Hunger

Testing 1.2.3. Is this thing on? Can anybody hear me? My phone was fried in the last pulse. If anybody can hear me, I’m at 33.2164° S, 151.1201° E. Hello? Anybody? I’m gunna go outside. Is it safe? Has anybody been out? I’m not sure I want to go but I need to. Hello? Umm. Over and out, I guess.

Climbing the hill, nearly broke me. I was weak from hunger. I wished I’d watched those Doomsday Preppers now. I wasn’t prepared for shit. Well, that’s not true, if the COVID virus - back in the 20s - had done anything it’d taught people to hoard toilet paper. I was prepared for shit, but little else.

My old moped was at the top of the hill, hidden under some fallen tree branches. Not that well, because everything had happened so quickly. I was relieved to see it still there. After, I’d dragged it out, I was a little scared to start it up. There was no other noise. No birds. Nothing. It was a silence you could hear.

Had to get to town, you know. Find some food. Supplies had run out three days ago. My toilet paper stash would be obsolete if I couldn’t eat. Maybe I could eat the paper? The thought was almost stupid, but who knew how desperate I might get? I really had a strong craving for something loaded with sugar. I’d settle for anything that wasn’t beans or paper. A beer would be nice and all.

I was on my bike, ready to start it when a whistle pitched high and painfully into the silence. It was the strange noise (warning?) that always preceded a pulse. Don’t wait if you hear that sound. I was pelting back down the hill before I even knew I was off my bike. I might be weak from hunger, but fear threw me down the hill and I was in the bunker before the rumble.

'I hate this. I hate this,' I cried, wrapping myself in a blanket to cower under the fairly solid wooden table that took up half of my space. The pulse took hold, and a wave of nausea rolled my guts. If they hadn’t been empty, I would have puked. This pulse probably only lasted three seconds, but it took me half an hour to recover enough to stand. All my stuff was on the floor. I don’t know why I bothered to put it back on shelves, but I did. I needed order. The pulses were waves of something evil. I don’t know what. But they kind of made you feel like you’d had an electric shock. You could even taste them. For a long time afterward, you could taste them. I’d only been caught outside for one of them and I never wanted to go through that again. I reckon I was close to dead. As close as you can get without doing it. It took me three weeks to think straight after that pulse and four before I could walk without pitching forward like a drunk.

Can anybody hear me? If anybody can hear me, I’m at 33.2164° S, 151.1201° E. Has anybody ever gone out straight after a pulse? Hello? For fuck’s sake, is there anybody?

I didn’t go out that day. The fear was too strong.

The next day, four days since I ate my last can of baked beans, I left the bunker again. My moped started after a bit of a struggle and blatted forward, breaking into the unnerving silence, like a fart in a confession box. I felt vulnerable to attack so went over land rather than use the paved roads to town.

Once quietened, I slid the moped into a shed that stood in the yard of the last house in town and grabbed my saddle bags. The front door of the house was wide-open; screaming abandonment and I felt confident that the building had not had inhabitants since the first or second pulse, I went in, calling.

'Anybody here?'

So much nothing. Too much nothing.

There was the detritus of an interrupted meal on the dining table. Hungry as I was, green potato was not enticing. There were dead cockroaches all over the floor. That’s how strong the pulses were. Cockroaches had always been said to be able to survive a nuclear explosion. It chilled me, to see them upturned and still.

I did my shopping in the kitchen. There was a pantry full of canned goods, dried pastas and, bless them, a bottle of unopened whiskey and a half empty bottle of gin. In the old world I was too young to drink, but all rules were superseded by need. I took a slug of gin and felt a burn that reminded me I was still alive. It made my mind swim, so I pulled open a large can of SpaghettiOs and drank them down like they were a liquid. It was the most brilliant meal I’d ever had. Then, I found a bag of sugar. Score! Dessert.

I managed to fit the cans, sugar and alcohol into my saddle bags and began to search the house for stuff that might be useful. There were candles, batteries, even a butane cannister cook top. These people obviously had somewhere to run to or they would have taken all this gear, surely? I found a sheet and wrapped what didn’t fit in my bags, into a sack and threw it over my shoulder like a Santa Claus clone and carried them to the shed.

My bike needed petrol and didn’t know whether to slink to the service station on foot or let the world, if there was one still out there, know I was coming with the lawn mower noise of my 50CC moped. I decided to ride for the ease of filling the tank.

The fear of another pulse was making me take risks that I probably shouldn’t. In town proper the silence was even weirder. I had to siphon petrol from abandon cars in the end, because the petrol bowsers needed power to make them pump. This took way longer than I wanted it to take.

I was sucking on a piece of garden hose poked down into an old Toyota’s gas tank, like a straw in a milkshake, when a voice startled the bejeekers right out of me.

'What are you doing?'

I’d thought the town was empty of people. I’d wanted to see people, right? Now, I wasn’t so sure. It was the creepy old dude that lived above the pub. He had a rifle. I nearly pooped myself. I spat petrol everywhere but managed to hook the hose into the moped’s tank.

‘I… I...’

‘Are you real?’ he asked. ‘I’ve lost my glasses.’

Am I real? Am I? I wasn’t that sure.

‘I think so.’

‘Do you know what happened?’ he asked.

I knew he was talking about the first pulse.

‘No,’ I said.

‘There’s dead folk all over the place. John’s just bones now.’

‘Shit,’ I said, even though I didn’t know who John was.

‘I’m trying to rebuild my laptop,’ he said. ‘It’s fried.’

‘You can do that?’

This surprised me. He’d never come across as somebody that could do stuff.

‘I could if I could see. Come with me, kid. See if you can find my glasses for me.’

‘I…'

‘Come on, it won’t take long. They’ve got to be in my room.’

‘Okay, if you’ll stop pointing that thing at me.’

The old dude looked at the rifle as if he’d forgotten he was even holding it.

‘Oh, sorry.’

With the petrol cap back on, I pushed my moped to the pub. It was hard balancing the sheet full of gear on the seat, while pushing.

‘What’ve you got there?’ Old Dude asked.

‘Candles and stuff.’

‘I’ve got a backpack you can have. Payment for finding my glasses.’

‘That’d be great.’

The pub smelled like, I don’t know, death maybe. I grabbed a couple of beers on the way past a refrigerator. The cans were warm. Even so, I had one opened and downed before we’d reached the top of the stairs.

‘Don’t go there;’ Old Dude said, pointing down the hallway, ‘There’s dead ones in those rooms.’

‘Dead what?’

‘People.’

‘Oh.’

In his room, I found Old Dude’s glasses in about ten minutes. They were under the bed, out of reach. I had to crawl under to get them, was covered in dust and crap when I came back out. Old Dude was holding an empty backpack and handed to me in exchange for his specs.

‘You should be able to fit your stuff in this.’

‘Thanks.’

Once he had his glasses on Old Dude looked me over.

‘You look like shit,’ he said.

‘You’re no super model either,’ I told him.

He laughed. ‘Hey what’s that hanging around your neck?’

‘It’s a locket,’ I said, grasping my right hand around the heart shaped locket protectively. ‘It was my mother’s.’

‘Can I have it?’

‘What?!’

‘Can I have it?’

‘No! It’s all I have.’

‘You see, I need gold to rebuild my mother-board. If I can fix my laptop, we can maybe get some information about what’s happening out there.’

‘Don’t any of those dead people have any gold stuff?’ I nodded in the direction he’d warned me away from earlier.

‘Nah. They were all cheap bastards. Not an ounce of real jewellery among them.’

I shuddered at the thought of creepy Old Dude frisking dead people for jewellery.

‘You sure?’ I asked. ‘Did you look without glasses?’

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look at this pile of junk for yourself.’

He was right, a couple of cheap watches and some flea market earrings sat in an upturned hat. Nothing gold.

‘I gave you a backpack.’ Old Dude said, like a bit of tatty canvas had the same worth as gold. ‘I really need to melt some gold.’

He looked at my mother’s locket with hunger in his eyes. Kind of scary. I wanted to leave. Get back to my bunker.

'You can have the chain,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

‘You’re brilliant!’ he said.

I took the locket off the chain and handed the chain over. To be honest, I wanted information about the world, too.

‘How long will it take you?’

‘Depends on the damage,’ he said. ‘My laptop’s down in the cellar with the kegs. Where I go when the pulse comes. I haven’t seen it properly yet.’

I slipped the locket into my pocket. It didn’t feel secure. I needed a new chain. Not having my mother’s locket around my neck was an added wrongness. Nothing was right anymore. I’d have to go shopping in the empty houses again. See if I could find a chain and maybe some gold or laptops for Old Dude to fix.

‘You better go,’ he said. He was keen, I think, to get a start on his repairs.

I didn’t need to be told twice. I was out the door and heading for the stairs when he called after me.

‘Come back, soon. It’ll be good to see you.’

He tapped his glasses and smiled.

It felt odd to be hearing such normal words. We should have been making survival plans or something. The urge to get away from the dead people and be safe in my bunker was too strong. I ran down to the bar and out. I could talk to Old Dude some other time. Right now, I was not hungry for company. I was hungry for a good meal. I was hungry for life to go back to how it was. When things were horrible, but not this horrible.

A whistle pitched high and painfully through the silence.

Can anybody hear me?