Hear the Monsters Cry

The sky was an infinite stormy grey. Debris littered the street, the black asphalt peeking out from underneath the carpet. Cars were scattered and left to rot. Their windows shattered, roofs and doors dented, some were even discarded upside-down. Buildings were falling apart, the crumbled mess on the pavement; smashed windows wept razor-sharp shards, leaving behind gaping holes. The most unwelcome of these sights were the corpses rotting in amongst the debris, their putrid stench infiltrating the streets. The sounds of gunshots were no longer a surprise. Wailing, screaming and cries for help resonated through the stagnant air even though they knew no one would come.

After 6 years of war, it was every man, woman and child for themselves.

Anything human was now a threat. The only certainty was that to survive, you had to shoot first. If you waited too long then you would die. There are no second chances or rewinds in such an ugly game. Your corpse would accompany the sick parade rotting silently on the silent streets in a cold and silent world.

Anna Walker had been vomited by the world into a war with eternity. A stale wind hissed at her choppily cut hair as she walked through the quiet streets, a rifle gun in a white-knuckled grip in her gritty, blood-stained hands. A shotgun and sniper rifle was positioned across her back. Two handguns were strapped to her hips, alongside three throwing knives hiding in a worn, leather belt. Her tired eyes continued to scan the area for any movement or sounds that could incriminate a threat.

She stopped dead as the echoes of footsteps sounded ahead. She moved to grab her rifle, ready to make a quick and easy kill but stopped mid-action. There was more than one set of footsteps. Anna scanned the area once more with a deadly focus. A small group turning around the street corner caught her attention.

In an instinctual decision, Anna ducked behind an overturned car, out of the open and away from the prying eyes of the group. It was unusual to see a group together. Most tried to survive alone, as was most practical. You couldn’t trust anybody; Anna had already learned that lesson the hard way.

She heard the group come closer, their footsteps pounding louder against the cracked cement of the road. She gripped her rifle in her hands and peered through a broken window in the car she was hiding behind.

A small group of three men and one woman came into view. They looked worse for wear; their clothes were torn, tears decorating the dull and dirtied fabric, coppery brown flecks danced and hung on them, reminiscent of spilt wine soaking into their skin.

It wasn’t wine.

‘No one here,’ a man with ice blue eyes muttered, his voice heavy with discontent as he looked around the empty streets.

Anna heard a dry jaunting voice over the others, ‘Damn I wanted to kill one today.’ She felt her stomach twist into an ugly knot.

‘You’ll get another chance Craig,’ the woman spoke softly, a twisted cold smirk crossing her face, ‘After me of course, I get the first kill, ladies first after all.

‘Maybe we’ll get a kid, they always scream the loudest.’ The group hooted and laughed at the prospect of a child screaming and begging for their life.

Anna’s grip on her gun tightened in anger and her palms sweated in fear. These people had lost their humanity, become killing machines, with no love, empathy, moral or ethical centre. They’d become monsters and she didn’t have a problem with killing monsters.

Anna turned slowly and moved to the side of the car, getting a clear shot at one of the men’s head. She breathed in deep, focusing her senses before pulling the trigger.

Screams and cries of alarm sounded from the remaining three as their companion fell to the floor, blood pooling around his head, dead instantly. Anna quickly ducked behind the car, to avoid being seen.

‘Looks like we’ve got a live one!’ one yelled, his tone gleeful despite the death of his comrade. Anna heard the cock of their guns being loaded. ‘You’ll pay for that one.'

She waited as she listened to their footsteps. One was coming close. Anna lowered her gun to the asphalt underneath before quietly reaching for one of her knives. ‘Come out, come out and play!’

In a fluid motion, Anna flung her arm to the left and caught the man directly in the stomach. He cried out in pain but was silenced as Anna stabbed another knife through his neck.

Unfortunately, Anna’s actions caused her to become visible to the remaining group members. She managed to duck just in time as a shower of bullets rained down on her. Anna pulled out her handgun, flicking the safety clip off. She jumped up and shot directly at the woman before ducking back down. By the cry of pain, she knew that she hit her target. Anna looked to see her on the ground cradling her knee. Her once beautiful face was scarred and cringing in pain as she whimpered.

Anna shot again.

The woman collapsed, dead on the asphalt. Blood splattered across her leg, the second bullet between her eyes now glazed over with death.

Anna had lost sight of the other man while she was distracted by the woman, but the sound of a rock rolling gave her enough warning to jump out of the way as the last man shot at her.

‘You are dead, girl.’

She managed to avoid bullet after bullet, ducking and rolling out of the way before she came to a stop in the middle of the street facing the man, like an old western shootout.

The man glared, his brown eyes alight with anger. With a firm hand, he raised his arm; gun trained at Anna’s forehead. An evil twisted smirk danced across his face, as he pulled the trigger but to his horror and surprise, nothing happened. Nothing but a useless clicking as the gun tried to fire a bullet that was not there.

‘Go to hell,’ Anna said before shooting her gun. The man’s body thudded to the floor before it all went silent.

Anna let out a deep breath, glancing around the street at the four dead bodies littering the road. Her stomach twisted painfully at the sight of all the blood. It was her life or theirs; she reasoned trying to convince herself that she’d done the right thing. They were monsters.

Anna slowly trudged back towards the car she used to shield herself. Snatching up her rifle from the ground, she turned and pulled the two knives out of the dead man’s body, wiping away the blood on her green sleeve. She slung her rifle back over her shoulder with her shotgun and strapped her knives back into her belt.

Now came the worst part, searching the bodies.

The men had the most ammo, with several water bottles and food packets stashed into their backpacks. When she came to the woman, she continued her regular search system until she saw a gold chain around her neck. Pulling it out she realised it was a necklace with a heart-shaped locket. Anna swallowed before flicking the locket open.

Inside was a photo, an image of a little girl with brown pigtails and a toothy grin staring at the camera. Anna’s eyes closed as a wave of emotion crashed over her, much like a stormy wave hitting a rocky shore. She glanced down at the dead women beside her, dead green eyes staring up at her lifeless.

She could easily guess what had happened. She was a mother who had lost her daughter in the war and to stop the pain she became devoid of emotion, a human that didn’t feel the pain of losing the person she loved most.

She became a monster.

Looking down at the locket and at the bright smile of the little girl, she flicked the locket closed and let go of the necklace. The metal made no noise as it came to rest against the woman’s unmoving chest, the heart right above her own. With another pang, her fingers moved and closed her eyes.

Standing up, Anna took in a deep shuttering breath and began to walk away. Her mind drifted away from her as she walked slowly over the cracked road. Thoughts of what life used to be like seemed almost like a dream.

She glanced at shattered glass windows wondering if they used to be shops, filled every day with new customers seeking to buy the items stocked on the high shelves. Perhaps it was an office or apartment building lobby, neighbours waving at each other, a friendly greeting as they passed.

She didn’t know. It was impossible to tell from the ruins.

Glancing up at the fading sun, Anna glanced around trying to find a spot to hide out for the night. Nights were even more dangerous than days.

She let her green eyes scan the area she had walked into. She was away from the crowded streets of the city, though the suburbs didn’t look much better. The houses were broken down, windows smashed, and some were now nothing but ashes. The streets were littered with debris as bits of the asphalt cracked open.

She wondered what the street had looked like 6 years ago. Green lawns, white picket fences, children riding their bikes up and down the streets while their mothers gardened, and their fathers washed the cars. It was a happy place, one full of laughter and carelessness. Now that picture was gone, dissolved, broken, and lost, just like all other memories of the old world.

Anna let out a sigh of relief as she caught sight of two metal doors against the side of a burned house. An old basement entrance would be enough shelter for the night. She jogged over and fiddled with the lock keeping the slanted doors shut. She glanced around cautiously before drawing her handgun and shot at the lock, the padlock blasting away from the doors. In one swift move, Anna yanked the doors open and entered the darkness in front of her.

It didn’t look like much, Anna mused, power tools hanging uselessly on the racks, bits of wood and scrap pieces of metal littering the stone floor. It was enough though. It was enough for one night.

Anna managed to find a couple of old candles hidden in boxes thrown in the corner to be forgotten. She struck a match and light filled the room. Then Anna nibbled on small pieces of bread and meat from her pack. Food was scarce and she had to ration out her meals if she wanted it to last long. Water dribbled down her chin as she drank from a bottle, the droplets quickly wiped away with a brush of her hand.

Anna sat in silence surrounded by candles in someone’s basement. She wondered if it had been a family’s, a husband and wife with kids running amuck upstairs. Perhaps the basement was used as an escape route. A quiet place for the man of the house to work in the silence of the night. Perhaps, it was a place the mother used for quiet as she did the children’s dirty laundry.

All Anna could do was wonder.

As she lay down on the stone floor, an old worn blanket thrown over her body from her pack, her mind took a turn to the group she killed. If the woman was a mother, she wondered what the men had once been. Fathers, brother, husbands, all titles lost in the chaos of war. Identities lost as their humanity faded and monsters they became.

Anna couldn’t help but wonder, before exhaustion and the temptation of sleep overwhelmed her, if they were monsters … what did that make her?