Evelyn Earth Part 3

It was getting darker by the minute. I rummaged through the loot that had piled up around my front door and found a battery powered lantern. Twisting it open I placed it on the table and jumped up next to it. Looking around the kitchen I gave myself a moment to gather my thoughts and that’s when the panic began. What was wrong with me? I had set out with a friend of mine to gather some simple supplies and had returned with no friend and blood on my hands. I jumped off the table and began to pace. It made no sense to me. I had been so normal before I set out of the house, but had somehow turned into a savage. Why in the world would I, 23 year old Evelyn Khol, arts grad student and all round goody two shoes decide to bludgeon a police man!

My heart beat had begun to accelerate and I could feel my hands clenching without realising that I was the one clenching them. Snapping my head up I muttered “shit, Maya.” I quickly ran out into the hall way and up to her door. Turning the handle I was surprised to see that it was unlocked.

“Hello?” I called out as I stepped into her one bedroom flat. Taking a quick assessment of the place I realised she was gone. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I had gotten so aggressive with Maya. Little meek Maya. It was almost impossible to even raise your voice at the poor girl let alone throw her out of a safe house. Running my hands through my hair I decided to check outside and see if I could catch her.

The streets were quiet. The earlier ruckus had died down and it seemed everyone had gone to ground. I was half expecting to see patrol cars or military personal, at least some form of crowd control that had dispersed everyone, but I swear a roll of tumbleweed could have come rolling down the road. Maya was nowhere to be seen and suddenly I was wondering why I had come out here in the first place. She was weak and would only have dragged me down. With a shrug of my shoulders I made my way back inside. It wouldn’t do for me to be caught outside unarmed.

It’s been almost 62 days and there’s still been no sign of Maya. There’s a large part of me that wishes she got out and found a safe haven. Someone else to take care of her, but there’s that little part of me, deep in my heart that wishes she failed. Failed like I knew she would. It was that little part that worried me the most. It would surface at odd times and I would find myself thinking of the strangest things. Like how to best blow up a car or how many bullets it would take to bring down a group of people.

                Sighing I pulled myself up from my bed and grabbed a bottle of water from the bedside table. I think being alone with only my books to distract me was making me crazy.

                 My supplies were running low and I needed to get back out there to re-stock. Throughout the last month I had seen how some looters had gotten organised. From atop my rooftop perch I saw a group of men armed with bats and knives pull a family out onto the side of the road from their townhouse—one of the ones in front of my building. They must have been holed up in there just as I was in here, but the scavengers found them, not me.

The men made no moves to be quiet or discreet. They screeched and they jeered and they laughed as they pushed the father around, beating him until he wouldn’t get up. The mother screamed and begged, but the men payed her no attention until one grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back inside. I could hear more screams from the townhouse, while the sobs of the toddler echoed throughout the street. They just left the kid there. I sat and watched him as the scavengers stripped the house and loaded a car with their bounty. The boy clutched at his unmoving father and keened, like a puppy dog.

By the time the scavengers pulled away and I climbed down from my perch the boy was gone. I felt the father’s pulse, but he was long dead. Inside the mother lay on the cold tiles of the hallway her dress pulled up around her head and throat. I made myself check the house, but the boy was gone. I ran back into my concrete tower and didn’t come out for days, not until the sounds of thunder rang in my ears and the ground began to shake.

I scrambled up onto the roof just in time to see the shopping complex across the road implode. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Not even in movies or T.V. shows or…anything. The whole structure was standing there one minute and the next it was engulfed in pitch black flame. My eyes saw it, but I couldn’t make sense of the element before me. It engulfed like fire, moved like slow water but held the consistency of night. It swallowed up the complex and just as it was about to collapse the darkness exploded. I was thrown backwards and felt my head collide with solid metal. I didn’t wake up until the moon illuminated the sky. Half the building had crumbled. It took me the whole night to find a way back inside. As I slept in the hallway of Level 7 I dreamed of pain, heart wrenching pain. Luckily I was able to find that small hole that led back inside my apartment. I had to knock out a piece of my ceiling to do it, but I got there, bloodied, but safe.   

From then onwards I made it a daily habit to climb onto the rubble filled roof and observe the patterns of other survivors. Groups of raiders would move from one block to another and burn down places that I assumed were used up—dry. The only places left untouched were my building and the townhouses on the far end. We were the very last bits of civilisation before the land opened up to the sea and the giant pillars that held up the Bolt Bridge. Everything before us had been caught in the blast and the scavengers skirted around the areas that were caved in. From up here I could make out the faint licks of darkness. They fascinated me completely. I found myself staring into their depth for hours, not moving a muscle. I began to develop a distinct earning for the element. One day I decided to go down there and get a closer look, but the prospect of finding what I was looking for scared me too much. A part of my old self still lingered, still whispered in the back of my mind that outside wasn’t safe, that all I needed was more supplies until help arrived.

 Help never came. For as long as I sat on that roof entranced by the black tendrils I thought about the lack of, well, anything. It felt like the world had abandoned me, me and everyone else. I doubted that the scavengers down there had any better idea of what was going on. Everyone was just trying to survive. Nothing had prepared our pampered society for a breakdown of this magnitude. We had no survival skills beyond Googling directions to the nearest McDonalds, but somehow those of us left had turned to violent coping mechanisms. I knew in my heart that I was no better than that group of men who had terrorised that family. The cop probably had a family of his own, but that never crossed my mind. All I knew was that I needed that gun, I needed it to further my chances and it was as simple as that. All the people with a conscience had simply vanished. Where was Maya? Where was that little boy?

These thoughts plagued me constantly.