SHORT STORIES: Decadence

He awoke with a knife against his throat. Careful not to make any sudden movements he opened his eyes and saw a small, dirty hand at the hilt of the blade. It belonged to a girl – no older than fifteen – and she obscured the shop’s entrance which led to the rest of the centre.

He could see she held the blade firmly and with purpose, like somebody who’d been taught how to kill. Slowly, he reached for the pistol down by his side, but felt the knife push even harder; his larynx pushed back. Outside the doorway, a harsh wind blew across the glass ceiling of the hollowed shopping centre, rattling the panes.

“You want to do this, kid?”

She ignored him. He noticed a subtle scar that spanned the distance between her mouth and eye, but it was mostly obscured by a layer of dirt. As he studied her face, she swung her head slightly, covering the scar with filthy brown hair.

“I get it: you’re scared because I’m just some guy sleeping way out here by myself. Truth is, I’ve got my own kids – about your age, in fact. I only laid my head down for a moment before heading back. Avoid travelling in the dark, you know?”

The girl remained silent, but held the shiv firmly in place against his tender throat. Behind her, the dilapidated shopping centre housed the ghosts of a time long past; the store they stood in still had some faded posters of beautiful women wearing designer jewellery. It was empty – of course – as everything had been looted by now. Only creeping vines and moss trailed its way around the two of them and out onto the second floor.

“What’s in your bag?” she commanded.

“My bag?” he said, glancing towards the bulky rucksack lying against the wall next to him. “Oh, so that’s what’s happening. Okay. I tell you what: you tell me your name, and maybe back off, and I’ll share what little supplies I’ve got with you. The rest is for my family back home, but I’m sure my wife would understand.”

“Give me the gun, first.”

“Then I have nothing to bargain with.”

“Give me the gun,” she said, while edging the blade deeper into his neck.

“Whoa, okay. Here – you’re the boss.”

Holding the small pistol by the barrel, he raised it until she could grab the stock. Once she held it, the girl slowly removed the knife and aimed the pistol straight at the man’s face.

“May I sit over there? If I don’t get up, my back’s prone to seizing,” said the man, motioning to a nearby stool. She nodded, which was sufficient. With a slight struggle, he raised himself onto his feet and slowly perched on the dirty stool next to where he’d been sleeping.

“Now that you’ve stolen my gun, how about telling me your name?” said the man. The girl looked slightly startled at the question, as if she’d forgotten the name she’d been given by her mother. Must have grown up amongst all this, he figured.

“Eve,” she whispered.

“There we go. I’m Augustus – now we’re not strangers. Reckon you could stop pointing that thing at me?”

Eve ignored his request and kept the trembling gun firmly locked on his head.

“You look as comfortable with that pistol as my daughter would with her dolls,” said Augustus.

“Where did you come from?” Eve asked.

“It’s a camp not too far from here,” said Augustus. “Got lots of families there, as well as that wife I mentioned and a couple of kids of mine – Susan and Peter. They’ll be all worked up and wailing “Where’s Daddy, Mummy?” and Sarah won’t know what to tell them.”

“Stop,” said Eve.

Augustus almost continued, but stopped himself. He’d got the girl to speak, and that was already more than he would’ve allowed, were the positions reversed.

They remained like that – Eve about a metre from Augustus’ chair, the gun pointed at him – for an uncomfortable few minutes. Eve’s gaze never wavered from his head, and Augustus kept his eyes firmly on the gun in her hands. He wondered if he had time to grab it off her.

“Look, why don’t you come with me?” he said, breaking the silence. “We’ve got plenty of food to feed another mouth – don’t exactly get many tourists wandering round, you know?”

Something echoed out far into the shopping complex, and Eve gasped. A shot fired off, and skimmed his right ear.

“Fuck me!” cried Augustus, cupping his ear. “You blew my bloody ear off, girl!”

A light splattering of blood now decorated the wall behind him. When he removed his hand to examine the damage, it was already stained red. He tentatively felt his ear, and noted that the top was now dangling precariously from a thin slither of flesh.

Eve didn’t respond, but instead breathed heavily through her nostrils; not quite hyperventilating, but dangerously close. Her hands were a shaking mess now, and the gun wobbled wildly.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, calm down. It stings like hell, but it won’t kill me – you might with that thing, though. Lower the gun, girl. Catch your breath.”

“I can’t, can I?” she said, and she wasn’t wrong. He’d been known to do terrible things for much less, and those people hadn’t been aiming a gun at him.

“If you’re not going to stop aiming that at me,” he said, “the least you could do is talk to me. How about we work out how we’re going to get out of this situation we’re in?”

“Give me the bag,” she said.

“We both know I can’t do that, or else my trip out here would be for nothing. All I’d have to bring back to Sarah and the kids would be a mutilated ear.”

Eve’s breathing slowed, but the weapon still shook in her hands. Augustus was sure she was thinking about just shooting him in the face right now and walking away – it’s what he would’ve done – but for whatever reason, the girl in front of him had chosen not to.

“So what’ll it be?” he said, wincing as he applied pressure once more to his ear. “I can give you enough to keep you going for a few days, and then you’re on your own. Hopefully that-“

Augustus was cut off by a sudden, light tapping outside the shop. The sound neared, and Augustus envisioned somebody coming to save him from all of this.

“What is it?” said Eve, as the noise stopped.

“A stupid deer,” said Augustus. “Nothing but a stupid deer.”

He’d never seen animals as anything but a source of food, but it looked like the girl felt differently.

“I think it’s got some babies with it, too,” he said, completing the picturesque scene. “Couple of foal.”

“Foals are horses,” said Eve.

“Whatever, then. Look, you clearly want to take a look at them. Go on, I can tell you want to,” he said. As he spoke, Augustus tried to see if some nearby rubble could be weaponised. “Have a glance. I won’t do anything.”

As Eve began to turn her head, Augustus felt a sudden shooting pain in his back, and his leg skidded out. Before he could explain that it was just his spine seizing, he felt an intense pain penetrating his skull. Except this bullet didn’t just skim his ear; it flew right through his jaw, shattering it and the glass panes leaning against the wall behind him.

He fell off the stool and onto the ground with a thud, trying to wail through the gurgles of a mouth filled with blood. Clawing hands tried to stop the flow as it leaked from his face and onto the floor.

“Oh, god, no. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Eve said, stammering. His vision faded in and out as he turned his head to look at her, nearing the doorway of the shop.

“You fuhkin bitshhhh,” he said. He tried pushing himself up onto his feet, but slipped in the pooling blood and slammed his head back onto the hard, tiled ground. As his vision faded, Augustus tried to swing his foot and catch Eve, to knock her down. As he felt his leg connect, a second blast echoed round the room and plunged everything into darkness.

*

“Oh shit, oh no.”

Eve stood, frozen, with the gun pointed at Augustus, who now lay in a crumpled mess at her feet. He was barely recognisable; the first bullet had torn through his face and out the back of his skull. She dropped the gun onto the floor.

She felt numb. Her ears were ringing, and an overwhelming hunger consumed her. Without looking at the body on the floor, she grabbed the rucksack Augustus had been guarding. She didn’t check what it contained as she zipped it up and threw it over a shoulder.

Exiting was simple enough, and it wasn’t long before she found herself outside in the city once again. She stopped for a moment as the cool evening air hit her face. Before her was a grand, stone staircase that led down to a road packed full of rusted cars; some with decaying, skeletal figures still inside. Beyond those, dense streets littered with newspapers midway-read and animal corpses picked dry. Further – Eve had no idea. That was long past the safety of the familiar.

She descended the staircase and leaned against a car close to the curb. She took a moment to look back at the shopping centre at the top of the grand staircase, partially expecting a mutilated Augustus to come shambling out of its towering glass doors, like in the comics she’d read. Instead, she saw a solitary deer slowly trot out of the towering doors she’d not long ran through. It stood for a moment, scanning the same horizon her eyes had, before darting down the stairs and off into the city.

Swinging the rucksack onto the ground, Eve undid the zip. Inside were the expected cans of food and bottles of hopefully clean water, but sifting below these supplies revealed a small, matted teddy bear. A sickness forced its way into Eve’s insides as she reached in and removed the teddy. Holding it up to the fading sunlight, she noticed a name had been inscribed on the underside of the toy: For Sarah x.