Random Things (Some Short Stories)

Damn parasites.

As she made her way deeper into the abandoned junkyard, she heard something move the usually still metal. She froze, and looked toward the origin of the sound. As the echo of the clang floated away, she pulled out her pistol and aimed it at the spot. A cat came out, a black one, and she put away her gun. She went on one knee, and reached out to pet it. It came up to her hand and rubbed against it as she ran her fingers over its head.

It made her think, the appearance of the cat. She sat down so she wouldn't get locked joints, and the cat climbed into her lap and curled up. It must have been lonely out here. Like her. When the disease was at its peak, people were killing themselves by the hundred thousands every day. At least, before they went insane. The insane victims were murdering people by the millions. Damn parasites. But when everything calmed down, and the only people alive were the resistant ones, we were so separated that she bet a few had killed themselves due to being alone. She knew she wanted too.

She was distracted in her thinking by a large meow, almost as if the cat could sense what dark turn her thoughts had taken. But, as she jumped out of her lap and went into the heap once again, she thought it was just hungry more than anything. As she had been before the cat came, she was alone. Even when the cat was here she was alone. It couldn't understand. Nothing here could understand, mainly because most everything here was junk.

The immense loneliness threatened to crush her. She tried thinking of something else so she wouldn't go insane. She felt her pack, and thought it was getting a bit light. She exited the junkyard, not expecting to find what she needed anyway, and went farther down the road for the gas stop that still had food. As she walked, she couldn't help but think. She thought about the world, and how messy we left it. She could never leave the junkyard, because earth was a junkyard. She laughed, a fleeting laugh, at the thought that even as we left, we decided to flip a bird at mother Earth and leave all of our stuff, so widely spread, so that plants could barely grow back. In the TV shows, you see apocalyptic worlds so green it was like a rainforest, but that doesn't happen when we let a virus go around that inhibits life, along with clogging up all the dirt with stuff.

When she saw the flickering holographic gas station sign, she breathed a sigh of relief. She entered, and glanced at the destroyed shelves for any canned food. As she remembered, there was three cans of corn left, so she popped one open and slugged it down. She threw the can away from her, hearing it clang to a stop, and she stood. It was getting dark out, so she opened her bag. She pulled out a sleeping bag and a blanket, lay the sleeping bag down, and rolled up the blanket. She put the blanket where her head would go, as a makeshift pillow. She then heard a sound deeper into the station, and she froze. She slowly approached the origin of the sound with her pistol out. Because of the approaching darkness, she couldn't see that well, and she slipped on the can she threw. She fell forward onto the corner of a shelf hard, making her bleed profusely, and making her black out. She lay there on the floor, bleeding to death. A black cat comes up to her body when she dies, sits on it, and licks its paw.