Sick Bastards
Author: Matt Shaw
Date: 2014-01-18 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Splatterpunk; Fiction; Dark; Thriller; Zombies; Unfinished; Post Apocalyptic; Science Fiction; Dystopia
Description: WARNING: THIS IS AN EXTREME HORROR NOVEL. There is gore. There is bad language. There are scenes of a sexual nature. But hidden underneath it all is also a chilling story. Please do not purchase this book if you are easily shocked, disgusted or offended. This book is not for you. A family will do anything to survive after a nuclear attack has left their world in ruins. Actions which even surprise them...

© Matt Shaw

The right of Matt Shaw to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any format without written consent from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

The characters, and story, in this book are purely fictitious. Any likeness to person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

WITH THANKS TO SUZANNE DELANEY FOR HER HARD WORK EDITING THIS BOOK

The following book contains scenes which some readers may find distressing.

The book is intended for a mature horror audience.

You have been warned.

SICK

BASTARDS

M A T T    S H A W

PART ONE

Now

Family Time

I thrust forward and she let out a squeal. Had it not been for her facial expression - a look of sheer lust - I’d have thought I had hurt her. At least I think her expression is one of lust. It’s hard to tell in the light offered by a gentle flame licking away at the darkness of the room. Not that that would have bothered me if the expression was one of pain. So much pain in the world - what’s a little bit more? I pulled back a little and thrust forward again with the same level of aggression. She yelped again and buried her face down in the pillow whilst, at the same time, lifting her arse in the air to allow for deeper penetration. Definitely wasn’t an expression of pain. I didn’t need telling twice and I upped the speed and hardness with which I penetrated her. We don’t make love. We never have. We fuck.

I pulled out and flipped her onto her back. Her response was a hard, heavy slap to my face. I smiled at her. She spat back.

“Fuck me!” she ordered.

I positioned myself on top of her and pushed in again. A heavy sigh from the pair of us. Feels so good. So wet and yet so incredibly tight. I breathed in her scent. No perfume. She never wore perfume anymore. No matter. I’ve grown accustomed to the smell of her scent as it mixes with my own. I kind of like it now. I breathed in hard as I continued to pound her hard and fast - the way we both liked it. I was close to the climax but could tell she needed longer. Either that or she wanted me to up the game a bit. I put my hands around her neck and squeezed hard - cutting off her air as she liked. She gasped and struggled which made the sensations I was feeling that little bit nicer. Her face was flushing now. Not sure if she is close or whether it’s because I’ve stopped all of the blood.

A knock on the door distracted us both. Before we’d a chance to hide ourselves, the door opened a crack and Mother stuck her head through. “I’ve been calling you for hours!” she moaned. “Put your sister down! Dinner’s ready.”

I pulled out with my vinegar stroke ruined; a jet of sticky white semen splashing across sister’s stomach. Sister looked just as frustrated as I was. My orgasm ruined by the appearance of mother and her orgasm denied completely right at the last minute.

Thanks Mum, thanks a lot. Great timing as usual.

“You owe me,” my sister huffed as she pulled up her French knickers, ignoring the cum trickling down her belly. I flashed her a wink as if to tell her she’d be getting it later and threw my trousers on, followed by my shirt.

We went downstairs together with me leading the way - the candle from the bedroom stretched out in front of us, with my left hand, lighting our pathway so we didn’t stumble upon the stairs. Mother had already returned to the table where Father was waiting for us. He was standing above the meat with a knife in his hand, ready to do the carving.

Just for once I wished he’d let me carve the meat. I’d start with the throat.

And as for the meat - it was staring at my sister and I. Eyes wide with fear. It was shaking its head and mumbling through the sodden rag stuffed into its mouth for us to help it. Same old, same old. It was disturbing the first time we heard the meat beg for its life. Almost completely ruined the banquet (and at the time it was a banquet - a heavenly one). Now it’s just part of the starter. I never knew, or understood, why Father didn’t start by cutting the tongue out as soon as the meat was strapped to the old dining room table. Part of me thinks he must like the interaction with it.

Male meat this time. I feel a little bit disappointed. I prefer the female variety as I find the skin easier to chew. Always seems tougher on the male stocks. I’m not sure if that really is the case or whether it’s my imagination making me believe it to be the truth. It’s not something I’ve ever discussed with any of my family. I don’t want them thinking I am ungrateful. I’m never ungrateful. None of us is. I’m just a little guilty afterwards for what we have done to a fellow human.

I sat down next to Mother and blew the candle out before placing it onto the table next to my plate. No need for the candle in here - this is one of the best lit rooms of the old country house with at least four candles in all corners of the room. But then, it needs to be bright in here, to stop us from accidentally chomping down on a small fragment of bone.

Mother winked at me, “See you’ve picked up some of the tricks I taught you. Told you she’d enjoy it.”

I shot my mother a glance to quieten her. We don’t talk about such things at the dinner table. It’s not right. In fact we don’t talk about such things in the company of Father and Sister. It was supposed to be our dirty little secret. That’s what she told me that evening when she first crept into my bedroom wearing nothing but black underwear and ripped stockings. Our dirty yet highly enjoyable little secret and that’s the way I wanted it to remain. I didn’t want Sister to think I’d been cheating on her. She gets overly jealous sometimes. I remember the time she caught me with a piece of female meat just before dinner. I wasn’t doing anything but she didn’t like the fact that I was engaging with it in conversation. Apparently the look in my eye was wrong.

I looked over at Sister to see if she’d heard. She hadn’t. She was already sitting there - next to Father’s seat - with her hands pressed together as she addressed the Lord.

“Dear Father, thank you for what we are about to receive...”

“Don’t know why you bother with that,” said Father, “he never listens.” And - with that - he plunged the knife into the meat’s leg. The meat screamed. The meat always screamed. Again - the first time we’d a meal as such I found it off-putting. So did Sister. Both Mother and Sister cried at the time but we knew we had to eat it or else it would have been all for nothing. Even Father looked sickened. Now it’s normal to us. In yesterday’s world I’d have likened it to the sounds of a lobster screaming when you dropped it into a pot of boiling water...

The meat screamed again as Father tore a large chunk of flesh from its thigh.

Mother held her plate up and Father dropped the slab of flesh onto it for her. A little bit of blood splashed her hand but it didn’t bother her. She just licked it off. A glint in her eye.

The first time any of us tried blood we gagged. It was to be expected. We gagged as we chewed the meat too. The first time. No one sicked it back up though. We knew we couldn’t afford to. We knew we’d to work through the gagging feeling. Be grateful for what we got as there wasn’t a lot else on offer at the time. Now though - months later - things have changed and we’ve all grown quite accustomed to the coppery taste. Can’t have too much though as that does lead to sickness. Sister found out the hard way and taught us all a valuable lesson.

A piece of flesh slopped onto my plate, after Sister had been given hers. The meat had gone silent now just as it always did. It wasn’t dead. You could still see it breathing. As per usual it’d just fallen unconscious.

This was also normal.

We started quietly eating when Father sat down with his own plate of meat - a large section cut from the other leg. He looked up at us and smiled as he forked the first cut of flesh into his mouth as though it were a tender piece of chicken. I looked around to my sister and my mother and they too were shuffling in their first mouthfuls.

It hasn’t always been like this.

It used to be different.

A Different Time

The skies used to be blue (on a good day) in some parts of the world. If we were lucky we’d get to see some of those blue skies over the United Kingdom too but mostly we settled for the grey that we’d been accustomed to. Grass was green. Trees were swaying, in whatever winds were stirring on the day you happened to look upon them, full of life as they danced from side to side occasionally shaking free a leaf or two. Rivers flowed with clear(ish) waters which were also full of life with fish of all sizes darting around seeking food and warmth. Birds sung in the skies as they glided around, whether by themselves or part of a migration. And people - so many people - everywhere going about their daily lives: some of them happy and merry, a handful grumpy and a good proportion quiet and just getting on with things which needed to be done.

These were different times all right. A world full of life. A world full of hope. At least as much hope as it could muster when certain groups and countries failed to get along and saw fit to scream at each other from opposite sides of the globe, each of them believing they’d more rights than the person (or people) they were addressing when - truth be told - they were always equal.

That’s as much as I remember.

As much of what I remember of the old world anyway.

The new world is a far bleaker place. I’ve been outside and the yellow skies have seemingly returned to normal and the trees near our house seem to still have some life in them but I’m sure it won’t be long before they wither and die like the others have done so before them. Maybe the yellow tinge my father described, hanging in the heavy atmosphere, will creep its way around to where we live too? Maybe these things take time? And when it does get to us the remaining birds, taking shelter in the trees we’ve somehow managed to keep a hold of, will just spiral to the floor dead?

I’d been the first to wake up - after Father of course. One of my clearest memories. I could play it back perfectly as though it all took place yesterday. It wasn’t yesterday though. It was months ago. I’m not sure how many. The clocks don’t work anymore just as the electricity doesn’t. Our mobile phones died long ago too, stopping us from using them as time-keeping devices or calendars.

Father was looking out of the window. I remember how scared he looked. I also remember not recognising him.

“Where am I?” I’d asked him but he shushed me quiet. At the time I thought it was because he didn’t want me waking Sister and Mother who were both asleep next to me. All of us crowded together on the same bed. I remember feeling uneasy about being there - next to them. Not because I’m shy about sharing a bed but because I didn’t know who they were.

I climbed from the bed and walked over to the window, next to Father.

He whispered, “I don’t think I was followed.” _____

Even if I wanted to forget I don’t think I could get the image of how pale he looked on that day out of my head. His eyes were surrounded by heavy black rings; his dark hair looked greasy and messed up. More noticeably - he looked petrified.

He turned and looked at me blankly. He didn’t recognise me just as I hadn’t recognised him.

The first thing he asked me was my name. I couldn’t tell him. Even today, I still can’t tell him. He couldn’t tell me his either. Nor could he tell me the name of the two ladies on the bed. He did show me a photograph though. It was the four of us standing together in a captured moment of happiness. I don’t remember when the picture was taken.

He’d told me that it was on the sun visor in the car. Stuck there with a piece of tape. A clue to who we were. He had been in the driving seat and apparently Mother was in the passenger seat with my sister and I in the back. In the boot of the car was a suitcase. He had pointed across the room to the suitcase. He had opened it whilst we slept. The clothes inside were a mishmash of various sizes and styles. Clearly the bag hadn’t been packed with any thought. Whoever did the packing had just grabbed whatever they could find and simply tossed it in there.

I had asked him how we got out of the car and up the stairs of this house. I didn’t think to ask whose house it was - not immediately anyway - but when I did ask him he told me that it was ours now.

Apparently he had woken up in the car. The force of the blast must have knocked him out just as it had done so with us too. That must have been what took our memories too. Some kind of reaction to the shockwave. He didn’t know where he was driving - he just told me that he pressed down on the accelerator and drove. It was purely chance that we came by this house and that it had been empty.

I asked him what blast and that’s when he told me about the bomb. He didn’t know exactly where it went off. He could only remember snippets of information. The biggest explosion in history and millions dead upon impact.

“We must have grabbed what we could and jumped into the car.”

“To head where?” I asked him but he shrugged. If we’d a plan he couldn’t remember what it was. For now he seemed content to wait in this house. To this day I’m not sure if that was because he felt it was safe or because, as he later told me, the car had run out of petrol as we pulled up. A blind bit of luck.

I looked out of the window to where he was looking and asked what he was keeping an eye out for.

“Looters.”

He’d told me that when bad things happen, society tends to fall apart and everyone is out for themselves. They don’t care about who they hurt in the process. They just want to protect themselves and keep on surviving.

“I don’t know where the owners of this house are,” he’d told me, “but it’s ours now and we must protect it. You hear me, Son?”

I heard him all right. The word ‘son’ sounded strange coming from his mouth. Alien. I looked down at the photograph; father, mother, daughter and son.

Surviving

None of us could remember our names when we woke up. And try as we might - they never came back to us. To this day I often wonder what my name could have been. Sister says I look as though I could have been a ‘Ben’. I don’t see a ‘Ben’ when I look in the mirror though.

I’m not sure when we gave up trying to remember. Starting afresh in this strange, but comfortable given the circumstances, house - we could have taken the opportunity to choose ourselves new names. We decided against it though on the off-chance our memories came back to us - one day - just as they had so easily disappeared in the first place. We’d rather wait to see what happens as opposed to lose the names forever; hidden behind some fakes plucked from thin air. As it turned out we rarely bothered addressing each other with names or labels. On the rare occasions we did, we kept it simple; mother was Mother, father was Father and sister was Sister. To my sister, I was Brother. To our parents, we were Daughter and Son.

The owners of the house never came back much to our relief. We had claimed it as ours and - at the time - I wasn’t sure how far we’d go to keep it as such. Ask me today and the answer is simple; we’d go as far as we would have to to keep a hold of what we believe to be ours. We never knew where they went either. I suggested that they may have done what we had tried - loaded up a car and just hit the open road to try and escape the destruction. Father dismissed the idea though. He’d say that if they had done that then they would have taken the food from the cupboards. As it was, the cupboards were brimming with foods of all sorts. Something for everyone. A stroke of good luck considering we had no idea where the nearest operating shops were (if indeed there were any shops). Not just food either but candles and (gas-powered) lanterns stashed in the garage. Just as well too, considering there was no power to the property.

Did the previous occupants of the house know something we didn’t? The amount of preparation they appeared to have done. No. Had to just be luck. After all - if they had prepared for the end of the world then I am sure they wouldn’t have left their house. Certainly not without taking the candles and food anyway.

The first few weeks were spent using the car’s radio to try and get a station - any news from the outside world that could be useful to know. Father hoped that there’d be a camp set up, or something, nearby that we could make our way to. Father would fiddle with the radio. The girls were in the house and I would be instructed to stand outside of the car keeping watch for possible looters.

Of course the radio was useless. Static on every channel we continually tried and then - after a while - the car’s battery just gave up the ghost entirely, killing any chance of finding salvation on the radio. In the end we ended up doing nothing. We had food, we had each other and we decided, as a group, that sooner or later help must come by; hopes raised by the fact that, from time to time, we’d see what must have been military aircraft flying overhead.

Food-wise - we ate well. Looking back, it was silly really. We should have rationed what we had. Tried to make it last longer than it actually did. I think we managed to eat well for just over a month, maybe longer but not by much. When Father realised the food supplies were diminishing quicker than anticipated - he did start rationing but, of course, by then it was too little too late. Our meals had been reduced to nothing and we were living off the smallest of portions, all of us getting hungrier and hungrier.

I think I miss shortbread biscuits the most.

And real steak.

The slices of meat we got to eat before this happened.

“What did happen?” Sister would occasionally ask Father.

He’d sit next to the open fire - burning away logs we had collected from outside with an old axe we found in the garage next to the house - and tell us bits and pieces of what led to the bomb being dropped. To this day I’m not sure if he was telling the truth or simply using his imagination to give what happened a reason.

The summary: one man’s greed led to the end of the world.

Father told us how he saw the mushroom cloud billow up into the air and the bright, near- blinding light of the explosion. He described how the bang vibrated his guts to the very core making him instantly queasy and fearful that something important was going to rupture. Again - I’m not sure how much of it was truth and how much of it was fabricated for our benefit; a little bedtime story to tell the children.

Soon enough the day that we feared came by. The food was practically gone (other than a few crumbs here and there) and our stomachs were rumbling.

“We need to leave the house,” Father told me as I came down to a non-existent breakfast one morning. “We need to see if we can find some food before we all starve to death.”

I didn’t argue with him. I knew if we didn’t do something (and soon) then his words wouldn’t be as melodramatic as how they sounded. I didn’t even question whether it was worth one of us staying behind, at the house, with one of the women whilst the other woman went out with Father. That way, there’s a man outside to find food and a man inside to defend the property.

Chauvinistic thoughts?

Before the bomb went off and things changed, I’m sure women would have been just as capable as men (in some ways more so) but now - in this new world - I couldn’t help but feel that way. No doubt something to do with all the tales of looters Father told us during the cold nights.

Armed with a knife from the kitchen, an axe from the garage and a torch - Father and I left the house in search of supplies. We didn’t know what we were going to come across. Perhaps some wildlife wandering the woods with the same goal as us? Perhaps some other survivors? Perhaps some glimmer of hope? Whatever it was - soon after leaving the property we realised just how bad things actually were and that nothing would ever be the same again despite our hopes for a rescue party plucking us away from the destruction to some safe haven we could learn to call home.

* * * * *

The first time Father and I left the house, we had been walking for what seemed to be hours. In reality it was probably no more than thirty minutes but - of course - it was impossible to tell.

My first impression was that everything seemed normal. It just made it that little bit more heartbreaking when you realised it wasn’t. Despite the way it looked, the world was ruined and chances were we were breathing in radiation with every breath. An invisible killer.

Father was the first to hear it; the sounds of branches snapping nearby to where we were. He held his finger up to his mouth as though to silence me before I even opened my mouth. I did as his gesture suggested and kept quiet. If there was a chance for a meal, at the end of this, I didn’t want to be the one responsible for scaring it off.

I held back as Father went forward with the axe in his hands - poised ready to swing it at the neck of whatever he stumbled across. I had the knife in hand - not that it was going to be of much use. Or so I thought. Looking back, I’m glad I had it. Had we left it back at the house, had we not bothered with it, then I’m pretty sure things would have been different.

“I thought you were a deer!” my father said.

I couldn’t see who he was talking to. Not from where I was standing. I remember getting my hopes up though. The thought of him talking to another person. It showed that, despite how it appeared, we weren’t alone. For a minute - I’d felt a glimmer of hope.

It was around that point that Father had sworn. He even took a step back from where he was standing. Something he’d seen had knocked him off-guard. I called out to him, quietly, to see if everything was okay but he didn’t reply to me. He just raised the axe in the air and told - whoever was there - not to come any closer. His voice filled with threat. His body defying his tones and visibly quaking with fear.

I think I called out for his attention a couple of times but he didn’t reply either occasion and then - from the other side of the tree - I saw why.

Present Day

The meat was stirring again bringing me back to the now. I noticed Father was looking directly at me. He was chewing his food and seemed bothered that I wasn’t eating mine. A quick glance to Mother and Sister - they were staring at me too. Wasting food is sinful.

“You aren’t hungry?” asked Father.

His dark eyes looked as though they were slowly turning black. Something which happened when he was angry. I tried to ignore it. Could just be the dim light of the candles making them appear that way.

“Sorry!” I said. “Drifted off for a moment.”

“That’s okay.”

He forked the last of his own meal into his mouth and swallowed it down before asking the awkward question, “So what has everyone been doing today?”

When things changed - after the first meat we ate - Father often asked this question. Of course he knew what we were doing with our days. The house wasn’t big enough to hide our activities. Not from anyone who really wanted to know what was going on anyway and Father was definitely that sort of person. He had to know what was going on. He made it his mission. If he knew where everyone was and what was happening within his four walls, it gave him a little more control over the situation. It led to fewer opportunities for things to go wrong. With that in mind - when he asked the question - he didn’t want to know the truth. He didn’t want to know what we were really doing, just as we didn’t want to discuss it with him.

He wanted a lie. Perhaps - considering what (or who) was stretched out on the table in front of us - he wanted the chance to feel normal again. Even if it was a lie.

* * * * *

“What have you been doing today?” Father would ask us.

Our first answers were that we had been watching out of the window for them.

“Don’t tell me that,” he had stopped us, “tell me what you would have been doing. On a normal day. That’s what I want to hear. Your mother and I. That’s what we want to hear.”

* * * * *

“I met this guy,” said Sister. She was looking directly at the meat who was continuing to slowly come round despite the blood loss. I’m surprised. Normally they don’t wake up again once they fall unconscious. “He’s just moved to the area from up north. For some reason he took a shine to me and introduced himself to me before introducing himself to anyone else in the class. It’s funny,” she continued, “we’ve only just met but we have so much in common. We like the same television shows, we both want to become doctors, both have a love of animals...He’s really nice. We’re going to meet for lunch tomorrow. You never know, I might get asked to the end of year dance yet...”

“And why wouldn’t you? You’re beautiful!” Father smiled.

Father was right. She was beautiful. Brilliant blue eyes that dazzled like precious stones despite the dim light offered by the candles dotted around the room. Long eyelashes. The blondest of hair and full, kissable lips. A perfect size eight although I’m not sure whether that’s because she’s naturally slim or because of the lack of food. I suspect, given the rest of her features, it’s the first of the two options.

To this day I still don’t understand how such a creature could come from Mother and Father. Neither of them were skinny, neither of them had blonde hair (both had dark) and neither had blue eyes (Father had dark brown and Mother had green eyes). Other than the weight (I’m pretty slim too) at least I appear to have inherited the same genes as Mother and Father with the dark eyes and dark hair. Thankfully I got Father’s height - the pair of us knocking on six foot two inches.

The meat started to get more vocal as it realised it hadn’t been dreaming. We did our best to ignore it as Father looked to me - expecting my answer to his question. I hated these questions. It was hard to remember what I enjoyed doing before the bomb, before all this. Did I do normal activities before any of this? I don’t remember them. Did I play computer games with friends? Did I like to go out drinking and dancing? Was I even social? I don’t feel as though I may have been. I feel as though I could have preferred my own company. Maybe.

“Well?” Father asked.

Mother sensed that I was struggling to think of something that would be deemed satisfactory so she chipped in with her own day, “I went shopping!” she said as she took another bite of the fleshy mess upon her plate. She licked her lips.

“Oh?”

“I found the most beautiful dress. It was long, flowing...”

“What colour?”

“Red.”

“Matching shoes?” Father was getting into Mother’s scenario with a smile on his face. He relished the chance to escape to a different (better) world.

“High heels. Admittedly, I don’t have anywhere to wear the clothes but I was hoping that - when you saw me in them - you’d want to take me to...”

Father interrupted, “The finest restaurant! There’d be a piano in the corner of the room. A pianist effortlessly playing a quiet tune as the diners - on surrounding tables - enjoy the finest cuisine from around the world. The low murmur of happy chitter-chatter from the patrons as staff busy themselves making sure everyone is catered for. The occasional chinking sound as wines glasses come together to toast various celebrations. I’d have the fish,” he continued. “What would you have?”

Mother’s eyes lit up at the prospect of fish. We hadn’t had fish since all of this kicked off. Not real fresh fish. The original owner of the house had some fish fingers in the freezer, which we ate, but they’re not the same. “I’d have the fish as well!”

“And then, as we enjoy our starters - I’d have pate by the way - I’d tell you how beautiful you looked in the dress.”

“And I would thank you...”

“And then I’d ask whether it was purchased with my credit card.”

“And I’d smile innocently and flutter my eyelids.”

“And I’d have my answer,” he laughed. He sighed as he picked up the carving knife from next to the top end of the meat. “Anyone for seconds?” he asked as he ran the blade across the neckline of the meat causing blood to spurt across the room.

Waste not, want not.

A Trace of Humanity

I was sitting on the edge of my bed in darkness. I had left the candle with Sister. Just as food had been rationed, so had the candles been. One per bedroom. Those were the rules put in place by Father and it so happened Sister and I were forced to share rooms (no choice really, given that there were only two bedrooms in the house). Even if there had been more rooms, Father would have still insisted that we shared. Safety in numbers; he was ever paranoid some lowlife scum was going to creep into the house - in the middle of the night - and slit our throats whilst we slept. Less chance of that happening when we all share rooms. Sister and I in one room, Mother and Father in the other.

Sister had stayed downstairs with Mother and Father; talking of times gone by as only they could imagine them (shopping, trips to the pub, going out with friends - the usual). She was giving me my space. I hadn’t asked her to but she knew, after a meal, I liked a little time out to myself. A little bit of quiet time to try and forget about what we had just done. By that I mean the person we had just disposed of.

They all knew I struggled with my thoughts after a big family meal. On some level I’m sure they felt the same too. I guess they just handled their thoughts better than I handled mine.

My thoughts?

Not so much my thoughts that I struggled with.

It was my guilt.

Father helped with the thoughts of course. He’d say, “If it wasn’t one of them on the table, it would be one of us tied there and one of them sitting at the head of the table with the carving knife.”

He was right too. We all knew it but it didn’t matter. It still played on my mind. They were still a person after all.

“No - they’re not. They’re meat. Nothing more and nothing less. Remember that!” Father had shouted the first time I tried to make the family see we couldn’t live as such.

I had told them we needed to make a run. We needed to leave the house. We needed to try and find a city - some camp at least. I had told them we were there living as savages and for all we knew there was civilisation right around the corner. Some kind of rebuilt society living in the wreckage of the cities which once stood. Father had an answer for me though. He always had an answer.

“They’re out there. We won’t make it through the first night!” he said.

When he said that, I didn’t argue with him. There was no point. He was right. Of course he was right. They were out there waiting for us. When it was just one of them and my father and me - we struggled to keep it back. And when we saw more on the horizon we knew that we didn’t stand a chance against them. They would have torn us apart, limb from limb. Mother and Sister wouldn’t stand a chance against them. No way. Father was right. We wouldn’t make it through the night.

The door opened and my sister walked through the door clutching the candle in her hand. She smiled at me sympathetically. She knew what I was going through. She had gone through it herself after all - just like Mother and Father. I don’t remember much but I remember the look on everyone’s face the first evening we sat around some meat. Everyone looked repulsed by what we had come to do. Father’s hand - steady on the knife nowadays - was shaking like an autumn leaf hanging onto the branch of a dying tree.

“Are you okay?” she asked. She walked over to the sideboard and placed the candle in one of the waiting holders before coming over to sit with me on the bed.

“Do you ever think about whether there is anyone else out there? I mean other than them and the odd survivor?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you ever think there are families living out in the country living their lives as we live ours?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe? Why?”

I didn’t say anything. I knew that - if I did - it would only turn into an argument between the household and I couldn’t be bothered with that. Especially when I knew it was just the post-meal guilt speaking. By tomorrow I’d be fine. By tomorrow I’d be back to doing anything and everything just to survive; the reason why we ended up going down the road we were traveling in the first place.

“Come here!” she pulled me close and tenderly kissed me on the mouth. Her hand snaked its way down my chest to my jeans where she - no doubt - expected to feel a bulge starting to strain against the fabric. She was in for a disappointment. She looked at me as though to ask what was wrong.

“You mind if we leave it tonight?” I asked her.

“You owe me!” she hissed. She rubbed my crotch harder, in an attempt to kick start the beginnings of an erection, before unbuttoning my jeans. She moved off the bed and onto her knees in front of me where she ripped the jeans down around my ankles. I should have known the kind caring sister wouldn’t have been there for long before the animal took over. Her warm mouth wrapped around my flaccid penis as she started to bob up and down - clearly determined to force me to an erection.

I shuddered. Not because what she was doing was painful. It was actually fairly pleasant despite my best intentions to ignore it. I shuddered because of what she has turned into because of the state of the world. I shuddered because of what we had all turned into. We had gone where - before the bomb - none of us would have ever dreamed of going. As the days and months continued to dissolve before us, all traces of humanity were going.

With my sister’s hand and mouth actions it wasn’t long before I had an erection. She got up and pushed me back on the bed. Without any words, or anymore foreplay, she removed her own jeans and pulled her knickers to one side before impaling herself on my shaft.

“And you’d better make me cum!” she demanded.

I closed my eyes as she started bouncing on top of me - grunting like a woman possessed. My mind took me to a better world. A world where everything was normal. A world where we were all able to keep a hold of our humanity and stop from turning into whatever we had mostly changed into.

“You’re fucking pathetic!” she spat at me when she realised what I was trying to do. A far shout from how she was when we first laid together...

PART TWO

Before

Days Gone By

“I thought you were a deer!” Father exclaimed to someone out of my line of vision. He lowered the axe in his hands as clearly the person wasn’t a threat or something we could take back as food. Suddenly his eyes went wide as though he couldn’t quite believe (or make sense) of what he was seeing.

For some reason (perhaps down to the look on his face) I was rooted to the spot.

“What the fuck?” said Father.

He sounded alarmed. Whatever was behind the tree, out of my line of sight, was enough to make him take a step back. In all the time that I could remember, I could never recall seeing Dad actually take a step back from something. Whatever it was, he would always be the one there, at the front, standing his ground.

“What is it?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer me. He just raised his axe high in the air - the head of which glistened in the last remnants of the fading sun.

“Stay there!” he ordered. His voice was filled with threat but his body gave him away. His hands - even his legs - were shaking violently.

“Father, what is it?” I asked. “Father?” Both times I called out to him he ignored me. Either that or he didn’t hear me - too pre-occupied with whatever it was that had his undivided attention. “Father!”

And then I saw what it was which had him so transfixed. It came lurching forward from behind the row of trees which had previously blocked my vision. At first I thought it was human but then I realised it couldn’t have been. Yellow skin, red-faded eyes, a thick black tar drooling from its curled lips.

My hand tightened around the handle of the knife.

“What the hell is that?” I asked Father.

With no warning the thing suddenly lunged forward with alarming speed. Father had no time to react and was knocked to the floor within the blink of an eye. The axe slid across the muddied floor into a pile of foliage out of his grasp.

“Father!”

The creature was on top of him. The pair became a frenzied blur of movement. Father trying to defend himself against the monster who was trying to bite and claw at his face with a relentless level of aggression I had never witnessed before.

I dashed forward with the knife raised and jumped on the back of whatever the hell it was. Within seconds I plunged the knife down into its spine. It didn’t scream. It roared. Before taking the action, I foolishly believed it would have stopped it in its tracks but it didn’t. It sprang to its feet launching me clear from its body. I landed in a crumpled heap completely unarmed. My knife still in its back. Another haunting roar echoed through the seemingly beautiful scenery.

I tried to climb to my feet but was instantly knocked down by the creature as it pounced on me just as it had done so with my father. I screamed as I fought desperately hard to keep it from tearing my face off.

“Dad!” I kept screaming.

“Push him up!” I heard my father yell.

I summoned the last of my strength and pushed the creature up - away from me. I turned my head to the side and saw my father running towards us, the axe back in his hand where it belonged. I watched the blade as he took a wild swing. As the blade neared us, I closed my eyes.

The creature stopped struggling with me. In fact - it stopped fighting completely. Its body was just limp. Slowly I opened my eyes. The creature was still on top of me but minus its head...

I pushed the body away. My father helped me to my feet.

“What was that?” I asked him.

He was staring at the head. It was on the floor - its mouth still violently gnashing and eyes still wildly fixed on us; a look of hate rooted deeply within them.

“What is it?” I asked him again.

A noise distracted Dad before he had the chance to answer me. He looked up.

“We need to go!” he said. “Now!”

I followed his gaze and there - in the distance - a number of creatures similar to the one we had just killed. Male and female. At least - what used to pass for male and female. All of them looking directly at us.

“Run!” said Father. “Just run! Back to the house! Go!”

Father hadn’t even finished before I was running back towards the house with him hot on my heel. We had hardly covered any ground when both of us were breathing heavily. The time locked away in the house, living of what we had been left by the previous occupants, had done nothing for our levels of fitness.

We couldn’t hear anything coming behind us and yet I didn’t dare turn around to look. I just kept focused on running; kept focused on not tripping over one of the many broken twigs which lay upon the muddy floor.

Father took the lead slightly. Even if I had been able to overtake I wouldn’t have. I’d let him lead the way to the house so there was no danger of me steering us in the wrong direction.

“It’s this way!” he shouted. I wondered if he could sense my apprehension about knowing the correct route back. The problem with being in the thick of the woods was that everything looked the same. Probably should have left some sort of trail for us to follow back. Funny the things you think about when it is too late.

* * * * *

Unsurprisingly the route back to the house seemed quicker than the journey away from it. No doubt based on the belief that we were being chased by those things still. Father was first in and I was second. No sooner than I had stepped over the threshold he was already slamming the door shut and putting the security chain across.

“Get something to block the door!” he called out.

Mother and Sister appeared from out of nowhere. Both of them looked scared, probably because of the look on our faces. It didn’t take a genius to know something was wrong.

“Don’t just stand there! Get something to block the door!” Father shouted again.

I hurried through to the lounge. There was a large bookcase in there, filled with books on a wide range of random subjects. I called for Sister to come and help me move it. She didn’t need asking twice.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as we struggled to slide the bookcase out of the lounge and over to the door. “What happened?”

Father came over and helped us whilst Mother waited by the door unsure of what to do for the best. I looked at Father and wondered whether he was going to take the lead and tell them something (other than the truth) which might make them feel a little more at ease.

“Looters!” he said, quick as a flash.

Looters were dangerous enough to worry about and yet not as bad as what the truth was. Mother and Sister were already worried (you could tell by their faces) and there was no sense in worrying them further. They didn’t need to know. Not yet. I looked over at Father. He caught my glance and turned away - no doubt embarrassed by the fact that he had to tell a lie to the family. He didn’t need to be embarrassed though. I know why he did it. He did it to protect them. I understood that.

With the bookcase in place, Father went through to the lounge and looked out of the front window. We hadn’t been followed. Outside everything looked normal. Everything looked peaceful.

“We can’t go out there again,” he said as he continued to try and catch his breath back, “under no circumstances. It’s too dangerous. You hear me?”

We all nodded.

None of us wanted to ask what we were supposed to do about the dire food situation.

A Prison

The day after we stumbled into whatever the hell it was that we ran into in the woods, Father instructed me to help him secure the rest of the house whilst the girls worked away in the kitchen trying to make a meal from the remaining crumbs.

“We can’t just stay in here,” I told him as we tipped the bed-frame against the window - having put the mattress on the floor - in the room he shared with Mother, “we need food!”

“You saw what was out there. One of those things nearly killed us. Had the other ones been closer - or taken more of an interest in us - we wouldn’t be standing here now!”

“But we have no food!”

“Someone will come. Everything will be okay.”

“What if everyone out there has changed into one of those things? Can you imagine what they’d do to your sister? Your mother? You want to see that happen?”

I didn’t want to see that happen but I knew we couldn’t stay in the house for much longer. Not without starvation killing us. At least death at the hands of those things would have been a quick way to go - and that was only if we bumped into them again although I knew the chances are that we would.

I asked what he thought we should do. “What do you think then?”

“Someone will come. We’ve all seen the planes flying overhead. Sure, they aren’t frequent but it does show they’re out there. Survivors. Military, no doubt. People working on a way of getting everyone to safety. That’s what happens in situations like these.”

I wanted to ask my father if he had been in these situations a lot but I knew that to do so would be crossing a line. He is my father and I needed to keep respect for him. I couldn’t challenge him. It would only lead to more problems and more issues between everyone. We didn’t need that. No one did.

“What are you two talking about?” Mother asked as she walked into the room.

“Nothing,” Father answered quickly and changed the subject, “how’s the food looking?”

Mother didn’t need to tell us. We could see from the look on her face that it was a bleak situation and that there was hardly anything left. Even so, “Not good. We probably have a couple of days left and that is if we have tiny portions. And I mean tiny. We can’t stay here, we need to leave and see if we can find somewhere else.”

Father sighed. We both knew he was going to have to tell Mother and Sister what we had seen outside; that it wasn’t just the looters we needed to fear.

“There are these things out there,” he said with a heavy sigh. I waited to back him up as I knew it would be hard for Mother to believe, considering she hadn’t seen it herself. Hell, if Father had come home and told me, I would have thought it to be another of his tall stories made up for entertainment purposes.

“Things?” Mother interrupted.

“Humans? I don’t know. They looked ill. Infected with something,” he continued. “One of them attacked us. It was strong. It was like a rabid animal. We managed to kill it but...There were a lot more of them just on the horizon. I mean a lot. There’s no way we can fight them all. No way. They would tear us to pieces.”

“Well what are they?”

Both Father and I shrugged.

“But we have next to no food left. Literally crumbs. We can’t stay here.”

“We just need to wait it out a little longer. I’m sure someone will come by...”

“That’s your plan? To sit and wait? What if no one comes?”

Father didn’t have an answer for her. I did but I kept it to myself. No one would want to hear that - if no one came - we’d starve to death eventually. An experience I’m sure is unpleasant.

“And what’s to stop them coming to the house?”

“They didn’t follow us.”

“But you weren’t exactly far away. What is to stop these people from coming here during the night? Or tomorrow? Or the day after?”

“What do you want me to say? I don’t know. I don’t. We’ve made the house as secure as possible. We just need to give it a bit of time and see what happens. Whatever we decide, though, we can’t leave tonight. If we do - we’re dead. If we try again tomorrow - or the day after - if these things don’t come by this way then maybe, just maybe, they’ve gone in the other direction.”

Everyone fell silent just as Sister came into the room. Not because we were hiding anything from her. It appears everyone just ran out of things to say. Mother clearly wasn’t happy about staying in the house, with or without the things out there, and Father obviously had no intentions of letting us leave yet.

The world had ended and now we were in a prison too.

Questions

That night (after everyone had been filled in with regards as to what was happening outside) Sister and I were lying wide awake in the bedroom that we shared. She was on the bed and I was on the floor where I had gotten used to sleeping. After the first uncomfortable night I actually found it more bearable than I had first imagined.

I could tell by the moonlight spilling in through the gaps in the barricade by the window that she was wide awake. She was staring through the same holes which allowed the light into the otherwise dark room.

“What are you thinking?” I asked her.

My voice made her jump. She had presumed I had fallen asleep. Like her, though, I found sleep to be the last thing in my mind.

“I’m can’t sleep,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

“Me too.”

“And scared.”

I hesitated.

“Me too.”

“How do you think this will end?” she asked.

I hesitated.

“Someone will come by. Probably in a day or two. Like Father says. They’ll take us to where the other survivors are.”

“What if they don’t come?” she asked.

I hesitated.

“I don’t know,” I told her. There was little sense in lying to her.

“Why can’t we remember anything?” she asked.

“The bomb, I guess. Something to do with the blast radius?”

“If it weren’t for that picture, I wouldn’t even know to call you Brother.”

“Be thankful for the picture then.”

“Those things out there in the woods,” she said, “what if that is all that is left?”

“It can’t be.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because we’d be one of them too. If they turned into...Into whatever they are...We’d have turned as well.”

“What do you think they were?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think they’ll come to the house?”

“I don’t know.”

“If they do, the barricades won’t hold them forever.”

“I know.”

“They’ll kill us.”

I didn’t say anything. She was right and I wanted to agree with her but it wouldn’t have helped the situation. If anything, it would have made it worse. At the same time I didn’t want to lie to her and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

We sat there, for a while, in silence.

“Brother?”

“Yes, Sister?”

“Did you want to share the bed tonight?”

I looked at her. I could tell by the pale moonlight that she was crying. Tears glistening on her cheeks. I got up from the floor and sat on the edge of the mattress where she was lying. I put my hand on her side for comfort - a little gesture to let her know that I was there for her.

“Everything will be okay,” I told her. I hadn’t wanted to lie but found myself doing just that. “Father is right. Someone will come for us and everything will be okay...”

“I don’t know what I am more scared about,” she said. “What is happening outside or the fact that my own mind is so confused I don’t know who I am or what has happened.”

“You’re my sister,” I told her, “and I am your brother. Your protective brother!” I gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“Please cuddle me,” she said.

I positioned myself to lie behind her. I put one arm under my head for support and the other I wrapped around her. I gave her another gentle squeeze. We both just lay there in silence - staring out into the world beyond the gaps in the barricades.

It’s funny. It looks so beautiful out there. So peaceful. You could almost be fooled into thinking that everything out there is perfectly normal.

Almost.

The Hunger

The following morning Sister and I awoke in each other’s embrace to rumbling stomachs and an overbearing feeling of despair. Yesterday, we had hardly eaten anything and yet we knew that (what we did eat) would be more than what we were going to see today. I’m sure that I read (somewhere) that you could survive for a longer period without food than you could last without water and, at the moment, the taps were still working. I didn’t care though. I was hungry, not thirsty, and I already felt as though I was getting weaker by the minute (even though I was sure it was mostly in my head).

Last night Sister had fallen asleep in my arms pretty quickly after I cuddled up behind her, my presence bringing her some kind of comfort. Unfortunately I didn’t have the same luxury and stayed up most of the night looking out of the window (through the barricade) to the world outside, wishing things could go back to how they were before the incident which changed everything for the worse. I knew there was no point in wishing such things yet I couldn’t help myself. I still wished away regardless. And then (when I realised I was wasting my time) I lay there wondering whether I should take charge of the situation and leave the house by myself.

“I’m going to find some food or help. Whichever comes first.” That’s what I would have said to Mother and Father. Of course, he would have told me not to be so bloody stupid but I’d argue with him. I’d tell him we didn’t have a choice and that one of us would have to go out there. If he wasn’t going to do it, then it only left me.

“Did you sleep?” Sister broke my playback of how I thought the conversation would go.

“Yes.” I don’t know why I lied. Just felt right.

She squirmed away from my embrace. Was she suddenly uncomfortable with me being so close? Was it not her who asked me to come onto the mattress with her too?

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine.”

I don’t remember my name yet I remember the words I’m fine. If someone used the phrase, the chances are they were far from fine and that something was bothering them. I didn’t push her to find out what she was really thinking. I didn’t need to. I expected I already knew the answer. She was scared about the situation (both inside the house and out). And she had every right to be; both of our stomachs were rumbling loudly and that wasn’t going to fix itself by sitting around in the hope someone would come by the house and find us here. Besides, if someone did come by, would Father believe they were actually there to help or would he just regard them as a possible threat? Looters here to see what they could scavenge?

“I was thinking about leaving the house,” I told her. There was a brief spell of silence. “Thought it might be worth going out and seeing if I can find help, or some food.”

“What about what Father said?” she asked.

“You know we can’t just sit here and wait.”

“But if you leave...What he was saying about the things out there...Those people...”

“If I stay, we’re going to starve. How long can we last with no food? I don’t have a choice.”

“Father won’t let you.”

She was right (of course) but maybe he didn’t have to know. Maybe I could just avoid the whole conversation with him? I could just leave via the window. Move one of the barricades and sneak out. All it would take is for Sister to go downstairs and keep them talking. I could leave. A little time later they’d discover me missing but by then I’d be long gone and there’d be nothing they could do about it. I’d either come back with help or food - either way it would be a win for the family.

“I won’t ask,” I told her.

“He’ll be mad.”

“I won’t be here.”

“But I will be.”

“You don’t need to let him know we had this conversation. Just act surprised when he comes and tells you both that I’ve left via one of the windows. It’ll be fine.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t have a choice. We don’t have a choice. In an ideal world - yes - someone would come and find us and everything would work out perfectly. We’d go on to have our happy ever after but, what’s happened outside, that’s proven we aren’t living in an ideal world. The place is ruined and if we’re to survive...I need to do this.”

Sister didn’t say anything. She knew I was right as much as I wished I wasn’t. I didn’t want to go out there - especially alone - but I knew I didn’t have a choice. Not if we wanted to survive.

“When?” she asked.

“This morning. Now.”

Her eyes welled up. She looked away from me. I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. She must have been able to see that it was the best thing to do. She must have realised what it would have meant if I just sat there and did nothing?

“I’ll come back!” I promised her. I don’t know why I told her that. It was stupid of me. I hoped I’d be coming back, of course I did, but I couldn’t promise it. What if there is no food out there? What if there is no one out there to help us? I could end up walking until I collapse from exhaustion.

“I could come with you?” she suggested.

I shook my head. “You can’t. It’s dangerous out there. Besides which - as much as I’d love for you to come with me - Mother and Father would realise pretty early on if we were both to go missing. We wouldn’t exactly get far away enough before they’d come looking.”

“They wouldn’t come looking,” she said. “Father won’t leave the house.”

“If both of his children vanished from the house I am sure he’d come after us. Look - just stay here. You can tell him why I would have left when they realise I have gone. You can say that you didn’t know I was going to do it but that I’ve probably gone for help. It might make him feel better about it all. Help him see that I didn’t have a choice, yeah?”

Sister reluctantly nodded.

“I love you!” I told her. I pulled her close for a hug. She hugged me back.

“Just come home!” she ordered me.

“I will.”

PART THREE

Now

Morning After

Morning had come, despite my wishes for an eternal sleep to take a hold of me during the night. I shouldn’t have eaten any of the meat last night. I should have refused it. A hunger-strike. I should have just let myself starve to death but then - if I was going to do that - I should have done it the first time I was presented with the choice of eating or not.

A strong willingness to survive, I guess. How I wish I could shake that from my mind now. But then (if we’re talking wishes) I wish I hadn’t survived the bomb in the first place. If it had to happen - and it was only ever a matter of time from what Father remembers of the past - I wish I had been one of the lucky ones to have perished upon impact. At least then I wouldn’t have turned into what I am today - whatever that is. And I wouldn’t have had to witness my family changing from the people that I loved into...What are we now?

I can’t shake the thoughts of what I have done to my sister and the images of the things I’ve eaten from my mind. When I’m taking part in the atrocities it feels good. It feels more than good. But afterwards? The guilt surges through me reminding me how wrong it all is. I can’t cope with it.

I glanced up to the mattress where Sister was sleeping. She kicked me from the bed once she had finished with me last night and had fallen asleep pretty quickly. Guess I played my part well. She looks as though she is sleeping soundly. Certainly more at peace than she was the day I left her to go looking for food; the day I stepped up and put my life on the line to protect my family from the risks of starvation.

I shouldn’t have left the house. I should have stayed put and let nature take its course. If we starved to death then so be it. God’s will. At least we would have died as innocents. No blood on our hands.

Looking at her now, I wonder whether there is any part of my sister left in there just as there’s a small part of me hidden away deep beneath the surface. Or is she lost to whatever darkness consumed our humanity when we were presented with the option?

Please let there be some humanity left in her.

And within my mother and father.

She stirred from her peaceful looking slumber. Slowly she opened her eyes.

“Morning!” she whispered. There was a sparkle in her bright blue eyes and a smile on her face. Had she forgotten what she did to me last night? Has she forgotten that she forced me to an erection and then - for all intents and purposes - raped me? I understand that what we do - what we all do - is wrong but it has never gone that far before. A new (unpleasant) side of my sister.

“Morning,” I whispered.

She sat up on the mattress and stretched, “I can’t remember the last time I slept so well.” She laughed. “I guess I should thank you for that.” She rubbed her eyes and stood up. “How did you sleep?”

Did she think last night was a game?

“Good,” I lied, keeping it simple.

She jumped down next to me and pushed her way underneath the thin duvet which covered me, “Fancy another go? This time you can pretend to rape me.” She giggled like a naughty schoolgirl, “Please don’t...Please...No....”

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked. I kicked the blanket off and stood up.

“Me? What is wrong with you?”

“I wasn’t playing last night,” I said. “I wasn’t in the mood...”

“You owed me.”

“Owed you? Owed you what?”

“The orgasm you denied me.”

“Have you heard yourself? Jesus - what have we turned into?!”

“What?”

“I don’t even know who we are anymore.”

“I’m your sister and you’re my brother. A great fucking brother at that.”

“Everything’s so wrong.”

She looked at me as though I were a piece of trash. No. It was worse than that. She looked at me as though I were one of those things outside.

“It’s okay when you want sex but when I want it it’s tough? Is that it?”

“It’s not just the sex...”

“Oh my God - you’re still stressing about the meat? Every time it’s the same...”

“And it should be the same for you too! Why am I the only one who feels like this? Why does no one else see what we’re doing is so wrong?”

“Because everyone else knows what we’re doing is necessary to survive and you always get like this after we’ve had a meal.”

I wanted to remind her what the meal actually consisted of but I knew she wouldn’t care. In her head what we did was perfectly acceptable. Father made sure of that by forcing his opinion on us so strongly that he may as well just have brainwashed us.

“And you don’t usually complain after we’ve fucked!” she pointed out.

There was a playful tone in her voice. There was no point in arguing with her. It was true. I don’t complain after that. I get carried away by the lust of the moment and all rules go out of the window. With the meat I get carried away with the thought of eating (the thought of surviving) so those rules go out of the window too until afterwards when the indigestion kicks in and I can’t help but think of what I have just eaten. Did they have a name? Were they like me in that they were part of a larger group and they were on the lookout for help or food? Did they have a family? Who knows - with regards to the sex, maybe I’d start to have guilty feelings about that too had I been left with a burning (or itching sensation) after the act; some unpleasant reminder that what we did was wrong as opposed to a feeling of contentment.

“You need to pull yourself together! You heard what Father said last time you got like this...”

“How could I forget? How dare I have an opinion about how we are living? It was stupid of me to have even challenged him.”

Sister didn’t say anything. She just glared at me. Her once sparkling eyes dulled in colour at my tone of sarcasm. I had to be careful. If I pushed her too far, she’d tell Father. Daddy’s little pet.

“I’m sorry.” I tried to take a step back to save from getting into an argument with her.

“You shouldn’t be challenging him. You should be thanking him. Thanks to Father we’re alive. Thanks to Father we’re safe. Had it not been for his actions - that night you came home from trying to rescue us - we could have all been killed. You need to remember that.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

A knock at the door interrupted us. The door opened and Mother stuck her head into the room. “Your father says breakfast is ready if you care to come down.”

Mother didn’t wait for an answer from us. She knew we’d be down. We always went straight down when we were expected to as that was what Father wanted from us. He didn’t want to be kept waiting. He never did.

I apologised to Sister again and offered her a hug. She accepted my apology and put her arms around me. I held her tight, clinging to the memory of how it felt to cuddle her when she was human. She used to be so caring. She used to be so gentle. So kind. Now she’s broken. Just like Mother and Father. I’m battling with my conscience so as not to follow their lead.

Humanity will be the death of me but without it, I’d feel lost anyway so what does it matter?

Most Important Meal of the Day

Father was sitting at the head of the table with a smile on his face by the time Sister and I walked into the room. At first, I thought he was being strange - perhaps lost the plot entirely - but then I realised why and did my best to ignore it (and the sounds).

Sister and I took our seats opposite each other. In front of us, on the table, were bowls full of off-cuts from last night. I looked up at Sister who wasted no time in digging in, using her fingers as kitchen utensils. I chose not to. My mind was tormenting me with the expression on the meat’s face last night when it was all in one piece in the centre of the table.

It was missing from the table now of course. Where it had been bound, there were just dark patches from where it had leaked (piss and blood). I knew it smelt bad in here (in the whole house in fact) but I didn’t notice it anymore. At least I could be thankful for that.

Father grunted with satisfaction as he fisted a handful of meat into his gaping mouth. I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was the taste of the meat or the other goings on which made him grunt.

He realised he had made a noise and quickly cleared his throat as though the sounds were all part of the same action. Sister couldn’t help but laugh; a laughter stifled behind her hand.

“So how was your night, you two?” Father asked. He grunted again.

“Satisfactory!” Sister teased. I looked at her. She was staring directly at me with a knowing smile on her face. I smiled back at her. Not that I wanted to. I just didn’t want Father to think there was a problem. I suddenly flinched as I felt a foot dig into my crotch. Another glance towards Sister and she gave me a playful wink.

“Well the good news is that we still have a fair amount of food left in the kitchen,” Father said, in between grunts which seemed to be getting more frequent. “With that in mind I think it’ll be safe to say we don’t need to venture out today, Son, so the day is yours to do with as you please.”

The hunting trip cancelled thanks to the poor bastard who stumbled across the house yesterday.

“That’s good,” I told him. In some ways it was good and in other ways not so much. On the one hand it meant that I didn’t have to help hurt someone (if we even stumbled across a normal survivor out there as opposed to one of the infected) but - on the other hand - it meant that I’d definitely survive another day. Out there, there was always a strong possibility of running into a large group of the infected and getting torn from limb to limb. I was too afraid to take my own life but  if this is how life is to be lived now, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid if death did come along.

Father’s eyes momentarily rolled to the back of his head as he let out a sigh. He slammed his hand down on the table, “Goddamn!” he shouted. He quickly tried to cover his tracks even though we all knew there was no point, “So what are you going to do with your day now then, Son?”

I shrugged.

“I can think of something,” Sister laughed, her toes still buried into my crotch. Suddenly her foot was pulled from my lap and the toes were replaced with stroking fingers. I heard Mother laugh.

Sister just looked pissed.

I kicked Mother away and jumped to my feet, sending my chair flying in the process, before she had a chance to unbutton  my jeans. Father and Sister just looked at me as though I had lost the plot.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not feeling very well. I think I’ll just go for a lie down.”

I started towards the door but Father stopped me, “Son...”

Slowly I turned to face him.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day...”

“I know but I’m really not feeling very well. I think I’ll just skip it today...”

“...And the meat won’t last forever. It’s already started to turn. We need to eat whilst we can,” he continued. “Maybe you should take your food upstairs with you on the off-chance you get peckish.”

The look in his eyes hinted it wasn’t so much of a suggestion as opposed to more of an order. I flashed him a smile.

“Of course.”

I walked back over to the table and collected my bowl of off-cuts. Sister was staring at me, meat hanging from her mouth, shaking her head disapprovingly. She knew I didn’t feel tired, or unwell. She knew I just wanted to escape from my family like the ungrateful bastard that I am.

I hoped the look in my eyes was enough for her to not tell Father what was really going on in my mind.

Father and Son

I closed my bedroom door and sat in the small beam of sunlight which managed to find its way in through the gaps in the barricade. I wanted to cry but couldn’t. The last fragment of my humanity wasn’t quite enough for tears. Instead I just felt a rage slowly build within me as I thought about my family and what they had become: a mother pleasing a father beneath the dinner table whilst kids are present - and then trying to do the same for son; a sister sitting there, aware of what is happening, whilst eating slithers of a person. I felt sick. The bowl of food I was forced to take with me, resting to my side, reminding me of what we had become. I shoved it across the room. It crashed against the wall and the contents flew out leaving splatter marks where they landed.

I couldn’t help but think of how long it had taken for us to get to this level. Or how long it hadn’t taken us to be more precise. Without society here dictating what was right and wrong, things have changed quickly. We had become more animalistic in our nature and I hated it.

I looked beyond the barricade blocking the window and wished that I had the guts to pull it all away and just leap from the ledge. End it all. Hope to God that I’d still be entitled to a seat by his side despite what I had done since the blast.

Something might come along, a nagging thought kept whispering in my head.

The nagging thought was right. Something might have come along any day now. If I killed myself now I’d never know. But if something did come by - could I really live my life to the full knowing the things I had partaken in? Was there any hope I could become normal again? But then what is normal? Is society all that’s wrong in the world and how we are now - is that normal? Is this how we are supposed to behave as humans? Is this what we really are? The thought made me feel uncomfortable. Who was it (in the first place) who deemed the difference between rights and wrongs anyway? Who was to say they were right in what they initially said?

I tried not to think about it. It’s not as though there’d ever be anyone there to answer the question for me. I was just tormenting myself further.

With no advance warning (of a knock or such-like) the bedroom door swung open and Father appeared. He looked angrier than he had done downstairs when we were talking. I could only presume Sister had told him the things I had been saying to her.

“You don’t have to stay here, Son.”

“What?”

“If the way we live doesn’t meet your requirements then you’re more than welcome to try and go it alone...”

Sister had told him then. Damn her. I couldn’t help but wonder whether she would have kept her mouth shut if it weren’t for the fact that Mother had pushed her foot from my crotch. I saw the ugliness of jealousy on her face at the time and knew there’d be repercussions.

“I don’t know where you’ll go,” Father continued, “but I’m sure it will be better than here.”

I wanted to argue with him and explain how I felt and that I was surprised the rest of the family didn’t feel the same. I wanted to tell him that I felt shame for what I had done (on many levels) and that they should too but there was little point. I could see it, in his eyes, that he wasn’t in the mood for arguments or someone challenging him. Besides - I wasn’t ready to leave the house. I had nowhere to go and those things are still out there.

I welcome death, yes, but I’m too afraid to run towards it with open arms; the ever hopeful belief lingering that - soon - a group may come by and help us.

“Perhaps you should use today to think about what you really want. You can stay here and fit in with our ways or you can leave and make your own path in life. You’ll always be welcome here but not whilst you’re continually challenging me. Not under my roof.”

It’s not your roof, I wanted to tell him. My tongue didn’t move. Clearly it had more sense than my tired brain.

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” I told him.

He didn’t say anything immediately. He was just standing in the doorway looking down to where I was sitting on the floor. That look in his eyes still blazing away, burning a hole through what was left of my soul.

“Well you be sure. Stay up here today. No sense you ruining everyone else’s day just because you’re struggling with your thoughts. You stay up here and decide what you want to do with your life and where you want to go. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

He waited for an answer but I didn’t have one for him. Not one that he would have liked anyway. I remained silent. He grunted and stepped from the room, closing the door behind him.

I still can’t cry.

My mind is still too poisoned for that.

All I could think about was what had brought us to this moment.

It was all my fault.

Sister was right.

PART FOUR

Before

Alone

It was the first time I had left the house since leaving - a couple of days earlier - with my father when we originally went out looking for some food (or help). Trapped inside the house, even for a couple of days, I had forgotten how beautiful it was out here. Surprising really, considering the supposed state of the world. I kind of felt stupid for bringing Father’s axe along with me as some form of protection.

The air tasted fresh. The scent of the trees and earth lingered in the air. Nature at its most fragrant. The mid-morning sun beamed down upon my face, warming my skin and making me feel more alive than I had felt for as long as I could remember. The birds were singing in various trees around the house, music to my ears which had grown accustomed to the infrequent creaking of the old house and hushed mutterings of my family.

I would have given anything for my sister to be here with me, so she could feel what I was experiencing, but I knew it wasn’t as safe as I was being fooled into believing. I knew there were dangers within the woods which had the potential to claim our lives within the blink of an eye and that, that, I didn’t wish upon my sister.

I stopped walking at the edge of the grass. A line of trees was in front of me. I turned back to the house. No obvious movement from within. Clearly they hadn’t discovered I was missing yet. Should I just turn back? Go home before they say anything?

I can’t.

I need to go on - no matter how scared I am of what I might find.

I closed my eyes and took the first step into the woodland. Okay. That’s it. I opened my eyes again. No turning back now. I’ve done the hard bit; the first step. Now it’s just a question of baby steps making sure to keep quiet in case any of those things are nearby.

I continued forward, careful of where I placed my feet. I knew it would be impossible not to make a noise but it didn’t mean I had to be carefree about traipsing through the woods. I didn’t want to accidentally snap any twigs or branches which may be lying on the floor. Not when the noise could attract the attention of possible trouble.

* * * * *

The sun had made a fair amount of progress across the sky by the time I heard the sounds of footsteps heading my way. Naturally I dived behind some cover (a large oak tree) on the off-chance it was one of them or - worse yet - a group of them.

I had been walking for so long, in such blissful and beautiful settings, that I had gotten used to the idea of being alone and my mind stopped from even thinking about running into anyone (or anything). Until now anyway. Now my mind was chastising me for being so stupid and not staying more alert to the reality of my surroundings.

My heart was beating ten to the dozen as the footsteps continued to get closer. Pushing myself against the tree - wishing I could remain invisible - it was impossible for me to see who (or what) it was. My hand gripped the axe handle tighter and I readied my mind for a plan of attack. Even if this thing walked straight past me, I couldn’t leave it to wander with its own devices. I’d have to deal with it just as Father dealt with the last one.

A swift swing of the axe, aimed at its neck.

With any luck, despite my obvious weight disadvantage compared to that of my stocky father, it would only take one hit to detach head from neck.

I steadied my breathing as the footsteps got closer. With any luck (whoever it was) they wouldn’t hear me.

Please walk past.

Please walk past.

Please walk past.

Closer.

Closer.

They stopped at the other side of the tree. Human. Definitely human. And they sounded out of breath. The thing from the other day, even with a knife sticking from its back, didn’t sound as though it was out of breath. This has to be a person. A normal person.

I stepped out from behind the log with the axe raised up, ready to bring it crashing down into the skull of whoever it may have been. I kept it up there, even when I realised it was indeed a normal person (much to my relief).  He jumped when he noticed me.

“Scared the shit out of me!” he said. “I thought you were one of them.”

By them, I presumed he meant the things which my father and I stumbled into when we first left the house.

“What the fuck are they anyway?”

I lowered the axe. Despite his aggressive language, he didn’t look as though he was about to try and attack me. If anything, the medium built man seemed happy to see me.

“I don’t know,” I told him, “something to do with the blast I guess.”

“The blast? What fucking blast? What the fuck is going on?”

Clearly he had lost his memory too. I didn’t have time to fill him in on the details.

“What’s that way?” I asked him referring to the direction he had come from.

“You don’t want to go that way!” he said.

That wasn’t the answer I had been hoping for but it was one I was expecting. After all, he’d hardly be heading my way if there was anything good over there.

“What about that way?” he asked. He nodded towards where I had just come from. “What was over in that direction? Anything?”

“No food,” I told him. I didn’t really want to go into details about what was in that direction. He seemed harmless enough to talk to but that might have been because I had the axe in my hands (and he was unarmed as far as I could tell).

“But what about shelter?”

My mind flashed through the three options I had for a response. My first thought was to take the axe and split him down the middle of his body. The second thought was to lie and tell him there was nothing that way either. The final thought - the one I knew I should listen to least out of the other given options - was the loudest one: tell him about the house. I knew Father wouldn’t be impressed given his fear of looters and keeping our family safe in these dark times but (telling the man) it was the right thing to do. The human thing.

“There’s a house...” I told him.

The human side won.

Meet the Family

Walking back through the woods with the man by my side felt both strange and comforting at the same time. On the one hand I didn’t know him and he could have been anyone. On the other hand it was nice to have a bit of company.

“So it’s your house?” he asked. “Your father’s, I mean?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t want to tell him that we took it from someone who was either dead or had run away. I couldn’t help but think it would have potentially painted us in a bad light. More to the point, I didn’t want him thinking it would then be acceptable to take it from us. After all, if we had done the same to someone else then surely it would be okay for someone to come along and take it away from us again.

“So you can tell me where we are then?”

“What do you mean?”

I looked at the man and could tell by his face that he had no idea where he was. The whole place was alien to him.

“I just woke up here in the woods. I have no idea where I am or even how I got here.”

If I hadn’t lied about owning the house then I could have put his mind at ease and told him that my family and I were the same. We woke up in the house, moved there by Father who woke up in a car in the middle of the woods.

“I believe it’s something to do with the blast. The things, the memory loss - I believe it’s all connected. My family and I have gaps in our memory too,” I told him, skirting around the question of where we were.

He actually looked relieved to hear he wasn’t the only one with memory loss.

“I don’t even know about any fucking blasts!” he said. “What the fuck happened?”

We still had a way to walk so I figured now would be as good a time as any to fill him in with what had happened (according to my father at least). “I’m not sure of all the details,” I started, “my father told me about this so I can’t answer any further questions you may have but apparently political arguments escalated. One thing led to another. It started with rockets, then invasions and then - eventually - someone just dropped a bomb and ended it all...”

“A nuke?”

“I guess.”

“I thought there’d be a dust cloud, or something. Ruin for miles and miles but look!” he pointed skywards. Past the trees (overhead) and out into the blue sky, the sun was still shining brightly despite making efforts to go down for the night. “I thought things like this were supposed to vanish behind layers of radioactive smog?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen. All I knew was that it had happened and this is how we lived our life now. We were starving and it was us and them.

The man stopped asking questions. He looked pale. I’m not sure whether he had run out of questions or because he didn’t want to hear any more of the answers I had for him. I wanted to ask him whether he was okay but didn’t bother. It was a stupid question. Of course he wasn’t okay. He had woken up, in a strange place, and discovered his world had more or less ended. Suddenly it dawned on me that I might have had some good news to share with him.

“Planes!” I blurted out. “Occasionally, back at the house, we see planes flying overhead.”

The man looked at me blankly.

“It means we aren’t the only ones alive. There are more survivors. My father thinks they’re military. He says they’ll be looking for people like us and that they probably have somewhere safe to take us. That’s something, right?”

The man didn’t look as impressed (or hopeful) as I had hoped he would.

“They’re up there and we’re down here. It’s a lot of ground to cover and I doubt they can even see us from up in the skies,” he said.

I didn’t let his words bring me down. I’d rather have a little hope than no hope.

“My father said that if we’re to survive, we need to remain optimistic.”

The man didn’t respond. I could tell by his face he had lost all hope already. We continued the rest of the walk in silence with only the noises of our footsteps crunching on the woodland debris underfoot to break the uncomfortable atmosphere.

* * * * *

By the time we reached the house I couldn’t help but think I had made a mistake. The man’s silence was uncomfortable and made me feel nervous. At first I thought he was a victim but now I had the unpleasant feeling he was nothing more than a looter; someone who was out to take what he could get in this shitty world.

I stepped up onto the porch, by the front door. The man waited on the drive a step or two behind me. He looked apprehensive too. I raised my hand to knock on the door but it swung open before I had the chance to do so. Father was standing there. Mother and Sister were behind him - watching from further down the hallway.

Mother and Sister looked relieved to see me but Father - he wasn’t even looking at me. I was invisible to him. His eyes were transfixed on the man standing behind me.

“So...” he said.

His voice was quiet. I hadn’t seen him like this before.

“Did you return as the hero? Some food for us? Some help? Or did you return with your tail between your legs and another mouth to feed?”

I couldn’t help but feel it was a rhetorical question.

“Who’s your friend?” he asked.

With no words (or warning) I spun round on the spot, with the axe in hand, and struck the stranger’s neck with so much force that his head separated clean from his body. The body just stood there for a moment with a fine jet of red mist spurting from the stump painting the blue skies (and then splattering the floor). After a couple of seconds the body then slumped to the floor in a crumpled heap.

Father jumped.

The girls screamed.

The severed head rolled to a standstill.

“What the hell are you doing?” Father shouted.

He stepped from the house and closed the door behind him to stop Mother and Sister seeing anymore than what they had to - even though we both knew they had already seen more than they needed to.

Father snatched the axe from my hand and asked me again, “What the hell are you doing?”

“There’s nothing out there!” I told him. “Nothing but those things and whoever this was...I bumped into him in the middle of the woods. He told me he had seen those infected people too. He said there was a lot of them and not a lot of anything else...”

“So you killed him?” Father hissed.

“He was going to come this way with or without me!” I said. In truth, I hadn’t planned to kill the man. It was only because of the change in his personality that I realised he couldn’t be trusted. Too unpredictable. Too dangerous. I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind of the man being a looter; the worry that he’d attack my family and me just as soon as we entered the house. “I didn’t have a choice!”

Father didn’t say anything.

Another thought (albeit disgusting) flashed through my mind. I could see from Father’s face that he too had had the same troubling, yet necessary, thought.

“And now we have something to eat.”

I dropped the bloodied axe onto the floor of the porch.

PART FIVE

Now

A Welcome Solitude

I couldn’t take my eyes off the broken bowl and strips of meat next to where I had thrown them, before Father had come into the room. My mind was continually telling me that they were there because of me. Had it not been for me trying to be the big man and rescue our family - we would never have gone down that dark path. I knew there was little point in thinking about it. I couldn’t turn the clock back no matter how much I had wanted to. And yet I couldn’t stop from procrastinating about what had come to be and where I (the hero) had led his own family.

My mind was always louder when I was by myself. A constant chattering in my brain about things I’d rather forget about yet, today at least, I preferred it to the warped wittering of my mother, father and sister. A guilt-filled break from the crazy.

“Without Father we would have starved!” Sister had been known to tell me on down days.

Down days? It seems they are becoming more and more frequent now. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we had an up day. Was there even such a day since waking up in this prison?

Anyway - if it wasn’t for me - Father wouldn’t have stopped us from starving. The meat I brought up that day was at least a week (maybe two) before the second piece of meat stumbled in from the cold; just as confused and scared as the first piece. Had it not been for the piece I walked home I’m pretty sure the second person would have come by a house filled with the bodies of four family members.

Can’t turn the clock back, stop wishing it possible. What’s done is done.

My mind drifted to thoughts of leaving the house. I could just turn my back on the whole family and go off and find some help by myself. There has to be something out there. And if there isn’t, and I do end up dying from starvation or running into other forms of trouble...Would that be such a bad thing? It wasn’t the first time I’d had such thoughts. Staying here can only end badly too. Survivors aren’t frequent and we can’t rely on them stumbling into the house forever. Soon they’ll stop coming and we’ll be faced with starvation again. Then what? Would Father turn on his family? I couldn’t say for sure but if I were a betting man - I was pretty sure I know what he’d do...

The door opened and Sister walked in.

“I had to tell him!” she said. There was a defiant tone in her voice. Her defiance was also obvious by the way she strode into the room without daring to knock first. No chance of an apology then. “He had already suspected something was wrong by the way you behaved at the table. You only have yourself to blame!”

“Yeah well, it doesn’t matter.”

My mind was already telling me that leaving the house (and finding my own way) was the right thing to do.

“You’re not angry?”

I stood up and walked over to a stained mirror which hung on the wall. I beckoned Sister to join me until we were both standing side by side looking at our reflections.

“How old do you think I am?” I asked.

“What?”

“How old are you?”

Looking at our reflections, hers in particular, I reckon I could have given a good guesstimate to her age easier than my own age. Her skin was smooth, without so much of a single wrinkle and there was a shine of innocence (dulling with each passing day we stayed in the house) in her eyes which suggested she wasn’t a day over eighteen.

My own reflection, though, was a different story: a worn, tired face; wrinkles around my dark eyes. I know a lot of that was down to stress but, even so, it made it hard to give an accurate age. Was I just wearing badly and only in my teens like my sister? Was I older? Twenties perhaps? Maybe even early thirties?

“I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know my name. There’s lots that I don’t know. There is something I do know though...”

“What’s that?”

“I know that I want to remember and that is something I’ll never do all the time I stay in this house.”

Sister smirked, “You’re leaving again?”

It wasn’t the first time I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to leave. The first time I mentioned it and Father said I couldn’t go anywhere. I had to stay with the family - where it was safe. The second time he said the same thing. The third time he told me that I knew where the door was. The other times the thoughts crossed my mind, I kept it to myself. Looking back - I guess the first few times I mentioned anything were just a cry for help. Now I felt different though. Inside. I meant it. I wanted to leave. It was the best thing to do for the sake of my own survival and sanity (what was left of it).

“I mean it this time!” I told her. I tried to explain my reasons even though I had no idea whether she’d even want to hear them. “People won’t keep stumbling into this house from the outside world. Father doesn’t go out looking for them and nor does anyone else. The fact we’ve had a few people come by this way in the first place is a miracle...”

“God is looking out for us!” Sister shouted.

“Damn you with your God. There is no God. If there was then we wouldn’t be in this position. No one would. The world wouldn’t be ruined.” I continued, “What happens when people stop coming by? We starve to death? I don’t think so. How long before Father - or Mother - decides their survival is more important than ours?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you love them? Mother and Father, do you love them?”

“Yes!”

“Really? And they love you?”

“Yes!”

“Because I feel like I don’t know them and I wonder whether they feel the same about us.”

“They wouldn’t turn on us.”

“What about each other? What about going downstairs one day to find Mother on the table with Father standing above her with that knife in his hand?”

“He wouldn’t!”

“You can’t say that for definite.”

She didn’t say anything. There was nothing she could say. She knew - deep down - that what I was saying had an element of truth in it. Neither one of us had heard Mother or Father tell us that they loved us. Not that we could remember anyway. And despite what Sister said - she couldn’t pretend there wasn’t the possibility of Father (or Mother) turning on either one of us (although I think it was fair to say they’d probably start with me).

“So that’s it then? You’re going?”

There was a hint of sadness in her eyes which reminded me of how she used to be before things turned ugly for us. Not a lot. Just a hint. Enough to make me realise that (perhaps) she was still in there - deep down lost in the blackness consuming her soul. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. I couldn’t help but wish she would...

“Come with me!” I said.

“What?”

“We can leave - together...Mother and Father can’t stop us. We can just leave and try and find some help. We can come back with the army, if we find them, and collect Mother and Father or we can just start again by ourselves - just the two of us.”

“You tried to leave before. Remember what happened?”

“That was before. We just need to be more clever about it - go out there quietly and try and sneak past anyone that we stumble across as opposed to fight them.”

“I don’t want to go. I like it here.”

“No you don’t. Not really. You just think you do. This is a prison though. Not just for me and you but for Mother and Father too. They think it’s a sanctuary but it’s not. Come on - come with me. We can start afresh. We can choose ourselves names - it’s clear our own names are lost. We can start a new life. One which is better than this...”

“What about Mother and Father?”

“They won’t leave with us.”

“I could talk to them.”

“They won’t.”

“I can try. I don’t want to leave without them.”

The poor girl still thought they were her mother and father. I had long since come to the conclusion that they weren’t. They were monsters. Mother and Father were as lost as our names.

“It needs to be you and me. They’ll slow us down...We have to do this.”

“I don’t want to.”

“But...”

Father’s voice boomed from the doorway, causing me to jump. I hadn’t even noticed him standing there.

“She said she doesn’t want to go!” he said.

I spun around to face him. His eyes were black again. His skin red as though flushed through with rage. This wasn’t good.

Nothing Stopping You

“We’re leaving!” I told him. “You can’t keep us here.”

“How many more times are we going to have this conversation? Same old, same old...You eat a little food, you start to feel guilty about your desire to survive and what you’ve done, you talk about leaving, you go quiet, you bang your sister, all is right in the world...You eat...You feel guilty...Just go. We don’t want you here. It’s hard enough surviving without someone as negative as you trying to make things harder for us. So - yeah - leave. You want to go, I want you to go and your mother wants you to go...Your sister, though, she isn’t going anywhere.”

“I’m not leaving her here with you!” I told him.

I don’t know why I said that. I should have just gone whilst he was letting me. That little glimmer of the sister I once knew flashing in her eyes though - I didn’t want to leave that. I didn’t want to lose it. I wanted to bring her back from the dark place she found herself in at the moment. I still felt I could. The blackness in Father’s eyes now showed me that for him, it was too late. He was lost for good. But not my sister...

“Then we have a problem.” Father turned to my sister and asked her, “What do you want to do? Do you want to leave too?”

“Not without you and Mother...”

“We’re not leaving though. Someone will come by and find us. They’ll come and take us to safety. It’s just a question of waiting...”

“And when they do come - what makes you so sure you won’t just kill them before they reveal who they are? After all - how do you know they’ll be your saviour as opposed to another lump of meat for the table?” I blurted out. I turned back to Sister, “We need to leave - he’s lost the plot. Look in his eyes.”

Sister looked at Father and then back to me, “What about them?” she asked.

Her own eyes had dulled once more. The sparkle had once again slipped away.

“Please,” I begged her, “come with me.”

She shook her head, “Not without Mother and Father.”

“And we’re not going anywhere,” he said with a smug look on his face.

I wished I had the axe to hand. I would have stuck it in his face right there and then. I’m not sure whether the thought was from the darkness battling inside of me or whether it was part of my good side. After all, killing something evil - surely that’s not a bad thing to do? The line between right and wrong has become blurred since the bomb.

“I can’t stay here,” I told Sister, trying to ignore the look on my father’s face.

“And I can’t go. Not without my family.”

I wanted to tell her that they weren’t her family but I couldn’t. At the end of the day - despite what they have become in the bad days - they’ll always be her parents. They’ll always be our parents.

“What are you waiting for?” Father asked, that same smug look on his face. “We’ll even move the barricade from the front door. Save you from having to leave via the window again.”

I hate him.

“Fine,” I said after a slight hesitation - trying to decide whether Sister would change her mind or not. It appeared not.

“You might want to eat that,” said Father as he pointed to the meat on the bedroom floor, “you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday. You’ll need your strength out there if you’re going to survive for long...Lot of walking to do. Could be miles.”

I looked at the meat. Father was right. I didn’t want to eat it but I had to. If I left on an empty stomach I’d get hungry even quicker once I had walked for a bit. At least staying in the house, doing nothing, kept hunger at bay for a little longer. Out there, doing the exercise, though - I’d definitely need a full stomach before I left...

“We’ll leave you to your meal.” He smirked at me as he beckoned Sister from the room. She didn’t even look back at me as he closed the door behind them.

I walked over to the meat and picked it up. Certainly not as fresh as it was yesterday but it will do. In my mind I pictured a nice fillet steak. And then I bit down on a section which squelched between my teeth.

To think - this used to be hard.

PART SIX

Before

The First Bite

We were all sat around the dinner table, empty plates in front of us. Father was sitting at the head of the table, Mother was sitting next to Sister and I was alone on the other side despite having the option to sit at the other end of the table opposite Father.

He had called us there to discuss what had to be spoken about. The man I had killed earlier, with the axe, was still lying in a pool of clotted blood at the front of the house - no doubt already attracting the attention of swarms of flies and other insects all looking for an easy meal.

Father had told us that it was just meat. He had told us that we were supposed to picture something else - like a steak - when we bit down into it. He told us that it would be easy if we didn’t think about what we were doing. If we over-thought it then we would find it harder.

Of course it wasn’t just a case of Father telling us how to go about eating the meat. There was also some protesting too. Mother didn’t really say anything; she agreed with Father that we didn’t really have a choice. Sister was against it though. One hundred percent. I was too - despite my initial thought that it was the best option. Now it was laid out in front of me (so to speak) the idea repulsed me.

“I’ll take the first bite,” said Father, “I’ll tell you what it tastes like. Prepare you.”

Sister still didn’t look convinced. Would it really have made a difference whether Father went first or not? The idea of him reporting back saying it tasted as disgusting as we thought it would be surely wouldn’t have helped us conquer our own fears of eating human flesh.

Can’t think of it as human.

It’s not human.

It’s meat.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Meat.

“Anyone want to say anything?” he asked.

No one did say anything. Whether they wanted to, or not, was another matter altogether though. I’m sure we all had something to say but realised there was little point. At the end of the day there was no sense dragging it out any longer than entirely necessary. Father nodded his head and stood up. He picked a knife up from the table - a large butcher’s knife Mother had brought in - and headed towards the door to go and get the meat.

I nearly offered him a helping hand. Nearly. I couldn’t though. The thought of what needed to be done (cutting skin off a still-warm corpse) before having to eat it...No way. There was no way I could see the body and then stick the pieces of flesh in my mouth. At least sitting here, in a room away from where the meat was being prepared, I could pretend that everything was normal. I was just sitting in my house, waiting for Father to bring me my dinner.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Just meat.

Steak.

A nice prime piece of fillet. Fresh from the butchers. Blue - just the way I like it.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

My mind played back the mental image of seeing the head separate from the neck of the body. My mind played back the spray of red into the blue sky. My mind played back the sight of the head rolling to a stop and the way the eyes seemingly settled on me (the latter part of the thought clearly an extra detail my imagination added for whatever reason). Stop thinking about it. What’s happened has happened. It’s finished. It’s over with. No need to dwell on it. It was a question of him or me (and the family). I did what I had to do. And I’m certainly not about to eat a piece of his body. Certainly not. I’m just sitting here waiting for Father to bring me my steak.

I love steak.

Shame I don’t have some chips to go with it.

I’m not sure how long Father was out of the room for. When he came back in he had a plate of meat with him. I didn’t dare pay any attention to the plate, nor the blood on his hands. Instead I just stared at his face. His pale face. A look of horror in his expression that I’ll never forget despite wishing I could. I wanted to ask him whether he had taken a minute to try a small piece for himself but the words didn’t come from my mouth.

Mother asked, “Are you okay?”

He nodded as he put the plate down in the centre of the table.

“Plenty left over if anyone fancies it!” he tried to joke.

No one laughed.

No one moved either. We all just sat there - none of us able to take our eyes from the plate. It’s a shame we knew what the meat was because there, on the bloodied plate, it looked like a kind of ham.

Father took a deep breath in and sighed it back out again. “Down the hatch.”

Quick as a flash he picked a small piece of meat up (thankfully most of them were cut fairly small in size) and threw it into his mouth which promptly clamped shut. He paused there for a second or two. You could see, on his face, that he was having an internal battle with his thoughts about whether to chew or spit it back out. Slowly he chewed. We all watched for his reaction. It was clear the meat wasn’t the best yet he hadn’t spat it back out which (on some levels) was a positive.

“Pork.”

He swallowed.

“Shame there isn’t some brown sauce in the house,” was another attempt at a mood lightening joke. Again no one laughed.

Mother picked a small piece up, and I did too. We both put the pieces of fillet steak into our mouths and slowly chewed down. Father was right. There was an element of pork to the taste. The texture was...Chewy, uncooked ham. I couldn’t help but wish there was some gas in the house with which we could have cooked some of the meat. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to light a small fire, outside, with which we could have cooked a little of the meat? Perhaps that would have made it more bearable.

“It’s not as bad as it could be,” I said to Sister.

She didn’t look convinced. She was clearly struggling with the whole idea of eating a fellow human despite it being our best chance of survival. I don’t know for sure but starvation must surely be a horrible way to die and whilst it’s fair to say none of us would have starved immediately - it wouldn’t have been long before the effects of hunger started to take their toll on our bodies; especially as none of us was particularly large to begin with.

“We’ll need to keep our strength up,” Father told her, “just in case those things outside come by...We can’t be weak.” You could see by his face that he sympathised with Sister. He hadn’t wanted to eat the flesh either. None of us did. “You can do it,” he added.

“Forgive me Father for what I am about to do.”

Sister quickly picked up a piece of meat (the smallest on the plate) and threw it into her mouth before promptly chewing down on it as quickly as she could. Seconds later she swallowed it down. The speed she ate with, I’d have been surprised if her taste buds had the chance to register any flavour. She gagged and (for a minute) I thought it was going to come back up and land in a mushed up state back on her plate. Thankfully for all concerned, it didn’t.

Father reluctantly took another piece from the pre-cut sections. He put it in his mouth and began the chewing process once more. I looked at Sister and Mother and they both reached forward for another taste knowing that the small pieces already swallowed would not be enough to sustain us.

I guess we aren’t taking it in turns anymore.

“How about if we lit a fire?” I asked Father. “There are papers in the lounge - we could use those...Perhaps cook some of the meat? Might make it...”

“And where would we cook it?” he asked as he swallowed his second piece. “There’s nowhere indoors where we could safely keep a fire under control and - if we light it outside - the smoke might attract those things to us. We can’t risk it.” He took another handful.

I didn’t argue with him. He was right. He was always right.

I took a second piece of flesh for myself.

Here we go again.

Bad Dreams

I don’t remember who told me. It could have been my father. It could have been my mother. I doubt it would have been my sister. Like so many of my beliefs, ideas and thoughts - they’re all in my head; I just don’t remember how they were planted there. For all I know some teacher in some school (or even a friend from years gone by) told me this particular thought and I just don’t remember the occasion: eating cheese before you go to bed gives you nightmares. I don’t remember if there is any truth in that sentence. I can’t recall ever trying it if I’m going to be honest. Had I (before the blast) at some stage in my life eaten cheese before bedtime because of some uncontrollable urge or because I was curious to see what happened? Or was I the sort of person who believed most of what I was told and did my best to avoid it?

I really wish I knew.

I also wish someone had told me the same rule applied when discussing human flesh.

It wasn’t human flesh. It was prime fillet steak. The best you can buy.

Despite finishing the meal a few hours ago I couldn’t shake the taste of flesh from my mouth. Sadly we had all but run out of anything to drink other than water which, by some stroke of luck, was still obtainable from one of the house’s many taps. Refreshing - yes - but hardly what you need when you want to cleanse your mouth of disgusting tastes.

We should have been more careful when it came to rationing the toothpaste when we first moved into the house but then, I guess, we didn’t expect to be here so long. Stupid really. We should have known we were going to be here for some time...

I rolled onto my side. Sister was sound asleep. She looked so pretty there, illuminated by the few beams of moonlight penetrating the barricades by the window. I don’t know why but impure thoughts leaked into my mind - at first they weren’t necessarily of her. They were just of women in general. What it would feel like to be with one, to lay with one, to feel their touch upon my skin.

I couldn’t remember, whereas other sensations I hadn’t experienced since the blast, like stubbing a toe for example, I could recall perfectly. I couldn’t help but wonder whether I was a virgin before; a thought which promptly slipped from my mind as I wondered about the touch of a woman once more. Even the sight of a naked woman...

I hesitated for a moment.

My mind stuck on the last thought I had; the sight of a naked woman. There was a girl, only a few feet away from me, who was near naked under the thin sheet which covered her, choosing to sleep in bra and knickers as opposed to full clothes.

Quietly I sat up and dragged myself across the floor to where her mattress was. Quiet as a mouse (and slowly so as not to wake her) I pulled the sheet back to reveal her perfect body.

My penis strained against my shorts at the mere sight of her.  At the thought of her touch, I couldn’t help but touch it. All the time, my eyes were transfixed on her breasts. I’d give anything to feel her hand wrapped around my shaft. Anything...

“What are you doing?”

I looked up to her face and jumped when I realised she was staring - not at my face but at my right hand gripping my penis within my shorts. I pulled away but she already knew what was happening.

“I’m sorry...” I said. I felt my face redden and went to turn away from her but she bolted upright and stopped me mid-turn. She turned me back around to face her. “What are you doing?” I asked.

She shushed me. A smile on her lips. A twinkle in her eye.

“Let me help!” she pleaded.

Before I could object or do anything, I felt her hand fondle my crotch. Her touch felt so good. So electrifying.

“How’s that?” she asked as her fingers wrapped around the shaft and began a firm stroking motion. I couldn’t help but sigh. I didn’t need to answer. She knew I was enjoying it. I’m not sure how but I felt myself harden, more so than I had already done. “Close your eyes,” she whispered.

I didn’t want to though. I couldn’t take my eyes off her body. I wished that I could be inside of her. Feel her snatch around me. I knew it was wrong but I didn’t care. After all - what if we were the last humans? We’d need to repopulate the world so surely it would be deemed acceptable. We ate human flesh for our survival. Who was to say we couldn’t fuck for survival too?

I pushed her back onto the mattress and ripped her knickers off with a quick motion revealing a hairy bush and pretty pink lips of her tidy looking vagina. She didn’t stop me. She pulled me closer until I fell on top of her. A little bit of fiddling on her part, and a thrust on mine, and I was inside of her.

I slipped in with so much ease. She was so wet yet so beautifully tight. The sparkle in her eye was brighter than the beams of light offered by the moon. I felt her hands grab my buttocks. She seemingly pulled me even closer to her, forcing me in as deep as I could go. We both let out a sigh of delight.

Suddenly I woke up. I was on the floor where I had drifted off to sleep. She was on her mattress where I had left her. A peaceful look on her face. A frustrated look on mine. An erection straining uncomfortably against my boxer shorts.

A weird dream?

I felt disgusted with myself.

I started the evening by eating human flesh and then I ended it with dreams of fucking my own sister. After killing someone today, too, I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what I am becoming and exactly how far I’ll go to ensure my own survival.

PART SEVEN

Now

Leaving it Behind

I finished the last of the meat (prime fillet steak). I hated that I had to do so but Father was right (of course) - I would need my strength if I was going to survive out there by myself. I knew it was going to be hard anyway (surviving) but, even so, I didn’t want to stunt my chances more so by refusing to eat what was already prepared. Had it been a question of preparing it myself - from someone breathing - then it would have most likely been a different outcome. I would have left the house hungry. An empty stomach.

I am a killer - yes - but I don’t want to be.

I stood up. This is it then. Nothing else here for me. Time to leave. For good.

The nagging feeling (which had kept me here other times I went to leave) started to creep into my thought process once more. I did my best to dismiss it. I’m serious this time. I’m leaving.

I left the room and headed down the stairs. As I reached the bottom step, Sister and Mother stepped out from within the lounge. They both looked as though they were sad.

“You do this every time,” said Sister, “just stay with us. It’s fine.”

“I can’t,” I told her.

I crossed the hallway towards the front door where I started to move the various pieces of furniture (found from around the house) which were stopping me from opening the door. Neither Sister nor Mother helped me.

“Your father will calm down,” said Mother.

The fact he could be so cold to me (to all of us) didn’t bother me. I could live with it if it was just that but it wasn’t. It was how he behaved in general that I couldn’t live with. It was how they all behaved that made me feel as though we were less of a family - and I blamed myself for that too. I wasn’t guilt free. Far from it. The difference was I at least felt I could redeem myself. I thought I could go back to how I was; the innocent lad as opposed to the flesh eating, incestuous killer that I had grown to be. I knew I could go back. Try and put it all behind me. Move on with my life in whatever capacity that the outside world permitted.

When they realised I wasn’t going to stop dismantling the barricade, they both started to help me despite Father advising against it from the lounge. With three pairs of hands the doorway was soon clear for me to make my escape.

I turned to Mother and Sister.

“Stay with me!” Sister looked as though she was about to cry, her eyes welling up and the glimmer of humanity back in there again. It was just a shame I knew Father was only too capable of making it disappear into the blackness with so much ease.

“Come with me!” I told her again.

She looked at Mother. Mother shook her head. Sister shook hers. I felt my own eyes well up too.

“I’ll come back for you. As soon as I find someone, or something, I’ll get word to you. I promise...”

Sister hugged me. A warm embrace. I didn’t want to let her go. Why did I feel like I was saying goodbye to a lover as opposed to a sister? My confused state of mind was playing tricks on me. This was why I needed to leave. I pulled away from her squeeze, worried that I may not be able to leave if I stayed much longer. I gave her a peck on the cheek before I turned to Mother. An awkward kiss between us (neither knowing which cheek the other was aiming for) made me accidentally kiss her on the lips. A reflex lick of my lips and I was sure I could taste Father...

“Travelling light?” Mother asked. She was referring to my lack of luggage.

“Best do,” I told her. No sense in letting a bag of useless belongings slow me down and I was sure I’d find something, at least, within a day’s worth of walking. From the patchy memory I had of my past life, I was never too far away from anywhere that you couldn’t walk to in a day or two. Not in this country.

...And speaking of Father - he didn’t come to wave me goodbye. Not even a shout out from the lounge. I guess having a soul meant I wasn’t part of his family anymore. Disowned. It didn’t matter though. I didn’t go to him either. I simply smiled, one last time, at Sister and Mother and stepped from the house.

“CLOSE THAT DOOR!” I heard Father call out from the lounge.

As I turned to face the trees to the side of the house I heard the door slam behind me and - seconds later - the sound of the various objects being stacked against the door once more.

No turning back now, not that I wanted to. I didn’t want to give them (well, Father anyway) the satisfaction.

I took a deep breath and stepped from the porch down onto the driveway. A few more steps and I was walking on the ever-growing grass and - seconds later - I had passed the first of many trees which lay ahead. My adrenalin was already pumping; not through fear but rather the endless possibilities stretched out in front of me. I only wish Sister had come with me.

* * * * *

I remained alert as I continued to walk through the woods. Not just for any of those potential people (the ones who were infected with god only knows what) but also for survivors who may have been stumbling around seeking help just as I was. My eyes would dart from the horizon down to where I was stepping; one minute watching out for signs of trouble and the next looking down to ensure I wasn’t going to trip on a large log, or twist my ankle on a bit of uneven ground. All the time, my mind was wondering as to how I’d react if I did meet another person, such as myself. It had been so long since I had seen anyone, who didn’t end up on the dining room table, that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak to them normally - my necessary social skill standards seemingly having slipped these past few weeks. God. It all happened so fast. One minute living a relatively normal life and the next...What had we become? I shook the thought from my mind and went back to fretting about what would happen if I met someone out here.

Father had spent so long telling us about the looters that it was hard to think of a person as anything but. If I did meet up with anyone, would they attack me before I had the chance to figure out what I was going to do or how I was going to react?

I couldn’t help but wish someone had come with me.

My sister.

There she is again; popping into my mind.

What are you doing in there?

Please don’t leave me! I could hear her in my mind. That lost puppy look on her face. The eyes welling up. The uncomfortable cramping in my heart as is twisted within my chest cavity - pained by what I had left behind.

Stop it. Stop thinking about her. Sister. Stop thinking about her. She made her mind up. She chose to stay behind. She chose to stay with Mother and Father.

In my mind I watched from a doorway as Father pinned her to her own mattress. The mattress we had shared on many occasions. Naked, he was pounding her hard and deep. She was screaming for him to get off. Clawing at his back and scratching at his face. Of course, Mother was of no use. She was sitting in the corner with her panties pulled aside, rubbing herself with a piece of left-over meat from an old meal. Sighing with pleasure as her eyes fixed upon what Father (husband) was doing to Sister (daughter).

I knew it wasn’t happening. I knew it was my mind trying to get me to turn around (I won’t). I knew if I were to go home, Mother and Father would be in one room and Sister would be in another. None of them really talking. All of them waiting for a meal to head their way. Father wouldn’t be fucking Sister. Not whilst Mother kept him in line so often with regular services and emptying. Something I’m sure she did so as to keep him away from their daughter. I’m sure one day it will come to be. I’m sure one day he’ll lie with her. When Mother loses what is left of her looks and he fancies something younger and tighter. Something which doesn’t require spit to get wet.

The thought of Father and Sister fucking popped into my head again.

I shook it from my mind as best I could and continued to walk.

As my mind continued to tease me with imagery I’d rather not see and possible outcomes as to what will happen in the home I left behind, I realised the feeling that was burning within me was not one of worry for my sister but rather one of jealousy. The thought of Father being inside her. The thought of him ejaculating into her pussy. The shared moment as they look into each other’s eyes. I’m not worried for her. I’m jealous. I want to be the one inside of her. I want to be the one who shares those moments. I want to be with her.

When did this happen? My diseased mind corrupted from imprisonment within that house. Broken by the change in the world. How did this happen so fast and how did I not see it coming in time to stop it?

I dropped to my knees and retched at the thought of what I had become. Seconds later and there was a puddle of puke soaking into the earth in front of me.

When did this happen?

I remembered. It happened when I made it so.

PART EIGHT

Before

Siblings

As I lay on the floor, I couldn’t help but think about the dream that I had. My first thought, when I woke up and despite the erection, was that it had been bad. Not just bad but sick. But as I lay there, watching my sister sleep in the warm glow of the fragmented moonlight, I couldn’t help but wish it weren’t just a dream. I couldn’t help but wish it were real.

I wanted to feel her touch.

I wanted to know what it felt like to kiss her.

I wanted to be inside of her.

Without giving it much thought, I crawled from underneath my bed sheet and made my way to the mattress where she lay. She was lying on her side, one hand under her face and the other at her side. She looked so peaceful. Carefully I crawled onto the mattress, and under the sheet, behind her. When I knew she hadn’t stirred, I moved closer until we were touching skin to skin. She still didn’t stir so I carefully put my arm over her as though cuddling in.

She stirred.

“What are you doing?” she asked, still half-asleep.

“I’m sorry. I was freezing down there. Don’t mind, do you?” I asked.

“You don’t feel cold.”

“You’re nice and warm. Is it okay?”

“Don’t snore!” she ordered me.

“I won’t.”

We both fell silent for a moment. By her breathing I guessed that she had fallen asleep again. I arched my back as thoughts of touching her snuck back into the forefront of my mind once more and my erection slowly started to pulse into life. An arching of the back to stop from poking her with it.

I held my breath, occasionally sipping the air like a fine wine, scared that she’d hear my heavy breathing. A quick sniff of her hair. She smells so good. A natural odour that hasn’t been disguised with various products due to not having them to hand.

You can fuck me if you want! I was dying to hear the words come from her mouth but they didn’t.

My heart skipped a beat when a thought popped into my mind. A single crystal clear thought to touch her. I hadn’t even moved yet but I was shaking.

“You’re shivering!” Sister suddenly said.

I thought she was asleep.

She backed into me. Was that a come-on? Or was she offering more of her own body warmth to try and warm me up? She must be able to feel my erection. It’s pressing right against her buttock. She can’t not feel it. Definitely a come-on.

I nervously reached my hand down to her knicker line. She made a sound of satisfaction like an mmmm type noise. I slid my hand underneath her knickers and she suddenly pulled away and jumped up from the mattress.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted.

I jumped up too, “I’m sorry - I thought that’s what you wanted...”

“What I wanted? You’re my brother!”

I tried to gesture for her to keep her voice down so Mother and Father didn’t hear and come barging in to see what was happening.

“Jesus Christ...” she continued.

“I’m sorry. Okay? I misread the signs...”

“You’re my brother!” she repeated.

“I just got confused.”

“Confused?”

“I don’t feel like your brother sometimes. I’m sorry!”

She didn’t say anything. I wanted to hug her and reassure her that everything was okay but I didn’t dare raise a finger on the off-chance she kicked off again. There was a brief moment of silence between the two of us as neither one knew what to say.

“I feel the same,” she said, “sometimes.”

She seemed calmer now.

I had a feeling she was referring to the fact that sometimes I don’t feel like I’m her brother.  Going from her reaction it’s fair to say she didn’t feel the same as me when it came to my stupid sexual advances. Stupid.

With regards to feeling like family, I guess everyone is in the same boat since the memory loss, and from time to time we all feel as though we’re with strangers in this house. A weird feeling considering these people are actually your family.

“Can we pretend this didn’t happen?” I asked her. “I just got confused. It won’t happen again...”

She didn’t say anything. She looked just as confused as me to be fair. I couldn’t help but think she was stunned by the whole episode. With everything happening at the moment - was this the final straw?

I stepped forward to offer some comfort - even though I couldn’t help but think a hug probably wasn’t the best way to go, given the circumstances. Before I had taken two steps, she suddenly stepped forward and pulled me in close to her. Within seconds we were kissing.

I pulled away, “What are you doing?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

She pulled me back in for another kiss. I didn’t understand but I didn’t care. Moments later we were still kissing having fallen back on the mattress, she on top of me.

It should feel wrong but it doesn’t.

It feels right.

Natural.

She pulled at my boxers, tearing them down to my ankles where I kicked them off. She unhooked her bra allowing her small but pert breasts to be free. I pulled her knickers off just as she had done with my boxers. It seemed only fair. I rolled her onto her back with ease and found myself between her legs. Both of us were flustered. Both were breathing heavy. Both didn’t seem to care we were siblings. Neither of us felt as though we were.

“Are you sure?” I asked her.

She responded by pulling me into her. I slipped in with ease.

* * * * *

Now

Remembering how Sister and I had first ‘got together’; I’d fallen asleep after we had finished. I hadn’t meant to. I’d meant to stay awake and talk to her about what had happened but my eyelids were so heavy. We were supposed to talk about what happened next and that it was supposed to be our secret...We were supposed to anyway. I’m not sure how long I had slept for but I awoke to the sound of her quietly sobbing by my side.

When I looked into those perfect eyes - the windows to her tainted soul - I didn’t look at her as though she were a sister. I couldn’t. Not after what we had done. Looking back at it now, I realised that I looked at her as though she were a girlfriend; a lover even. It was only now that I was realising this.

I slumped back against one of the many trees close to me, and slid down the trunk until I was on my arse in the dirt. I felt sick again. Not because of the feelings I was having about my sister but rather the worry that I had left her in that situation.

I want to go back for her but know I can’t. There’s no point. She won’t leave without Mother and Father and I don’t want them coming with me. The whole point of leaving was to get away from them. I should distance myself from Sister too. The feelings I am having for her aren’t natural. They aren’t right. They’re a product of a forced situation. It’s just harder to distance myself from her mentally. I don’t want to. I want to keep her with me.

I couldn’t help it when I started to cry. The tears spilt from my eyes in a never-ending cascade. Months of build-up finally released. Not because of the loss of my sister but because of my confused state. The lack of memory, what’s happened to the world and what has been happening to me (and us) over the weeks. It’s too much for me. I can’t take it...

A scream from somewhere behind me snapped me from my thoughts of despair. A woman in trouble. I carefully peered around the side of the tree that I was leaning on. In the distance I saw a woman. She was on the floor. Crowding in around her were those people...not people...things...

I went to make a move. To do what, exactly, I’m not sure. It didn’t matter. Before I even realised it, I had stopped in my tracks and stayed against the tree. If anything I seemed to push myself harder against it.

The woman screamed again. She was calling out for someone to help her. Her next scream was cut short as one of those things tore into her neck with its teeth. I turned away from the carnage as the others started to bite into the woman too. The scream was now nothing but gargled noises. And then, moments later, the sound stopped, from the woman at least. Despite being a little way away from her - I could still hear a sound...A crunching. Teeth ripping through flesh and hitting bone. Gnawing, mashing, chomping and chewing. Lips smacking together in a feeding frenzy. A roar. Of satisfaction from eating the woman?

I carefully leaned round the corner. The things feasting upon the woman seem to have finished. They’re lurching off. Thankfully not towards me. They’re headed in the opposite direction groaning as they walked. Watching them now, they look slow but I know (from our first encounter) that’s not the case. When they need to move, they can with frightening (almost inhuman) speed. I certainly don’t think I’d have been able to outrun them if they’d seen me. I cast my eyes back to the body of the woman. I can’t see for sure but it looks as though she’s nothing more than a pile of bones and gore. Certainly not recognisable as a person. Jesus. The speed with which those things tore through her.

Rooted to the spot and unable to take my eyes off the mangled remains of the poor woman, my mind couldn’t help but drift back to the second piece of meat I ate and another turning point for my family.

One step further into the darkness which consumed them (us)...

PART NINE

Before

Turning Sour

When Sister and I came down stairs, the following morning, Mother and Father were distracted by the arrival of a scared looking woman. We hadn’t heard the knock on the door - no doubt too absorbed in what we were doing and the awkward conversation we awoke to.

The woman was sitting at the dining room table. Mother and Father were with her. She had blood on her face. I’m not sure where it came from. She was crying whilst Mother and Father were trying to comfort her. The presence of the woman was probably a blessing as it took the attention away from Sister and me. I had guilt written all over my face and Sister had red-raw eyes from where she had been crying whilst I was sleeping.

“What’s going on?” I asked from the doorway.

“Came by the house,” Father told me, “petrified and cold...You didn’t hear the banging?”

Both Sister and I shook our heads.

“She was chased by those things. They’re still out there.”

“What were they?” she asked.

“We don’t know.”

The woman sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She turned to Mother and asked, “May I have a cup of water?”

Mother looked to Father as though wondering whether he’d permit this stranger to have a glass of water. Father shot me a glance. He had a look in his eye that I couldn’t understand.

“Take your sister upstairs,” he said, “give the woman some privacy.”

I stepped back from the room and led Sister back up the stairs to our bedroom. It was only as I went into the room, and closed the door behind us, that I realised what was about to happen downstairs. There was no fridge. There was no way of keeping the meat from the man fresh for long. We would starve again...

Whilst it was obvious the woman downstairs wasn’t a looter (she was just another survivor like us) she had already made it apparent she’d be another mouth to feed - or in this case water. As we didn’t even have enough food for us, we couldn’t go taking in anyone else. They’d only be a liability.

We hadn’t been in the room for very long, certainly not long enough to talk properly, before there was a knock at the door. The door opened and Mother walked in.

“You can come down again,” she said. She looked pale. I’m not sure whether she just looked ill or whether she had seen something that had haunted her. Sister and I both went to leave the room but Mother suddenly blocked us, “Just remember the world has changed now and we need to do things that we aren’t proud of in order to survive...”

Her words hit home instantly (with me at least). I knew what she meant and I knew why she was pale. My fears had been confirmed. We’d been sent upstairs in order to avoid having to watch father dispose of the liability.

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say. Words wouldn’t bring the woman back and, although we all knew it was wrong, there wasn’t really an option. Not that we could see anyway. Not stuck here in this house. Even less options now the woman had confirmed those things were still outside too.

It really was a case of us versus the world.

Sister left the room. I still wasn’t sure if she knew what she was about to be faced with but I worried for her. What with what happened between us and what we ate yesterday; she was about to be confronted with yet another warm corpse. A corpse we were supposed to devour.

Mother blocked my path.

“A word?”

Sister turned back, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, dear, we’ll be right behind you.”

She waited until Sister took the hint and continued downstairs, urged on by a smile from Mother.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“I heard you.”

“You heard me?”

“The both of you.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

“You’re brother and sister...What you did...”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about!” I lied again.

“What you did is dangerous. What if she became pregnant? Not only would we struggle to look after her during a pregnancy - if things don’t change - but the baby would of course be deformed...”

“Mother...Really....”

The sound of Sister screaming from downstairs silenced the pair of us for a split second.

A split second.

“I don’t know what your father would do if he found out. But it’s wrong. Sick bastard. It stops now. Whatever it was...”

“Mother, I honestly don’t know what you’re....” I tried to interrupt her but she spoke over me.

“...Whatever it was...It stops. You hear me? If it continues, if you even speak about it again, your father will be dealing with you. Understand?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

“Do you understand?”

I realised that she wasn’t going to let it go. I reluctantly nodded.

“Yes.”

“Now get downstairs. We’re having a family meeting.”

* * * * *

Sister was sitting at the dining room table. Her head was buried in her hands and she was weeping. A sound I had grown accustomed to hearing even though I wish I hadn’t. No matter what happened between us - she was my sister and I hated seeing her upset. Not that I could blame her. Father had killed the woman. And not only that - he’d placed her on the dining room table with her clothes stripped off right in front of where he had made Sister take a seat. Father himself was standing at the head of the table with a bloodied knife in his hand.

“Take a seat,” he ordered me as I walked into the room with Mother following close behind.

Of course I wanted to turn and run, just as I suspect Sister and Mother may have wanted to do the same too. I didn’t though. Where was I going to run anyway? There was nowhere. Those things were outside and, for all we knew, we were the last survivors; our dysfunctional little family unit.

“None of us may have liked what we had to do yesterday but we all knew that we didn’t really have a choice. We’ve run out of food and we don’t know when help is coming. For all we know, despite the hope we must keep hold of, there is no hope coming. For all we know, we’re alone here and will continue to be so for the rest of what remains of our lives. When opportunities come up we must, therefore, seize them - even if it means doing something that we wouldn’t usually have done before any of this happened to us.”

“You murdered her!” I pointed out.

“Just as you murdered the man yesterday,” Father was quick to tell me.

“He was a looter.”

“Did he take anything? Did he try and take anything?”

“I thought he might...”

“So he didn’t then. He was innocent. This woman...She was going to take something. She was going to take our food, our water and anything else she could have. I’m more justified in what I did than what you did yesterday but that’s not important. What’s done is done.” He changed the subject and I let him as I didn’t like how his picture painted me. “We can’t keep the meat fresh. It will turn before we get a chance to eat it all. With that in mind, when we’re presented with opportunities such as this one - we can’t let them go. Especially considering we don’t know where the next meal is coming from,” he said.

I looked around the room. Sister was still sobbing. Mother was nodding her head along to what Father was saying. Did she really believe in what he was saying or was she just going along with it for a peaceful life?

Father didn’t say anything else nor did he wait for us to argue with him. He simply took the knife and cut a slice of meat from the dead girl’s arm. I felt sick in my stomach but didn’t say anything for fear of getting shot down again. I simply turned away and wondered if this really was how we were supposed to live now.

I closed my eyes as I heard Father bite into the first piece of flesh cut from the remains.

* * * * *

Now

I took my eyes off the woman’s body. It wasn’t going to help me now, thinking back to what happened with the woman in the house. It served no purpose other than to distract me from the task at hand - staying safe and finding somewhere to lay low or (better yet) some survivors who’d be able to offer me shelter.

Need to put the dead woman (over in the distance) from my mind. Need to ignore the thoughts of what I’d done to get to this point in my life. Need to (as much as it pains me to think it) leave my sister behind.

I glanced back over to where those things had wandered off to. I couldn’t see them now. Better still, I couldn’t hear them either.

The coast was as clear as it could be.

Slowly I pulled myself up from where I had slumped against the trunk of the tree and continued making my own path through the woodland’s foliage, all the time trying to be as quiet as I could.

PART TEN

Now

Shelter

If it weren’t for the sun still going down in the evenings I’d have had no idea how long I had been walking for. It still surprised me that I could see the sun. That any of us could. I was always led to believe that, after a bomb such as the one which broke things for us, the sun would disappear behind an impenetrable radioactive cloud of dust and ash. I certainly wasn’t complaining. All the time I could see normality, such as this, it gave me hope that there was a chance things could, once again, go back to normal. Even if it’s on some distant shore that one of the planes could transport me too.

Regardless, with the sun going down now, I knew I had been walking for about six hours. Thankfully I hadn’t seen anymore of those things but rather depressingly I hadn’t bumped into any survivors either.

Sure, there was a part of me that was scared of seeing anyone in case they were like my own family now - poisoned by the change in the world with the potential to kill me for a food source or because they’d feel threatened by me - but at the same time I was scared of being alone too.

At times, when the dreaded feeling of loneliness was at its strongest, I found myself wanting to shout out to see if anyone responded. Had it not been for those things running around, I probably would have to. Best stay silent though. It’s the only way.

I pushed through a large holly bush, scratching my skin in the process, and stopped dead. There, in the distance, I could see another house. Not dissimilar to the one I had left Mother, Father and Sister taking refuge in. Perhaps a bit smaller.

Immediately my mind wandered as to thoughts of potential survivors and, despite the noise I made underfoot, I soon found myself running towards the front door - all the time desperate to call out to the potential inhabitants of the house. Would anyone even be in there?

By the time I got to the front door I was out of breath but that didn’t stop me from banging hard upon one of the four panels of the door. No answer. I banged again. Still no answer. A couple of seconds before I banged against it for a third time.

I pressed my ear against the wood. There were no sounds from inside. I took a step back from the building and glanced from window to window (at the front of the house anyway) in the hope that I’d catch sight of someone standing by one of them, perhaps looking out to see if I was a threat. Surely they’d see me, a young lad by himself, and regard me as one of them? A survivor looking for help?

May I have a cup of water? The voice of the woman haunted me. She asked for a cup of water and it sealed her fate. Would I be doing the same by talking to strangers who may be inside this house? If I ask for a cup of water will they deem me another mouth to feed just as Father had labelled the woman before taking her life?

Simple. Don’t ask for any water. Don’t ask for anything. Maybe even refuse it the first time it’s offered too. Show you’re not a liability.

My heart sank when I realised there was no one at the windows. No lights coming from the rooms either. The house was empty.

I hurried back over to the front door and tried the handle. To my surprise it wasn’t locked and the door swung open. I guess the previous occupants (just like the ones in our home) had left in a hurry and not bothered (or cared about) locking up.

“Hello?” I called in quietly. I wanted the people inside (if there was anyone hiding away) to hear me but not anyone who may have been lurking within the trees behind me. “Anyone here?”

No answer.

I stepped in and closed the door behind me.

With the light fading it was hard to see inside. There was no point trying the power as we had no power in our own home and yet I still found myself trying the switch. Nothing happened.

I can’t stay here for long. I can only make it my home for the night. I need to find help and staying here will lead to nothing but eventual starvation...

Starvation? Food?

I hurried through to the kitchen using my hands to help guide me through the areas of the house which were darker than the last. Thankfully there was a large window in the kitchen which let in some of the remaining light. Enough to illuminate the room enough for me to see what I was doing anyway.

There were boxes everywhere. Empty. The bin was overflowing with a foul stench lingering in the air. To be fair I noticed that when I first stepped into the house but I’m guessing it was here that the stink came from. Perhaps some of the contents had rotted away and were festering within the bin liner.

I quickly rummaged through the cupboards but they were empty too. Some of them had some boxes but...Boxes without content are useless. I need food. More reason not to stay in this house past the night. As soon as the light comes up, in the morning, I’m leaving. No choice.

I walked from the kitchen, once again using my hands to help guide me in the darker spots of the house, and started to look around. Before I settle in for the night, I need to be sure the place really is empty.

Downstairs was a similar layout to my own home. There was a dining room, a lounge, a kitchen, a toilet and (unlike the home I had left behind) a small study which was filled with books.

The stairs were in the same area as our own home too and I hurried up them to scour around upstairs. Upstairs consisted of a bathroom and a small bedroom with one final door on the right hand side of the landing. I’m guessing a master bedroom...

I stepped in and gagged on the stench that hit me as soon as I did so. Immediately my eyes were drawn to where it was originating from. Not the bin in the kitchen after all. The bed. A couple (elderly) were cuddled up in bed. A man and woman in a bad state of decomposition.

I didn’t need to look too closely to see how they died. The woman had a cut across her throat and the man had large cuts in his wrist. Not the most peaceful way of going but I guess it was their easiest option given the circumstances. The knife was close by to the man’s hand.

I stepped from the room and closed the door.

Tonight I’ll sleep in the smaller room.

* * * * *

Lying awake in the smaller room with my mind flitting between past and present, I can’t help but wonder whether my family should have chosen to do what this couple had clearly decided was the best course of action. I couldn’t help but wonder whether they had come to a cross-road whereby they had to make the same decisions my family had made (cannibalism) and just decided they couldn’t go through with it and - therefore - the best plan was to take their own life?

But then, the woman had her throat cut. I wondered whether she even saw it coming or whether her partner (at least I presume they were partners) just did it out of the blue before taking his own life? Maybe he had made the decision for her? However it happened, it was certainly extreme...I let out a little laugh. Not because of the scene in the other room but because I believed their course of action to be extreme. Given everything my family (and I) have done since all of this began I don’t think I’m in the best position to start judging people.

Something suddenly dawned on me. A thought popped into my head as though it had always been there (just well hidden). What if it’s the radiation? The man lost his mind and killed his partner (before turning the blade on himself) because of a strange radiation affecting his thought process. It wasn’t entirely impossible for such a thing to happen.

And that would explain what happened with my own family too. It wasn’t the consumption of human meat that made us lose our minds and humanity. It was the strange effects of the fallout from the bomb. We hadn’t escaped the blast as we had believed. At least - not completely unharmed or unchanged.

Those things out there too, roaming in the darkness...Clearly they’re human. What if they’re like my family and me? Perhaps that’s what we’re going to become. The more flesh we consume, the more we lose our humanity...We’re going to turn into those things. I saw the way they tore that woman apart. I saw the way they set about her and took her down. Driven by an insatiable hunger.

Mother and Father had consumed more than Sister and I. Despite the love my sister and I felt (mistaken as lust to begin with) being wrong, we hadn’t really done anything else. Yes I killed a man but I did so thinking I was protecting my family. I didn’t really want to do it. Father, though, he killed the other people. He may not have wanted to kill that woman because he really wanted to do it. He may have genuinely done it believing it were the right thing to do (thanks to the radiation changing his thought process) but the third person who came by the house, and then the fourth...He was smiling when he killed them...And - even then - he didn’t kill them right away. He left them on the table, alive. He liked to hear them scream. So did Mother. At times, I thought Sister might have enjoyed it too but...The way she said a prayer, each time, before we ate...She was just acting...

I sat up on the small bed with my heart in the back of my throat as images of Mother and Father tearing Sister apart, limb from limb, flashed through my mind.

I can’t believe it took me so long to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The radiation was slowly turning us into monsters. To think I already thought we had lost our souls. I already thought we were demons but we’re not. Not yet. The final step could be close for Mother and Father, what with the taste for flesh they have, but I’m sure I can save Sister if I can get to her before they turn.

I jumped from the bed and looked to the window. It was pitch black outside. There was no way I could make it back to them now. Even if I had a torch, to help me see through the woods, it would be too dangerous.

I screamed a yell of frustration and rage and swung for the wall with a clenched fist. The pain was instant and I dropped to my knees cradling my hand. I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have left her with them. Not them. I should have known. I should have realised sooner. If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive myself...

I’ll never forgive them.

A New Day

I had hardly slept a wink during the night. I was tired and hungry. Before leaving the house I searched around (fruitlessly) on the off-chance I could find something to eat but there was nothing in the house other than some crumbs in a couple of the boxes and I mean crumbs; not even big enough to pick up. Of course I tipped the near empty box into my hand and licked the tiny crumbs from my palm but it gave no nourishment, only a taste for food that I miss.

I stopped in the kitchen and took a long drink from the tap. I’m still amazed that the water runs freely from the taps but I don’t care. I’m just grateful. I filled a bottle up, that I found in one of the cupboards, and did the lid up tightly. I had made the mistake of leaving the family home without any water and I had learnt from that mistake.

I left the house determined to make it back to where my sister was and even more determined to bring her away from Mother and Father with me. I knew she’d kick up a fuss but I’d do my best to explain to her what was happening. Do my best to explain my theory about the poison we’ve been subjected to.

Who knows - maybe Mother and Father would listen to me too? Maybe, if they stop what they’re doing now, they won’t change any further? Maybe there’s still a possibility for us to all leave together and find some help in the form of whatever camp we can find. And maybe there’s a chance that others in the camps (or towns or whatever) have been going through what we’ve been going through too? There could be a support group. There could be a way of cleansing our souls and claiming back the humanity we once shared.

I shook my head. I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s a strong chance they won’t even believe me. There’s also the possibility that I’m already too late. They could have already turned. Not just mother and father but maybe Sister too. Maybe I’m wasting my time in going back for her (them). Maybe...

No. I can’t think like that. Just as the sun, shining brightly in the sky, offers hope then this is also a ray of hope that I refuse to let go of. At least until I know, for sure, that it is definitely too late and then I suppose I’ll have no choice.

They will listen to me.

They will hear me.

They will come with me.

We will find help.

Our souls will be cleansed.

That’s the way it will be. That’s the way it has to be. I won’t give up. I won’t. And I know my family. I know them. I’m sure, if they hear what I have to say, they won’t want to give up either. They’ll want to do all they can to claw back their souls (and humanity). They’ll want it as much as me.

As I entered the woodlands, headed in the direction of the old family home, I couldn’t help but think about all that we had gone through so far (in a relatively short amount of time).

Our souls are so damaged. I hope it’s not too late.

Please don’t let it be too late.

PART ELEVEN

Before

Confused Affairs

Sister and I returned to our small bedroom having eaten the bare minimum needed to survive. She went into the room first and curled up in a small ball on the mattress which we had earlier shared. She was crying. I wasn’t sure whether she had stopped since when I saw her sitting at the dining room table with the dead woman.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

It was a stupid question but one I couldn’t help but ask. I knew what the answer was going to be because I felt the same. The only difference being that I was doing a better job of burying it from plain sight. Not that I expected her to, but she didn’t answer.

I crossed the room and crawled onto the mattress behind her. I didn’t wait for an invitation to put my arm around her. There was no intention other than to offer her some support. A little comfort. Let her know that I was here for her if she did decide she wanted to talk.

“We could leave, you know,” I told her. “We could just go out and see what happens. We might find some survivors. We might stumble across a camp, or a town, or something. Something other than this anyway.”

She didn’t answer. She just continued to weep into her pillow.

“And if we don’t make it, if we don’t find anything out there...At least we’d have each other, right? And we’d die knowing that we tried to do the right thing. Maybe that’s better?”

She twisted her body round until she was facing me. Without any words she kissed me. The sweetness of her kiss tainted by the taste of the dead woman. I pulled away, shocked by what she was doing.

“Please...” she said as she moved in for another kiss. This time I responded and kissed her back despite not knowing what was happening. Everything is changed now and I don’t know what’s right and what is wrong. It’s all confusing. It’s all...

I rolled on top of my sister and pressed my erection against her. She moaned as though she were desperate to feel me inside her.

Suddenly the door opened and Mother walked in. I rolled off Sister immediately and sat up, panic all over my face. Sister also looked horrified yet Mother didn’t say anything. She was almost looking through us. A distant look on her face, blood smeared around her mouth.

“Your father is downstairs cutting the rest of the meat up for later, and tomorrow,” she said, “so I thought I’d come upstairs and see what you kids are up to. So. Anything fun happening?”

Mother’s voice sounded funny. It was hard to explain but she didn’t sound like she usually did. A crack in her voice suggested something was amiss.

“We were just talking!” I told her.

I knew she saw what we were really doing. It would have been impossible for her not to see it. Sister jumped up from the mattress and hurried from the bedroom exclaiming the need for the toilet. The door slammed behind her. I wondered whether it were just an excuse to get away from the embarrassment of having been caught out by Mother (once again). Alone, I half expected Mother to berate me for what we were doing. But she didn’t.

“I wish I remembered a time when your father and I were like that,” she suddenly said.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Truth be told, I don’t even remember him sleeping with me. Not like that anyway. And since all this has started he spends most of the night sitting on the end of the mattress or pacing the bedroom. He hasn’t touched me. Not like that.”

She didn’t move from where she was standing. Same distant look on her face that she had when she first came into the room. A far cry from the angry woman who’d confronted me only an hour (or so) earlier in the day.

Was it the meat? Was it the act of cannibalism which was changing our way of thinking? Was it the stress of the situation and the prison-like living arrangements? Each of us, in turn, starting to crack and wear down?

“Sometimes I’d wish he’d touch me like that...” she said. She licked two of her fingers, on her left hand, and slid them down the front of her jeans. Seconds later she let out a small sigh of pleasure. “...Like this...” she moaned.

I could see her fingers working away, rubbing, beneath her jeans. I looked away.

“Mother...”

“Don’t call me that,” she sighed. “Tell me what you did to your sister earlier. Tell me how you touched her. I want to hear...”

“Please stop.”

“Tell me or I’ll tell your father.”

I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I just knew that I felt sick. Deeply sick. More so than I had when I felt Sister’s tender touch. This was different. This was very different.

Mother crossed the room and stood directly in front of me.

“Tell me what you did.”

“Please stop...”

I tried to move but she pushed me back down and put a foot on either side of me. Her crotch was directly in front of my face.

“Did you touch her with your hands?” she asked. She unbuttoned her jeans with her spare hand and lowered them down, along with her knickers. Her other hand was rubbing against her vagina which looked as though it glistened to her touch. “Did you use your fingers? Tell me or I’ll tell your father what a dirty little fucker you are...” she said.

I didn’t want to tell her but if Father knew, I knew things would be worse. I knew he’d be mad at both Sister and me. How far would he go? Would he lose his mind just as we are losing ours? Or would he want to taste Sister too? I felt myself get angry at the thought. Protective or jealous?

“I just put it in her,” I whispered - almost ashamed.

Mother put her crotch closer to my face. I could smell it; a different tang to the scent given by my sister’s. Musty? Dirtier?

“Put what in her? Fingers?”

“My penis.” I felt my face redden.

“What did it feel like? Was she wet? Did you force it in? Did it slide in with ease?” she sighed as she started to rub herself harder.

“Please...”

“What about your tongue? Did you use your tongue?”

“No...”

Mother suddenly grabbed my head and thrust it into her crotch. She angled herself so that her lips were pressing against my mouth.

“Use your tongue,” she ordered me... “Let me feel your tongue against my clit...”

Using her bodyweight she pushed me back against the mattress until she was straddling my face, getting her stink all over me. She started grinding down against my mouth until she managed to part my lips.

“Lick me!” she hissed. Was she angry or sexually frustrated?

I felt disgusted with myself yet I found my tongue enter her vagina. The taste of her juices coating my tongue. With her legs either side of my head I couldn’t hear much other than her sighs.

Just get it over with.

Part of me hoped that Sister would walk back in and interrupt what was happening but another part of me wished (more than anything else) that she’d never see what was going on and that she’d never hear about it either.

Mother’s hands gripped clumps of my hair and she pressed down hard with her pussy, her legs twitching either side of my head and rattling my brain inside of my skull. I was feeling as though I was about to pass out, from loss of oxygen, when she suddenly rolled off my face. She was huffing and puffing, clearly out of breath. She laughed.

“If you show your sister that, she’ll love you forever!”

Mother wasted no time in suddenly jumping to her feet. Within seconds she was pulling on her knickers and jeans.

“Don’t tell her,” I told Mother as I wiped her juices from my face.

“It’ll be our secret,” Mother laughed. “And I won’t tell your father about what you two get up to either,” she continued, “as long as you do that to me when it’s needed...”

The thought of doing that to Mother again made me gag but if it meant keeping the dirty secret of Sister and me then...Whatever it takes.

Mother looked at me. “Did you want me to suck you off?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. She laughed. I guess she was joking.

“I’m going to see if your father has finished cutting the meat up. Are you going to come downstairs or are you going to stay up here sulking?” she asked.

I want to wash my face, I thought.

* * * * *

I half expected to walk into the bathroom to find Sister there (sobbing still) but she wasn’t there. I didn’t give much thought to where she had gone (or why she didn’t come back to the bedroom) as my mind was too focused on washing the stink of Mother from my face and swilling some soapy water around my mouth to lose the taste of cunt and flesh - an extremely potent mix if ever I tasted one.

I caught sight of myself in a mirror which hung on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I looked like Hell. No. I looked like I had been to Hell. I don’t feel human anymore. I feel like...I don’t know what I feel like. I just know that everything is wrong and I don’t know why or how it has come to this. It’s not right. It can’t be natural for people to change in such a short amount of time, when something bad has happened such as the bomb. Is it just us? Or would there be others out there too, reacting in the same way? Everything starts off okay and then it changes when the food vanishes. Before you know it you’re killing people, eating them and fucking your family as a dessert.

A single tear rolled down my left cheek. A single tear? Is that all I am capable of now? Nothing more and nothing less. I didn’t wipe it away. I left it there for as long as I could until it dropped off the bottom of my cheek and onto somewhere on the floor. The last of my humanity?

I couldn’t believe where we had ended up. I may have believed it a little more had we been here for years but we hadn’t. In the great scheme of things - all of this has happened really fast. Too fast to be normal. I wish I could explain it.

“Son!” I heard Father call out for me. His voice sounded distant as though it were coming from downstairs. I won’t pretend I didn’t jump when I heard it. I had gotten used to the silence of the house as we tended to go about doing our own things (most days).

I quickly washed my face in the sink before leaving the room and heading down the stairs to see what he wanted. I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was to do with Mother and me. Had she told him after all? Maybe she was filled with the same amount of guilt that I had first been filled with when I slept with Sister - the feeling also shared by Sister who couldn’t help but cry after the event (despite wanting me to kiss her again today). Or maybe Sister had come back to the room and I just didn’t notice, what with my head stuck between Mother’s legs.

I walked into the dining room and was shocked to see the whole family was there. Mother was sitting (looking fairly relaxed) at the head of the table where Father used to sit and Father and Sister were standing by the remains of the dead girl. Sister had a knife in her hand and was hacking away at a piece of torn flesh.

“That’s it,” Father guided her.

“What is it?” I asked when I managed to shake the shock from my expression. Earlier, Sister had been crying about the woman and the fact we’d eaten a piece of her and yet here she was cutting some more flesh from the body under Father’s instruction. Maybe she had been crying upstairs because of what we had done and the meat hadn’t bothered her like I originally thought it had.

Sister slapped the piece of meat onto a plate already filled with other off-cuts.

Father congratulated Sister and then looked at me. He looked angry.

Father and Son ‘Chat’

I was led into the lounge by Father. He told me to close the door behind me so we didn’t disturb Mother and Sister and then he instructed me to take a seat. He sat on the larger of the sofas meaning I could either sit next to him or choose the armchair.

I chose the armchair.

“You saw what it was like out there,” he started, “with those things running around. We nearly died, you and I, killed by whatever the hell that thing was. And yet you’re still here, with your sister, saying that leaving is the best option. With what you’ve seen out there do you honestly believe that’s the case? And let’s not forget what happened the second time you left the house. You bumped into a stranger. A stranger who then made you fear for your safety, as well as the safety of your own family, forcing you to take his life. An axe to the head, wasn’t it?”

“We can’t stay in here. We can’t pretend that a group of people will come on by claiming to be survivors and that they’ll lead us away from all of this to somewhere safe.”

“You’ve seen the planes overhead. There is something out there other than destruction and decay. There’s something out there and they’ll find us.”

“But you can’t be sure they’re even looking. They might have enough to be getting on with, repairs and such like. There’s nothing to say they’re out there and looking for people like us. And what’s to say that they’re not the enemy? Flying overhead - it could be the people who dropped the bomb in the first place.”

Father didn’t say anything. I could have sworn I saw a little doubt in his eyes but only for a second.

“What we have here is sanctuary. Safety. Relative comfort. Your mother and I thought you’d be happy here. We thought you’d both be happy here. And safe. And you are safe. You saw what happened to the woman who came by here. She wasn’t given a chance to ruin what we had...”

“She wasn’t given a chance at all. What if she were one of the only survivors? You talk about someone coming here and rescuing us but how are they going to do that when you kill them?”

“One lone person, even two people together, will not be the ones who come and pluck us from all of this and you know it. The military - or whatever surviving groups have formed out there - wouldn’t send a couple of people. There’d be a convoy of some description. People who travel by themselves or in twos...They’re not to be trusted. I did what was necessary just as you did what was necessary with the man you brought home. We’re survivors now and we need to do whatever it takes to remain alive.”

“It’s not right...”

“No it’s not but it’s all we have. But please, if you want to leave, don’t feel as though you have to stay here. By all means leave. The door will be open for you, should you wish to come home again. But, know this, if you choose to leave - you do so alone. I won’t let you take your sister out there. I won’t let you put her life in danger.”

I fidgeted in my seat. Staying here, we were in danger - danger from those things out there stumbling across the house and getting in, and a strong danger of starvation. After all - it’s not everyday people accidentally come by the house. They’ll stop coming. For all we know no one will come by the house again and yet Father couldn’t seem to see that. Blinded by what he thought to be the best course of action for our family.

“Everything I’ve done with regards to getting the windows and doors blocked up, what happened to that lady and doing what we did to the man...I did it for us just as you took a man’s life for us. It’s all with the best intentions. The world we used to live in is over now. It’s gone. There’s a new world out there. One in which we need to find our place. It’s cruel and it’s harsh and old rules we all used to live by are out of the window. You need to realise that or else you’re going to go mad...”

I couldn’t help but wonder if I had already gone mad. Lustful thoughts of my sister, what happened between Mother and I and (of course) what we ate now...I’ve already gone mad. But so has the rest of my family.

“It’s natural that you’re feeling a little guilty. Any normal person would. I did too. But we need to bury those feelings. In this world guilt doesn’t exist. Surviving exists...”

“We’ve heard birds outside though. Remember? When we first got to the house. When we left the house. Before we found those things out there - the mutated people...We could be out there, you and I, hunting for food. At the same time we could be looking for survivors too - the convoys you mentioned. Two birds with one stone. Staying locked in the house isn’t the answer.”

“You step outside and you bring attention to all of us. What if those things are out there? What if they’re close by? You see them and they see you? You run back to the house, they chase. You get in here and then - eventually - so do they. We’re sitting ducks.”

“We’re sitting ducks by staying in here.”

“Not all the time we are keeping look out. Every day I go around this house periodically to look out of the small gaps left in the windows. Every day I check to make sure they’re not coming towards the house or even to see if there’s a convoy out there. And I will continue to do so. At some point, I’ll expect the same from you and the others too. We need to work as a team. Trying to divide us, like you did to your sister, is only going to cause trouble.”

I didn’t say anything. I just sunk into a despairing silence. Father was wrong but he wasn’t going to hear it. In his eyes he was right and it was like his ears were closed to any suggestion otherwise.

“Do you want to leave? Knowing it will be by yourself?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“So you want to stay?”

I reluctantly agreed.

“Then remember - all the time you’re living under my roof, you’re playing by my rules. These conversations with your sister about leaving - they stop. Now. It doesn’t get mentioned again. If it does then you need to leave and - next time - it won’t be your choice. Do you understand me?”

I nodded again.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes!” I said.

Father nodded, “Good. Then we’re done.” He stood up. “Let’s see how your sister and mother are getting on with cutting up the meat.”

He walked over to the lounge’s door and opened it. He stepped back, keeping the door open for me. I walked through and Father followed.

In the dining room the woman had been decimated. Most of her flesh was piled up high on a plate. I couldn’t begin to describe the stench and I almost gagged when I saw Mother was sitting at the table grating a piece of the flesh onto a plate for herself.

“It’s much easier if you eat it like this,” she said, “because you can get the same quantity of meat but it’s in smaller, easier to swallow flakes.”

Sister was staring at me. Her eyes had changed. They no longer looked to be the windows to her soul. They looked to be closed. Dead almost. The once-sparkle shining no more. I couldn’t help but wonder what Father had said to her to get her to change so suddenly; to go from a crying tormented angel to this so quickly...But then Mother had changed too. One minute she was lecturing me about sleeping with Sister and telling me it was wrong and the next she was grinding herself against my tongue.

Father pushed past me and joined Mother and Sister at the table. I remained in the doorway.

“You’ve done a good job, ladies!”

This is my family. They’re all mad.

We’re all mad.

PART TWELVE

Now

Lost

As I walked back through the woods in the direction I thought the family home was in, I couldn’t help but think back to how my family had been and the changes they (we) had been experiencing on a mental level. It didn’t make sense when I was living the moment but now (looking back) it made perfect sense knowing what I know about the radiation poisoning we were all suffering.

I suddenly stopped and looked around. Damn these woods. Everything looks the same. I had spent so much time, lost in my own little thoughts, that I realised I had no idea whether I was heading in the right direction or not. Some of the trees and sights looked familiar and others not so much. Was I headed in the right direction? A large bush in front of me. I remembered, to get to where I did yesterday, I pushed through a large holly bush. Is this the same one?

I pushed through, scratching my skin again, and found myself in a small clearing face to face with a deer. It was just looking at me with large, soulful eyes.

We could be out there, you and I, hunting for food...

As we were both standing there, looking each other in the eye, everything seemed to be right again. I forgot about the troubles in the world. How could there be trouble when there are such things of beauty still alive and blissfully living their life in ignorance to the dangers surrounding them? I smiled. Not because of the deer but because of me. I smiled because I found the deer to be beautiful. With everything going on in the world, I found beauty. I hadn’t lost my humanity. I hadn’t lost my soul. More importantly - I hadn’t lost my hope.

Suddenly, without any warning, the deer darted through another bush and out of sight. I felt my heart sink a little as our shared moment of peace was gone and replaced with the feeling of worry that plagued me through the night that I might be too late for my sister.

I pushed forward and crawled through another holly bush. This definitely isn’t the right way. Yesterday I hadn’t pushed through two bushes so close together. I’d have remembered. All I can hope is that I stumble across the same path sooner or later. After all, I felt positive I was at least heading in the right direction.

A few hours later and I was still walking in what I thought to be the right direction. It was safe to say I was less confident now, though. Nothing looked familiar and it was beginning to dawn on me that I was lost. As was my hope. After all, the longer I delayed in getting back to the house, the more chance there was of Mother and Father becoming one of those things and tearing Sister apart. Or maybe she’d have upped the amount of flesh she feasted upon and was on the verge of turning now too?

I’m not sure what I’d prefer for her to go through. Would I rather she was killed by a ravenous mother and father or would I prefer her soul was lost forever and she became something truly evil? Neither would be particularly pleasant.

Despite my hunger and thirst (having finished the bottle of water I had taken with me) I started to jog. I didn’t care anymore whether I’d run into any of those things. I saw them so infrequently that I knew the chances of stumbling into their path was slim. Besides, so what if I did? I feel as though I may as well be dead anyway. What the man and woman did, back in that home, seemed like the right thing to do. Perhaps I should have just taken a leaf from their book and used the same knife on my own throat last night?

I shook the thought from my mind.

That’s not me talking. It’s the radiation poisoning.

I can survive this.

I will survive this.

* * * * *

Before

Every day I woke up thinking it was going to be my last day on the face of the planet.  If I wasn’t thinking it then I was wishing it. This wasn’t living. Father was becoming stricter with what we could and couldn’t do (such as having to go to bed at a certain time and having to be up at a certain time) and Mother was becoming more needy to the amount of time I spent pleasuring her with the same excuse of telling my father every time I tried to turn her down.

By now, Sister knew what was happening between mother and me. It didn’t stop her from wanting me for herself, though, when the mood took but that didn’t mean she liked it. I tried to tell her that it wasn’t my idea and that if I didn’t ‘help her’ she’d tell Father but I knew she didn’t really believe me (although it was the truth).

Father kept talking about our survival (usually over a meal which tended to give me the shits - especially the older the meat was) but if this was all that was on offer then I wasn’t interested.

Sister had turned hostile to me now. Whereas before, when we lay together, it was softer and more tender - now it was aggressive as though the act was nothing more than a means to an end (orgasm). It was hard to complain when I was enjoying it as much as she was though. Throwing her around the room, trying to keep the noise down so Father didn’t twig, whilst taking all of my frustration and aggression out on Sister was good for keeping my rage to a minimum. If we weren’t fucking (as she called it) then she was barely talking to me.

I don’t know. It could all be in my head but it felt as though my family were somehow ashamed of me on some level. Perhaps because I didn’t think what we were doing was the right thing? Like I said, I don’t know.

Each day I prayed the military (or whatever survivalist group is out there now) would find us so we could try and get back to what I perceived as ‘normal’ and each day I was let down. Of course I wanted to tell Father it was a bad idea to stay in the house again but I never did say anything. Not directly to him anyway. Not after the last time.

Sister was sitting on top of me grinding down as hard as she could onto my erection. I had already ejaculated and it was starting to get painful but she didn’t care. It was my fault for not stopping her when I was close like I usually did. If I said something she’d usually slow the rhythm down long enough for me to become a little less sensitive to the situation before picking the pace up again. Better yet - I’d be the one in control and I’d dictate when I needed to slow or switch techniques for a while longer until she was close to having an orgasm.

The days were gone where I’d be permitted one and she’d be happy to wait until later in the day, or to have one the following day instead. Mother’s fault. If Mother had an orgasm then Sister wanted one. Fair was fair.

Sister’s breathing had become more rapid. She was on the verge of an orgasm. The way her face was flushing, I could tell it was going to be a good one for her. Thank God. She increased the speed with which she rocked backwards and forwards. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on something else other than the soreness I was feeling. Something else. Anything else. Come on....

Suddenly the bedroom door flew open and a man dashed into the room. He jumped when he saw us (and we jumped when we saw him). Sister jumped off of me and covered herself up with her hands whereas I jumped up from the mattress and just stood there stark naked with a shocked look upon my face. The man didn’t bat an eyelid. He turned towards the window and yelled when he saw it was (mostly) blocked up. Quick as a flash he hurried over to it and started to pull at the items barricading it.

Seconds later, Father burst into the room with the axe in his hand. The head of it was bloody and he had a splatter pattern across his clothes and face as though he had only recently dug it into someone.

“Come here!” he yelled, ignoring Sister and me.

The man turned and screamed when he saw Father standing there. It took Father less than two steps to cross the room to where the man was and when he did, he smashed him directly in the top of the skull with the head of the axe. The man crumpled to the floor like a sack of spuds, completely out cold.

Father hit him in the head again with the axe handle (just to be sure). Slowly he turned to me.

“Don’t just stand there!” he said. “Give me a hand.” He then noticed Sister standing there - her hands still covering her nudity as best as they could. For the first time in as long as I could remember, Father smiled. “Nice.”

Setting the Table

Once I had thrown some clothes on (quickly) I helped Father down the stairs with the unconscious man. It was a simple technique dictated to me by Father which involved dragging the man to the top of the stairs and then simply pushing him down them. He tumbled all the way to the bottom and landed with an almighty crack. Looking down at him, it was clear to see that the crack had come from his leg as it was bent in the wrong direction. Father laughed.

“What was all that about?” I asked Father.

He turned to me, from where he was looking down at the man, and simply turned the question back on me, “What was all that about?” he asked.

Of course he was talking about the scene he had run into. With Sister and I both naked (and my erection) I knew it was a rhetorical question posed by Father. He didn’t need an answer. Not when it was so obviously standing to attention, glistening with the cream of my sister upon the softening shaft.

Father winked, “Naughty boy.”

Not the reaction I was expecting.

He didn’t wait for me to say anything; he simply bounded down the stairs to where the man was groaning. He scooped him up, from under his arms, and dragged him towards the dining room. I guess dinner is about to be served.

I didn’t want to help Father. In fact I wanted no part in what was about to unfold but I knew now was not the time to be arguing with him - what with the fact he still had the axe and the fact he had seen Sister and me in a position which most fathers would baulk at. I made my way down the stairs and took a hold of the man’s legs so that there wasn’t a part of him dragging on the floor. With the two of us carrying him, we made it through to the dining room in no time.

To my surprise there was already someone else in there, other than Mother who was busy pulling a chair out from underneath the table for Father to drop the man’s body onto. On the table was the body of another man. Looking at the one being carried by Father and me (and the one on the table), they could have been brothers. Unlike the man being carried in my own arms, the one on the table was very much dead. His head was perfectly split down the middle and it was entirely possible to see where the axe had cleaved the brain in half.

“You two missed all the fun!” Father said as we propped the second man up on the chair Mother had prepared for us. He turned to Mother, “Have we got anything we can tie him with?”

“His leg is broken!” I pointed out. “He isn’t going anywhere.”

Father looked down at the man’s leg and saw the obvious crack. He smiled. “Hold out his other leg!” he quickly instructed me. I didn’t ask why. I knew there was no point. Just do as Father says. That’s the rule. That’s always been the rule.

I picked the man’s (good) leg up and held it outright so it was stretched perfectly straight in front of where he was sitting. The man groaned.

“Got it nice and tight?” Father asked.

I nodded, unsure of what his next move was going to be. Father grinned again and then - all of a sudden - he jumped into the air. He landed, both feet together, on the man’s knee. There was a god-awful crack as the leg literally snapped to a ninety-degree angle. The man suddenly screamed himself conscious before falling unconscious again. Father landed on the floor in a crumpled heap, laughing. I fell over too, due to the kick of the man’s leg sending me to my arse.

From the floor I started to retch. The sound was bad, yes, but I felt it. I felt the bone splinter into pieces. I felt it.

I gagged.

Even Mother had a complexion more pale than usual.

“I think it’s fair to say he won’t be running away from us!” Father pulled himself up. The look on his face disgusted me. He looked as though he was having more fun than he’d ever had before.

“Why don’t you just kill him?” I asked, trying to hide my disgust.

“Because his friend is already dead. That had to happen. If we can keep him alive, for as long as possible, then we’ll have something to eat when we finish this one,” Father pointed out. “You need to think of the bigger picture.”

* * * * *

During the course of the afternoon Father explained to us that he had seen the two men from the upstairs window. They were loitering around by the tree-line, watching the property, and he could tell they were looters (or intent on taking the house for themselves). I didn’t ask how he could tell. I just sat there and listened to him.

Sister was more excited about his story than me. She said that she was grateful Father had spotted them. Thankful that he’d had the insight to do what needed to be done. Two of them, against us, could have caused trouble for us. Yes, we would have won but they could have hurt one of us in the process. If it wasn’t for Father, one of us would have been hurt.

I wanted to slap her but refrained from raising my hand.

Father continued with his story. He had run down the stairs and removed the barricade from the front door. He had unlocked it too, knowing the two men outside would try the handle before resorting to smashing a window.

Just as he surmised, the door handle turned and the two men stepped into the property.

Father had already told Mother to get Sister and me to stay as quiet as possible. Mother had simply chosen to hide herself away in one of the upstairs rooms without interrupting us. No doubt she could hear us, through the door, and knew we wouldn’t be in a hurry to come down the stairs and ruin Father’s plan.

With the two men in the property, Father slammed the door behind them. They both jumped and turned to see him standing there with the axe high in the air. The first man died instantly as the axe split his head open as though it were nothing more than a grape. The second man screamed and darted up the stairs. We knew what happened from there.

I guess his plan was to jump from one of the windows. Why he deemed that a good idea, when he could have just run to the back door, I’ll never know. I guess he just panicked. God only knows what he thought when he burst in on Sister and me.

At least he didn’t know we were siblings.

“This is why we’re going to survive,” Father said. “By staying one step ahead of trouble!”

PART THIRTEEN

Now

Walled In

Father’s words echoed through my mind as I tried to stay as low as possible in the undergrowth of tangled weeds and vines.

This is why we’re going to survive, by staying one step ahead of trouble.

I’m not sure how many of those things were passing me by. I could hear them all snarling and gnashing their teeth. I didn’t dare look up for fear of my movement being enough to gain their unwanted attention.

My heart was beating so hard. I was surprised they didn’t hear it.

How I didn’t hear them until they were practically on top of me I didn’t know. Had it not been for the thick undergrowth, I’d have been torn to pieces like the woman was yesterday. If I survive this...If they go on by without noticing me...I need to be more careful. I need to pay more attention and stop worrying about the past. If I survive this, next time I may not be so lucky.

A foot crashed through the undergrowth and landed upon the moist earth next to my head. So close. I held my breath as though it had the potential to help me stay hidden even though I knew it didn’t.

Please walk on by.

Please walk on by.

Part of me wondered whether a couple of the group were Mother and Father. Had they turned now and joined the others? Was Sister among them, walking, or was she contained within their stomachs?

Another foot came within inches from stepping on my face.

Please walk by.

I closed my eyes and wished for them to be gone. A wish that went answered, for when I next opened my eyes they were no longer around me. I tilted my head over so slightly and could see them a few feet away. None of them were looking back. A silly mistake to not notice them until it was nearly too late but one that I had managed to (somehow) get away with. I can’t do that again. I won’t do that again.

I stayed where I was until they were small dots on the horizon, despite the ants crawling over my skin biting me here and there. I’d sooner feel their bite over one of their bites. I breathed an audible sigh of relief and rolled onto my back. That was too close for comfort.

When I was sure there was no one else around me, I sat up and untangled myself from the weeds and vines which had somehow managed to wrap themselves around me as though they had a life of their own.

Get the fuck off!

I stood up. If those things are heading in that direction, I’ll go in a different one. I want as much distance from them as I can possibly manage. I turned to my right and quietly started to walk onwards being mindful of where I was putting each step. The last thing I needed to do now was cause a twig to snap under my weight. Those things are fast when they need to be. I’m not sure if their hearing is good when it needs to be too. Rather be safe than sorry.

I hadn’t made it ten steps when I was suddenly slammed to the floor with so much force that the wind was knocked from me. I barely had time to react, to put my hands out to cushion the fall, when I felt a vice-like grip on the back of my head, clutching at my hair. I yelled out in pain as I was pulled to my feet. I felt another hand on my shoulder; this one spun me around until I was face to face with a man. Not one of those things but a real man...

His face was bloodied as though he’d received some of the treatment he was now serving me. I tried to ask him who he was. I tried to beg him to stop. I tried but I didn’t get a chance to finish a sentence as one of his bruised looking fists connected with my cheekbone, sending me crashing back to the floor. I didn’t get up. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. My vision was dulling and I felt dizzy.

“You’re one of them!” he shouted.

I went to answer him to protest my innocence but was quickly silenced by a foot to the gut. Once again the wind was knocked out of me. This time I didn’t even try and respond to the shouting he was doing. I didn’t need to. I could see he was about to be answered. They were running up, fast and furious, behind him. Their arms flailing in the air. Their teeth gnashing. Their eyes fixed upon him.

I wasn’t sure if he had stopped shouting at me. Everything was ringing in my ears. He looked shocked though. Worried even. Slowly he turned around and saw what was heading his way. The ringing in my ears continued and his last words were drowned out - as was (what must have been) his ear-piercing scream. I watched, from the floor, as he lashed out at them aimlessly. His fist connected with one of them but it might as well have missed for all the good it did. Within seconds he was on the floor as they swarmed his body. His screams still drowned out by the ringing. I pulled myself up from the floor and froze as one of those things stopped ripping at his flesh with its teeth and locked eyes with me for what seemed an eternity. I half expected it to suddenly dash towards me but it didn’t. It blinked and then turned its attention back to the twitching body of the man who was still fighting despite surely being dead.

I wasted no more time watching the carnage. I turned and ran as fast as my shaky legs would allow me to, without daring to look back. I just kept my eyes locked on the floor. I kept them fixed on where my feet were to be landing as I traversed the thick undergrowth and crashed through holly bushes and nettles until I got away from the scene of violence.

I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks. Not because of the things which were now some distance behind me. No. I stopped dead because of what was in my path now.

A large wall.

It stretched as far as the eye could see. On this side of it was thick woodland. On the other side of it there didn’t appear to be any trees whatsoever. There were buildings. Granted, there weren’t many but there were definitely buildings. My first thought was that it must have been a survivors’ camp. A wall erected to keep the monsters at bay?

The ringing in my ears had subsided and I had barely noticed until I heard the familiar sound of one of those things roaring from behind me. I spun around on the spot and flinched when I realised they were heading for me now. The man, behind them, left in the same state as the woman I had seen consumed yesterday. A pile of bloody mush. I turned back to the wall. No way up it. Not easily anyway. A quick scan as far as my eyes could see and there was no obvious entry point.

If I couldn’t go through it, I’d have to go over it.

I started to run again, this time along the length of the wall until I came across a tree which was climbable. I only hoped that those things (ever gaining) couldn’t climb too. My left hand led the way by grabbing a hold of a thick branch overhead. My right hand grabbed it next and then I used all of the strength I could muster to pull myself up. Once I was up - to my stomach at least - it was easy to flop over the branch using my gut to help me stay on it whilst I moved my hands to the left of my body and swung my feet up to the right. I was out of puff but not out of danger. Not yet. By the time I was secure on the branch those things were directly beneath me. They were reaching up, trying to grab me, but thankfully not mimicking the awkward manoeuvre I had utilised to get myself up here. I paused a moment to catch my breath and then looked towards the tree I was now sitting in. With a little bit of climbing, I’d be level with the top of the wall.

I wasted no time in getting myself to the necessary position yet I was careful not to slip. I’m not coming this far just to fuck it up now, and soon I was able to see over the wall. There were some vehicles parked up, some cabins (one had bars in the window) and what appeared to be a billboard with a map on it. In the distance I could see a vehicle driving off at speed, kicking up a dust cloud as it did so.

I called out for someone to help me. Maybe there was a ladder over there? Maybe they’d have something to help me down from here? I called out again, a couple of seconds later, when no one returned my call. Soon I realised no one was coming.

Shit.

Using the trunk of the tree as support I pulled myself to a standing position. My face and gut were sore from the kicking I had received from the (now dead) stranger. Who was that man? Why had he attacked me so? It didn’t matter. Not important now.

The top of the wall looked to be fairly wide. Definitely secure. Sound in structure. It would take my weight and, if I were lucky, it wasn’t too far to jump from here to get to it. I looked down and saw the things scrabbling at the trunk of the tree. Jumping to the wall; it’s not as though I have much choice in the matter.

Okay.

On three.

One.

Two...

Three.

I closed my eyes and made the leap of faith. I wheezed as the wind was once again knocked from me as my gut slammed against the top of the wall. Ignore the pain. Ignore it. Same trick as used on the branch...

Hands to the left, swing feet up to the right.

I was on top of the wall. Out of breath, battered, bruised but definitely on top of the wall. I rolled to my side (and the edge of the wall overlooking the camp) and called out for someone to help me again but still no one came. Another vehicle in the distance wheel-spinning from where it had been parked. It didn’t come in this direction. It tore the dirt track up in the opposite direction completely.

Nothing else for it but to drop down and hope I don’t break something. I positioned myself so that I was sitting on the edge of the wall with my legs dangling down. Jesus it’s high up. I cast my eyes around the campsite one last time on the off-chance someone was down there who had noticed me.

No one.

Damn it.

Okay.

On three...

“One....Two...Three...”

I pushed myself off. The fall took what felt like less than a second. Upon impact my legs crumpled underneath me and I fell forward with my hands outstretched to try and take some of the impact too. They took some but not enough and my arms also gave way. The hard floor rushed towards my face as I rolled forward....

BLACKNESS

PART FOURTEEN

Now

Turned

Sister was on the dining room table. Her wrists and ankles bound to the legs of the table with what appeared to be dressing gown cord. I was sitting at the head of the table.

Sister was begging me, “Please help me! Please get me down. Don’t let them do this to me” and I wanted desperately to help her but I couldn’t. My legs were broken; one twisted round in the wrong direction and one with the bone poking through just beneath the kneecap. They should have been hurting like mad but I felt nothing.

The door opened and Mother and Father walked in; both of them were naked. They approached the table with their eyes fixed upon Sister’s body which was also naked. She pleaded with them just as she had pleaded with me but they ignored her too.

Father stepped to the end of the table so that her head was directly in front of him. She was crying now. She knew what came next. We all knew what came next. We had seen it on many occasions from the people who had previous lay upon the table. He looked down at her and picked a knife up from where it sat next to her pretty head. Mother stepped behind Father and craned her head around his body to see what he was doing. And then her hand appeared too - first on his side and then reaching around stroking his genitals. Father sighed at Mother’s touch as she began rubbing his shaft up and down until his prick became hard. All the time Sister was still pleading for them to let her go. All the time, her pleads going unheard.

Father put the knife down for a second and leaned onto the table as Mother increased the rhythm with which she stroked him. He was murmuring under his breath for her not to stop and how nice it felt. I called out for them to let us both go, just as my sister was, but they didn’t care what we were saying. Not now they were in the moment.

Mother’s other hand appeared on his other side. It moved down and cupped his balls. He winced as she gave them a hard squeeze and a slight twist. And then her hand disappeared behind him again. It appeared again only when she gave her finger a quick suck and then it was hidden once more.

Father laughed.

“Do it!” he sighed.

Mother thrust her body against Father’s and his eyes went wide. I couldn’t see what was happening behind his back but I knew. Suddenly a stream of hot spunk shot from the end of his cock and sprayed down Sister’s face and chest. Mother released him from her grip and he stepped to the side, out of breath, before slumping down in one of the spare chairs next to the table. Mother laughed as she wiped her brown finger against her leg. It wasn’t perfect but it was better.

She leaned forward and licked Sister’s face. Specifically where Father’s cum had hit her.

Sister whimpered.

“Delicious!” Mother sighed. She bent over the table further and started to lick the cum from Sister’s chest too.

Father laughed as he pulled himself from the chair. He got on his knees behind Mother, and thankfully out of my line of vision. I heard him start lapping at her. When there was no more cum to lap off Sister’s chest, she started to suck on her nipples instead.

Sister’s ‘whimperings’ turned to sighs of delight.

“Untie me!” she begged.

Mother reached onto the table but she didn’t untie the cords as Sister had wanted. Instead, she picked the knife up. Sister screamed as the knife was plunged into her stomach. The blade was twisted around causing a large gash in her belly.

Father’s face appeared from behind Mother. She immediately berated him and told him to carry on with what he was doing. His face disappeared again and the lapping noises resumed once more.

Mother pulled the knife from Sister’s gut and reached in with her hand. Sister screamed, and screamed again when Mother pulled her hand out with a fistful of intestine. I couldn’t believe my eyes as Mother started to lick the intestine, getting blood all around her face; her face which looked to be a picture of pure sexual satisfaction. She bit into whatever the hell was in her hand and god knows what oozed from within and into her mouth. Despite the blood on Mother’s face, I could see it beginning to flush in colour as she moaned louder than she had ever done before...

I suddenly realised that Sister wasn’t screaming at all. She had passed out long ago. It was I who was screaming. Mother and Father looked at me. Their skin was yellow. Their eyes were faded red. They snarled, curling their lips. Black tar drooling from within.

I screamed again.

Zone ‘B’

I opened my eyes with a jump. I rolled onto my back. The sky was directly above me. Perfect blue skies. White fluffy clouds moving slowly across the peaceful scene. Hard floor beneath me. Wall to my right side and salvation to my left.

I pulled up and nearly fell straight back over again; either a bump on the head, the lack of food or the mental exhaustion taking its toll on my body and state of mind.

I looked around. There were a number of cabins in front of me and some set back from those too. They weren’t the biggest but it didn’t matter. Each cabin was a sign of other survivors. I wasn’t alone anymore. We weren’t alone.

I stumbled over to the first one. There was a billboard next to it with a large map on it. I couldn’t help but stop and look at it. Jesus. Is this the size of the area? It’s huge. So many survivors. It seemed to be divided into areas. Different zones. I felt my hopes rise a little as I continued towards the first cabin.

Three small wooden steps up to the door. I turned the handle and pulled the door open. Inside were a series of cages. Cages? What the hell? There was a body in the far cage but the rest of them were empty. Some keys hung from the lock in the door closest to me as though they’d been used and simply abandoned.

I hurried over to the far cage to check on the person. I could tell by the smell that they were dead yet I still rolled them onto their back so that I could see their face. It was a man. He looked to be in his forties - at least - but it was hard to tell considering the state of his rotting flesh.

What puzzled me more was that he was wearing a lab coat.

Ian Woodhead was on a name badge that hung around his neck.

I looked around the cabin. There was nothing else in here of note. Certainly nothing to help me determine what the hell had taken place here. My only thought was that they must have caught some of those things that were running around outside in the woods. They must have caught them and kept them here. Something must have happened and they escaped. I didn’t care. I didn’t come here looking for trouble. I just wanted help. For me and what was left of my family - if anything. I’d need to be careful. I guess it’s not as safe in here as I first believed it to be. The wall being nothing more than an illusion of safety.

I left the cabin.

Would I find similar stories in the other cabins too? My heart sank a little. I was hoping to find a way out from this nightmare, not more corpses. I stopped myself from calling out again. If those things are around here, I don’t want to attract attention to myself.

I hurried across to the next cabin - only a few short feet away from the last one - and tried the door. Just as the last one had, this one opened with a quick twist of the handle too. The stink of death hit me immediately but it wasn’t the sight of the dead bodies inside - four or five of them at a glance - which shocked me the most.

PART FIFTEEN

Before

The House

Father was looking out of the window. I remember how scared he looked. I also remember not recognising him.

“Where am I?” I’d asked him but he shushed me quiet. At the time I thought it was because he didn’t want me waking Sister and Mother who were both asleep next to me. All of us crowded together on the same bed. I remember feeling uneasy about being there - next to them. Not because I’m shy about sharing a bed but because I didn’t know who they were.

I climbed from the bed and walked over to the window, next to Father.

He whispered, “I don’t think I was followed.”

Even if I wanted to forget, I don’t think I could get the image of how pale he looked on that day out of my head. His eyes were surrounded by heavy black rings; his dark hair looked greasy and messed up. More noticeably - he looked petrified.

He turned and looked at me blankly. He didn’t recognise me, just as I hadn’t recognised him.

The first thing he asked me was my name. I couldn’t tell him. Even today - I still can’t tell him. He couldn’t tell me his either. Nor could he tell me the name of the two ladies on the bed. He did show me a photograph though. It was the four of us standing together in a captured moment of happiness. I don’t remember when the picture was taken.

* * * * *

Now

The picture was what caught my attention more than anything else in the cabin. It stuck out like a sore thumb next to the bodies. More people in lab coats with name badges hanging around their necks. One, sitting on a chair in front of where the photograph was stuck, with a screwdriver sticking from his ear, the tip poking through the hole of the other ear. I pushed him to the side and he slumped to the floor with a satisfying thud. I reached up and took the photograph from where it was stuck on a line of monitors. What the hell is this doing here?

And then I noticed the monitors. They lined the walls all around me. Some of them were just showing static. The ones directly in front of me, where this picture was, were live though. A sign above them read ‘Zone B - House 3’. I looked at them in turn. My heart raced when I realised it was showing images of the house I had shared with Sister. A live broadcast? There appeared to be a camera in each room. My heart stopped when I noticed the bottom left camera. I dropped the photograph. One of the cameras was set up in the lounge. Sister was sitting there, on the settee, with her legs spread. Father was on his knees. His head buried between her legs. I felt a pang of jealousy and an urge to vomit. No vomit though. Just a scream of rage. What the hell was this? We were being spied on? People could see what we were doing and yet no one came to help? What the fuck?

I jumped from the chair I was sitting on and picked it up. Without thinking I brought it crashing down onto the monitors in front of me, smashing them in the process.

I fell to the floor, exhausted by the sudden surge of aggression and adrenalin. I wanted to keep screaming but I couldn’t. I could barely catch my breath. What the hell is going on? I clambered to my feet, pulling myself up with the help of some of the unbroken monitors. They were showing live broadcasts too. A sign, above the top row of monitors, read ‘Zone B - House 2’. A quick glance at the pictures displayed as I pulled myself to my feet and another sickening feeling as I realised it was the other house I had stumbled across. The two dead bodies lying in the bed.

What the fuck.

I stumbled from the cabin before I noticed anything else. I already felt as though my head was going to explode. Just above the eyes was raging with an excruciating headache, the likes of which I had never felt before - or at least remembered feeling before.

Outside I didn’t care if those things were around anymore. I found myself screaming at the top of my lungs, burning my throat, for someone to help me...For someone to explain what was going on.

Another cabin a few feet up a little dirt track. I was almost scared to venture into it, for fear of what was inside, but I knew there was little choice. I had come this far. I needed to finish the journey. I ran towards the door and pushed it open with ease; just like the others it hadn’t been locked. A room full of filing cabinets. A desk in the corner with a lamp still shining brightly as though there was never an issue with the power. Each of the cabinets was labelled up to show the contents within. My eyes were drawn to ‘Zone B - House 3’.

* * * * *

Before

The first thing he asked me was my name. I couldn’t tell him. Even today - I still can’t tell him. He couldn’t tell me his either. Nor could he tell me the name of the two ladies on the bed. He did show me a photograph though. It was the four of us standing together in a captured moment of happiness. I don’t remember when the picture was taken.

* * * * *

Now

Inside the filing cabinet’s top drawer there were a series of beige folders stored in suspension files, the first of which was filled with various photos of Father, Mother, Sister and me. I pulled the folder out and rested it on top of the drawer so that I could sift through them. So many pictures of us. Either together or by ourselves. There were even pictures where we’d be standing with someone else, or what appeared to be another family. Not all of us together, just me. Me standing with two strangers. Sister standing with four strangers. Mother standing with another man. Father standing alone, a fishing rod in his hand. A smile on his face.

I dropped the photographs back into the folder and pushed it all onto the floor before turning my attention back to the contents of the cabinet. The next four folders were labelled at the top...

KELLY DETHLEFS

BRIAN BIGELOW

CARMEN REYES

JOHN BURLEY

I pulled the first one (KELLY DETHLEFS) out and flicked it open to the first of many pages contained within. Some of them handwritten, some of them typed. Reports of some description and various interviews.

* * * * *

Before

None of us could remember our names when we woke up. And try as we might - they never came back to us. To this day I often wonder what my name could have been. Sister says I look as though I could have been a ‘Ben’. I don’t see a ‘Ben’ when I look in the mirror though.

I’m not sure when we gave up trying to remember. Starting afresh in this strange, but comfortable given the circumstances, house - we could have taken the opportunity to choose ourselves new names. We decided against it though on the off-chance our memories came back to us - one day - just as they had so easily disappeared in the first place. We’d rather wait to see what happens as opposed to lose the names forever; hidden behind some fakes plucked from thin air. As it turned out we rarely bothered addressing each other with names or labels. On the rare occasions we did, we kept it simple; mother was Mother, father was Father and sister was Sister. To my sister, I was Brother. To our parents, we were Daughter and Son.

* * * * *

Now

My heart skipped a beat when I turned one of the pages and found a small Polaroid picture of my mother clipped to the back of it. I lifted the photo up so that I could see underneath. A questionnaire of some description. The form had the name Kelly Dethlefs written upon it. Under relationship status it read as widowed. Next of kin had a name I didn’t recognise next to it and then it went into various questions as to why she wanted to take part in the project and why she thought she’d make a suitable candidate. One of the answers which stood out more than any of the others (at a glance) was finances.

I tossed the folder to one side and pulled the next one out. A few pages in, there was a similar page with a picture of Father attached to it. Brian Bigelow. Single. More of the same as per the last file. Again, I threw it to one side. I felt my eyes start to well up as I realised we weren’t who we were forced into thinking we were. None of us were.

The next file, Carmen Reyes, was the woman who I had previously believed to be my sister. I didn’t go much further into it as I realised the next folder would have been all about me.

I hesitated for a moment, having dismissed Carmen’s folder onto the floor with the others. I was nervous about what I’d find by looking into the flimsy file. I picked it out from the cabinet and opened it regardless, seemingly unable to stop my hands from doing so.

John Burley.

A tear rolled down my cheek. Just the one. More seemed unable to follow. I had come out looking for salvation and merely found more death and questions. A noise suddenly caught my attention. I turned to the desk, from where it came from, and noticed the chair was moving slightly.

On closer inspection I noticed a foot underneath the solid looking desk. Someone was hiding.

“Who’s there?”

“Please don’t hurt me!” They sounded as panicked as I felt. Slowly, they came out with their hands raised to the air as though they believed the folder (still in my hands) was actually a pistol. Like the others - the corpses - I had seen, they were wearing a lab coat with a name badge hanging from their neck. Michael Bray.

“What is this?” I raised the folder.

“Please...I can explain...Please...”

PART SIXTEEN

Before

The Last Days

The man whose head Father had split with the axe was consumed fairly quickly over a couple of days with not a lot of him going to waste. Sister had a fair amount (certainly more than I could stomach) but it was Father and Mother who seemed to eat the most. No doubt spurned on by Father’s ill-conceived belief that he felt stronger for eating the flesh of another human. Again, there was no sense arguing with him.

“The God you pray to... he hears you,” I had heard him tell Sister one afternoon. “He hears you and that’s how we keep getting sent more people, like these two. Come now, eat...Be thankful. It’s what your God would have wanted. If it wasn’t - why are we feeling stronger when we consume the flesh of others as opposed to getting ill? If it were a sin, like your brother seems to suggest, surely God would make us suffer? We are blessed. We survived the blast, we have each other - one big happy family - and he keeps sending us more food...”

I was in the other room. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to hear. Since our conversation in the lounge the other day, he had more or less given up talking to me - unless ordering me to keep watch out of the windows. I guess he knew my mind could not be swayed. Sister’s mind though was still in the balance. One minute she seemed okay, the next she seemed to take Father’s side. This conversation, another little act of brainwashing on Father’s part, would tip the balance back towards him, I feared.

Mother walked into the room where I was sitting.

“What are you doing in here all alone then?” she asked.

I didn’t answer her. Not because I was being rude. I just knew she didn’t care. There was only one reason Mother would walk into a room with me when there was no one else around. Again, our ‘normal’ conversations were at an all time low since the last two people came by the house and since she first started using me for her own sexual gratification.

She sat with me on the sofa.

“You look sad!” she said.

Of course I was sad. Sister was being brainwashed by a father who was desperate to bend her will into his line of thinking. Father had completely lost his mind - as had Mother - and I was close to losing mine too. Not forgetting my daily diet is human and I had killed a man - something else which was still weighing heavily on my conscience.

I killed a man to protect a family. A family I felt I was growing distant from.

“How ever can I cheer you up?” she asked. A schoolgirl giggle.

Again I stayed silent. She didn’t need an answer and wouldn’t have listened to the one that I had given her anyway. She never listened when I asked her to leave me alone. She moved closer to me on the sofa and ran her hand up my leg to my crotch. She gave it a squeeze. I felt my penis betray my mind as it responded to her touch.

“What about this?” she asked. “Does this cheer you up?”

Just let her get it over with, I thought to myself. She fumbled around with the buttons on my jeans before reaching in and taking a hold of my shaft. I tilted my head back against the sofa and closed my eyes so I could pretend I was somewhere else. Somewhere normal. The world wasn’t broken. The world was perfect. I was with a loving girlfriend. We had been invited out for the night but chose to stay in instead. Chose to stay in together. Just the two of us. Some soft lighting, quiet music playing. One thing had led to another and my loving girlfriend had decided to give me some oral.

Not my mother.

Sister’s voice, in the other room with Father, killed my imagination.

“God isn’t sending these people to us,” she told Father, “it’s not in his control anymore. The Devil won. The Devil and his minions...Humans in disguise...People like us. They’ve broken the world. They’ve made God blind to us. All we can do now is beg for his forgiveness. That’s what I do every day when we eat. I ask for his forgiveness. You should too.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I wish I could see his face.

Mother stopped what she was doing and looked up at me, a naughty glint in her eye, “You like that?”

“Yes.” It meant sister wasn’t lost yet.

Mother suddenly jumped up from me when a door slammed from the other room. Clearly Father didn’t appreciate Sister’s comments as much as I had.

“You’ll have to sort yourself out!” Mother said.

I quickly put myself away and did my jeans up - just in time too as Father came into the room. His face; he looked angry. Yet when he saw me, his expression seemed to darken even more.

He slumped down in the armchair across the other side of the room.

“Everything okay?” Mother asked him.

“Sometimes I don’t know why I bother. Why any of us do.”

I took the cue to leave the room, doing my best to hide my grin. I cast my eyes into the dining room. There was no one in there. Sister must have gone upstairs. I hurried up to see her. She was in the bedroom as per usual. I closed the door behind myself.

“Father thinks this is all about God...The people he sends us...”

I cut her short by kissing her. She responded. I still had the erection that had been kick started by Mother’s touch (and Mother’s mouth). I shoved Sister back and she toppled on top of the mattress.

She looked at me with the same amount of lust in her eyes that I felt surging through me. I kicked my clothes off and she did the same with her own until we were both naked. She went to say something to me but I didn’t let her. I threw myself on top of her and kissed her again, my hands roaming over her perfect body.

“So fucking hot!” I told her. I spat in my hand and rubbed it against her vagina. To my surprise it was already sopping.

I thrust forward and she let out a squeal. Had it not been for her facial expression - a look of sheer lust - I’d have thought I had hurt her. At least I think her expression is one of lust. It’s hard to tell in the light offered by a gentle flame licking away at the darkness of the room. Not that that would have bothered me if the expression was one of pain. So much pain in the world - what’s a little bit more? I pulled back a little and thrust forward again with the same level of aggression. She yelped again and buried her face down in the pillow whilst, at the same time, lifting her arse in the air to allow for deeper penetration. Definitely wasn’t an expression of pain. I didn’t need telling twice and I upped the speed and hardness with which I penetrated her. We don’t make love. We never have. We fuck.

I pulled out and flipped her onto her back. Her response was a hard, heavy slap to my face. I smiled at her. She spat back.

“Fuck me!” she ordered.

I positioned myself on top of her and pushed in again. A heavy sigh from the pair of us. Feels so good. So wet and yet so incredibly tight. I breathed in her scent. No perfume. She never wore perfume anymore. No matter. I’ve grown accustomed to the smell of her scent as it mixes with my own. I kind of like it now. I breathed in hard as I continued to pound her hard and fast - the way we both liked it. I was close to the climax but could tell she needed longer. Either that or she wanted me to up the game a bit. I put my hands around her neck and squeezed hard - cutting off her air as she liked. She gasped and struggled which made the sensations I was feeling that little bit nicer. Her face was flushing now. Not sure if she is close or whether it’s because I’ve stopped all of the blood.

A knock on the door distracted us both. Before we’d a chance to hide ourselves, the door opened a crack and Mother stuck her head through. “I’ve been calling you for hours!” she moaned. “Put your sister down! Dinner’s ready.”

I pulled out with my vinegar stroke ruined; a jet of sticky white semen splashing across sister’s stomach. Sister looked just as frustrated as I was. My orgasm ruined by the appearance of mother and her orgasm denied completely right at the last minute.

Thanks Mum, thanks a lot. Great timing as usual.

“You owe me,” my sister huffed as she pulled up her French knickers, ignoring the cum trickling down her belly. I flashed her a wink as if to tell her she’d be getting it later and threw my trousers on, followed by my shirt.

I’ll repay her when I get her out of this hellhole. I feel as though our time is coming. It won’t be hard to get her to come with me. Not after hearing the conversation she had with Father. Not now I know his brainwashing techniques hadn’t won her over...

PART SEVENTEEN

Now

A Few Home-Truths

I shoved the man into the cabin no sooner had he opened the door. He fell to the floor, tripping over his own feet, a pathetic mess. He had tears streaming from his face and clearly he feared for his life. If he had been one of the people (in the second cabin) watching the monitors then he had every right to fear for it too. He knew I was a killer. He knew I tasted human flesh.

I looked around the cabin. More monitors, some computers, and a few cabinets but nothing which stood out and explained to me what was happening, despite the man’s promises.

“You said you’d tell me what was going on!” I hissed at him. I stood over him as though I were ready to clobber him. In truth there wasn’t much between us - height wise - and he was much stockier than me so I’m sure that, if it came down to it, he’d have beaten me in a fight. Especially whilst I was so hungry. Not that I wanted him to realise as such.

“Second cabinet down!” he said, pointing to the filing cabinet from where he lay, sprawled out on the floor. I followed his finger to the cabinet and walked over to it. As instructed I opened the second drawer down. A large collection of CDs. Four stacks of varying amounts bound together by elastic bands.

“What is this?”

“There’ll be one in there of you!” he said. “It will say your name on the front of the top case.”

My name?

John Burley.

I pulled all four stacks out and turned to the man.

“Get up!” I ordered him.

He did so. He took the piles from my hands and placed them on a sideboard next to one of the computers. I watched as he opened the computer’s CD drawer on the tower unit and slipped a CD from the case of the batch which contained my name. He turned one of the screens on and it flickered into life. My face was onscreen. I was sitting at a table in a room I didn’t recognise.

A female voice off screen spoke to me, asking me questions. Despite it clearly being me onscreen, I didn’t recognise any of this.

“We’re going to ask you to confirm some details before we continue, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

“Can you confirm your name?”

“John Burley.”

“And your date of birth?”

“September 30th, 1980.”

“Mother’s maiden name?”

“Osborne.”

I tried to remember my mother but couldn’t. Not the one pretending to be her, back in the house, but my real mother. My birth mother. My head pounded as though telling me that part of my memory was off-limit.

“Thank you. Can you confirm why you’re here?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. I’m just replying to an advert.”

“Can you confirm the advert and where you saw it?”

“I saw it online. It mentioned a series of scientific tests but not a lot else. Other than a substantial pay to those who completed it.” Onscreen I laughed. Why do I remember none of this?

I turned to the man who wasn’t watching the screen as intently as I was. He was nervously watching my reaction.

“Turn it off.”

He did as he was told.

“You signed up to this. You all did.”

I looked at his name badge again. Michael Bray. The name didn’t ring a bell.

“Signed up to what?”

“Please, I’m just paid to work here. This isn’t my idea. None of this is. They just employ me.”

“Signed up to what?” I asked him again. I went to hit him, to try and get him talking, and he fell back against the table of screens with his arms raised.

“A test!” he shouted. “It was a government test. We didn’t tell you exactly what was involved. We kept it secret from you until after you had signed the contracts...”

“I wouldn’t have signed without knowing the ins and outs of something!”

“The money! That’s all people seemed to care about, the money...”

“But what about the bomb?” I asked. “The end of the world!” Michael Bray started to laugh. I wanted to hurt him so bad that I felt the adrenalin surge through my body. “What’s so fucking funny?” I screamed at him.

“None of it was real! Don’t you see? The whole thing was set up to see how you’d cope...”

He fumbled with the CDs that were in his hand still. He dropped all but one.

BRIAN BIGELOW.

He tore the first CD from the packet and put it into the computer tower after taking out the previous CD. I just stood there, dumbstruck, as he kicked it into play.

“This is the man you thought was your father...”

* * * * *

Father (aka Brian Bigelow) was sitting on what looked to be a chair similar to the kind you’d find in a dentist’s surgery. He was rocking backwards and forwards as though trying to free himself from the restraints which bound him to the chair; one on each wrist and one on each of his ankles. A contraption was around his skull. Mean looking metal prongs at the front of it seemed to be pinning his eyes open so he couldn’t look away from a large screen which played various images in front of him.

The camera filming him seemed to be operated by a person. They first looked to my father and how he was secured into the chair and then they turned their attention towards the large screen in front of him. The camera settled for a minute, maybe two, so we could get an idea of the various things they were broadcasting directly into Father’s unblinking eyes despite his screaming and protests.

“He’d be kept in that chair for up to eight hours at a time. All the lead subjects went through the same. They would be kept in the chair and they’d be drip fed with various psychedelic drugs. Eventually - even though the films stopped playing - they’d believe what they saw was true. In this case, and the other cases in Zone B, Mr Bigelow believed a bomb went off and destroyed the world you knew.” Michael’s voice whispered in my ear as I continued to stand in the present, watching the scenes play out on the video.

The images rotated between ones of an Atomic Bomb being detonated (and the mushroom cloud it threw into the air), people being torn apart by the radioactive blast, the photograph of Mother, Father, Sister and me, people looting and  tearing up the streets.

Father continued to scream for them to stop but still they continued to play.

* * * * *

I was mesmerised by what I was seeing play through on the screen; the disturbing images with the picture of (what I thought to be) my family spliced into it all. I’m guessing pictures of the family were there to try and turn Father’s way into thinking we actually were part of his life...

Father...I need to stop calling him that. He isn’t my father. Mother isn’t my mother and Sister, dear Sister, she is nothing to do with me either. Part of me was hugely relieved, considering what we had gone through, but another part of me just felt as though my world had crumbled beneath me even more so than what I had originally thought.

Suddenly the pictures on the screen turned to images of me fucking my sister. One minute we were in the bedroom. Then we were in the dining room, over the table. Sister was replaced with Mother. Still fucking. Mother replaced with Father. Banging me hard and fast. I stumbled back against the wall and covered my hands with my eyes with a scream of despair. By the time I pulled them away again, Michael was just staring at me as though I had gone mad. The screen, still playing the CD, was still rotating images of explosions and looters. My imagination obviously decided to kick up guilt for what had come to pass.

“Turn it off!” I told him, before I saw any of my own images come back to haunt me some more. The man did as he was told. “We were all brainwashed?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Why do this? What could you possibly benefit from it?”

“It wasn’t me! I just work here!”

He was trying to refuse to take any responsibility for what was going on here but, the way I saw it, he was the only one here (seemingly alive) so it made him one hundred percent accountable. With a sudden rush of energy, I crossed the room towards him with a speed which even surprised me. Before I knew it, or he knew it, I had him by the throat and against the table. I started to apply pressure.

“Why?!”

He gasped for air and was trying to say something so I released my grip a little. Not a lot but enough for him to be able to force some words out with a little effort.

“They wanted to see what would happen if a nuke did go off,” he spluttered. “It’s just a test to see whether it would be worth setting up teams to scour the war-torn areas looking for survivors or whether it would be better just to cut their losses and consider everyone dead.”

“Who’s they?” I demanded.

“The Government!”

I released my grip completely and backed away from the technician, surprised by what he was saying.

“Of the people in Zone B, your family are the only ones left alive. The first couple, the ones you found in the house, they killed themselves. The man killed the woman and then turned the knife on himself. He bled out in her dead arms. They waited as long as they could, for someone to come and find them, but decided they didn’t want the pain of starving to death when the food ran out. They took what they perceived to be their only option...Another family, they were killed by the infected groups when they tried to leave...They were trying to find help. They were only a mile or so from your house when they were attacked...The two girls died instantly but the men...They made it to your house when your father killed one of them with an axe and...”

“I remembered what happened!” I hissed. I remembered them alright. The second man, the one whose legs we broke, he didn’t even try and tell us what had happened. They weren’t looters, as Father had suspected; they were just another version of us. I felt sick to the stomach. My head was reeling with all the information I was trying to absorb. All I kept coming back to, though, was that the government planned this. They made it happen. They wanted it to happen. Even when we were killing each other. They didn’t care. They didn’t try and stop it. They just left us in there, to rot. “And what did these fucking tests prove?”

The technician struggled to look me in the eye so I made him, by grabbing him around the throat once more. “That it wouldn’t be worth looking for survivors if such an event took place. It’d be more productive to spend the time, and money, on starting the population again with what we had. Your family would be too damaged,” he said, “there’d be no place in society for a family such as yours. Finding people like you, it would be more trouble than it’s worth. Other zones have similar families I heard...You aren’t the only ones to have lost your mind. Although you are one of the only ones to still be standing...”

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tear the man’s face off. I wanted to stamp on his head until there was nothing but blood and brain underfoot but I did neither. I just stood there completely dumbstruck by what he was telling me.

“But those things,” I managed to stammer, “in the woods. The radiation poisoning...”

“Poisoned, yes, but not radiation. Just a potent mixture of chemicals. A biological weapon.” He didn’t wait for me to question him about it. He simply moved to the mouse and keyboard, on the computer, and selected a file - hidden within various other files - on the hard-drive and pointed me to the screen.

It was a laboratory (on the video now playing). A man, in what appeared to be a prison uniform, was stretched out on a hospital bed with doctors standing around him. A timer-counter in the corner of the screen was reset to zero and then another doctor entered the frame with a syringe in his hand. There were no words. He simply walked over to the man on the hospital bed and injected the syringe into the arm. I could see the man was screaming but there was no sound. For that I was thankful.

No sooner had the syringe pierced his skin, the timer started to count up.

“The laboratory isn’t here. It’s in the middle of town. They run the tests there but release the test subjects in the various zones. They’re easy to control, and contain, there but they also serve the additional purpose of keeping the other experiment’s subjects - that’s you and your pretend family - in place.”

I watched on-screen as the man on the bed arched his back as though in a substantial amount of pain. His face was contorted and his mouth wide open. He was thrashing around violently. The timer on the clock hadn’t even hit twenty seconds.

Michael pressed stop on the video. With the image frozen, both on the screen and in my mind, I could see the man’s face. His skin had discoloured, his eyes looked to have changed and there was black stuff coming from his mouth. It took twenty seconds to turn him from human to monster.

I collapsed onto the chair near to the table. Everything was so overwhelming. A million different thoughts buzzing around my head; my headache seemingly getting worse.

“We were monitoring them after release. They’re extremely efficient killers. They seem to stay alive, like you did, by feasting upon the flesh of the things they killed. Deer, rabbits, even some of the prisoners we released into the area. At the moment this needs to be injected directly into the bloodstream but they’re working on turning it into a gas. Imagine the destruction of populations if a gas, which did this, was released into war-torn areas. The people would tear themselves apart. Eventually they’d mostly starve to death and even turn on each other. Those who survived, the military could go in and clean up. They’d get control of the lands without needing to drop any nuclear devices and without losing any of their own men. At least not to the scale of a full-blown war...”

“What’s wrong with you people?”

All this time I thought it was my family who had turned. My family who had lost their souls. All this time I was wrong. It wasn’t. They were just surviving - as Father had said. All this time, I thought they were the sick bastards but the sick bastards were the ones out here, watching us and testing us to see how we’d cope.

I put my head between my legs to stop myself from passing out. I wished I could put the clock back. I wished I could go back and tell myself not to follow-up on the advert I had supposedly found.

Did I really agree to this just because they had offered a little money?

I shook my head.

We wouldn’t sign up to this. Not for any amount of money in the world.

“You lied to us. You lied to get us here.”

“I don’t know all the ins and outs of what they told you,” he said, “but some things would have been kept from you, yes...”

I rubbed my head. Damn it’s hurting.

“Headache?”

I nodded.

“What’s to be expected. Withdrawal.”

“What?”

* * * * *

Before

Silver Lining

Mother, Sister and I were sitting at the dining room table. Father was sitting at the head as per usual. The mood was glum. Between us, on the table, were empty boxes which had once contained food.

We knew this day was going to come. It was inevitable. We’d all just hoped someone would have come for us by now. Was this a sign that no one was coming? Was this a sign we were alone?

“We’ll go out. Son and I. We’ll go out and see if we can find some help or some food. Whatever we stumble across first. If it’s food, we’ll bring it back here and go out searching again - each day - until we also find help. If it’s help...Well, we’ll be fine.” Father’s words were comforting although he wasn’t really giving us some answers. He was just stating the obvious plan of action. One we would have done even if he wasn’t here, sitting at the head of the table. He turned to me, “We’ll go out first thing tomorrow.”

I nodded.

“And in the meantime, look at the positives; we still have running water...”

PART EIGHTEEN

Now

Enough

“The water?”

The technician nodded.

“What was in it?”

He shook his head.

“You don’t know or you won’t tell me?”

“I don’t know. That wasn’t my area and the information isn’t kept on files here. They’re back at the main base.” He looked at me and must have known I wanted more information from him as he continued despite me not saying anything to him, “Whatever it was - it was put there, in small doses, to keep you from remembering what had happened. It was used as another way of controlling you. Your memories specifically. You stop taking it and - well - those memories might sneak back in bit by bit. The ones which weren’t damaged in the initial operations anyway.”

I suddenly felt a rage brew within me that I had never experienced before - not to this level anyway. Another side effect to having stopped drinking the laced water or a side effect to the shit I was hearing?

“Look...I’ve told you...I’ve told you everything I know. Please. Just let me go. I told you already, I wasn’t the one here pulling the strings. It wasn’t me. I just worked here...Look...Take these,” he said as he fished some keys from his pocket before throwing them to me. “My car is outside. Just take it. It’ll get you wherever you need to get. It’ll get you away from here...Please...Just let me go. This...This wasn’t me. I didn’t do this. I just work here.”

I looked at him, my eyes burning through his soul. Is this the look my father looked at me with on the occasions I crossed him? I shook my head. He’s not my father. He’s not. He never was and what he is now - it’s nothing to do with me. He isn’t my concern. Not anymore.

“That’s just as bad...” I told the man.

“I know. That’s why I set about sabotaging it. Don’t you see? I’m not just alive because I was hiding. I was the one who gave the prisoners the keys! It was me who set them free. I didn’t think they’d go and kill everyone. I thought they’d just take the time to run. I thought they’d run and not look back.”

The man was visibly quaking. And he should be. He knew he was in the wrong. He knew they were all in the wrong. What they were doing was criminal but they got away with it because they hid behind government badges. I didn’t feel sympathy for him, because some of his friends were murdered. I felt nothing. As far as I was concerned, he had got what he deserved. Well...Nearly got what he deserved. And I didn’t even want to know why there were prisoners here. Political prisoners? Maybe. Used as more tests no doubt.

“Some of them went over the wall whilst others were going on a rampage through the cabins...I hid. I don’t know if they knew I was there and spared me because I did them a favour, by breaking them out, or whether...”

I reached forward and grabbed the technician’s head with both hands. I’d had enough of his voice, his stories, his bullshit. The rage, burning within, was spewing from every pore and I couldn’t control it anymore. I didn’t want to control it either. The man screamed and reached up to grab my arms. He tried to pull them away but my grip was good and my mind made up. I pressed my thumbs against his eyes, which he had shut. His name badge bounced around, where it hung on his chest, as we struggled in the cabin.

Michael Bray.

Michael Bray.

Michael Bray.

Fuck you.

I dug my nails in and pushed my thumbs through his eyeballs. His scream reached a pitch I had never heard before, not even from the people on our dining room table. I screamed too. Not from horror but from pleasure. A weird feeling of sick satisfaction washing through me. I pushed in further and his screams suddenly stopped. His arms dropped to his sides where they swung lifelessly. I waited for a couple of minutes, relishing the feeling of my thumbs being embedded in the man’s brains, and then withdrew. I let go of his body and he dropped to the floor with a satisfying slump.

I looked down to my hands. Both of them were covered in blood. My thumbs were the worst: blood, dark clotted gore and brains. I gave them a lick clean and remembered back to what my father had said back in the house, during one of our many meal times.

“Can you feel that?” he had asked, between sucking on a piece of flesh. “I can feel the man’s strength surging through me...Can anyone else feel that?” He had even started laughing.

At the time I just thought he was crazy but now - now I know he wasn’t. I can feel it. I can feel the man’s strength surging through my veins. I dropped to my knees, over the body, and sunk my teeth into the technician’s throat. A quick turn of my neck and I tore a massive chunk from his still warm body. The taste hit me hard as I started to chew. The best piece of blue steak you had ever tried as I slowly rolled it around my mouth letting it hit every taste bud possible. I didn’t feel guilty as I swallowed it down and bit down on the corpse for another taste. He had it coming. He created me. He created my family. If the other lab geeks were alive, I’d do the same to them too. I’d put them on the dining room table for Mother, Father and Sister. I’d talk and joke with my family as we’d listen to the soundtrack of the screams coming from the meat. I’d chink glasses of the laced-water to keep the memories of what happened at bay and I’d be grateful for what I had.

The next chunk of flesh came from his cheek where it was easier to bite it off. As I looked down upon his body I could only wish he was still alive to feel the sensation of me eating his face. To feel what he had created. To feel the teeth of the monster tear into him piece by piece until there’d be no more flesh to consume.

Another mouthful swallowed and another taken as I kept telling myself, He had this coming. More memories of how it came to be - the situation we found ourselves in - flooded through the pain of my headache to slowly, bit by bit, reveal themselves.

PART EIGHTEEN

Before

Interviews

The lady sitting opposite me was pretty. Of course I had noticed when she first walked into the office but there was time now to sit back and admire her - really admire her - now that we had got the numerous questions and paperwork out of the way.

She looked around my age (thirties). Dark hair down to her waist - tied back in a pony-tail -, glasses which made her look both cute and intelligent (not that she needed glasses to prove her obvious intelligence).

I smiled at her but she didn’t notice, or she chose to ignore it. Ever the professional.

“That about wraps things up.”

She put the last paper of the questionnaire back into the folder she had originally carried it into the room with and clipped the pen onto the pocket of her long white coat.

“So...Am I a suitable candidate for the scheme?” I asked.

The lady smiled at me.

“We’ll have a discussion and let you know,” she said as she stood up.

“Oh - right - well...You have my home number and my mobile but it’s probably best you use my mobile. That’s always on me. And, you know, sometimes I unplug my home phone. Too many cold callers keep managing to get through to me. Honestly, you sign up to have your number ex-directory and they still manage to get your details...”

The woman interrupted me, “You don’t have to leave. We should have an answer for you within the next couple of hours. There’s a waiting room down the corridor. I’ll take you there now.”

“Oh, right, okay. Good. I mean. Yes. Thank you.”

I stood up too and followed as the pretty lady led me down a long corridor aligned with many doors. I could see other people, through small windows in the doors, being interviewed for - I guess - the same scheme I am applying for. So many applicants but then I suppose that’s to be expected with the money they’re offering for the people who successfully complete it.

The lady stopped by a door and opened it for me. She didn’t walk into the room. She kept the door open and urged me to go through.

“There’s lunch provided and plenty of magazines and such to keep you occupied. Go in and make yourself at home,” she said, “and we’ll get back to you as soon as we have come to a decision with regards to your application.”

I nodded and walked into the fair-sized room.

There were three other people waiting; an older couple and a girl who appeared to be in her teens, maybe early twenties. The door closed behind me and the happy-looking threesome turned to see me.

“Ooh, here’s another one,” the man said. “Come on in and take a seat.”

I walked over with a shy “Hello” and took a seat at the table they were sitting on. At the far side of the room was a series of tables linked together and covered in a white drape. These tables were covered with various plates of sandwiches and other types of ‘finger-food’ like cocktail sausages, sausage rolls, crisps, peanuts and anything you could imagine.

“I’m Brian, this is Kelly and...” he turned to the younger of the two ladies, “...I’m sorry...I’ve forgotten your name again.” He laughed. “I told you I was bad with names.”

“Carmen.”

“And this is Carmen...”

“John,” I said as I took a seat. “So you’re all here for the advert? The government research programme?” They nodded. “I don’t suppose they’ve told you what is actually involved?”

“They won’t say,” said Carmen as she took a piece of tomato from her sandwich and rested it to the side of the paper plate she had earlier filled with snacks, “apparently it’s top secret and we only get to know if they choose us.”

“I hope they do choose us - that money would come in handy that’s for sure,” said Carmen.

I smiled at her and she coyly smiled back. Another pretty girl.

“So how long have you been waiting?” I asked.

“Two hours.”

“One and a half.”

“I walked in about ten minutes before you did,” said Carmen.

As conversation kind of dried up a little, I cast my eyes around the room and noticed a camera attached to the ceiling in the corner; a red flashing light hinting that it was in use.

“I think we’re being watched,” I told the others.

They turned around and saw the camera.

“Probably making sure we aren’t talking about the tests we’ve been doing,” Brian said as he turned back round to face me. The others turned away from the camera too. “If you feel uncomfortable with that, you’re probably in the wrong place. You can rest assured that, whatever the programme will be, there will be cameras aplenty to track our progress and make sure we’re playing by their rules.”

The others murmured noises of agreement. I didn’t. I knew they had filmed me for some of the interviews that I had gone through during the first part of the day but I didn’t feel particularly comfortable with it. I just envisioned the footage ending up on some dire television show filled with idiots making fools of themselves as they begged their way onto whatever they were applying for. Paranoid, I guess.

* * * * *

I’m not sure how long we had been sitting in the room as I didn’t have a watch and I didn’t want to keep bothering the others for the time. The pretty lady who led me here did tell me they’d be as quick as they could. Maybe patience is one of the virtues they’re looking for in their candidates?

I had spent some of the time waiting talking to the other people in the room but it came to a stage where conversation dried up between us and I found myself sitting in the corner with a plate of food on my lap, staring out of the window whilst imagining what I could spend that money on. I’d start by clearing my debts. They weren’t substantial but they were enough to be a nuisance each month, especially with the low-income from my dead-end job. Should have spent more time in class and less time bunking with my friends, who have since deserted me and also managed to get themselves decent employment with decent wages.

The door suddenly opened and the pretty lady walked in. She was followed by several large men. Whereas she was wearing the same lab coat I had earlier seen her in, these men were wearing black uniforms and looked entirely out of place.

We all stayed in our seats as the woman went to the front of the room, next to a table. She put a file (which she had carried in, under her arm) onto the table next to her. I set aside the plate of food, on the table next to where I was sitting, and braced myself for the news she was about to deliver.

“We’re sorry for keeping you waiting,” she addressed the group, “but I’m pleased to inform you that you’re all eligible to become part of the programme.”

The group seemed happy with the news. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a weight off my shoulders too. My debt was cleared. Chances are, the rest of the money would keep me from having to go back to that dead-end job too. Not forever. Certainly a little while at least and that was good enough for me.

“So when we do we start?” asked Brian.

“We shall begin the process immediately.”

“Do we get to know what we’ve signed up for now?” Kelly laughed.

The pretty lady stood up and pulled some paperwork from the file that she had brought in with her. Four people, four sheets. She walked around the room handing them to each of us, along with some pens.

“As soon as you’ve signed these.”

“What are they?” Brian asked. I couldn’t help but snigger to myself. He had asked yet I had already signed.

“Non-disclosure policy. Standard stuff.”

The man seemed happy with that and signed his life away.

“So what now?” he asked as one of the men in black went back around the group collecting the signed documents.

“Now we need to separate you. Mr Bigelow, you will go with these two gentlemen,” she said as she pointed to two of the men in uniform. “Miss Reyes, you will go with these two gentlemen,” she pointed to another two men. “Ms Dethlefs, you are with these two and, Mr Burley, you’re with me and this gentleman here.” She nodded towards the man who had handed her back the paperwork. “Has everyone had enough to eat? It’s going to be a long day.”

Now

No Way Back

I stumbled from the cabin, leaving the corpse of Michael Bray behind in a bloodied pool, and dropped to my knees outside as the door swung shut behind me. I bent over with my hands to my head as though they had the power to take away, or ease, my headache. My broken mind was torn between playing back previously lost memories of what happened back in the offices - with the government officials - and thoughts of fucking my sister (not my sister!) and mother (not my mother!) and what I did to that man who I had taken back to the house. He wasn’t a looter. He was just someone like me. A prisoner. Forced to be a part of this. Was he one of the ones they had put in here - just to see what happened - or was he one of the men who’d escaped only to then be killed by myself? I screamed as the thoughts continued to muddle themselves in my head.

I can’t blame myself. I can’t. This isn’t my doing. This isn’t my fault. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t.

Yes you did, though, you signed up for it.

I didn’t know. There was no way of knowing.

Just your stupid greed...

Had I known what was going to become of us, I would never have gone ahead with it.

My mind flashed thoughts of being secured against my will on an operating table. I was struggling but the restraints kept me in place. Even if they hadn’t, the hands of two strangers made sure I went nowhere. I was screaming then too. Screaming for them to get off me but they didn’t listen. They just stuck me with that needle and everything went dark. My mind flashed back images of eating my sister’s moist cunt (not my sister!) and my mother riding my face (not my mother!)

I threw up onto the muddy floor. Because of the meat I had consumed, so greedily, or because of the pain in my head and the flooding of my thoughts.

The water will make the thoughts go again. Maybe.

I looked up and around. The wall was to my right and an unknown horizon on my left. I struggled to my feet, using the wall of the cabin as a much needed support. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know in which direction to turn. It wouldn’t be long before the people who really run this place - not the ones who just work here - would realise something had happened and they’d come looking. What would they do when they get here? Terminate the programme or enlist new staff to keep an eye on the proceedings? If I run - would they leave me out there, this sick bastard they created, or would they come for me? Snatch me away from my real family, who I still can’t remember, and run more tests on me? I felt another bubbling in my stomach.

Ignore it.

Swallow it down.

Keep the meat down.

You need the strength for whatever does come next.

What does come next?

I felt my eyes well up. Seconds later there were tears. Not just one. But many. And they all felt good. They all made me feel human.

But you’re not human anymore. They took your humanity away from you. They’re to blame. Not you. You are the victim.

I screamed again.

I looked around desperately. There was no one else around. No one to tell me where I was. No one to point me in the direction of the exit to this nightmare.

You can’t leave. Where will you go? You’re broken. You don’t belong in normal society anymore. You’re damaged goods now. You’re a murderer.

I staggered back towards the cabin where I first found my file. I opened the door and went in, letting the door swing shut behind me. The files were still on the floor where I had left them. I picked them up until I found my own file. Bits of my memory were slowly filtering back to me but I still didn’t know who I was. Not who I really was. Not without checking the name on the folder, and in the video footage that I had seen.

I flicked through the pages hoping to unlock more of who I was but nothing was jumping out. Just pages and pages of questions about why I believed I would be a good candidate for the programme (loyal, trustworthy, hardworking - standard answers given to impress a potential employer). Nothing about my real family. Nothing which hinted where I lived. Nothing of any use.

In a fit of rage I threw the file across the cabin. The pages flew out and spread themselves across the floor. I wanted to scream again but kept it contained. I was so angry but didn’t know who to direct the anger too. Was it them? Were they to blame? Should they be on the receiving end of it? Most of them here are dead and I don’t remember where I went for the initial chats and interviews. Was I to blame? If it weren’t for my initial greed I wouldn’t have even gone to the meeting in the first place. I’d still be at home, wherever that was, with my real family, whoever they were. And what of my real family? Are they looking for me? Are they out there somewhere, asking people of my whereabouts? Do they even care? Are they even alive?

Swallow the sick feeling down once more. Hold it in.

I dropped back down to my knees. I wasn’t sure where to go from here (again) and I was tired. My head spinning from the information gained and the withdrawal. I started to weep once more. I had just found out that the world had not ended and yet I had never felt so alone. Another tear spilt from my left eye. I wiped it away.

PART NINETEEN

Before

Dead End

I felt sick. The taste of human flesh fresh in my mouth. The iron taste of the blood which had oozed out, on the initial bite, seemingly tainted my tongue forever. But the thought of what I had done to the man was troubling me more. And the thoughts of what my sister and I had got up to, not forgetting Mother and I. Everything is wrong. I am wrong. I am damaged goods.

Father says help will come. He isn’t sure when. But what if it does come? Sister and I can’t continue the way we are, nor can Mother. And the others seem to have a taste for the flesh now. A wanting for it, almost. A need. Wherever we end up, when help comes, they – we - won’t be able to continue eating human flesh.

Mind you, would they want to change if there was the option for real food?

Yes.

With the bathroom door closed I looked at myself in the mirror. I look tired. And not just from a lack of sleep but, in general, I look shattered. A poor diet, lack of sleep, lack of real exercise and sunlight - all taking their toll on my body.

I put the knife down onto the side of the sink.

I had taken it from the kitchen when Mother and Father weren’t paying me any attention -  which was most of the time. When I did so, my thought process had been clear; take it upstairs, go to the bathroom, run the blade down the length of my wrist, try not to scream out in pain. Wait as my life drains from my body. Slip into a peaceful sleep. It wasn’t the first time I had had thoughts of suicide but, even so, I still struggled with them. When I had taken it, my plan seemed so simple but now, now I’m here ready to do it, I’m not sure so that I can.

Fear of the unknown stopped me. Not knowing what was waiting on the other side, if anything. Was there a Hell? If so, I’d surely be going there for what I had done. Would it be worse than where I am? Could it be worse? My mind said ‘yes’.

I went against instinct and picked the knife up. I put it against my wrist and closed my eyes. My thought process being that, if I couldn’t see what I was doing, I wouldn’t be as worried. I pushed the blade down; hard enough to feel it against my skin but not hard enough for it to do any damage other than a tiny mark which would fade in time. I ceased the pressure and put the knife back down on the side, breathing heavily. I can’t do it. I can’t.

Fuck.

A knock on the door made me jump.

“I’m in here!” I called back.

“Hurry up! I need to get in there!” Father’s voice boomed from the other side of the door.

I picked the knife up and tucked it down my trousers carefully so only the handle was visible, and that I covered with my top. I waited a few more seconds and flushed the toilet so he wouldn’t question what I was doing in here and opened the door. Father was waiting.

“I hope you haven’t stunk it out in there!” he moaned as we crossed paths.

* * * * *

Now

Same story as before. I can’t do it.

I was sitting at the table, still in the cabin, with some scissors pressed against the pale skin of my shaking wrist. Adrenalin was surging through my body and yet I still couldn’t bring myself to pierce myself. Change of plan. I moved the opened scissors from wrist to throat. It might hurt more but I’m sure it will be over quicker. Drag one of the blades across my throat, hard, and job done.

I took a deep breath and pushed down.

I let the breath out and screamed, despite my throat being sore from the screaming already raged from my body. I threw the pair of scissors across the cabin. They bounced off the far wall and dropped to the floor. By the time they did so, I realised why I couldn’t bring myself to cut my own throat (pain and fear aside). Mother, Father and Sister. They’re still in there. I can’t leave them there. I can’t. It’s not fair on them. They’re victims, just as I am. They were created, just as I was.

I suddenly remembered the keys I had taken from the technician. I pulled them from my pocket. A silver key (which looked to be a house-key), a car key and a fob with two buttons on it (one to lock the car and one to unlock it). I dismissed everything else in the room and left the cabin.

Outside was unchanged other than the fact that the air seemed purer to me now. Previous thoughts of radiation in the atmosphere were gone. The sun was shining, the skies still blue. There were even some birds singing in the trees that were on the opposite side of the large wall.

I looked from side to side. Cabins everywhere. Not too far in the distance I saw what I was looking for: a row of vehicles parked up nicely in a line. I started to run towards them with hopes high. If one of these cars is the technician’s, if the key works...It would be so much easier to get back to the house. So long as I can find a way in, past the wall. Pretty sure ramming it would do nothing but crumple the front of the vehicle.

As I neared the cars I aimed the key fob and pressed the ‘unlock’ button. One of the car lights flashed. I couldn’t help but smile. It felt as though it was the first proper smile I had experienced for as long as I could remember; not as impressive as it sounds as I think about the memories stolen from me. I quickened my pace until I reached the car.

Please have petrol! Please have petrol! Please have petrol! All I could think as I jumped into the driver’s side and slammed the door shut behind me. I slipped the key into the ignition and twisted it. The engine spat into life as the petrol gauge moved into position showing how much fuel there was left in the tank.

A quarter of a tank.

Certainly enough to get me back to the house.

I crunched the car into first gear and instantly stalled the engine, unsure as to whether it had been so long since I had driven a car that the basics had escaped me or whether I had ever learned to drive in the first place.

Come on.

I fired the engine back up again.

Take two.

Foot on clutch. Select first gear. Find the biting point by slowly lifting foot off clutch. The engine chomped at the bit to make the car move. Biting point successfully found. Release the handbrake. All coming back to me now. Car moved forward slowly. Right foot puts a little pressure on the accelerator as left foot comes completely off the clutch. We’re moving. No stalling this time round. I smiled to myself. A job well done. And no one around to see the initial stall so - therefore - it didn’t happen.

I headed back down towards the wall. I wasn’t speeding but nor was I taking it easy. I slammed on the brakes only when I reached the sign I had seen when I first came over the wall. With the handbrake engaged, I jumped from the car and made my way round to remind myself of what the sign said.

A massive area divided into various zones. I wanted zone ‘B’ which was apparently directly behind the wall in front of me. It had to be anyway, regardless of what the sign said, for that was the one I came over initially. There were three houses marked out on the map. Surprisingly, considering how easily I had managed to get myself lost, they wouldn’t have been hard to stumble across had I stuck to roads as opposed to traipsing through the undergrowth and woodlands. I don’t feel stupid though. I had to stay relatively hidden. Couldn’t be sure as to whom or what I would have stumbled across on the open roads. The world makes for a scary place when you think it’s full of those things, looters and other survivors.

Knowing what I know now, it still makes for a scary place. To think there are monsters out there, in the real world unaffected by radiation and starvation, who would willingly put other humans what they have put us through.

I traced the outline of the wall on the map with my index finger but I found what appeared to be a gap in the structure. There’s my way in. And going by what I see here, it doesn’t look to be too far.

I couldn’t help but wonder as to whether this was the route we had used when we first entered the area. Did Father unwittingly drive us from here? Or were we dropped off somewhere inside of the zone where there’d be no danger of us accidentally doubling back to the campsite.

Not important.

I have a way in and - more importantly - I have a way back out.

Another triumphant smile as I turned back to my car and jumped in, closing the door behind me. This is it.

PART TWENTY

Before

To the House

Foggy eyesight prevented me from seeing who was man-handling me into what felt to be some kind of transport. They were putting a seat belt on me and trying to get my head to stay back but, despite my own efforts to keep it level too, it kept slumping forward as though the muscles in my neck were mush.

I heard a voice which I didn’t recognise. Female.

“This one is starting to wake up! Who has the tranquiliser?”

Another unrecognised voice answered, “It’s back in the van, I’ll go and get it.”

I tried to speak but felt myself dribble instead.

The female voice continued, “Be quick or else we’ll have to terminate this subject and go in with the three. How are the others?”

“Sleeping peacefully,” said another (male) voice, “the father should be waking up within the next twenty minutes, or so. Long enough for us to get them into position.”

I was trying to make sense of what was being said around me but couldn’t. I heard the words but they meant nothing to my confused brain. I’d felt as though I’d been hit by a sledgehammer or a bus. A throbbing in my head, arms and legs which refused to work and eyesight which refused to focus upon anything despite my best efforts and concentration.

The original female voice was still moaning, “I said we needed a double dosage to be safe. Didn’t I say that? The amount of money it has cost to get them to this level and for what? For it to be ruined just because we didn’t get the dosage right!”

A male voice told her, “Everything will be fine.”

“Well it’d better be because I’m not taking the fall if we have to terminate it here.”

“It won’t come to that!”

Someone was approaching from my right. Or was it my left? I couldn’t tell. Everything sounded as though I was underwater. Wishy washy.

“Here!”

Suddenly, I felt a sharp stabbing in my neck before a weird sensation of a cold fluid spreading through my body at the source of the injection(?).

Eyes heavy. Voices becoming more distant.

Blackness.

* * * * *

Now

It wasn’t long before I was speeding along through the woodlands, sticking to the roads to ensure I didn’t miss the house. I couldn’t help but think how easy the journey had been. I half expected to find the zone’s entrance guarded by people with guns but it wasn’t. It was just a gate system which was easily operated with the touch of a button. Two large, solid gates opened and then closed again as soon as your wheels passed over a pad on the other side.

Admittedly, I hadn’t seen a way of operating the gates from this side of the wall but that wasn’t important. There’d be other ways across just as there had been earlier, when I got across. Worst case scenario, we’d go over that way again.

My head was still pounding from whatever the main cause of the pounding was but it wasn’t bothering me as much as it once was. Not now I’m heading back to my family (not my family) with the news that the world hasn’t ended. Not now that I’m heading back to them the hero. The hero I had so desperately wanted to be the first time I’d left the property as opposed to what I did return to them as (a murderer).

My mind flashed back to the mist of blood which spurted from the man’s head when I removed the axe. My thoughts turning to my teeth ripping through the flesh we had cut from his body. My imagination causing my mouth to water at the mere hint of flesh. I shook the thoughts from my head and tried to concentrate on how Mother and Father would feel when I told them the good news about the world and that I know of a way out.

Everything will be alright.

Mother was behind me, in my mind, reaching around stroking my genitals as I pushed my foot down harder on the accelerator. In the real world, as I was driving, I felt a twitch from below. Ignore it. Besides - it’s not a bad thing...What Mother and I did.  Nor was it bad that I lay with sister. They aren’t family. It’s perfectly natural. The rude thoughts were quick to be replaced by my mind. Replaced with images of what I had done to the technician back in the cabin. The killing. The feasting.

Damn you, I thought as I shook the thoughts from my mind once more.

Nearly home. I must be nearly home. Not my home - I don’t live here. I don’t. I live...I live...I couldn’t find my previous house in the various confused thoughts buzzing through my mind. My mind was too clouded with feasting, fucking and killing. What’s wrong with me? Nothing. Nothing that is my fault anyway.

Everything will be fine when I get Mother, Father and Sister and we all get out of here. Back to the real world. Back to our families...

But how can we go back to them when we can’t remember who they are? Will these thoughts ever come back to us or will we forever be plagued with reminders of the atrocities that we had done when we were living together as a family? These thoughts - the bad ones - are they so easily forgotten when we do return to the normal life or are these things you can never forget? I suspect the latter.

I slammed the brakes on and the car skidded to a halt in the middle of the road.

* * * * *

My Possible Future

Despite returning to our own families when we returned to the ‘real world’, Father, Mother, Sister and I had all vowed to stay in touch. We shared a common bond (the experience we went through) and it was good, sometimes, to get together and talk about the days gone by. After all, we couldn’t forget them. They were impossible to forget. Ill thoughts which just fuelled unpleasant nightmares, disturbing our sleeps. We felt it was a good thing - to meet up and talk about them once a month, maybe a couple of times a month, depending on whether we could fit it into our schedules.

It was as though talking about it with the people who went through the same experience helped to cleanse our souls and temporarily rid ourselves from any demons who were lingering in our minds. Not sure why it worked like that - it just did.

It also meant we could continue seeing each other.

Some of the worst times of my life had been with these three strangers, who I still considered family, and yet some of the best times of my life had been with them too. Today was one of them as I lay back on my large, comfortable bed with both Carmen and Kelly working the shaft of my penis. One with her mouth and the other with her tongue and hand.

I couldn’t have been happier when I received the text from Brian saying he wasn’t going to make it today but he hoped that we’d have a good ‘meet’. As soon as I read the text to the girls, I instantly knew what it meant.

Kelly, still expertly using her tongue on my scrotum, re-positioned herself until she was sitting on my face. I couldn’t help but remember the first time she did this. The day I believed her to be my real mother. When she sat on my face then, grinding her cunt against my mouth, I felt sick to my stomach as her juices smeared over my face. Now it’s different though. Now I can’t get enough of her taste and actively try and pull her down upon my face by holding her by the waist and pushing downwards. Even if she wants to get off - she’d have to struggle against my grip - not that she ever did.

I pulled my tongue out of her sweet tasting pussy and pulled myself up the bed a little so that I could lick at her arse-hole. Not something I had ever done before - that I could remember - and not sure why I felt the urge to do it this time but, as soon as I pushed in with my tongue, I knew it had been a shrewd move and - within seconds - I felt the familiar and pleasant tingling of an orgasm brewing.

I pulled out and muffled through with, “I’m going to cum!” and with that I did. The most powerful orgasm I had felt for as long as I could remember shot from me. Carmen - good girl that she is - caught it all in her mouth and must have expertly swallowed for I didn’t feel any of it splash anywhere on my naked body.

Kelly moved from my face, as soon as my hands fell dead to the side of my body. She stopped licking at my testicles and started to passionately kiss Carmen on the mouth. I couldn’t help but watch with fascination as they swapped my semen from one mouth to the other - both girls seemingly unable to get enough of it.

I hope they don’t want to kiss me afterwards.

Both girls moved away from my body, giving me room to move and sit up. Kelly lay on her back as Carmen kissed her way down her body until her face was buried between Kelly’s easily spread legs. Kelly sighed with pleasure as Carmen began to flick her tongue against her clitoris.

I’d have loved to have stayed and watched but I couldn’t. Not whilst dinner was cooking slowly in the oven. It had already been in there for about four hours and I was sure it would be almost ready. I jumped off the bed and walked through my small flat until I got to the kitchen.

I stepped over part of the body of the new postman who had been knocking on my door with a parcel earlier that day and opened the door to the oven. Inside was the rest of the postman. The aroma that spilled from within made my senses dance and mouth water.

Kelly was screaming through the flat with a body-shuddering orgasm and I couldn’t help but think she’d be doing the same again later when her mouth wraps around this piece of succulent meat.

The size of the postman - I just knew he’d make for a tasty meal.

I closed the oven door. Another ten minutes or so, I reckon.

Long enough to give Carmen the orgasm she is owed.

I walked back through to the bedroom. Kelly’s face was already between Carmen’s legs, Carmen’s hands holding her head in place. She was grinding against her. Carmen is clearly being taken care of and I couldn’t help but stare at Kelly’s naked ass sticking up in the air.

I licked my lips and moved in for a closer taste.

PART TWENTY-ONE

Now

My Family

I opened the car door and threw up onto the road outside. I paused a moment, unsure of whether more sick was to follow. Only when I was completely satisfied there was no more did I close the door again. I sat up in the driver’s seat. I didn’t know what the future was going to hold for us but the one my mind painted...It proved to me that there isn’t a place in society for people like us. Not now. The government made sure of that.

Besides - my idea of a future may be different to how Father, Mother and Sister would picture it, if they were to get back to the real world. If they knew the truth of what happened to us, they may not want to see each other again. They may even have the strength to kill themselves.

Given the dark path they took in the house though, I’m sure they wouldn’t. I’m sure they’d carry on living just as they are now. Unable to break the evil habits. Unable to fit back into a normal society.

For all of us - the damage is done and it’s only now that I realise what needs to be done. There is only one way we’re going to be going back now. I’m not even sad about it either. If anything, I want it. Because it is for the best.

I slipped the car into first gear again and resumed the journey down the winding road with thoughts ranging from a corrupt future, in the real world, to the taste of flesh and the feeling of being inside sister. The most prominent thought, though, being what I was going to tell my family and how they would receive me, given Father’s feelings towards me as I left the house.

It wasn’t long before the house came into my line of sight. Nestled there, in a small opening, surrounded by trees either side of it. It looked so picturesque there. The perfect country escape. The perfect hideout. My heart beat faster at the anticipation of seeing my family once more; excitement and fear (still worrying about Father’s reaction to what I have to say to him).

I beeped the horn as the car rolled to a stop outside of the home. I could see Father standing in the dining room window - watching out. He didn’t look pleased to see me. He mouthed something, though I’m not sure what. I was thankful when Mother and Sister appeared at the window, next to him. Thankful to see them and thankful he hadn’t killed either of them yet because he was feeling peckish.

Sister disappeared from sight. Seconds later the front door opened and she came running down towards the car with a grin on her face and her arms outstretched. Father was shouting for her, to turn around no doubt, but she didn’t hear him just as I didn’t either.

I climbed from the car and welcomed Sister’s embrace.

“I was so worried about you!” she exclaimed as we hugged. I smiled. “What happened? Whose is the car? How far did you get? What did you see?” So many questions.

“I need to speak to Father,” I told her.

She didn’t need to go and get Father. He was already standing in the doorway, looking down to where I was standing next to ‘my’ car.

“Well, well...Look who it is.”

The thoughts I had, as I was driving home, on how best to fix this flashed through my mind again; I realise what needs to be done. There is only one way we’re going to be going back now. I’m not even sad about it either. If anything, I want it. Because it is for the best.

And the way back to normal starts with an apology.

“I’m sorry!” I told him.

He took a step back, clearly shocked by what I said.

“What?”

“You’re right, Father; you were always right and I should have listened to you. I’m sorry that I didn’t. I’m sorry that I turned my back on you, Mother and Sister. It was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”

Mother appeared at the doorway too, a smile on her face as she heard what I said. Sister was smiling too. The only one who wasn’t smiling was Father.

“There’s nothing out there, Father...” I continued. And I meant it too. There is nothing out there. Not for us. I realised it as I was driving back to them with the truth of what happened. Even if they believed me - where would they go? Where would we go? We’re monsters now and there’d be no room for beasts such as us out there. Not in the real world. There is nothing out there. Nothing at all. And if it weren’t for each other, we’d be alone. “I found a camp but it was destroyed. Bodies everywhere. There’s nothing out there but carnage and chaos. Please - let me come home...Let me back into the family.” I was practically begging.

Father still wasn’t saying anything. He looked to Sister. He looked to Mother. They both seemed pleased to see me. They both seemed to want me back in their lives. Both of them accepting of my apology. Father looked to me. Without a word he simply nodded and stepped to the side, keeping the door held open with his hand. Sister gave a little jump for joy and ran on into the house, ahead of me. I smiled and turned back to the road from where I’d just come...

...There’s nothing out there for us.

I turned back to Father and nodded a thank you in his direction.

This is where people like us belong. Tucked out of the way from the real world where we can do minimum harm and, more importantly to us, where we can live in ignorant bliss from the heavy guilt of what we had done to survive. What we had become. The journey here made me realise that ignorance was indeed bliss. I didn’t want to see their faces, even after what they had become, when they realised it was all for nothing. I struggled with it enough myself. I couldn’t inflict that on anyone else. Especially Sister. I only hope that, when I start drinking the water once more, I’ll soon start forgetting the truths I’d discovered.

I’m not sure how this story ends. The government might continue running the experiment from beyond the wall, as soon as they send more people in to run the camp, or they may send in armies to terminate the program. There’s a good chance they could simply turn their back on us too - knowing that everything this side of the wall will eventually starve to death as no more prisoners will be coming by. And then, of course, there’s the chance that Father’s smile is nothing more than a smoke screen to his true intentions and tonight, the night I go to lay with my sister, will be my last for I could wake, exhausted, bound to the dining room table. Father’s knife at my throat.

I stepped into the house and joined my family.

Father closed the door.

The End

Author’s Notes

I suppose I should start with an apology really. I understand that the story you just read is sick. I appreciate that and sort of expect some flak for it (on some levels) too. Just believe me when I say that not all of my stories are as dark and twisted (gory or incestious) as the piece you’ve just read (if indeed you managed to read it all the way through to this point).

Know this too...

It wasn’t my fault.

I was never going to write this story. I have a long list of ideas and stories that I need to get written down before I am put into my wooden box and buried under the earth and “Sick Bastards” was not amongst the list.

So how did it come to be written?

Simple.

Ladies and gentleman, I present to you Graeme Reynolds of Horrific Tales Publishing. Graeme and I are acquantiances on Facebook and (dare I say it) friends too. At least I regard him as a friend. For all I know, he hates me. It’s nothing something we’ve actually discussed.

Anyway, if you’re on my author page on Facebook, you’re most likely aware that Graeme and I are working together on a new novel (due out in 2014) called “ART”, a story I wrote with the talented author Michael Bray.

ART is a dark tale, there is no doubt about that, but it isn’t what I would call truly horrific (like this title) but it does indeed have its moments. One evening I was chatting to Graeme on Facebook (as you do) and he signed off saying he was going to go and read more from sick bastards (myself and Bray). He actually meant he was going off to finish reading ART but my brain took it in a whole new direction. I just sat there, at my desk, thinking he hadn’t seen anything yet and if he wanted sick bastards - well, I’d be the guy to give it to him.

Having just finished ART and being between projects, I immediately penned the opening to this story (the opening that you guys read two hundred and forty odd pages ago as it remained unchanged). I just wanted to make it sick (proper sick) and to make him realise that the work he was currently reading was nowhere near as dark as I could take things. Well I think I did it well. The opening pages including sex (incestuous at that), a hint of blasphemy and - of course - cannibalism. I sent it off with a smile on my face and even posted it onto my author page.

To my surprise my readers seemed to lap it up and even wanted more.

Well - who was I to argue?

By the following morning I had the plot in my head and so many twists as to what was actually happening that I immediately began work on the full piece and it turned into my next serious project. Not bad considering it started off as a joke. More surprisingly - it is also my longest piece of fiction that I’ve written on my own!

All because of Graeme Reynolds.

Anyway - I won’t tell you where my dark thoughts came from (for this piece), just trust me when I say that I haven’t actually slept with any of my family members and I almost definitely haven’t eaten a person in real life. At least, not that I am aware of.

I hope you enjoyed the story (is ‘enjoyed’ the right word?) and that you aren’t put off from supporting my work! Until the next time - take care!

Kind Regards,

Matt Shaw

FROM THE SAME AUTHOR

Novels

The Infestation

The Lost Son

Love Life

The Vampire’s Treaty

ART

(The Peter Chronicles)

Happy Ever After

G.S.O.H Essential

A Fresh Start

PETER

All Good Things

Once Upon a TIme

9 Months Book One

9 Months Book Two

9 Months Book Three

Non-Fiction titles

im fine

Still Fine

PlentyOfFreaks

Wasting Stamps

Self-publishing: Releasing your book to the digital market

Collections

Scribblings From a Dark Place

9 Months Trilogy

Happy Ever After Trilogy

Reviews, Critics & Mystery Shopping (DELETED TITLE)

The Story Collection: Volume One

The Story Collection: Volume Two

Shorts

A Taste of Your Fears (part of the Literature-Ly You range)

A Taste of Your Fears 2 (part of the Literature-Ly You range)

Taste of Horror

The Peter Chronicles (includes bonus stories)

Novellas

Smile

The Dead Don’t Knock

Writer’s Block

Buried

The Last Stop

The Chosen Routes

A Christmas to Remember (YOU choose the story)

Romance is Dead

The Breakdown

The Cabin

The 8th

The Cabin II: Asylum

The Missing Years of Thomas Pritchard

Consumed

Influenza: Strain ‘Z’

Heaven Calling

Picture Books

I Hate Fruit & Veg

Want to find Matt Shaw?

www.facebook.com/mattshawpublications

www.mattshawpublications.co.uk

matt@mattshawpublications.co.uk

Table of Contents

- PART ONE
- PART TWO
- PART THREE
- PART FOUR
- PART FIVE
- PART SIX
- PART SEVEN
- PART EIGHT
- PART NINE
- PART TEN
- PART ELEVEN
- PART TWELVE
- PART THIRTEEN
- PART FOURTEEN
- PART FIFTEEN
- PART SIXTEEN
- PART SEVENTEEN
- PART EIGHTEEN
- PART NINETEEN
- PART TWENTY
- PART TWENTY-ONE
- Author’s Notes
- FROM THE SAME AUTHOR