ‘arrangement’ was going to be more trouble than it’s worth. I mean why else would she have tried to soften me up with a home-cooked meal? She heated a can of beans and added in some curry. The real treat was the bread she had been baking in the oven outside her house. She had set a metal barrel long-ways under some stones and built a fire below it. It was a make-shift oven but it did the job.

She ate very little, but she watched me tear into the meal with a small smile playing across her lips. I sopped up the beans with the bread and ate them ravenously. I knew my stomach was going to ache afterwards, but I didn’t care. I knew that I was playing right into her hands, but it had been a few weeks since I had eaten anything cooked and piping hot so I didn’t really care. You can’t risk building a fire out on the road for fear of attracting unwanted attention. She didn’t say much while I ate. It was only after I finished that she began talking.

She spoke, “You seem like the type of person who probably has seen their fair share of fights.”

“I have, but I am more a fan of avoiding-”

She interrupted, “I don’t need someone to fight for me, quite the opposite. I need someone who can retrieve something for me.”

I had been tasked a couple of times to retrieve stolen or soon-to-be stolen items in exchange for payment. I questioned, “What do you want me to retrieve?”

She looked me dead in the eyes and said, “My daughter.”

This was already shaping up to be more trouble than it was worth. I began, “Look, I’m no tracker. Even if I could, I couldn’t convince a runaway-”

“She didn’t run away, she was taken by those goddamn Junkers a couple of weeks ago.”

The request goes from bad to worse.

“I feel for you, I do, but there isn’t much I can do. You know they can’t be reasoned with and chances are she’s already gone.” She smacked me.

The old woman snarled, “She’s a tough girl, there ain’t no way she’s dead. The two of us live out here by ourselves, we gotta be tough. Are you going to help me or not?”

“I can’t. I don’t know where she is and even if I did, how would I get her? Just waltz up to them and try to reason with the Junkies?”

“I know where they are holed up and I can get you in there without them ever knowing.” She replied.

“Even then it’s way too risky.”

She blew out a deep breath and said with desperation, “I can make it worth your while.”

I tried to kill the conversation, “I have enough money to get by and if I wanted more I could pick up a few odd jobs-”

“I have food. Enough to probably get you where you’re heading.”

That shut me up.

She continued talking, “You look like the migrant type, where ya heading? Nah, it doesn’t really matter, probably think you’re going someplace better. I got enough food to get you there.”

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Let me see it.”

“Don’t trust ya.”

I asked, “How do I know this ain’t a bunch of shine?”

She pointed towards a safe and said, “Why do you think I went through all the trouble of dragging a safe from the ruins out here to the middle of God’s asshole?”

“Show me the food or no deal.”

“I’m not stupid, you’ll get your food once you bring her back. I show you it now and all I’ll get is a bullet in my head. You pull through and I’ll give you enough food to travel for a week.”

“Two weeks.”

“Deal.”

“How do I get into the camp?”

Her eyes were shining like diamonds as she said, “The Junkers have a small group holed-up nearby in the school, you know what a school is right?”

“I’ve read quite a bit about them, about the world from before.”

“An educated boy huh? That’s good, maybe you’ll actually live to get the reward. I scavenged the place before they settled in. I found a key that can unlock the side doors to the building.”

I asked the question that needed asking, “What happens if she’s dead?”

She looked like wanted to smack me again, but instead answered, “She has this locket, she drew a picture of me inside it. Bring it back to me as proof. You’ll get your payment, but don’t expect me to throw you a Goddamn parade for it.”

She insisted on taking me to the building. It was a good five-mile walk and by the time we reached it, the sun had set. She brought along a .22 hunting rifle. It was worn, but looked like it was in good enough condition to fire accurately. Most of the school’s windows had been shattered and replaced with boards. It is run-down, but not as bombed-out as the rest of the buildings surrounding it. I could make out a few Junkers sluggishly patrolling its perimeters.

She said, “There are fifteen classrooms, five on every floor. If you’re quiet, you can probably find her and get out before they’re any wiser. Personally, I’d be willing to double your pay if you murder every son-of-a-bitch in there.”

I shook my head and told her, “I’m going to get in there and out, getting trig will get me killed.”

She huffed and I knew that she was genuinely disappointed with my decision. I watched the guards drunkenly walk their routes for a while. I counted silently in my head to see how long the side door would be unattended for. I had about one hundred and eighty seconds to get in through the side door.

I told the old woman to leave, but I doubted that she would. There was no way she was going anywhere with her daughter’s return so close at hand. I just had to hope she wouldn’t draw any attention to herself. I bided my time until the guards were out of sight and then I slipped into the decrepit school through the side door. I was now in the school.

The hallways were cluttered with cans, syringes, and trash. As much as I didn’t like the concept of walking barefoot in that, I needed to be quiet. I undid the laces of my boots and set them by the door. Boots make noise and noise would get me shot. I walked slowly and carefully down the hall, listening for any signs of life and trying to avoid stepping on anything that would make noise or injure me in any way. All around me were the sounds of people snoring and my heart threatening to beat its way through my chest.

The first floor seemed to be where everyone slept. I assumed that the leader was asleep on the third floor and anything of value would be kept up there too. I assumed that they had nothing of any real value other than enough drugs to sedate a small army. I didn’t want to spend any more time in here than I had to. While I crept through the hallways, one of the doors swung open and I froze in place.

He rubbed his eyes as he walked down the hallway and that is the only reason why I am still alive. He shuffled down the hallway and I began to slowly stalk after him. He was trying to be quiet, which meant that he was up to something that he didn’t want anyone else to know about. Every step resulted in him shaking and twitching. I don’t know how long he’d been using, but I do know that it had probably irreversibly damaged his nerves. I drew my gun just in case. He climbed the stairs and I paused at the bottom and waited for him to reach the top before continuing onward.

I reached the top of the stairs just in time to see him disappear into a room. I take my time to reach the door, I didn’t want to barge in and risk him getting the drop on me. The air smelled of cooking meat. It was an old scent, but it was still there. I felt my mouth beginning to water and I prayed my stomach wouldn’t start to rumble. I cautiously put my ear to the door and listened. Emanating from within the room was the sound of flesh striking flesh and an animalistic grunting.

I cracked open the door. His back was turned towards me and his pants were around his ankles. He was having some sort of liaison and was trying to keep it secret. This was going to be easier than I thought. I slipped quietly into the room. He was too preoccupied and didn’t even notice me until my left arm wrapped around his neck and my right pushed his head forward, effectively cutting off his breathing. He gave a startled choke and tried to struggle free. He pushed against me and tried to build up momentum to slam me against the wall, but I kicked the back of his leg and dropped him into a kneeling stance. It was then that I noticed the girl.

She was lying on a table, at least what was left of her. Her arms and legs were gone. Where the limbs used to be terminated in four large burns. The limbs were hacked away sloppily and seared shut to keep her from bleeding out. She was semi-clothed and there was a pendant around her neck. She looked dully up at the ceiling and I had no idea if she was alive or not. The man continued to struggle. My grip tightened. He feebly tried to writhe free. I continued to apply pressure. After a few moments, he went limp. I kept him in a head-lock. He sank to the ground and I sank down with him. He was clearly unconscious. I kept choking.

After a few moments, I stood up and looked over the corpse. His eyes were bloodshot and a bruise had already formed on his neck. He’s dead. Suddenly the pieces all clicked into place. The smell, this room smelled like cooking meat. The girl’s missing and cauterized limbs. The twitchy way they move. They weren’t just raping her; they were eating her. It wasn’t fast either. They were chewing her apart piece by piece and keeping her alive to keep the meat fresh. I wanted to wretch, but I knew the sound might give me away.

The girl’s head lolled back and forth. She was delirious and as I looked at her, I knew that she’s too far-gone. She may survive this, but she would never live again. She had been taken beyond the breaking point and that which is broken can never be pieced back together. I remembered her mother’s words and realized that she had probably been like this for weeks. I approached her exposed body and draped a nearby blanket over her body. This wasn’t out of a sense of modesty. I could no longer bear to look at her bruised, scratched, and burnt form.

I needed to get her necklace as proof for her mother. I reached over her and unclasp the necklace. In that instant, her eyes opened and met with mine. I wish I could turn a poetic phrase like ‘her amber eyes regarded me with such unfathomable sadness that my heart ached’, but to be truthful, her eyes weren’t pools of sadness. When I looked into them, I saw nothing, no recognition, no acknowledgement, and that frightened me more than anything. I opened the locket and looked at the picture. It was a picture of the older woman. She looked younger in the drawing, she looked happier.

The broken girl began to feebly moan through her cracked and parched lips. It started off low and quiet, but steadily grew in intensity. As I listened to that moaning, I knew that there was nothing I could do. Watching man’s inhumanity towards man is more terrifying than any Lovecraftian eldritch god. I took out my pen and began to scribble a note to myself. That was a perfect example. I had to capture the inspiration before it was wrested from my grasp. I wrote in my notepad as the sounds of her moaning and groaning grew in intensity and the sound of boots tromping down the hallway grew closer.

Favors and Finality
"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.”"

- Phillip K. Dick ( Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? )

I tried to jot a few more notes, but at this point the girl has stopped wailing and has started ranting.

“This can’t be happening! This isn’t me! I have to go back to sleep. I have to go back to sleep! This can’t be who I am. I have-”

She talked like someone who had just realized a terrible mistake had been made, a horrible and irreversible miscalculation. She was making too much noise and was going to draw them to us. She was about to get me killed; I had to do it. I moved quick and without hesitation. I wrapped my hands around her throat and she gurgled in response.

I wish her eyes reflected some semblance of relief to be put out of her misery, but they only conveyed horror. To her emotionally scarred mind, there was no difference between my touch and a Junker’s. She saw no difference between us and maybe she was right. I came out here not out of concern, but for the promise of a reward. Her stubs jerked and flailed in the air, but she was unable to defend herself. To me, she was nothing but an objective on the way towards my reward. She gurgled and tried to breathe through my tight grip. She expired quickly and that was when the Junker entered the room.

I whirled on him while drawing my .44 magnum. I had it aimed at his head before he could even raise his handgun and level it at my head. He had managed to draw it out of his pants, but it was not pointed anywhere near me. The gun was angled mid-way between the floor and me. He realized that any attempt to raise it higher would not end well for him. The decision not to raise it any higher than it already was, was the only thing that kept him from being shot on the spot.

There were a few seconds of stunned silence that passed between him and me. This was not what he was expecting when he came in here. He was on the make and now he’s staring down the barrel of my gun. There was a look of confusion as he tried to piece together how a mysterious stranger could materialize before him so late at night. His eyes lit up as he realized that I was an intruder who has snuck into his camp and that he has to alert everyone to my presence. He opened his mouth to scream and I saved him the trouble.

My gun shattered the silence of that place.

Five.

The bullet didn’t really punch a hole in his head as much as it completely obliterated one side of his face sending flecks of blood out spattering the wall behind him. He pirouetted and reflexively squeezed the trigger of his handgun. It dry fired with a resounding click. He didn’t even have bullets loaded in the damn thing. Resources must really be spread out if they couldn’t even provide their followers with a means to defend themselves. The silence following the roar of my hand-cannon lasted only a second before the alarmed cries of the Junkers began to ring out.

I had to get out of there. I had wanted a few moments to explore the ruins of the school and maybe pick up some literature, but that moment has passed. I grabbed the necklace and headed out. I ran out into the hallway, there was no point in trying to be quiet now that have I woken up every junked-up asshole in the place. I headed towards the stairs, but I heard the sound of approaching feet coming towards the stairs. I was going to have to improvise an exit. I ran to the nearest window just as a Junker crossed my path to intercept me. He had a sharpened bit of metal in his hand and a vicious smile like he had cornered a rat.

I charged towards him while leveling my gun at his face. Instead of getting out of my way, the drug-addled cannibal raised his hands to shield his face as if his hands were capable of deflecting bullets. Instead of shooting, I used my built-up momentum and kicked him as hard as I could in the chest. The sound of my foot hitting his chest without a boot gave off a heavy meaty-sounding slap. I heard his ribs crack as he was knocked through the glass window. He tried to grab at the sides of the window, but his hand sliced into broken glass and he fell. He plummeted fifteen feet and landed on the cement directly on his back. I grimaced as I realized that this was probably my only way out.

I used the sleeve of my shirt to brush away the glass stabbing out from the broken window. Once it was clear, I sat on the edge and looked down at how far I had to drop. I realized my idiocy when I spotted the dead Junker on the alley street. The impact snapped his head back and cracked his skull open on the street. Blood was dribbling out from the crack, but he was already dead. I heard the sound of boots behind me and I turned my head just in time to hear a loud bang!

The hallway erupted in a bright flash and I swear I heard the bullet tear through the air near my head. I was lucky that he didn’t stop running to shoot at me or he might have actually hit me. The bullet strayed wide and buried itself into the brick wall behind me. I had no time to return fire or steel myself for what I had to do to get out of the school. I had no time to let him plant his feet and take aim. It was now or never. I took a deep breath and shoved myself from off of the windowsill of the second story floor.

I tried my best to land with my legs slightly bent and on the source of least resistance. The flesh sunk in as my feet stomped into him. I rolled off, trying to reduce impact as much as I could, but I still felt a stab of pain shoot up my legs. It would have been better if I had been wearing my boots, but I had to be quiet when I originally snuck into the school. I began heading back towards the entrance in an attempt to reclaim my boots, but the Junker who took a shot at me poked his head out of the window and screamed:

“He’s out in the alley!” My opportunity to reclaim what was mine had passed.

I aimed my gun at the window the man had poked his head out of and fired a round. The bullet ricocheted off the bricks close-by and he ducked inside to get out of my line of sight.

Four.

I took off towards the street. Halfway through the alley, the door burst open and Junkers began to swarm out into the alley like angry ants. Some were still pulling up their pants and were in varied states of undress. They were working at drawing their guns out of their pants. I kept running and managed to turn the corner before shots rang out.

I jumped over the corpse of one of the sentries. A quick glance at the man revealed that he had been shot through the throat. He had bled out within seconds and I imagined him clutching at his throat trying to vocalize his shock. The woman had realized that I was going to have to shoot my way out and she sniped the nearest guard. I would have run right into an ambush if it wasn’t for her. Chances were she didn’t even do it for me, but for her daughter. I felt guilty that I was bringing her such bad news. Even up to the very end, she kept the hope that she was alive bright in her chest. I was going to extinguish that light.

The old woman had heard the commotion and had posted up behind a rusted car. She was dug in and ready to cover my escape. She saw me running towards her and all the pieces in the puzzle clicked together. I was alone and the locket was swinging back and forth in my hand. She let out a wail that brought back the horrible memory of the limbless girl who I had put out of her misery on the second floor. There was nothing in her eyes except hatred and ire. She stepped out from behind her cover and aimed the hunting rifle down the street at the advancing Junkies and started to shoot.

I heard them crying out behind me as her bullets found their targets. A few shot back at her, but as they didn’t stop to plant their feet to aim, their shots went wide. She mechanically drew the bolt back and continued firing into them without any cover or caution. I reached her position and took cover behind a car as a few bullets zinged past my head. I peeked over the car just in time to see another Junker catch a bullet in the stomach. She wasn’t looking to instantly kill them, she wanted them to suffer. She was leaving those closest to us gut-shot. The Junker’s have begun to take cover and it wouldn’t be long before they mustered up the courage to formulate a counter-attack. We needed to leave.

I drug the old woman into cover and shouted, “We need to leave now!”

She snarled, “Not until every single one of them is dead! They’re going to pay for what they did.”

I have no other choice. Her actions were going to get both of us killed. I smacked her. Hard. It would have left a red mark on her face had it not already been so flushed with unbridled rage. While it didn’t do much to bring her to her senses, it allowed me to take advantage of her stunned state to pull her away and start running for safety. Behind me I could hear them shouting out her name and I realized how screwed we truly were.

She tried to snatch her hand out of my grasp, but my grip was so tight that I was certain it was cutting off her circulation and would most definitely leave a bruise. I drug her behind me. She tried to ground her feet and hold ground, but I kept pulling at her and setting her off balance. She tried to raise the hunting rifle with her free hand and fire as if the blind rage and hatred were sufficient things to steady her aim and guide her bullets. The kickback from hunting rifle was too much and the gun fell from her hand and onto the street. I kept pulling her along. There was no time to turn back with those Junkers following us.

I could hear them behind us shouting, “You’re fuckin’ dead, you old bitch!”

She cried out, telling me to let her go back so she could retrieve her gun, but I knew that that was no longer an option. I could tell that the Junkers were heading back to the school in order to muster up their forces so they could assault the old woman’s house and make her pay for setting me loose among them. We only had an hour or so to get back to the house and get out of there.

After a few blocks, my feet were sore, but I had no option of stopping. My boots were still at the school. We were a good four miles from the house and I already knew that my feet were going to be covered in blisters and bloody by the time we got there. I shut the pain out of my mind and attempted to recite one of the stories from the books that we used to have at the library when I was growing up. It took my mind off the pain, but it didn’t do much to quell the feeling in my stomach.

A mile later the woman had calmed down enough that I was able to let go of her hand. I was certain that her drive to rush back to the Junker’s hideaway and obliterate her sadness in a hail of bullets had now subsided. Our frantic escape had left me winded. She slowed down to a brisk walk and I was grateful for that. The sweat in my socks had mixed with the blood and produced a stinging sensation in my feet. My heart was still thumping away heavily in my chest. The pain kept me moving. She looked down at her feet and refused to meet my gaze. After what I had seen in the school, I didn’t feel much like talking either.

We walked in silence until we got back to the house. She rummaged around in the back for a bit before she returned with a pair of boots that looked like they were about the same age as me.

She announced, “A trade. You tell me what those Goddamn Junkies did to my little girl and I’ll give you these boots. They won’t be the best fit, but I’m sure you can manage with them until you find a better pair. I don’t want you here any longer than you have to be.”

I am not a cruel man. She wanted the ugly details of her daughter’s final weeks. The cruelest thing I could think of to do would be to tell her in painful detail how they had amputated her arms and legs and were eating her slowly. Biting into her bit my bit. The cruelest thing would be to tell her how they had been using her for weeks and how her daughter had become a mindless broken shell of a person; masticating and molesting her until nothing remained. I felt like I have to re-iterate, I am not a cruel person. I am just a person in need.

I opened the locket and looked at the woman that had been sketched inside. The girl had quite a bit of talent. The drawing was detailed, but now the woman depicted inside this locket looks nothing like the woman that stood before me now. Her body looked like it had sunken in on itself and she looked enervated, from both extreme exhaustion and loss. Her once proud features were downcast and browbeaten. I had to tell her something. I decided to tell her the truth.

I slid the locket across the table, “You don’t want to know what happened to her. You want to remember her like this. You want to remember her as the strong girl who spent hours sketching this. Not as what I found in that place.”

The woman’s eyes welled up with tears and she spat, “Goddamn you.”

She thrust the boots at me and began to work opening the safe to give me my reward.

I pressed the sole to my foot and realized it was going to be too small for me. I reached into a pocket, drew my knife, and began cutting away at the boot. I loosened up the sides and cut a slit into the toe. This would get me to the next establishment and then I would have to find something more permanent. The old woman was working with the dial lock on the safe, but she was having a difficult time seeing through her tears. The leather of the boots had hardened and I had to saw at them with my knife to make room for my feet. I slid on the boots and took a few steps around the room. These boots would get me a good couple of miles before they became more of a hindrance than a help.

The woman had managed to get the safe open. The lock disengaged with a large ‘’clunk’’. She cranked the handle and popped the safe open. She started to speak with an obvious sadness in her voice that she was desperately trying to conceal from me:

“It may not be much-”

I made it quick. I raised the timeworn .44 and shot her in the back of the head before she could even react.

Three.

She fell forward onto the safe before slumping to the ground. She twitched and writhed on the ground for a few seconds shaking tiny droplets of blood free from the newly made hole in her head. She was dead before she could even piece it all together. I am not a cruel man; it was a kindness that I did. Those Junkers would have caught up to her eventually and the fate she would have suffered would have been worse than death. I am not cruel. I kept lying to myself. However, a kind man would not have planned this from the very start.

The safe didn’t contain much. There were five or six cans of preserved food.

The old lady was shining me after all.

I would be able to get to the next town if I ate sparingly. I swept them into my knapsack. I looked over the rest of the house, but other than a few small items, I found nothing of real value. Her only weapon was the hunting rifle that now lay abandoned on the street near the school. I replenished my canteen of water and took a long swig. It did little to assuage the feeling in my stomach.

I would have liked to spend more time poking through everything to see if there was anything else of value, but I knew that time was limited. They were coming. They had probably returned back to their base of operations and got themselves armed to the teeth. In a matter of hours they would be swarming over this place and I couldn’t be here when they arrived.

I was back on the road an hour later. I imagined the Junkers were fuming at finding the old woman dead, but by the time they would be able to get the word out and start organizing a search for me, I would be long gone. My knapsack would be enough to get me to the nearest town and the boots would get me most of the way there, even if they flopped around loosely with every step. As I walked, I thought of the perfect ending. I think of how the author should allude to the end, but still craft the story so that it catches the reader off-guard. The story I am writing has a fairly good base, but the perfect ending is far off. I kept walking.

The Stars in the Mine Shaft
"“We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.”"

- Clive Barker ( Books of Blood )

The last can dropped to the sand with a hollow sound. My old .44 rocked back and forth in its holster and tapped a cadence against my hip as I walked through the wastes. I held the last morsel of food up to my mouth and chewed it slowly, savoring the last bit of food I would have until I made my way to a town. I swallowed the final bite hoping it would satiate me, but still I felt hungry. Off in the distance, I heard a dark, feminine laugh. I ignored it. She wasn’t a real threat to me, physically at least.

Days later and I was still in the sands. My stomach had stopped rumbling a few hours ago and now just throbbed painfully. I had read once in a book that after a while the built-up acid begins to digest the stomach lining. I didn’t believe that at first, but as I walked through the desert with gastric juices sloshing around in my stomach, I had begun to reconsider my stance.

On the fifth day, I stumbled into an old town. It was basically composed of lean-tos and ram-shackled shacks. I searched the few buildings and only succeeded in kicking up decades old dust and tearing down cobwebs that looked as if they had been spun to trap a person. This place had been picked clean and whatever was left behind was ravaged by the inexorable passage of time. One odd thing I noticed was the lack of dead. There were no mummified remains or bones picked clean by scavengers. I was about to leave when I spotted the mineshaft.

It was right in the middle of town. This was clearly a mining town. I approached the lean-to that covered the descent. I stood on the precipice and stared into that immutable darkness and weighed my options. The mine had probably not been explored by scavengers, which meant that there might be something down there. I was tempted to keep walking through the desert in hopes of finding a new town, but I knew the chances of that were slim. Behind me, the manic sound of a woman laughing bubbled up. I made my choice and entered the mine.

I proceeded unhindered for about twenty feet. The setting sun cast its last dying light into the mine and provided enough illumination for me to see. As I continued my descent, the rays of light weakened until I was too deep to be reached. I moved my hand to my pocket and felt for the box of matches that I carried with me. I still had them, but I refrained from using them as any bright light would leave me blind in the darkness when the phosphorus burned out. I moved slowly and let my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.

The sides of the mine had been reinforced with steel to prevent cave-ins and had been arc-welded together. Judging from the poor quality of the homes above, this mine had been build before the big blast. The town had been built around it. My eyes had adjusted enough that I could see a couple of feet in front of me. The air was stagnant and I felt like I was wading into a miasma. I went deeper into the all-encompassing darkness.

After a few minutes of walking, the path leveled out and I reached a flat area. The air was now heavier than before and it seemed even darker if that was possible. I turned around and looked up the path I had come down. Either the sun had just completely set or I was too deep to even see the light stretching down into the abyss. I continued searching for something salvageable to tide me over until I could reach the next town.

I followed the winding, serpentine-esque tunnel. I wasn’t sure how deep t went, but at that moment, I felt like it might descend to the depths of the earth’s core itself. The path was tortuous and intersected and looped in on itself a number of times like an Ouroborus. It would be incredibly easy to get lost in the depths of the mines. I proceeded through the meandering mines.

The silence of that place was unsettling. In an attempt to dispel my unease, I coughed into my hand and sent the echoes reverberating all around me. It sounded like the coughing echo was coming at me from all angles, surrounding me. I continued walking and it seemed like my environment kept getting darker and darker. I had truly begun to regret my decision to enter the mine in search of supplies to scavenge.

I walked for what felt like hours before I reached the bottom. Much to my disappointment, the mine terminated in a dead end. I had hoped that I would come across the townspeople who had retreated into the mine for safety. I had assumed that was the reason why I hadn’t seen any remains up in the town. There were no graves, no skeletons, no sign that there had been anyone there at all except the lean-tos. Where had they gone?

I took a step forward and kicked something, it bounced once across the ground and stopped. It was cylindrical in shape, but in the darkness I couldn’t make it out. I pulled out the matches and I felt my heart begin to beat faster. I struck the phosphorus and briefly illuminated the mine with light. Before I even lit the match, I knew what I was going to find. I knew what it would be, I just wished that I was wrong for once. My match lit up dozens of bones. There were femurs, ulnas, skulls, and rib-bones. They were all human and they all showed signs of having been gnawed at.

''I guess I now know what happened to the townspeople. I have to get out of here.''

The match went out with a hiss and I could have sworn that the sound came from all around me. I turned around and began to head out. From behind me, I could hear her amongst the bones. She laughed as I fled the mine and tried to find my way back to the surface. She chortled as I tried to remember which tunnels and turns I took. She snickered at me as the realization dawned on me that this mineshaft might very well become my grave.

Hours later and I knew I was lost. I had accidentally backtracked to the dead end that houses the remains of the townspeople. It was then that I became desperate. I stood with my back to the bones and lit another match. I watched as the flame sputtered in the darkness and shifted towards me. The wind from the opening was blowing so lightly that I couldn’t feel it, but as long as I had matches, I could keep heading towards the wind and the opening of the mine.

It was a long and trying process, but I steadily made progress. My box of matches was slowly dwindling, but I had enough to get me out of this underground sepulcher. I had only one or two left. As I walked, the air grew lighter and my spirits started to lift. I was almost out. The sudden brightness from my match had robbed my eyes of the ability to see in the dark. I stumbled in the darkness, but didn’t want to wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I wanted out of this mine as soon as possible.

The ground leveled out and in my excitement, I gazed upward. Above me, there were thousands of stars. I had never been so excited to see the before in my life. At that very moment, they symbolized my salvation and escape from the labyrinthine-sepulcher that housed the gnawed down remains of the small mining town. Something chewed at my brain, but I brushed it away. I only cared about getting out of there.

I started to walk forward, but something made me freeze in my tracks and turned my blood cold. It was a voice. She laughed her haunting, feminine laugh that I never heard when she was alive before she asked:

''“There’s something wrong here. There’s something just a bit off. Aren’t the stars beautiful tonight?”''

It couldn’t be her. I had killed her. A .44 bullet to the back of the head was enough to kill anyone. Even if she had survived, there would be no way she would be up and walking around, much less talking. I had thought the echoing laughter was my subconscious torturing me for my actions, but this, this was one shade of fucked up too much for me. As if my head was on a string that her voice controlled, I craned my neck upward and looked at those stars twinkling in the sky. It was in that moment that I realized something was wrong.

There was something wrong with the stars. They were phasing in-and-out of existence. One second they would be there and then they would be gone. I watched in befuddled wonder as they would vanish and then reappear seconds later. The night sky was a panoply of tiny stars blinking out of existence and blinking back in. The horrifying realization dawned on me in one terrifying moment. Those weren’t stars.

I should have realized it sooner. It must have been the fact that I had been wandering around the cave for a few hours and the disorienting darkness that discombobulated me. I hadn’t even realized that I had reached the plateau that was before the opening of the mine. There was no conceivable way that I could have been looking at the stars from the place. I was right. They weren’t stars; they were eyes, and they were drawing closer to me.

They moved slowly along the ceiling of the mine, as if wary that the slightest lurch in movement might cause me to run from their impending ambush. I watched the eyes as they blinked and stalked slowly in tandem with me. They weren’t just watching me; they were hunting me. I needed to get out of there this very instant. I turned to where the ground sloped upwards towards my freedom and that was when I saw a dozen eyes waiting for me on the ground in front of me a few feet away.

I needed to see what I was going up against. I slowly reached into my pocket so as not to startle the creatures or provoke them. I fished out my second-to-last match and held the head to the striking pad. I took a deep breath and struck it. The match roared to life and bathed the mine in a bright flash. It illuminated the things and in that moment, I could do nothing but scream.

The creature froze as soon as the match lit. Its body was vaguely humanoid and its appendages terminated in powerful claws, which was how it could move on the mine’s ceiling. Its flesh was grey, sinewy, and powerful looking. The most disturbing feature were its eyes. It had over a dozen eyes randomly placed around its head. The match went out with a hiss and the creature hissed back with its slit-like mouth through needle-sharp teeth. That was terrifying enough, but what really made me scream was the figure standing behind the creature.

She smiled at me from her place in the shadows. Her top row of teeth had been displaced by the bullet passing through it. As she slightly shifted, droplets of blood spilled from the hole. The match went out and plunged us all back into darkness. While I stared in abject horror, the beast took advantage of my dumb-struck state and lunged forward. I raise my left hand to shield myself from the oncoming attack. Its teeth sank into my palm and it began tearing at me. I roared in anger and struck at its head with my free hand.

My hand impacted on its head with a meaty thud, but it held tight and continued to shake back-and-forth. I groped in the darkness and jammed my thumb into the small light I could make out. The monster roared at having one of its eyes put out and released my hand. In response to the fiend’s cry, the others hissed in response. The sibilant sound reverberated through the cave. I heard them drop down all around me and I knew I had to get out of there.

I took off running and I heard commotion behind me as they gave chase. I hazarded a glance back and I saw almost one hundred eyes stalking after me. I drew my gun as I sprinted upwards. I caught a glimpse of light ahead of me. I hadn’t realized how long I had been wandering around disoriented in that tunnel. The sun had already risen. I ran towards the light as the thundering approach of the creatures drew ever closer behind me.

My surroundings slowly brightened and I could see how dire my situation had become. The creatures were now just inches away from me. I could hear their hisses and their claws digging for traction in the old mine shaft. I felt one claw scrape against my clothes just as I was feet away from the light. I threw myself out into the light of day hoping the creatures wouldn’t pursue me.

I heard them hissing angrily through their needle-like teeth. I turned towards the opening to the mine shaft and saw their multitude of eyes glaring at me from the darkness. The eyes parted as one creature bounded out to continue its assault. I was prepared this time. It slammed into me and knocked me on my back. It towered over me and as it raised up its sharpened claw to finish me off, I raised my gun and shot it through the bottom of its jaw through the top of its head.

Two.

It slumped backwards and I aimed the .44 at the other creatures watching me from the darkness. They hissed at me and I roared back. The small reflective pinpricks of light that were their eyes vanished one after the other until there were none left. They had returned to their lair. A sudden feeling of relief washed over me, but it was quickly replaced by wooziness. In the excitement, I had forgotten about the bite wound I had suffered. I raised my left hand to look at the damage and I almost swooned.

What was left of my hand was in shreds. The cave-dweller’s bite pierced through my palm. When it shook its head back and forth while my hand was trapped between its incisors, it ripped my pinkie and ring finger free. My middle finger was hanging on my left hand by a few fleshy strands. I clamped my right hand over the wound and applied pressure to staunch blood-loss. I would need to cauterize this or risk bleeding out.

I stumbled into the lean-to and gathered up kindling and smashed a few chairs for wood. I built the fire quickly and propped my knife on the edge so the blade was in the flames. I looked over my wounded hand and the remains of my fingers. I looked over at the creature and saw the blood dripping from its mouth. The teeth finally caught my attention. They were rotted and the gums around them were beginning to succumb to sepsis. Cauterizing the wound would do no good. I would die of infection before I could reach the next town. I had to take more drastic measures.

I pulled the knife away from the fire, cautious not to burn myself. I wrapped my belt around my forearm to staunch the blood flow and act as a tourniquet. I took a deep breath and started cutting away the flesh to prevent the infection from spreading.

The pain was like a scalding poker driven directly into my brain. I wanted nothing more than to pass out, but knew that if I did, I would most likely never wake up as a result of exsanguination. I would bleed to death if I didn’t do what was necessary before it was too late. I dredged up old memories to give myself something else to focus on while I continued my grisly task.

''I remember the sun-kissed hair that I wanted to hold close to me, but knew I couldn’t. I knew that such a thought was aberrant, but still.''

The blade sawed back and forth and my flesh bulged and strained against the belt I had wrapped around my forearm. I had bitten through the belt, but I still clenched my teeth together in a rictus of a ghastly grin as I continued my painful work.

I remember the words spoken in the darkness of the night, “How can I love someone when I can’t even love myself?”

“I love you as you are.”

I was almost through it, but the hardest part was just about to begin. There was still the bone.

I remember chaste kisses stolen in the night away from prying eyes.

I worried the flesh, feeling it tear away from the bone.

''I remember proclamations of love and our desire to flee out into the world away from out cloistered life. I remember losing my nerve and staying behind the walls.''

I worked the knife in-between the bones and twisted it to create a gap.

I remember them throwing the head over the ramparts while hearing the bellowing laugh.

I tore it free and my recently amputated left hand dropped onto the sand. I am now crying, but am unsure if it is from the memories or the pain. I pressed my stump into the flames and seared the wound shut. I pulled it back to look where my hand used to be. It didn’t look pretty and I was sure as hell going to miss my left hand.

But it’s better than dying from an infected bite.

While I cleaned the blood off my knife, I stared transfixed at what was once my appendage. I sheathed my knife and stood up. I was woozy, but had managed to cauterize my wound so I wouldn’t risk passing out. I felt like shit, but I would survive. My stomach begged to differ and it rumbled out its response. I realized that I was still on the verge of starvation.

My left hand, or where my left hand had been, throbbed painfully. It felt like I had clenched it so tight that my no longer present nails were digging into my palm. I didn’t have enough energy to make it to the next town. I would die out there in the desert if I attempted to leave without finding something to eat. I knew what I had to do. I unsheathed my knife and drug the corpse of the fiend closer to the smoldering remains of my fire.

I set to work. Skinning the thing was the hardest part. My knife was beginning to dull, I would have to sharpen it when I next got the chance. I won’t say that I didn’t take some sick satisfaction out of butchering the creature that mauled and mangled my hand, I prepared the meat and built up the fire. I would cook a little and make jerky out of the rest. I built a small rack and slug strips of meat over the fire. I had about half a day to smoke the jerky before I needed to leave. The jerky would sustain me and last longer than cooked meat. I didn’t want to risk encountering the other mine-dwellers when the sun went down. This would probably be sufficient to get me to the next community, but I had to play it safe.

Moments later, I chewed up the last little bit of meat. I had to banish the thought from my mind of where it came from just so I could keep it down. I could only hope that the high heat of the fire would kill any bacteria or infection that the creature carried.

I have to ‘hand’ it to myself that was quite the interesting appetizer to the rest of the meat.

I stuffed the prepared meat and jerky into my bag and stood up. Now that my stomach was full, I didn’t feel so bad. I started walking out across the wasteland to the next community on my way towards the coast. My stomach was full of meat, my left hand was dismembered and roiling, and I felt alive. The old woman’s laughter bubbled up behind me as I continued to walk through the wasteland on way to my ultimate destination.