Surviving the End of the World: Part Two

Author’s Note: In the final stages of production for RED FIST! I’m super excited. I can’t wait to hold my book in my hands and say, “I did it!” Be on the lookout in September and October, of course, I will post a link on here and additional information if you’d like a copy. Hope you all like chapter two of this new series.

 Chapter Two: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Someone’s shaking me, but I can’t wake up. I want to. I want to! Something’s wrong. I need to wake up, but it’s been so long since I’ve slept, so long since my body’s had rest. I tell myself to wake up, but I can’t move. Somehow, I see everything around me, and I can hear how fast my heart is beating. Every throb is a vibration that crushes me down into the pits of despair. I can’t take this sight. I knew I couldn’t trust them. I knew it! These nomads are taking my niece, killing Milo. Unruly men with ugly women who can’t birth anything but dust, so they need Ni, to keep their nasty tradition alive.

Move dammit! Move! They’re taking her!

I scream, paralyzed. I don’t even know if I’m sleeping anymore. I hope to God— I hope to— fuck—I hope this is a dream.

God ain’t here. He left a long time ago. This earth is forsaken, and one would think with the end of the world people would come together to fix it, to rebuild, to make it whole once again, but no, the opposite has happened. The world, the cracked piece of rock and metal and shit in space, has gotten worse. If there is a hell, I wish to be there instead of here, sucking in dust and the screams of my niece. Her cries echo in my ears like missiles falling from the sky, rupturing the earth, splitting bodies into millions of pieces. I can hear everything, all the bad, all the ugliness of the world, of humanity seeping into my soul, and it makes me want to tear my guts out. If I can’t protect my niece, my sweet boy, Milo, who’s blood is flowing freely from his dead body near me, then why am I alive? I want to die. Somebody needs to kill me now. I can’t watch this any longer.

“Jamiel! Jamiel!” my niece is crying my name, but I can’t move.

Move! Move! Come on, please…fucking MOVE!

My world which already split in half, completely shatters into oblivion, into nothing at all. A giant bearded, pot-bellied man with skin that doesn’t look like it’s been clean in decades pulls at my niece’s ankles as she claws the floor, trying to stop him. Another man who might as well be fat ass’s twin, and two scraggly women with hooked noses and cancerous looking sores on their faces help pull Ni around the corner out of my sight, her cries for help reaching down into my gut and twisting until a ball of turmoil and sickness and shit forms, bubbles, and erupts. I explode into a splatter of nothingness. I fail. I fail. I fail. I fail…

“Fuck!” I awake, huffing, sweating, my body cold, my bones sore. In the darkness, slumped in the back of a wagon, I reach for my water. Someone grabs it before I do, and I draw my gun. The darkness is thick. I can’t see shit.

“Chill out. It’s me,” a familiar voice says.

“Oh,” I smile.

It was just a shitty dream. Ni is alive. Milo, who was sleeping in between my legs, stumbles over to me, licking me in the face.

“Hey, buddy. I love you!” I tell him, kissing him on the nose.

I sip from my canteen and peel up a piece of the tarp we’re under. Dusty roads and straggly, spindly needle trees protrude from the sand, drooping, begging for water.

“Where are we?” I ask, my eyes scanning the sand that stretches for miles upon miles.

“I think…Arizona?” Ni answers.

I look back at her, panicked. “How long was I asleep?”

“Two days. I got that nomad doctor to take a look at you. He said you were just tired.”

“Thanks.”

Ni reaches for the canteen of water. I give it to her. She takes a sip and then offers Milo some. “You had a bad dream?”

“Maybe. We need to go North. To Canada. Heard it was better up there.”

“Sorry,” Ni hangs her head.

I curse myself. I always sound like I have an attitude and Ni beats herself up really bad whenever I sound like that because she thinks she’s done something wrong.

“Not your fault. I just—”

The caravan comes to a halt. The wheels on this truck squeal as they try to gain proper traction on the sand. I peek outside again. So much sand. Arizona is a desert. Actually, a lot of the West is desert now apparently, deserts and mountains. Los Angeles might be the only standing city on this side of America. The nomads must be going there.

We’ve come from the East. Maryland. At first, I tried to find family and friends, but that proved impossible without proper communications. Everybody had fled, went into emergency shelters underground, or died. I didn’t know where anyone was, and after a year of searching and finding not a single soul Ni or I was familiar with, I gave up. We headed North. New York was lawless, but I took my family there anyway. I was hoping to find my friend, Monty there from the Army. I had his latest address, but it proved useless. He was gone along with his family. I always wondered what happened to the people I used to know. Did they survive? Are they underground? Wandering the lands such as I?  Where are they?

I don’t wonder anymore. I don’t think about them much at all. It just brings back memories, and that brings pain. And pain is a distraction. Any distraction to me keeps me unable to protect my niece and dog.

The back flap to the truck we’re inside gets pulled up and Cremson, a skinny, no- toothed kid too tall for his age, tries to tell us slowly without choking on his salvia that we’re taking a pit stop. I smile. He has such an honest heart, I feel bad for him. He’s with such a shady crew of nomads. Cremson is eleven, I think. Taller than me, oddly, tall as Ni. He’s from the backwoods, somewhere in West Virginia, but he’s a sweetheart, and if it weren’t for his missing teeth he’d knock ladies out of the park. He has long, dusty blond hair and bright blue eyes that look like how the ocean used to look in the summer sun. His face is still kind of babyish, but I can see the mark of a maturity carving itself into his bone structure.

Cremson helps Ni out of the truck, his eyes glimmering at her. He tries to help me, but I decline, patting him on the head. I help Milo down and Cremson pets him.

“I luhh yer’ dug Mista!”

Milo appreciates Cremson’s love, his tail wagging, his tongue out. I follow Ni towards the most prominent tree she says she’s seen since being in the desert. Milo follows, and so does Cremson. We sit under its wiry branches, the wind howling, picking up dust and the scent of death. None of us bat an eye at the stench, it’s a smell we’ve all grown accustom to. Plenty of folks die out here, plenty of life ceases to exist, and you’ll always know because of …vultures. They thrive now more than ever. They even circle us now, in the sky waiting for someone to die in this heat. The world is either too hot or too cold and now it’s blistering. Sweat gushes out of my pores. I only have three canteens of water until I find another place to refill with drinkable water, so I’ve been dicey with it, but damn, it’s sweltering.

I let Ni and Milo get another sip of water, then I do. Cremson eyes the canteen. Shit. “Eh Cremson?”

He smiles at me.

“Where’re your parents, man?”

“Dey’re dead, Mista! I been wit my auntie since then.”

“Does she have water? I can’t share mine. I don’t know if you have a disease or not.”

Cremson scratches his cheek, thinking, processing the information. Something’s a bit off about the kid. I guess he’s sort of slow, but I’m not judging.

“I dunno. I can go sheck?”

There’s a commotion on the other side of the trucks. I turn to Ni. “Ni. Stay low. If you hear gunshots, go behind that dune. Milo! On me.”

I push up off the tree, my dog following. I turn back, Cremson trying to follow.

“Get back! Stay with Ni!”

Cremson shrinks back near my niece, who is now behind the tree that doesn’t do much in the name of cover.

Milo and I sneak up to the truck, listening. I get on all fours, trying to get a view of what’s going on.

It’s nothing good. Six men with weapons, two of them with guns have three of the nomads with their hands up. The other nomads all stand defiantly behind them. These nomads are a tight bunch, they don’t have much for weaponry, but I can tell, they are fighters. I could tell that from the first time I met them, and that’s why I don’t trust them. That’s why I never bothered to learn any of their names except the kid.

The biggest nomad. The one from my dream drops his meaty arms. “You damn scavengers. No better than them buzzards!”

Fucking raiders. Always trying to rip people off. There are plenty of people like them in this new world. One of the ones with a gun steps forward.

“You pay our fee. This is our road!”

“We don’t have money,” says the biggest nomad.

“Lots of cars. Passengers. Means money.”

“Money is useless, son.”

“You know what I mean, old man. Don’t disrespect me!” the guy clicks off his safety. He’s a brown-skinned man, stout and ugly, tattoos crawling over his face. His Hispanic accent chirps through when he’s angry.

“You want our women?” the biggest nomad waves his hefty arm around, showing the raiders what he thinks they are asking for. Large women, one which I now remember as Cremson’s aunt. She has a rose tattoo on her shoulder. There are three other pretty beefy women, and then there are the two witches from my dream.

The man with the gun frowns. “Passengers. Give them to us. We need slaves.”

“They paid. That’s not our code.”

I nod, respecting that. Maybe these nomads can be trusted.

The raider shoots into the air. The shotgun blast loses itself in the screaming wind, but still, it makes plenty shake.

Sand rises and swirls, becoming a vicious storm, enraged at us, the straggling breathe of mother earth blowing down onto us, beating us for ruining her, for not caring enough.

I’ve always wondered if we, humans, caused this apocalypse? Or was is just the earth, getting rid of us? Maybe God? Like all the religious folk believe. The answer has never been made clear.

“Bullshit! All you fucking nomads are cannibals! I guess you choose death!” the raider spits, short-tempered and ill-mannered, not that any of that matters much nowadays.

 Everything happens so fast. Cannibals? Where were they taking us then?

The biggest nomad back steps, too slow. The raider makes his head a mound of flesh and bone, the thump of shotgun pushing the small man back as the nomad falls to the ground, now vulture food. War breaks out and pissed, mother earth berates them, sand, joining the chaos.

 The nomads rush forward, battle cries getting gobbled up into the howls of the wind. I run back to the tree and pick up Ni and Cremson, running for the lead vehicle in the line, staying low. I open the passenger door and make Milo, Ni, and Cremson pile into the back while I crawl into the driver’s seat.

The key is still in the ignition. I start the truck and slam my foot on the pedal, kicking up sand until the wheels grip the dirt. I keep my head down, yelling for my three companions to do the same and exit the bloodbath, bullets trailing us, puncturing the vehicle in the rear.