The Glint

From about fifty feet and slightly right, the glint caught his eye.

He moved, slow, measured, and silent through the alley, towards it, as the shadowed pile he estimated as higher than he was tall, revealed itself for bodies.

The glint was anomalous.

Bodies stacked, would’ve been picked clean of almost anything of value. These, he could make out, were still largely dressed. Some, he made for female, had been partially stripped.

A fact of this time, as much as the bodies were. What would have been a shudder from him 752 days before, had long been whittled down to an almost-silent sigh.

That’s how long, he allowed, inching nearly sideways, crouched, the M-25 in his hands at the ready.

That vague feeling riding him extra hard, as he moved. No movement in periphery, and as he checked his six, he couldn’t make out movement. That feeling he wasn’t alone.

From the appearance of the stacked bodies as he moved closer, it was obvious to him they had been alive, at the most, a couple of days before. There was every reason and sign of recent activity, if Lawrence, KS, was now a ghost town.

Whoever did this isn’t far away, if they’re not still in town.

Muscles tightened, and he strained ears and eyes to pick up minute movements or sounds.

It was virtually silent, but for the crackle of a still-smoldering building that had guided his way in, and had set him on edge, despite the need to forage for supplies, or trade, if the signs proved there was a relative safety, before he entered.

He closed the distance to where the stack of bodies stood, well above his height, and took in a sight now so common it didn’t register on his face.

Mute, contorted agony. Limbs splayed, discolored… a graceless and innocent mockery of life, left without dignity, and piled, as if for disposal. But left here, largely stripped of anything of value. Eyes grayed, and skin mottled, rigor having long enough let go.

Three days, at the most, and with the temperature he’d measured by an old, plastic thermometer’s mercury, the temperatures had peaked in the 60s the last few days. Dry. No rain. Not quite freezing at night. Mid-April, and reasonably warm, with no snow remaining on the land.

That feeling of being watched as he stared up toward the glint he’d first registered as a slight brightening on the brick wall on his right, bounced by the mid-day sun. He’d started into the outskirts before dawn. Noon would be the height, in a few minutes.

And, he was aware that in the last moments creeping up, he was exposed.

A damnable curiosity had crept over him.

Raiders would take everything. He didn’t have to know who these raiders were, or their particular habits, to be well aware of that.

The virtue of manpower, meant an efficiency when stripping the dead. You can always throw away the meaningless and the useless, later.

He looked to the ground, for any signs. The cracked and uneven pavement yielded little, beyond windblown dust, and gravel. Sign on trail, or beside the roadways he’d traveled parallel to, were far more revelatory. Smell on the air was the rot beginning to set in. Just warm enough, and soon, the bodies would bloat and blacken, should rain and cool not come.

But, there was that shimmer, two feet above his head, near the body of a middle-aged woman. Blonde, where the gray of dirt and ash couldn’t hide it. Her mouth open in a slack-jawed, twisted angle. Eyes misted and dry, with the finality of death.

The glint. Yellowish.

Jewelry? Who the hell wouldn’t have taken that from her?

He thought nothing as he reached out and risked toppling the pile, to reach her. Two years of bodies uncountable, and a number he’d turned into the dead he’d stopped counting at four.

In the shadow of the sun, toward the top of the pile, the glint was in her half-opened hand.

Palmed it, when the time came.

Somewhere between death and rigor loosening up, whatever she’d concealed in her final moments, was revealed.

He shook as he climbed up, afraid he’d cause the pile to subside. He could feel flesh give as his boots bought purchase against torsos, or faces, and he only paid attention to what he felt, so he’d know if he couldn’t find balance, or would bring the pile down on him.

It was reckless, and he knew it, and he couldn’t see or register any sign, but that cold trickle of nerves he was ignoring grew in amplitude, as he reached out, and grasped her cold hand.

A chain, and an object. Metal of course.

He was right. Some necklace. A keepsake, and he slid the chain from where it had hung on fingers half open.

He scrambled off, clumsily. Wiped one hand on his dirty and patched utility trousers, the Multicam pattern faded and softened by washings in streams and the extremity of days and nights without shelter.

In the other, he held up his prize.

A gold locket on a chain. 14kt. The curve and point of a heart. Common. Nothing special, but not worthless as a trade item.

He brought his hand up and thumbed it open, to find a small, color photo of an old man, smiling a tight-lipped smile that comes with dentures.

Obviously, nothing to him.

Something to her, the thought came, unbidden. And then, he felt something. A twinge, still alive in him. A reminder of the few nothings-of-value in his pack, should he wind up on a pile, or dead, and stripped of possessions. For trade, or just to keep going.

He had questions he couldn’t afford to entertain, and was aware that though obscured by the bodies, ahead of him, behind, he was in the open.

It would always be the wrong time to be lost, possessed by some curiosity or interest, in a hostile place.

As it was becoming before the Coalition launched the nuke that took out all the power, cordoned off the borders, and left hundreds of millions to kill each other and die.

As it is.

But, still he stood for a second longer, before bowing his head slightly. A whizz by his right ear felt. A muted thump as his eyes registered a new hole in the shirt of an elderly man’s body in front of him, a microsecond before the report.

No other movement or sound, as he ducked left, and crouched against the rent body of a washing machine.

He was right to be on edge, and had ignored it!

Fool!

His eyes searched, around the barrel of his rifle.

It didn’t take long to make him out, as he was standing in the clear, just maybe 70 feet away.

Tall. Black fatigues of some sort. Sighted AR-pattern rifle, lowered slightly. Well-fed, and out in the open.

He silently cursed his idiocy, as the man registered his position and moved to the righthand wall that made the alley, behind a dented Chevy.

He’s not alone.

He scanned the periphery, and opened his ears.

Where, then?

Behind me. Somewhere behind the bodies, where he/they couldn’t be seen.

Am I encircled? How many?

He heard a muted scratch on gravel behind him, some distance back beyond the stack.

That problem isn’t immediate.

His assailant wasn’t exposed, but he could make out movement. A second’s exposure of an elbow. Enough to make to imagine where Center Mass and head would be, but solidly behind what a 7.62mm round wouldn’t reliably penetrate.

He slowed his breathing, forced himself to, as he made out or imagined movement behind him. Focused on the immediate.

That SOB needs to move. I need to catch him at it.

And, as the nerves climbed, and he could imagine an unseen second assailant, or others, closing in, he focused on the man behind the Chevy. Homed in on the scratch of boots shifting on the pavement. Registered every movement that came through, distorted by the still-clear glass of the windshield and backlight.

The man was in front of the car, and protected by the engine block.

I could use a little luck, right now.

Luck, he knew, was nothing to count on.

And so, he waited, registering slight movement he couldn’t tell were real or imagined behind him, expecting any second would be his last. Little choice.

And, when he thought he couldn’t stand it any longer, a shift and scratch, and an exposed boot.

He sighted in an instant and fired.

The man yelped, as the round went through his ankle.

And he toppled down, dropping his weapon, and rolled out as he grasped for the wounded limb.

He drew down again, and fired, going for the man’s head, mouth open, but not screaming.

The report. And the successful shot taking him below the left orbit of the eye.

Done.

He didn’t wait or view the body more than a split second, as he was frantically searching, his ears blunted by the shot.

He moved back towards the stack, and clumily fell back against it, arms out at length, and one gripping the M25.

Steadied himself into a crouch, ears still buzzing, and that much less sensitive to what was surely creeping up on him.

How many?

He’d only heard sound behind.

One? I should be so lucky, he thought, sliding sideways to the edge of the stack, his back coming into contact with heads and limbs. Close. Intimate. And horrible.

When he reached the ragged end, he had to steel himself to venture an eye towards the street opening out on the other side.

Goddamn it. Nothing!

He waited for what seemed like hours, certain the man couldn’t have been alone.

But, eventually, reasoning that he’d heard nothing else, and his trained eyes saw no other movement, he slid out from the pile of bodies, and slowly crept forth.

Crossed the street. Crossed several others, full of broken glass and strewn broken things once grand, and now burnt or rent.

And several streets passed, realized he still gripped the locket in his hand. Despite the shot. Despite what seemed hours slowly moving from cover to cover.

Palm and fingers deeply and redly marked, as when he’d interwoven the chain in his fingers, he’d never let go.

That night, he made shelter in a half-burnt warehouse on the other side of town.

He didn’t make a fire, and ate his last can of red kidney beans, washing them down with water he’d treated with the ever-lower iodine in from the bottle he’d scavenged, 40 miles before crossing into Kansas. Stripped from the body of an unnamed raider – group unknown – who’d straggled behind ten of his fellows.

Sometime around midnight, by the arc of the Full Moon, he ventured into the yard away from his bivvy, and stared at the Moon for a while, and the brightness of night, obscuring stars that he’d never seen, before all light pollution was extinguished.

Thought on loss.

Thought of the insanity of crossing this land from where he’d started – Battlefield, Indiana.

Home gone. Life gone.

He’d connected for a brief second with the chain and locket held now in front of his eyes, glimmering with the light of Earth’s first satellite.

And wondered if he’d make La Jolla, or pass as so many unnamed, these last two years. Fallen of starvation. Taken by lone gun, or band.

To go where rumor had it, the pulse hadn’t taken out power, and the Coalition had established foothold.

Would he curse the Brits, then?

Did he still understand why it was done?

Was that enough, and could it be enough, for what was forever gone?

What would be, again?

He couldn’t know that, as surely as his life had nearly ended but for luck, today.

How long would that hold, before I lose my mind?

And why haven’t I? The fuck’s wrong with me?