It was another long and tiring day, still no rain insight after two weeks of merciless sunshine in the wastelands they had once called their home. Ruins of once proud and modern buildings were the only thing that still faintly reminded of a civilized area that must have had existed once. Oh how she missed the green trees, the soft wind in her face, her son playing in the backyard, laughing and squealing as he tried to hit his father with the stream of his water gun. She often remembered that moment on the days when she was out here in the wild, scavenging for food and whatever she could find and put to use. Ammunition had become the third most important item. The top priority was to keep her family going, and she would have done anything for it.
Rose would have never imagined that one day she would run around in nothing but dust and rubble, hiding behind the remains of buildings as she loaded her sniper rifle and watched for enemies. Never in her wildest dreams had something even remotely close to this shown up. In the beginning it had been scary, but it wasn’t as bad as it was now. Nothing could have prepared her for this. She would have laughed at anyone who would have told her that soon after they had finally settled down and lived a remotely normal life, everything would be destroyed. The world population decimated by two thirds or more, it was hard to tell without any decent means of communicating with anyone.
Nukes had been fired, no one knew why, some suspected it being a glitch in some system. And this was her reality now. She had no idea why she was still hoping that it would end someday, hoping of some miracle happening and all of this returning to how it had been once.
She took a deep breath, whispered a short prayer, anyone could believe in god out here. It was easier than to remind herself of the danger out here. One bullet could put an end to a life.
“Anyone can shoot a gun.” Jack had told her once, shortly after this had started and when she refused to take the sniper rifle he had been holding out to her.
When he was still okay.
She hadn’t been comfortable with the idea but took the rifle anyway. Now it was routine. He had shown her how to use it, explained it quickly and Rose could still hear all the rattling and clicking the rifle made when he reloaded it so quickly that she couldn’t follow his movements.
How terribly obvious it had been at the time that he had held all kinds of firearms from a very young age. As time went on it became more and more obvious to her too. The things he knew weren’t things he was taught somewhere. It was experience. He had taught her how to injure people efficiently, how to make them unable to fight back.
How to kill quickly.
Rose took another deep breath, peaked around the corner quickly and carefully and spotted her enemy. It was a cyborg, armed to the teeth with his back towards her. A clear shot. It wouldn’t take more than a second. The man had what she needed, what Jack needed. She had done it countless times now. The fear of taking a life had disappeared eventually.
Jack told her it would. He had also told her not to give in to the bloodlust it brought forth. She had made a new mindset then. To never take more than she needed.
She went back into hiding, climbed up the rubble and onto the remains of the roof. She checked the area, no one else in sight except that cyborg. She didn’t care anymore that these people had families or friends that would miss them. She needed what he had, and there were two ways to get it.
Rip them to shreds and hope the parts she needed didn’t get damaged, or kill them quickly and drag them back to the hideout to scavenge for parts there.
Rose lay down flat on the roof and readied the sniper rifle. She didn’t know the exact name of it. Jack had told her many times, but she couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter to her. As long as it shot and killed the target, anything was fine.
She slowed down her breathing, peeked through the scope like a hawk waiting for prey to rush by. The man came into sight, she adjusted the position and pulled the trigger without a second of hesitation.
A bird flew up, likely disturbed by the shot.
She looked over the edge of the building, the man had slumped down into the dust, a pool of blood spreading around his head. She reloaded the rifle and strapped it on her back before she jumped done the roof and walked over to the man. She kicked him to the side, his eyes staring blankly at her. Rose coldly stared back, stripped the man of any weapons and ammunition and stored them into the bags and pockets on the belt of her sand-colored overall. She then heaved the man up over her shoulders, both to use him as a shield should anyone dare to chase her, but also because there was simply no other way for her to carry a heavy person. She hadn’t been surprised at the muscles she had built up over the last months. She didn’t care either. As long as she did the killing, no one else in her small family had to.
The sun was setting, finally slowly putting an end to the terrible heat. She had no eyes for the stars anymore. It seemed surreal that something this beautiful still existed in a world like this.
The hideout was located behind a set of landmines. She knew how to navigate around them, knew their locations. When she parted the dried up bushes and slipped in to the short path that led up to the shed they had thrown together, she saw her son sitting next to a small fire. Dirt was smearing around his face, a fresh bandage around his arm. His clothing was torn at some spots but he smiled at her when he saw her.
“Found a flock of sheep not far from here.” He told her casually.
She nodded and let the corpse slide to the ground. It was normal by now. So normal that it was almost sickening how fast humans could get used to such absurd things. Her son didn’t even look at the man when he proceeded to hold fish over the fire. She wasn’t even sure anymore if the boy hadn’t killed anyone.
Jack had made a fuss when he still could fuss and yell. He wanted to keep their son out of this at all costs, but then he had fallen ill or something close to it. Then it was a race against time and Rose couldn’t be bothered to check on her son all the time when she wanted to save Jack.
John had adapted to it faster than she had. Jack hadn’t needed to adapt to it at all. It was as if someone had flicked a switch in him. He knew exactly what to do and he was barking orders and told them what to do as if he had never done anything else.
He wasn’t barking orders anymore now. If she was lucky he would look at her. Even more luck of he smiled or said something. She dreaded to go into the shed. It was the only thing she still feared.
Loss.
She dreaded the day she would go in there and he wouldn’t respond to her. She feared it so much, her hands began to tremble at the simple thought.
Dreaded the moment she would go in there and he wouldn’t just look like a corpse, but be one. Feared that he slipped away when she took too long to get the necessary parts. Feared she couldn’t be with him when he drew his final breath.
Rose rested the Rifle at a wall that had once belonged to the backyard of someone’s house, grabbed the corpse and dragged it over to the shed. Jack had stopped arguing when he realized it was either kill or be killed, now.
He didn’t say much anymore anyway. Rose was sure he knew that he didn’t have much time anymore. Finding a person skilled enough to do the necessary repairs was near impossible. They hid away, were dead, or liars.
Rose didn’t trust anyone anymore.
Today was a lucky day.
Jack looked at her with his pale blue eyes out of the ashen white face. He looked so terrible, Rose noted. She noticed that every time she came here. Rose smiled back at him. It never reached her eyes.
With skilled precision learned over the course of months she took the corpse of the cyborg on the floor apart. Ripped out what she didn’t need, plucked out what was necessary as if it would burst if she held it too tight.
Jack had once told her that he hated it when she did that, but not anymore. Maybe he had just gotten used to it too. He had also told her that he hated himself for being such a burden.
It was true that She and John had better chances than he had, but Rose would not leave him to die. She would try anything she could to just drag it out a little longer. She needed more time, more time in between the days Jack was fine and the days he was fighting to survive. It was rare that she could find everything that was needed in one day. She didn’t find everything today either. Sometimes she wished he was able to move without slamming into the ground seconds later out of sheer exhaustion. There was so much to this technology, too many things she didn’t know and too many questions Jack couldn’t answer.
Today had been a lucky day, but who knew what tomorrow brought forth?
