Quietus

It’s dark now. They’ll find me soon. They’ve been trailing me for a week. I can’t run anymore, not on a broken leg. The splint I fashioned from a broom and rags has slipped, and I can’t tighten it more without cutting off the circulation. I already can’t feel my foot. At least the bleeding has stopped.

They’ve found me twice since the accident, but both times I drove them away. I killed several of them with well-placed shots, but I’ve used all the bullets. All that’s left is my knife. That’s enough for one or two, but they travel in packs now. They’ve learned.

I slip the locket over my head and hold it in my clenched fist; the chain wrapped around my hand. After a moment, I force myself to relax and open my hand to examine the locket. It’s nothing special, just the kind you used to find in any low-end jewelry store. It’s a small, gold heart on a chain, with a clasp that would open it to reveal a photo inside. I turn it over and over in my hand, as I’ve done so many times before. The thin gold plating has almost all worn off now, revealing the dull brass underneath. There is no photo. I can’t even remember what my lover looked like. It has been too long and I’ve seen too much death.

They killed my entire family: my parents, my aunt, my sister and her 2-year-old daughter. That had been early on, when things first started getting bad. After that, I joined the resistance, even though I’d never been a fighter. I think I was searching for anything to make sense of all the death. Hunting for some place to belong, something to do. A week after I joined, I met her. We became friends, and soon inseparable lovers. We were a team.

A killing team.

At first it was self-defense. We killed only when they attacked us. We spent our days running and our nights hiding from them. With time, we became hunters; the prey stalking our would-be predators. The memory makes me smile. We were good at it. We’d killed dozens, maybe hundreds. The smile turns into something more grim. Better them than us, right? If we didn’t kill them, they’d have surely killed us. That made it all right, didn’t it?

For a time, anyway.

It has been nine months since she died.

The enemy didn’t kill her, at least not directly. We’d found a nest of them the day before. A nest of what had once been women and children, but were now just the enemy. They were hiding in a cellar with a single door. We built an incendiary bomb that evening while we hid and the next morning we dropped it into the cellar and bolted the door from the outside. How they’d screamed as they died, burning and suffocating in the black smoke that leaked out of the cellar door. That night while I slept, my lover spent one of our precious bullets on her own head.

I’d found the locket the next day. I went back to where my lover’s body still lay in a pool of congealed blood. With my knife I cut a small lock of her hair, just a few strands, coiled them up and put them in the locket where the picture should be. I haven’t opened the locket since then. I can’t bear the thought of losing that last precious memento.

I’ve killed many more of them since then, a lone hunter. But with every death, I hear the screams again. Whenever I close my eyes, I see my lover’s body with the destroyed face. I thought it would get easier, that the memories would fade, but the only memory that has faded is her face.

Why can’t I remember that beautiful face? Why instead do the faces of everyone I’ve killed still haunt me? They were the enemy. They wanted me dead. I only want her alive again for one last night together.

They are coming. I hear them now, scrabbling in the dark. It won’t be long. Why hadn’t I saved one last bullet for myself? I put the locket back around my neck and unsheathe my knife. I’ll see you soon, my darling.