When It's Useful

It's been six years now. Or roughly six years, considering no ones making any new calendars and it’s a bit difficult to keep track of time when the worlds ended and you're trying to survive. It’s been a long six years though. Long, hard, and painful six years.

The possibility of the world ending was never a new concept. Heck, before Mother Earth seemed to try to kill off the human population with the never-ending number of hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis, and over fifteen newly discovered, highly contagious, and more than likely death-sentencing diseases, I had read a fair bit of dystopian fiction myself. How crap the world is now comes to no surprise of anyone familiar with any apocalyptic stories. The human species really is trash when laws are no longer enforced, when some of the diseases involved infertility and a lower birth rate of girls, when food is scarce and everyone is endlessly hungry, when not many people know how to properly hunt anymore and rabies is on the rise, when money is useless and normal jobs are no longer needed because cities and towns have crumbled, when countries effectively decimated the majority of our remaining populations by fighting over resources, and when we have to rely again on the animal instincts that we’ve successfully been stomping out for hundreds of years now. Only the smart and strong can survive now. We have no time, energy, or empathy to spare on others when we can barely take care of ourselves.

As I said, it’s hard. Harder than any book or movie ever attempted to describe would happen if our civilizations crashed. Despite our low populations, there is still a fight for survival and resources that will never be enough. I never thought I’d make it this far. Every time I came across the dystopian genre, I always told myself that if I lived in such a world and I didn’t die initially, I would take myself out. It’s not a world I would ever want to live in. But the desire to live is strong in humans, and as much as I try to fight that instinct, I fail every time.

I came in possession of a gun once. A dead mans hand still wrapped around the handle like he lost in a cowboy gun standoff. I didn’t have much experience with guns, I couldn’t tell you the brand or type it was, but I was able to check and see there were four bullets left. It was my chance to escape this never-ending nightmare. I tried aiming the gun at my head many times. My hand shook too much to pull the trigger and I kept imagining that I'd be one of the peculiar few who got shot in the head but live to tell the tale. I didn’t want to be living in pain from my own gunshot wound when there were no longer any running hospitals to treat me. I wanted to go out painlessly. Instead, I ended up using all four bullets to scare off other people who tried to either steal the minimal items and food I possessed or tried to dominate me. I was one of the few remaining women left in this empty world, so you can imagine what a man would want to do with me. One of the men didn’t believe my gun was loaded, so his bullet ended up being a kill shot. He wasn’t the first person I’d killed and probably wouldn’t be my last. I had no room to care for others lives when my own was so thoroughly threatened. I kept the gun for false threats and protection now. Not everyone will assume it's no longer loaded.

I sit in my makeshift shelter, debating where to travel next. I originally wasn’t alone. I had friends and family I traveled with at one point or another. But friends and family turned into enemies or died off, and I found that it was better to just depend and take care of only myself. It was safer that way. I wished I could stay in this abandoned and trashy cabin way out in the woods. But resources were dwindling and I noticed an increase in human presence, the bad kind. All human presence was bad, but the worst were the gangs of men who banded together, thinking it was beneficial to work in a group. Which, unfortunately, worked for most of them. Working in numbers meant they could easily overpower anyone they came across, including a lone woman like myself. The only threats to these savage male groupings were other gangs of men. They still ended up fighting over resources, even within their own band of men. But when one gang sets eyes on another, it always ends up being chaos on sight. I guessed they wanted to prove their grouping superior, or maybe they didn’t want the competition, but not many were left alive after a gang on gang confrontation, certainly not the same number any clique started with.

I saw a large group of such males, at least seven, out near the town about two miles from my cabin, which meant it was time for me to move on. I started packing my few meager possessions, including the box of stale granola bars I found in the busted kitchen cabinets of the cabin, and the dirty water bottle I carried and refilled every chance I got. I already stayed here longer than I should, and it was time to head out if I wanted to stay safe.

After I finished packing, I slide the bag onto my back, keeping the unloaded gun in my hand. It was best to show it in obvious sight for anyone who thought I was easy pickings. I quietly left the cabin, looking back one last time at the place that gave me a moment of safety, and started trekking in the opposite direction of where I spotted the gang of men. I was going deeper into the woods and I had no idea what I would encounter or how long I’d be trekking for. I still had anxiety of the unknown, despite the unknown being my whole life for the past six years.

I stayed in the more crowded areas of trees and bushes so that I could stay hidden. I was wearing ratty and dirty camouflage clothing, which helped hide me as well. Walking through the branches and prickly bushes took more time and energy, but ultimately it was a much safer route to take.

I was considering bunking down for the night within the foliage when I noticed a familiar and rancid stench. Something decaying. And if I had to guess, human decay, which had a more overpowering stench than an animal corpse.

I tried to detect the direction it was coming from. I usually ignored the smell since it was quite common to come across, but I needed to know how recent the body had been dead for. If it was too recent, I might have to decide a different direction to travel in. Though some people were nomadic like me, others liked to hunker down and stay in one place for long periods of time.

It only took me a couple minutes to find the body. It was more decomposed than I expected, which explained why I only managed to smell it once I was close to it. I studied the body, noting it was probably female considering the dress the near-skeletal corpse wore. It looked decayed enough to tell me she’d died weeks ago. Just as I settled on continuing my trek, something shone brightly in the corner of my eye from the direction of the corpse. I turned my head back around to search for what caught my attention. I eventually noticed a rather large heart-shaped locket around the woman’s neck. The chain was thick and sturdy, and the locket was almost masculine in design with its thicker lines and shape. I stared at it and considered the necklace. Jewelry held no importance in this world anymore and I couldn’t think of a reason why I’d ever need it for anything, but I felt this compelling urge to take it with me. I tried not to rob corpses unless they had something useful on them, and for the life of me, I couldn’t find a reason how this locket could be beneficial. But I wanted it, my newly reawakened instincts telling me to take it. So, I did. I wiped off any decay from the thick chain on the woman’s dress and slipped it into my pocket. Hopefully I’d find a use for it eventually.

The rest of my journey was uneventful, no dead or living humans in sight. I trudged for a week before reaching the end of the forest. Unfortunately, it led to another town. I scanned the abandoned streets and dilapidated buildings, seeing no life at all. Usually, I didn’t risk going straight into towns much, but I decided to circle what I could of the area while staying hidden in the trees. I was on my last granola bar and needed to find something else to hold me over. The forest didn’t stretch the entire circumference of the small town, but I could see enough to determine there wasn’t anyone else walking around. If any life still lived in this town, they were hunkered down in one of the abandoned buildings. I didn’t have much choice though. I needed more food and who knew when I’d come across another potential source.

Just as I was about to leave the safety of the woods and step out into the open, I heard a rustle of leaves being crunched under foot behind me. The warning came too late and a body tackled me to the ground before I could turn and protect myself. The air in my lungs whooshed out of me from the impact and I was left breathless. The body on top of me was slightly larger than my own, but thin with starvation and I was able to push the man off me momentarily. I caught the wild look in the surprisingly young man’s eyes and noticed there would be no reasoning with the kid. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, but he was even thinner and dirtier than I was. There would be no talking him down. This would end with one of us dead, and I couldn’t let it be me.

When he went to tackle me again, I grabbed his biceps and was able to direct his momentum past me. I quickly spun and before he could turn around and come at me again, I jumped on his back, pinning him on his stomach to the ground. Before I realized what I was doing, I grabbed the heart-shaped locket out of my pocket and quickly wrapped the thick chain around the young mans neck. He struggled like a wild animal, but I had him pinned almost immobile and pulled harder on the necklaces chain. He stopped moving quicker than I expected. When I let up on my grip a bit, I noticed that the chain had dug into the young guys neck, blood pooling heavily onto the ground under him. That must have been what accelerated his death.

I still sat upon the males back, dropping the chain from my numb fingers. I noticed the indentations in my hands from the chain being pulled so tightly. I felt a bit numb, but I had no time to sit in my feelings over another death by my hands. It was a dog eat dog world now, and I’d eat however many dogs I needed to stay alive.

I brushed myself off, picking my discarded pack back up from the ground. I looked back down at the cooling body, focusing on the chain imbedded in its neck. I guess that necklace did come in handy after all.