Nature's Inexorable Imperative

Reader discretion advised. This story contains brief implications of sexual assault and restrictive eating behaviours.

Elle has become numb to the hot throbbing ache in her face, abdomen, and leg from injuries that she received five days earlier in the form of kicks and blows when a group of travellers intercepted her in the dead of night and tried to rob her. She is now without her bicycle and the trailer she’d hitched to it herself, on which she stored her gear and a small cooler for her food. She’d only gotten away with her backpack, the clothes on her back, and her life.

“Move and I’ll gut you,” he’d growled, breath hot and rank in her ear. He smelled like sweat and smoke as he restrained her and sliced off her belt with his knife, ignorant to what she clutched in her fist just out of his sight in the shadows. He’d caressed her back as he adjusted his hold on her, but the way he’d mocked her as he cut her pants was all the fuel she needed to snap out of her fear-frozen state and smash him in the face with a rock. His blood on her pants would have to be prize enough, he had a weapon, and even without the knife his hand, with a dog-skull tattoo on the back, was big enough to cover most of her face when he’d shoved it into the ground next to the tree she’d been sleeping beside.

She knows it was a group because, despite only being attacked by one man, she had heard many more voices join her attacker's violent shouts behind her as she’d fled from the scene, running and running until her throat tasted like blood and her sharply aching muscles forced her to stop. But she didn’t stop. Elle had continued to walk until her heartbeat calmed and she was sure the murmurs she heard were frogs and not people in pursuit of her.

A kerchief, tied as tightly as she could manage between two belt loops, has been keeping her pants functional since then. Most of the stores here were looted a long time ago, everything from small shops to department stores. Elle forced herself inside as many as she could, worried her throbbing face would hinder her from seeing or hearing anything or anyone in the shadows. She didn’t find any suitable replacements for her pants, nor acceptable food, and not even an in-tact bicycle. Only mangled ones.

She’d let out a ragged scream, kicking over a former sunglasses stand, screaming until she choked on her own spit and made herself dizzy. The resounding silence left her ears ringing, and then something deeper into the store clattered loudly. Elle had scrambled backward and tripped, falling into a metal stand that crashed to the floor in front of her. It was full of vacuum-sealed jerkies. With another angry cry, she’d shoved it away from her and crawled back again, into a rack of clothes, and tried to listen for any signs of movement or life while her heart hammered in her chest. It was there she found a thin, water-repellent, thermal, pastel green hiking jacket with a cruelty-free label.

It’s the only new thing she’d fled the department store with, and put her back to the town within a few hours.

-

It’s ultimately the cold that replaces the hot ache of her injuries. The days still make her sweat, but every night taunts a frost. Elle knows the water-repellent polyester jacket and stiff cotton work pants won’t keep her warm for much longer. The one thing she remains grateful for is her waterproof shoes, from a brand she’d felt incredibly lucky to work with, that at least kept her feet warm and dry. She’s glad she’d had multiple pairs. Perks of being a Brand Ambassador for companies whose values she’d believed in. Who knew she’d be taking a pair of vegan sneakers into the apocalypse.

-

The sight of the barn startles her enough to stop her in her tracks. The lightening sky setting it in stark relief. There’s a farmhouse set back among the trees, the yard overgrown. Whatever crops were in the field beyond are brown, sun-scorched and subsequently drenched by late-summer rains. The barn is closest, covered in peeling red-brown paint, with some additional bright green design on the side that she can’t fully see. She heads for the barn.

-

To get the heavy door open even just enough to let herself inside leaves her arms and legs shaking. It’s too dark to make much out, the interior smelling musty and of wet hay, but not of any animals. Elle finds a spot in the corner and collapses into a hay bale, falling asleep so quickly not even her hunger cramps could wake her.

-

Being hungry means waking up disoriented, sleeping in a bale of hay means waking up itchy. Elle groans and rolls over, trying to breathe through the contradictory nausea that clutches her stomach and the ache at the back of her mouth that makes her salivate. She plants her hand on the floor, taking several slow deep breaths to gather her bearings. With a sigh she squeezes her eyes shut, adjusting to the brighter light, and realizes that she must have slept through most of the day. She touches something metal, the cold rough texture of it making her wrench her hand back.

It’s a handle, a big iron handle, attached to a… door?

Elle gets on her hands and knees, brushing aside dust and hay to get a better view. It’s a trap door alright, to a root cellar.

With no watch, she can’t know how long it takes her, and her sense of time is further warped by every dizzy spell she needs to accommodate, each time folding herself into child’s pose until her vision isn’t dancing with pins of light and her limbs don’t shake too much to wedge a rusty shovel under the lip of the door.

Once she’d considered herself an athlete, but by now most of the muscle she’d so proudly put on as a vegan weightlifter has most likely wasted away. Once this door might not have been such a challenge. But when it finally slams open she can’t celebrate her win until her legs stop shaking and she can sit up without almost tipping right back over.

The root cellar is dark, and Elle fishes her hand-cranked flashlight out of her backpack before carefully assessing the shelves of jarred goods.

“Peaches!” she cries, grabbing a jar from the shelf and sinking to the floor in tears. Elle pries off the lid with much less difficulty and gulps down some of the juice. She weeps as she plucks out slices of the slippery, sweet fruit with her fingers, letting the juice drip down her chin as she eats, too hungry to even consider the travel utensil kit she has in her bag.

Self-preservation keeps her from making herself sick on the peaches, and instead she finds and pries open a jar of white beans, this time fishing her kit out and using her spoon to eat some more slowly. At the first sign of fullness, she stops, replacing the lid and considers her next steps. With so little already in her possession, Elle easily makes room to start packing jars into her bag. She prioritizes beans and chickpeas, then fruit, and then cranks her flashlight again to assess the rest of the shelves. She sees plenty of vegetables and greens but cannot commit to taking any, needing the protein to keep her going.

She takes down a can of tomato soup, clutching it against her chest, and then scans the shelves some more. To the right are different stocks and as she reads the labels she freezes. Bone broth, beef stock, chicken stock, organ meat stock. Elle lifts her flashlight, taking in the other half of the root cellar that is full of preserved meat, and fish, even eggs. She gags.

Glass clinks and scrapes threateningly as Elle shoves the tomato soup back onto the shelf, and quickly faces the ladder stairs, planting a hand over her mouth and slowly breathing through her nose to keep herself from throwing up. She can’t take any of the soups, she can’t be sure that the tomato soup doesn’t have butter or cream in it. The fruit and beans she thinks she can trust, and the vegetables as well, but nothing beyond that. And she needs to take more than her backpack can carry.

She has to check the farmhouse for supplies.

-

The front door isn’t locked but sticks from water damage. Elle needs to put her weight into shoving it open, and it gives on the second try. Upon first looks, the place seems to have been abandoned in haste. A thick layer of dust coats most of the surfaces. Whoever used to live here has been gone for a while, and there don’t seem to have been any visitors. It’s precisely empty.

-

“Why is there so much wool and leather!” Elle shouts, having come upstairs to search for clothes after finding only dishware in the kitchen. She throws a pair of trousers at the wall, knocking over a picture frame from atop the dresser. The woman of the house was two sizes too big, but Elle wasn’t going to be picky if she could find something to wear that wasn’t made through the exploitation of an animal. There isn’t much left as it stands, and anything remaining from the man’s closet would be absurdly large on her skinny frame.

Elle yells again and kicks the dresser hard, shrieking in fright when the door opposite the master bedroom creaks open from the force of her kick.

With her heart hammering in her chest, she realizes it’s a kid’s room, and upon further investigation, determines it used to belong to a teenaged boy.

One whose clothes she fits into.

You got lucky, she thinks to herself as she changes out of her sweaty, dirt-covered clothes and into the clean, slightly musty, clothes still left in the boy’s dresser. Long johns, a pair of sturdy jeans, an undershirt, crew neck sweater, socks, and— with only a mild reminder to herself that she can’t be picky in the apocalypse— some boxer briefs. She finds a small duffel in his closet and tosses in some more clothes for good measure, even finding a long dark green raincoat.

“Thanks, kid,” she whispers.

-

Elle almost drops to the floor in alarm when she sees her reflection in the front hall mirror. Her appearance is so foreign to her that her instincts considered her a stranger. Her face is still swollen, scraped, and discoloured in hues of purple, yellow, red and brown. Her skin is dry too, and she’s never looked more grey or sharp. How she could have longed for this years ago is beyond her now.

Tearing her gaze away from the mirror, Elle sees the utter disarray of the living room, as if the family had hoarded camping equipment, gardening tools, and lawn ornaments in here.

Elle gasps, “Yes!” She staggers over crates toward her prize.

A bicycle. With a storage crate fixed to the back.

“Thank you,” she breathes, dropping the duffel into the crate.

Elle wheels it back through the house, to the kitchen and out the back door.

She gets as far as the grass before she sees it.

Not the afternoon sun, but a blaze. She must have missed it travelling at night.

Another barn, miles back the way she came, is on fire. Black smoke choking the sky.

The hair on the back of Elle’s neck stands up and she shudders, everything in her body telling her that the man with the dog-skull tattoo is responsible.

“I’ve gotta get out of here,” she whispers, gripping the bike’s handlebars tightly and steering it back toward the barn.

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— Rooney