A Dead Life

What is to become of humanity? Will we struggle over the cusp of a cliff to find haven on a flat plateau? Having reached a place of such stark contrast to the rocky cliff, that we sink our sore heels into the soft soil and call it home. Do we not cast at least a cursory glance to the next cliff in our catch? And what if we are to fall? From the first cliff or the second? Will we rise like a phoenix from the? Reborn to a fresh start, retaining our previous risks and rewards? Or perhaps our ember, and all energy spent creating it, will fade to blackness like the closing of a tired eye.

The cold ground cracks like glass under a pair of old leather boots. In only a few moments, perhaps a few dozen more stomps, the gnarl of dead branches would break to give way to an old factory compound. Or so claimed The Isaac Corporation Industrial Tourism Map of the Amazingly Advanced American Interior. Spent breath wafted up toward the waning canopy of the once great pine forest. As to obey the law of equivalent exchange, the pines responded by sending down what little in the way of dead needles they could spare. Before the war, these pines had never had to endure a season so naked. These days, the pines slowly let more and more of their guard down as they approached death.

Arthur gripped the old map, and began to trace a route with his finger. His attention, first dealt entirely to acquiring his location, began to drift to the state of his hand. Grey, cracked, dead skin. Black, bruised, bloody fingers. The shaking of his right hand had almost gone unnoticed, as it had somewhat synced with the shaking of his left. Like being pulled from the jaws of sleep right before it takes you, Arthur snapped to. ‘I’m here,’ Arthur put the map away, and broke through the tree line into the clearing.

A relic of the humanity that still clung to this world with blistered hands, the Carlisle Arms Manufacturing Facility stood like a proud veteran, unaware that his war has ended. The massive brick building had several stories, and was flanked on the left by a handful of smokestacks and their respective foundries. A smaller building with several bay doors grew out from a corridor on the right side to complete the scene of a seemingly ancient campus that once cranked out weapons of war at a pace that only increased until the day of the war. Moss and vines had crept up the bricks, and weaved themselves through the frames of long-ago smashed windows that lined the top of the building. Arthur began his approach.

He cautiously stepped through the overgrown meadow that had once been a chaotic turnabout for shipping trucks and troop-carrying vehicles alike, and approached a rusted bay door, propped open wide, like the mouth of a dead deer in the forest. Arthur leaned against the exterior wall, and took a deep breath. He put his head down, and got a look at himself in the evening light. His clothes were ruined from a lifetime on the hike. His hands were shaking from having never maintained a steady diet. He closed his eyes.

This isn’t the first time he would scavenge an old structure. In fact, he had been doing his best to work his way across the locations listed on his old map. Arthur was a lone wolf in a world now inhabited primarily by hostile scavengers and raiders. He felt that if he could find a weapon, then he could compete, with the pros, in the only game left on earth. He steered clear of areas that offered anything else in the way of salvage. What if he came across others? What if they were armed? In this world, a weapon is more important for self preservation than food. Due to this, an acute sense of fear and anxiety would grip him at the door to each and every new opportunity. Maybe he would find nothing. Maybe he would strike gold. Maybe he would end up dead.

The building groaned and creaked, in a sort of protest to Arthur’s presence, as he crept through the remains. Door after door. Room after room. He cast his gaze at every square inch of the old factory with as much attention and focus as he could muster. A bent pipe would resemble an assault rifle, dropping its disguise only after Arthur had rushed over to inspect it, and allowed his mind to wander over all the uses of his new find. He wasn’t discouraged, however. He was not capable of grasping the concept of defeat. This factory was picked clean days or perhaps hours after the war. How long had it even been since the war? Arthur had no idea. Maybe no one did.

Among the familiar sounds of decay in the building came something strange. A predictable noise, the clacking of shoes on concrete. Arthur stopped moving, and moved to hug a wall. The footsteps continued. Sweat gathered and began to pour down Arthur’s face like a spring shower of old. Arthur had not seen another person in a very long time, and did not consider introducing himself. He waited. The steps meandered through the building, towards his general location. ‘Another one. Like me.’ Arthur whispered to himself, ‘Here to steal my gun.’ Arthur’s entire body tensed. He shook all over. He slid down the wall, until he was sitting against it. Staring straight ahead, he waited. His face broke into a smile.

Slowly. Painfully slowly. The footsteps neared. Arthur had not selected his position with any inkling of logic, but by sheer dumb luck, it would seem that the other scavenger would enter the room using it.

*Clack*

*Clack*

*Clack*

The visitor. He had only one foot in the room before Arthur pounced on him. Taken wholly by surprise, the newcomer’s bag and belongings spilled all across the floor as the two men struggled for a dominant position in what would certainly be a fight to the death. Arthur, being the aggressor, was on top at the outbreak. With a hand around the throat of the man, he began to press all his sickly weight to the floor. Gasping for breath and thrashing his legs wildly, the visitor struggled. He was able to reach a metal pot from his floor-strewn belongings, which he brought swiftly over Arthur’s head with a loud clang. Arthur reeled, and fell back like a pine needle.

The visitor hurriedly got up, shaken. He looked around, and started to collect his things hurriedly. Arthur, stirred on the floor. Regaining his senses, leaping from ground, Arthur grabbed the leg of the retreating intruder, bringing him to the ground once more. This time, he climbed onto the back of the man, and wrapped his thin arm around his neck like a vine around an old window frame. He pulled, squeezed, and yanked. With each jerk, more life was robbed from the visitor, until there was none left. Arthur squeezed and heaved, breathing heavily, long after the man had collapsed onto the concrete floor, until there was a sickening crack. Arthur finally let go. The man was warm, but was no longer creating heat, only losing it. He was dead.

Arthur stood up to admire what he had done. The new visitor lay on the floor, limbs strewn in a manner that would never be comfortable. Arthur kicked the body. There was a loud thud as his boot connected. The body rolled over to expose a clean shaven face, with wide sad eyes. Arthur smiled. ‘My building. My gun.’ He said. A quick search of his bag revealed that the man carried some food, clothes, and cooking equipment. Arthur scoffed, kicked him again, and made for an exit. Another wasted day.

He found an exit in a nearby room. He emerged around the back of the factory. The setting sun cast its light at a narrow angle across the tops of the dead trees, and onto a small flowing stream. Arthur approached the stream, and drank. He drank handful after handful of the dirty water before noticing what lay directly beneath the surface. A body, decayed down to bone, clad in what was once the camouflage pattern of a nation’s army. Clutched in a skeletal hand was a rifle. Arthur fished the rifle from the stream, and held it up to what little light remained. It was rusted, caked with dirt, and exactly what Arthur was looking for. He drug the body to dry land, and harvested ammunition from the corpse. During his depraved looting, a shimmer from around the neck of the body caught his eye.

A golden necklace in the shape of a heart. Arthur pulled it from the neck of the soldier, breaking the delicate chain, and splitting the heart open. It was a locket. Inside was a picture of a couple. Although damaged from a long time under the water, the shimmer of love in the eyes of the young couple did not lose its luster. Arthur stared at the picture for a long time. He gazed into the eyes of the young lovers, these people that he would never have met even if life was not so cruelly interrupted by the war. He saw not the young couple, but himself. Or what he thought was himself. He seemed to remember this look. Had he looked at someone like this before? Had someone looked to him in this manner? He couldn’t remember. Neither did it matter. He closed his mind’s eye on the murky memory of a dead life, and woke up.

The air was colder now that the sun had set. But there was walking to do. Arthur did not bother to close the locket before he cast it back into the stream. With lots of effort on the rusty action, he loaded the rifle, and slung it over his back. He checked his map, and began to stomp onward.