World War 4: Sticks and Stones

Peter's Fall

Fifteen years ago. 

Today was my thirtieth birthday. I should have been out celebrating, but instead, I found myself working furiously on the finishing touches of the bunker. I knew that someday, sooner rather than later, something terrible was coming. My buddy Frank and I had been joking that we would connect our bunkers once the apocalypse arrived, but to me, that was only a joke. In a couple of hours, I had finally finished working on securing the bunker. Now it was time to pack it. "What do I need?" I wondered to myself. I had a ton of food to prepare for the possibility of a meganuke attack. Those bombs were rare, but research told me that they had enough radiation to last over a decade. With that in mind, I started to pack cans and cans of preserved fruits and some precooked soups. I knew that by the time that I was finished, I had enough to last a decade for my family and I. Only my family and I. To ensure that nobody would be able to steal my food, I packed a submachine gun with just a few bullets into the bunker. I hated guns, but I knew that I was entering a time in the world where my needs were going to override my hates. "How's it going down there Pete?" My wife called down to me from upstairs. "Fine, fine. Almost done packing." "Good. We gotta get you celebrating. thirty's an age you only get once." I laughed at her joke and decided to loosen myself up a bit. I stopped working and brought myself upstairs. My wife came slowly through the hallway. She smiled, holding a beautiful dark red velvet cake. "Grace! You shouldn't have!" "haha, but I did anyways. Kyle, come here! we're gonna have some cake for daddy. It's his thirtieth birthday, you know." Kyle didn't much care that it was my thirtieth birthday as much as he cared that there was cake. His little five year old body came rocketing towards the table. "Woah, slow down bud." I said this to him, but there was no change of speed. I gave up as I watched him jump into his chair. "CAKE!" Grace started to cut the cake. As she cut to the middle, a glistening goldmine of frosting peeked out. She gave me a gigantic piece about the size of my head. "C'mon Grace, you know I don't need that much." She smiled. "I know, but even if you don't start with that piece, you're gonna eat that much anyways." I had no argument there. I grabbed my fork and chowed down. The red, velvety sponge dissolved in my mouth leaving just the sweet sensation of the frosting. The cake was utterly delicious. It might have been the last delicious thing that I had tasted before the attack. As soon as I had finished my piece, a rush of tiredness possessed my body. I kissed Grace on the lips and Kyle on the forehead and walked myself to bed. 

The next day, early in the afternoon, the sirens started to ring. Chaos ensued. I rushed Grace to the bunker. Frantically, I tried to find Kyle, but he was nowhere to be found. "KYLE?!" I yelled until my voice became coarse. I tried to run back to get Kyle, but I heard the loud burst of a bomb in the distance. There was no time. I had to close the bunker door. I could see the cloud of explosion and death come rushing towards me. Kyle came running. It was either him or the door. Grace or none of us. I had no choice. Without him, I closed the bunker door. As soon as I did, a deafening bang hit the door full force, but I had succeeded just in time. Grace sat there only in disbelief as a mother who had just seen her child die at the hands of his father. I sat next to her. She understood why I did what I did, but she could not shake her feeling that there was another way. We sat in silence. Our hearts burned at my choice. My heavy hand wrapped itself around Grace's shoulder. Our lives would never be the same, our souls would never again feel the bounteous rush of joy that Kyle had brought into our lives. These were the worst days of my life. Until I finally realized my destiny once again. 

About a year into our new lives, Grace and I found ourselves stuck in the midst of a community that Frank had started underground. While I was impressed at what he had accomplished, I had wished that I was living alone. At that same time, I had gotten Grace pregnant. She was about 2 months in when I heard what the evil sadist councilmen had decided. For some reason, they had decided that there was not another goddamn feasible way under the sun to keep people fed than to eat the children of volunteers. Grace and I took no time at all to decline when a man who claimed to be a council member came to us and asked us to volunteer. "Fuck no we aren't going to let you take my child. Y'all are the ones who packed for a normal nuke. I want you to eat as many fucking babies as you want. See how your heart feels. I for one am going to enjoy my delicious soup and live like a normal human being." They seemed to be insulted, but I felt no shame in what I had said. They deserved every word. seven months later, Grace went into intense labor. Her screams felt as though someone had stabbed her in the heart. I grabbed her hand and encouraged her. I had seen with my own eyes what she could accomplish. I knew that this would be no different. About fourteen hours later arrived a child, crying in exhaustion, but the tears of joy mixed in the cries were unmistakable. 

a year later, during the night was when I snapped. Two people disguised in all black came to my room. I almost thought that I had dreamt it until they started moving towards my one year old. I tried to attack one of them. I got a punch in and I wound up for another. The second man grabbed my arm and held me down. I tried to scream, but my face was pushed against my pillow. The first man grabbed my child and ran off with a head start. Soon enough, the second had caught up to him. I couldn't run until I had caught my breath. As soon as I did, I ran as fast as I could in the direction that they took my child. I could no longer see them, but I heard a voice call out. "You disrespected the council. Your wife was voted to become a child-bearer." I ran faster. They were going to eat my kid! I saw two black cloaks that were thrown on the floor, but nobody was attached to them. I never caught their faces, so all I could do now was look for my child. I ran and looked. Ran and looked. I never found people, but I found a small fire. Above that fire sat my only living child, whimpering away his final breaths, burning to a crisp. A man stood with his back to me and, without saying a word, he took a knife and he cut into my child's leg and bit in. In his bite of passion, barely cooked blood drizzled down his face. He never turned around. "Nobody disrespects the fucking council." 

At those words, I turned. Defeated, I left. I went back to my room for only just a moment and grabbed the gun from my wall. I scoffed. "Nobody disrespects the fucking council." I loaded the gun. I had no idea who had murdered my child, which meant that I had to kill everyone who had ever thought of eating a baby. Everyone who respected the council's evil was dead. I took one shot at a neighbor to feel the recoil. This woke up Grace. She only sat there in horror as she watched me mow down hundreds. I had no vision. I couldn't see anything, but my blind rage. There was a child huddled into a clump with someone that seemed to be his girlfriend. I nearly took a shot, but I hesitated for just a second and I found myself on the ground. As soon as I hit the ground, my gun was ripped from my hands in such a way that cut them. Then, I felt a sharp pain and I hit the ground hard. I was out for just a second. In a confused haze, I saw the child who had been huddled with the girl. He was holding the barrel of the gun just inches from my face. I was ready to die. I closed my eyes and let it happen. Then, "click." Then silence. The gun was empty. In that moment, I felt the anger of missing out on sweet relief. I was forcefully grabbed by my hands and shoved in a hallway behind two bookshelves. As I had reached for the gun originally, I had felt a passion for vengeance. As I sat behind these shelves, I felt nothing. I sat there for a week. I had been offered "food," but I had declined every time. I would have rather died than devour a soul. Eventually, Frank came to visit me. I put on a brave face. I had no idea that he had been the one to propose cannibalism. Frank didn't recognize me at first, but as we had got to talking, he realized who I was. He asked me why I had done it. I didn't want him to see me in a state of weakness, so I answered. "I was bored. I needed something to shake life up a bit." I had expected him to much more dissatisfied with my answer, but for some convoluted reason, he understood. We got to talking again. He seemed more interested in catching up with me than talking about the shooting, so I let myself relax a little bit. In a day or so, Grace finally came to visit me. "Why didn't you visit sooner?" "I tried to, but I had a hard time convincing the council." "Fuck the goddamn council!" "What do you mean?" At her question, I explained what had happened during the night of the shooting. She finally understood why I did what I did and I saw the rage in her eyes. I became happy that she supported my massacre, but upset that that was what it had come to. We spoke for a while. "I think that I'm going to escape the bunker, see if the research was wrong. If it wasn't, then these devils die with us." She was ready, but alas, we had to wait. Eventually, I was let out. Grace and I found a shovel in a cabinet and hid under my bed, which was near a wall. I draped a blanket over the edge, so that nobody would be able to see us and we dug a tunnel with just enough width that we would be able to crawl through. We made sure that the tunnel was long enough so that when we made our tunnel wider, we wouldn't shave through the wall. Eventually our small tunnel went about fifty feet. Then, we started to dig outwards to make a room. Once we were able to stand up, I grabbed Grace's hand. "This is it. We live today, or we die trying." I shoveled with one last push and the outside air breathed onto my head. While the radiation didn't kill me, it burned immensely. My wife grabbed her shovel and filled the hole back to the bunker. She changed her mind. She couldn't let herself watch as radiation burned an entire society, especially now that she knew it wouldn't kill. My face felt like it was melting, but nothing was happening to it. "We have to move forward, Grace." She nodded through her searing pain. I was filled with unceasing joy at the knowledge that one day, I would be back to complete my destiny. Grace was just happy to be free of that cesspool. There was nothing as far as the eye could see except for a small village in the very far distance that seemed to be unshaken by the War. "We need to get there, Grace. We need an army. We WILL burn this place to the ground."