One Less

Sighing, I glance outside across the hardened sand and fierce spires that litter the horizon line. It’s a beautiful view, believe it or not. Sure, the whole landscape is a delightful shade of beige, but it’s the only landscape we’ve known for the past twenty years. Ever since the Ruin. And trust me, in today’s society, you’ve really got to appreciate the little things. For me, it’s the view from this godforsaken room.

“Evaminora,” Sir snaps, and my eyes pan lazily to him, setting his teeth even more on edge. “Do you have any defense for yourself? Or would you like to continue burying yourself in this hole you’ve dug?” With a humorless chuckle, the old codger lifts his wrinkling, sun-spotted hands in a placating gesture. “Actually, no, this time, you’ve dug yourself a crater.”

I don’t have a defense for myself. I can’t talk my way out of what I did, no amount of smiling or joking is going to lessen the severity of my actions, and really, would I want to spare myself?

I’ll be dying today. Well, tonight, after the sun goes down, after it’s safer for people to be outside.

Sir’s mouth is set in a grim line, and I take a moment to really absorb the man.

He’s in his mid-fifties, with a slim build and a poor excuse of a comb-over on top of his pale head. His beady, brown eyes are shrunken into his gaunt face, but still sparkle with an unquestionable intelligence that demands he not be underestimated. It’s the only reason he’s lived this long.

This Ruined world chewed up and spit out anyone who was too weak for the new environment. Most days, temperatures breach 120 degrees and the UV index is typically in the 40s. I mean, forget cancer; This kind of radiation puts Chernobyl’s creations to shame.

Sir would’ve died in the first wave, except he’s got a smart mouth and a quick wit, and quickly made himself invaluable to the people who took over. Hell, he’s been Vitas’ right-hand man for as long as I’ve been here.

My jaw tenses at the thought of Vitas.

You don’t need to be riddled with radiation to be a monster. The world knew that before the Ruin, but afterwards? It’s part of Survival 101. Don’t trust the ones who look too good.

“Look at her, Reg,” Bianca scoffs at me with a disdainful once-over, “She’s not taking this seriously. This is what I’m talking about. The rats spread pestilence and plague, and there was talk of a mutiny long before she began these little stunts.” Bianca spits the word like it’s a bad taste on her tongue, as though it tastes worse than the desert dog meat we eat when things get really bad.

In case it’s unclear, I’m one of the rats she’s talking about.

Sir—Reg—sighs. No one but me notices the irritated glance he gives her, but then again, no one else knows Sir’s nuances like I do.

“Your silence buys you nothing,” he tells me with a hard tone, and I go back to looking at the landscape.

“My voice buys me nothing either,” I say bitterly, “If the Council wants my death as punishment for killing Vitas, then so be it. Wasteful is better off without him.”

What a shitty name for a city, right?

Wasteful.

It’s fitting, obviously, but still shitty.

Full of waste. The dilapidated houses, the streets filled with the trash of times before the Ruin. Other cities bring us their pitiful leftovers and hand-me-downs because they too know we are a wasted town.

“You were not appointed judge, jury, and executioner, girl. You have no proof of the things you accused Vitas of. And conveniently for you, he’s not here to defend himself.” Kilo’s raspy voice comes out as a hiss, and I roll my bored expression over the him. The dark-skinned man was one of Vitas’ most loyal supporters, and a murmur of agreement ripples through the rest of the council.

My temper flares hotly for the first time since my knife drove through Vitas’ black heart.

“Proof? What proof could I have? What proof could any of us have, short of you all being in the same room at the time.” Standing angrily, I note with satisfaction, that more than half the individuals sitting at the large and somewhat derelict table flinch.

Good. They should be scared of me.

I lift my shirt, exposing the tanned, sun-stained skin of my stomach and abdomen. It’s covered in round, discolored, circular scars as most all our skin is, from blisters we got when the sun first made us all sick. From a sickness that more than 75% of the world didn’t survive.

With those are the handful of linear scars from fights won. And on my left flank, there’s a distinct cavity of missing flesh with a clear crescent impression on both sides. It’s not just a bite mark but where Vitas ripped my flesh away with his teeth.

Bianca looks away with a grimace, Kilo’s clicks his tongue in annoyance, and Sir simply meets my eyes with indecipherable scrutiny. The rest of the Council shifts uncomfortably.

That’s the problem with these people.

They don’t know what it’s like for us less fortunate. They don’t understand what life in the sand entails or the horrors we’ve been subjected to. Even after the world was destroyed by humanity’s greed, there’s still a class distinction. And an over abundance of privilege.

“Here’s your proof,” I hiss, “Go find the other girls with similar scars and ask them who did it.” I laugh humorlessly, a dark, grating noise that has everyone’s shoulders tensing. “Oh, wait, you can’t. Because none of the others survived being eaten by the man who claimed he’d help them.”

Zombies were such a popular part of pop culture back when we had things like television and, oh gosh, well, electricity. The reality of it is much less enthralling.

You’d think that the radiated mutants who we can no longer classify as humans would be scary enough, but no. Here, we have humans, who are still humans, eating people.

It’s one of the few taboo we adhere to, but I’m just one measly woman with a bloody knife and my word against a dead man’s. Still, I have no regrets.

Lowering my tattered shirt, I sit, and my anger simmers down once again.

“Wasteful is better off without Vitas. Bury your head in the sand if you must, but I stand by my actions. No one else will be hurt by the monster again.”

The landscape calls to me, and I gaze with resignation at the mountains floating hazily in the distance while the Council argues with hushed murmurs. I tune them out.

Unconsciously, my fingers lift to the heart-shaped locket that sits around my neck, the last connection I have to life before the Ruin. It was a gift from my mother for my fifth birthday. She’d clasped it around my neck, her golden hair floating around us and illuminated by the streaming sunlight as she leaned down.

“Happy birthday, my little morning star,” she said, her voice full of affection. Kneeling next to me, she’d opened the locket, revealing the tiny picture of her and I at the hospital when I was born. “See? Now we’ll always be together.”

A year later, she died in the first wave.

I’ve forgotten what Mom looked like. I lost the photo years ago, and my thin, wiry frame combined with the sun-bleached, cropped hair doesn’t exactly boast of our resemblance.

But when I hold the locket, I remember her golden hair and the feeling of being so loved at one point in my life.

I hear Sir sigh, a weary sound that pulls my attention back to Council arguing over what’s to be done with me.

“It’s decided then,” he says with a surprising amount of regret. His eyes meet mine. “Evaminora, you are hereby sentenced to death for the crime of murder without just cause in the first degree.”

Despite my resignation to the fact that I’d die for my crime, my heart stutters at the words being said aloud. Almost woodenly, I find myself nodding, and it’s not much later that I’m escorted from the room, down the many stairs and into the basement that smells mildly of old excrement and piss.

Bianca’s face was satisfied. Typical. She hates us lower people who keep Wasteful at its pathetic state of impoverished. Kilo was smug. Whether he genuinely believes that Vitas was innocent, or he’s just salty over the fact that Vitas met his end at the hands of a woman, I don’t really care.

It’s over. Wasteful is safe from just one less monster skulking about in the desert sun.

I’m sitting in the floor with my arms braced on my knees when the door opens again, and Sir stands at the entrance flanked by two guards.

“It’s time.”

What I hadn’t anticipated in all this was the numbness in my mind and body as I’m walked through the only building more than two stories tall left in Wasteful and out onto the street where its residents have been rounded up for the execution. The dirty, haggard faces that follow me are a mix of emotions. Some are bored, tracking my movements with disinterest. Some are confused, filled with recognition. What could the little 20-something--year-old girl have done to warrant death?

Others I recognize myself, and they look at me with gratitude. They’ve lost loved ones to Vitas, and tears track down their sallow cheeks. Stupid. Don’t waste what little liquid you have on tears for me.

With the sun lost over the horizon line, the sky is a dusty yellow color, and the air is dry but less than a hundred degrees, at least.

The old, wooden platform I’m led onto looks over the whole square, set right in the middle of the two square miles of tents and haphazardly thrown together cars that form some sort of protection against the sun during the day. I scan the crowd, my eyes tracking over people unseeingly.

My hands which are bound together with a zip tie lift again to my locket while I listen to the hollow and echoing words Sir is telling the crowd.

Mom’s golden hair fills my vision as I close my eyes.

Her whispered words fill my ears as the noose is placed around my neck.

“Happy birthday,” she says.

For just a moment, her face floats in front of mine, and I choke back a sob at the full rosy cheeks and the pink lips that split into a bright grin.

I’d forgotten.

Her eyes were blue. A greenish blue that changed color depending on the light.

“I love you,” her voice rings out in my back of my mind.

The noose tightens, and I take a deep, cleansing breath.

I love you too, Mom.

The wooden hatch below me starts to fall.

I’ll see you soon.