Rose Gold

Rose Gold

What is the cost of a life? In the old world I guess it was worth a bit more, a few barrels of oil or acres of land at least. It hardly mattered now. Feeling the weight of the sawn-off shotgun in my hand I wondered if the value of a life was worth the few miscellaneous tins of food I was gaining? Probably not, but that life was worth taking to safeguard my own. I suppose that much has never changed.

I dutifully rifled through the ragged pockets of the nameless corpse at my feet, most of them at least; a few had disappeared into the steaming chasm where once a ribcage had been. Not much of use, a blunt pocket knife, some twine, a neatly folded and ironically named “bag for life”.

I was just about to move on when I noticed a glint of metal from the exposed patch of skin where balaclava met frayed jacket collar.

No one really knows how it came to this. In the movies it always began with a cataclysmic event, but the reality was much more imperceptible, a bank collapsing here, a missile fired on distant shores, we all just went about our lives already trained to see bad news as the norm, life just kept getting harder until there was no more life to go about. It didn’t take long before kill or be killed became the norm, hunger is a powerful motivator but soon you don’t even need motivation.

Since everything went south, I had not really strayed too far from my patch. I figured if I was going to survive then I would at least have more chance of doing so trying to scratch my survival from the area I knew. In honesty, I had barely thought about how to survive at first, what consumed the bulk of my thought was finding a reason to want to. Those who did fight to survive and had made it through the first few weeks of violence and riots had generally decided to stay on the move. I suppose they hoped that changing location could change circumstance. My own survival in those first few weeks and months had been a chance by-product of my own depressing existence. Most people with good jobs and active social lives had little in the cupboards, little tolerance for solitude and a strong desire to band together to maintain the lives that they were losing. I was already used to closing my curtains, my cupboards were stocked to ensure that visits to the supermarket were kept to a minimum, even better, not many people knew of my existence.

There was this old forest we would play in as kids, a few measly acres saved to maintain some green amidst the inexorable sprawl of the old world. I used that as a base, utilizing the old den we had hung out in as my invisible fortress. Funny how when society collapses we revert to those childhood fantasies. Perhaps as children we were preparing for this? Perhaps now in the horror of this new world, pretending we are children playing games safeguards us. Childhood fantasies to guard my mind and a lifetime of anonymity to guard my body – no wonder I had faired a little better than most.

The truth was that I adapted quite well to this life because I had never really felt at home in the old one. The constant pressure, social competition and general disquiet had me living in a perpetual fantasy in which I disappeared to live on a desert island. The difference was that that fantasy had always involved living on that desert island with her. The end stole everything from everyone, but it only really stole one thing from me; true love. She was working away when the world as we knew it collapsed and no one ever made plans for when the phones went down.

Back in that old world, I had once been described as “death neutral”, I was reckless and depressed, I wasn’t suicidal, but I was so indifferent that I did little to preserve my own life. I suppose this was the true source of my guilt now. Saving a life did justify taking a life, but taking another life to preserve my own pointless indifference is something else entirely, especially as it was only in the life of another that I ever found a reason to live my own.

I had left my little patch of safety in the daily inconvenience of finding food. Sleep, water, food, warmth, you don’t realize how needy the human body can be until those basic things become a challenge. There were plenty of farms within a day's walk and while the cupboards of the abandoned houses had been empty for years, you could still find the odd things growing, on one lucky day I even found a chicken that had survived. More often than not, a pigeon or crow shot from the rafters of a dilapidated barn would be the bounty, but either way it staved off the hunger for an evening.

I was on my way back from one of these outings when I carved this eighth notch on the butt of my shotgun. My eye had caught a little movement in one of the upstairs windows of the farmhouse. I hadn’t been quiet, there was little need to these days, it had been weeks since I had seen anyone, maybe months or days, who knows. Still, blasting rat after rat until there was more than enough for dinner, I had exorcised some pent-up rage and beaconed my presence to the seemingly dead world around me.

So there I had stood, five lifeless rats tied by their tails to my belt, trying to work out if I really had seen something or if my tired lonely mind was playing tricks again. I decide to walk on; if it was someone, they likely wanted to keep to themselves as I did.

I passed back through what was left of the town center on my way back. It struck me that perhaps the reason most people had chosen transience since the end was not to find new things but to escape the constant reminders of what they had lost. Each storefront, each café, a memory, a happier time, a person lost. The broken windows and overgrown chairs of the café where I had consoled my sister after she left that abusive relationship. There was the carcass of the department store where my best friend had worked, where we would get drunk on cheap wine after he locked up. There was the rubble of the jewelry store in which I had bought so many gifts for my love, that rose gold locket in the shape of a heart that housed both of our pictures, not to mention the engagement ring I had never got to use.

As the memories of the past faded and I neared my new forest home, I became quietly aware of a presence. My fortress was little more than a few leaning tree branches (security in anonymity, not in structure), so even the chance of its discovery was not worth risking. I walked on, slower, purposefully, timing my footsteps so I could listen for others.

I had begun to spin on my heel before I was even sure that a branch had cracked behind me. Balaclava, dark green rags, a carrier bag. My shotgun was already drawn and leveled.

“Keep moving friend”, was all I could say.

The intruder stepped toward me again.

“One more step and I shoot” I announced as the shotgun visibly shook with anticipation and fear.

The carrier bag dropped; the arms outstretched. My hands sweated on the grip as I reconfirmed my shot. There we stood, the first person I’d seen in so long, silently facing me, palms calmly outstretched, a posture of surrender.

The hand slowly moved from their submission, up, intentionally, calmly, reaching towards the zip of the jacket.

I lurched and commanded, brandishing my shotgun, visibly panicked as that hand continued its slow deliberate movement.

The first teeth of the zipper separated and as they did, I pulled my trigger.

I stood for a while, my ears ringing and my mind running through the now-familiar roster of justifications. What is the cost of a human life? Taking one is justified to save your own. Duty, not choice. Them or me, survival.

I steeled my resolve and pushed myself to take what I could from my vanquished assailant, that their death could serve my life in both immediate safety and future preservation.

I rifled the pockets and taking the barely useful items that I could when a glint of metal from an exposed patch of skin beneath the balaclava caught my eye.

I pushed back the clothing with the butt of my gun and there it was, rose gold and incongruously clean, sitting too naturally on that alabaster collarbone.

A heart-shaped locket.