Hunger

The air was stale and wretched. The scent of decay clung to his nostrils like rotten fruit. This was surprisingly a good sign as it helped hide their own stench. They had not been able to bathe for several days now and they were determined to not have the game they were tracking be aware of them.

Glaring around, John took in his surroundings. Thick, dead trunks jutted from the ground and towered high above them. The remnants of what had once been trees. They would continue on for many more miles. The sky was overcast. It was always overcast but it rarely ever rained. A side effect of the damage that was done to the world so long ago.

An eerie mist hugged close to the ground. He watched the fog swirl and reform around his feet with every step he took. The disgusting smell that lingered in this area may have been beneficial but the fog was not. It blinded their view of the “forest” floor and the tracks of their prize that they hoped to follow.

The thought of the animal sent John’s stomach into a frenzy of disgruntled gurgles. He was hungry and his body was really letting him know. It had been two days since their rations had run out and they were in desperate need of finding new food immediately.

A sudden crunch behind John brought him out of his deep thoughts and caused him to jump with a startle. He whirled around to face the culprit of the sudden noise, raising his rifle as he did so. His daughter lay flat on her face before him. He let a smile spread across his face.

She had clearly fallen down out of exhaustion and the weight of the bag on her back. She stared back up at him with dopey, innocent eyes. The kind of look a child would give when caught red handed doing something wrong.

John sighed and shouldered his rifle.

“You should be more careful,” he exclaimed in a rough yet tender voice. The voice a father would give to his daughter when needing to ensue a lesson.

“Sorry, Pappa. I didn’t mean to. I just sort of slipped.” His daughter exclaimed as she clambered to her feet awkwardly under the weight of her luggage. She roughly brushed the dirt off herself.

John rolled his eyes. His daughter was determined but she was also notoriously stubborn, much like her mother had been. She’d rather admit to clumsiness than reveal that she fell out of exhaustion. It may have been a mistake to bring her along. But he hadn’t had any other choice. She was the only one he could rely on in the settlement. Besides, it was time to show her the cruelties of this hostile world

“Perhaps I have been pushing you too hard lately,” he admitted. “We’ll take a rest for a few moments.”

“But I can keep going!” She insisted while pushing pass her father.

“We rest,” he announced sternly, grabbing her by the arm just a little to aggressively. He regretted the action immediately.

She glared up at him for a moment, sighed with the frustration only a ten year old girl like her could muster and sat abruptly on the forest floor with her arms crossed.

He began to move to sit next to her but a glint of metal caught his eye on the ground where his daughter had fallen. He knelt down and picked the object up. A small heart-shaped locket glinted weakly in the light of the overcast sky.

He opened the locket to find the face of a woman tentatively staring back at him. She had a round, kind face that was framed by bright, blonde hair. Her smile was radiant but also gave off a hint of sadness.

“What is it?” His daughter asked curiously.

John turned to face her while holding the locket.

“You almost lost this,” he snarled angrily, brandishing the locket in her face.

“Oh,” she exclaimed awkwardly. “It was an accident. It won’t happen again.” She declared while reaching for the locket dangling in her father’s hand.

He recoiled.

“No you won’t! You need to be more careful.” He reverberated again, this time with more patience in his voice. He extended the locket once more.

She apprehensively reached for the locket, feeling that this may be another sort of test. When she saw that her father wasn’t going to snatch the locket away from her again, she tenderly took it from his hand and cradled it in her own.

“I don’t mean to be hard on you,” he finally said. “You mean the world to me. But out here, it is far different from what you’re used to. Your mother and I tried to give you as much a sheltered life as we could. But now-” his voice trailed off.

“But now she’s gone.” She finished.

It had only been a week since the fever had taken his wife. But given the lack of resources coupled with the abruptness of the illness, she hadn’t stood a chance. Still, the pain ached strongly and John found himself staring at the locket his daughter was now placing around her neck. He had bequeathed her the locket after his wife’s death and suddenly felt guilty from attempting to deprive her of her mother’s memory.

You never told me what you two did before.” She said.

“Before?” He rebuked curiously.

“Before the world changed.”

This was true. John never liked to talk about the past. It was a bygone era that was likely never to return to how it used to be. He felt it was pointless teaching his daughter about how things were, when it was considerably more useful to teach her how things are. She was never going to experience a civilised world. Why make her dream of it? Maybe another time he would be more lenient or even be in a good mood to reminisce. It was not today, however.

“Perhaps I can go into more detail another time,” John said sadly. “Ready to keep moving?”

She made to protest but thought it best not to hassle her father about issues he did not feel comfortable sharing.

“I promise I will share stories from before when I am in the mood to talk about them.” He assured. For now, let’s get moving again.”

His daughter nodded slowly and with determination.

“Alright then, let’s move out!”

They spent the next few hours moving silently and slowly through the dead forest, following the tracks of the animal they were hoping would be their prey. Eventually, the naked trees began to thin and rolling sand dunes rose mightily before them.

The tracks were even more clear now. There was no wind to blow them away and the sand was etched deeply with the foot prints. Carefully and cautiously, they made their way up the first dune.

After clambering up and down three low dunes, a towering dune stood before them. It must have been at least fifty metres high. John would have preferred to skirt the dune and find where it’s crest began and climb from there. It was always much easier to climb the sand that way. However, the tracks just shot straight up the sheer side of the wall. With a grunt of disapproval, John and his daughter began to climb.

Reaching the top and peering over the crest, John took in his surroundings. The world before him was riddled with high rising dunes that stretched out into a foreboding desert. Despite the lack of sun from the overcast day, heat still emanated off the sand. A thick haze of heat radiated off the horizon that could be made out far off in the distance.

John squinted his eyes and brought his hand over them to shield them from the glare. He could make something out down in the crevice in front of him.

He withdrew his rifle from his shoulder and beckoned his daughter to do the same. He stared down the scope of his gun. Through the cross hair he could see the beast they had been tailing for days. It was beginning to clamber and stagger exhaustedly up their neighbouring hill. A slight limp slowed it’s pace. It’s back was turned away from the two of them. This was good. It meant this would be easy to kill as it couldn’t flee fast.

He tapped his daughter on the shoulder and pointed in the direction of the animal. She aimed the gun the way John had pointed and peered down the sights of her rifle.

“You see it?” He asked in an excited whisper.

“Yes.” She said after a few moments.

“Do you think you can hit it from this distance?”

Another pause came from his daughter. This one a little longer.

“How far?”

“One hundred and fifty metres at most.”

“Yes.” She finally stated.

“Good! Shoot it!”

His daughter lowered her gun to look at her father in disapproval.

“I don’t like this. He’s injured and defenceless out there,” she argued. “And alone.”

“We’ll be putting it out of it’s misery then.” John said, wondering how best to proceed with his daughter having sudden doubts.“Put your gun down a second. I need to give you some advice when it comes to these sorts of situations.”

She lowered her weapon conspicuously.

“I understand that you would second guess this. Your mother and I did when we were younger. But it’s best you don’t humanise them. It only makes it that much harder to pull the trigger. Do you understand?”

She nodded unsurely.

“Good! Now raise your gun and look down the sights again. View them as you would a bird or a dog. They’re just an animal and we’re hungry.”

His daughter obliged and looked out at her target again.

“Can you still make the shot?”

“Yes.” She said. This time with more confidence in her voice.

“Shoot him!”

“But dad!” She whined while turning to face him again.

“Are you hungry?”

She nodded slowly and sadly.

“Yes.”

“Then bloody shoot it!”

She sighed deeply, turned to aim, and quickly pulled the trigger. The sound of the rifle firing cut through the air loudly. It had been so quiet that the sound seemed to echo away for eternity.

John peered down his own gun and saw their prize splayed on the ground. Blood drooled from his wound and seeped into the ground where the sand drank it in happily.

“Good shot, sweetheart!” John said, barely hiding the pride for his daughter. “He’s down but not dead. Don’t worry, he won’t be going far.”

It took them ten minutes to carefully clamber down the other side of the dune and make their way to the body. By the time John and his daughter reached it, it was dead. It had dragged itself a few feet, leaving a rugged trail of disturbed sand behind its lifeless corpse. But life had unmistakably left it’s body now.

John lowered himself towards the body, careful not to look in the dead eyes that stared blankly up into the sky. He didn’t want to humanise the man and disregard the lesson he’d just taught his daughter. His hair was matted and oily and his clothes worn and torn. He began stripping the corpse of the human being he had coaxed his only daughter into murdering.

“Now we eat?”

John turned to look at his daughter. She had an innocent hunger in her eyes. There was no humanity in the look she now wore upon her face. Only carnal appetites.

“Yes,” John declared menacingly with a broadening evil grin. “Now, we eat.”