'Til Death

The old world ended in fire. Marris remembered that much. He’d been a different person back then, sure, but he could still remember the Fall. Something like that you don’t forget.

The campfire crackled in front of him, a reminder of days gone, never to come again. He took a swig from the flask on his hip, the punch of cheap liquor failing to provide the distraction he sought. He swished the bitter spirit around in his mouth for a moment, swallowed some, then spit out the rest. It was hard to find liquor at all these days, he knew that, but this stuff tasted like piss.

Standing, he poured the remaining drink from the flask along the edges of the fire, the flames roaring in response. Marris slid the flask into a pocket in his tattered jacket, an old biker style leather coat. He’d taken it from some upscale department store when everything went to shit. Most took toilet paper, blankets, food. He’d taken a coat. Had to look like a badass at the end of the world, right?

He spit at the thought. In the days after the Fall he came to realize that looking tough and being tough were very different things. He’d lost people. He’d done things he’d never imagined he would. He knew in his heart that he wasn’t a bad man, though. Survival of the fittest was all it was. The simple logic of a world gone to hell.

As it turned out, kill or be killed was a pretty fucked up way to live. He’d seen a lot of people die. People he cared about and plenty more he didn’t. Of those who’d lived through the end of the world with him, only he remained. The 38 years he’d lived before the Fall felt like a dream that hung at the edge of memory. He stood up, the heat from the fire suddenly feeling a bit suffocating.

He headed towards his tent, or what remained of it. As the years went by it was starting to look worse than his jacket. He’d come across plenty of others along the way; it’d be no trouble to replace. He felt oddly sentimental about the thing, he realized. Like the jacket, it was a personal piece of the world that had been. He didn’t allow himself many of those anymore.

He gently pulled back the flap and entered his ramshackle home. He didn’t want to leave the fire unattended so he grabbed two of the bags inside and hauled them out into the chilly near-twilight air.

He found himself next to his fire again, choosing its smothering warmth over the biting cold of an October evening. He opened the larger of the two bags first. It was an army-style duffle he’d taken from the remnants of a military checkpoint a few years back. Of everything he’d stolen this had held up the best.

Shifting through his meager belongings he found his pistol. While these days he tended to prefer the service rifle he had slung over his shoulder, the pistol was another of the articles he’d kept from... before. It’d been a gift from his grandfather and the first gun he’d ever shot. While it could use a cleaning, he mused, it was in better shape than most everything else he owned.

He slid the gun into the holster on his belt and kept digging through the bag. He selected the least grungy-looking can of food and was about to set it aside for dinner when he remembered the other bag. He shoved the can back into the duffle and hefted the thing aside. Sitting on a rock near the fire, he reached for his newest acquisition.

This bag was, in Marris’s eyes, something of a work of art. It was old—in that way everything was after the world ended—but the denim had held up extremely well. The patches that covered almost every inch of its surface formed a kind of phantom tapestry. He was reminded of his wife Madison who’d insisted on collecting similar mementos. The night they met she’d worn a jacket covered in patches much the same way.

Marris hadn’t seen much of the bag’s owner, and she’d seen nothing of him. She never heard him as he crept up on her camp in the darkness. She’d likely never even had time to register the barking cry of his rifle before she was a crumpled heap on the ground. He’d paid her body no mind—he had enough ghosts dancing in his nightmares—and grabbed the bag from just inside her tent before he set the thing aflame. He’d seen friends die while looking for every last bit of loot from a campsite, and in a world like this dead friends were often lessons learned.

He sighed, undid the buckle on the front of the bag, and took his first look inside. After four years of living like this, he was rarely surprised by what he found among other people’s belongings. If you’d survived this long it was because you knew what to keep and what to leave behind. One could only afford to be sentimental if the object was useful, Marris thought.

The woman’s bag was no different. Its spartan contents were the bare essentials of a life lived after the world had died. Canned food (in noticeably better condition than his), a survival knife, a first-aid kit, and two canteens full of...something. While he hoped for whiskey, a smarter part of him was relieved it was water when he took a swig.

At the bottom of the bag was something else, a silver chain he’d certainly have missed if it hadn’t reflected the glint of the setting sun right before he closed the flap. He picked it up gently in callused fingers and moved it towards the fire for a better look.

Holding the prize before him, he followed the shining chain down to an equally lustrous silver heart alight with the reflection of the dancing flame. This was something of a surprise. The types who clung to relics like this hadn’t lived long after the world went to hell. Sentimentality, he reminded himself again, was only acceptable if the object was useful.

There was something about the shining heart that pulled at him though, and when he found the tiny clasp on its side there was a moment of wonder he hadn’t expected. The locket he held was just as much a piece of a story as the bag he’d found it in. It was a fragment of a tale told through possessions. A piece of a saga that outlived both her and the sulfur stink of gunpowder that had cut her story short.

Slowly, he opened the locket. His clumsy, dirty fingers seemed almost comical against this precious relic of the world before. He found within a picture of an infant on one side, a name and date etched in silver on the opposite.

Marris’ mouth went dry. The flowery font spelled out a name: June. Beneath it, a date, just shy of seven years ago but an entire world away. A queasiness started to build in his stomach.

The child’s face, smiling brightly opposite her name, shattered his heart into pieces.

No, no, no, no.

For all his willing it not to be, every time he opened his eyes his daughter stared back at him. In his mind’s eye, flashes of a life he once lived played out before him. A life in a world lost to time. Lost to fire.

There was Madison, standing before him in her wedding dress on that day in April she’d become his wife. There was June, the little life they’d brought into the world together, nestled in her mother’s arms. And there, at the end of it all was her back as she took June and left him alone beside his campfire.

For the first time since the night they left tears welled in Marris’ eyes. Still transfixed on June’s face in the locket, he wept openly, the tears hot against his face. He closed the locket in his fist and gave over to the pain, his body wracked with the heaving sobs of a man who’d forgotten how to cry.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, tears streaming down his dirty face, snot collecting in his unkempt mustache. Every part of him felt sick. He unslung the service rifle from his shoulder and tossed it away, suddenly disgusted by it.

When he finally unclenched his fists he found one of his hands a bleeding mess. His nails had dug deep into his palm. The locket was stained in his blood. It came open as his grip loosened, the glass inside shattered by the force with which he’d held it. June’s picture, the last one in the world,was tainted sanguine with her father’s blood.

His stomach turned itself into knots within him. Why would that woman have a locket with June’s…

The memories flooded back.

There was Madison, holding June in her arms, seated next to the fire with her back to him. She said something he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been paying attention, his mind had been made up.

He’d loved Madison, more than he’d thought was possible. When June was born he’d loved her even more. But after the Fall, you could only be sentimental if the objects were practical. Madison never understood that. June was a toddler, he’d told her, another mouth to feed in a world without enough food to go around. It was kill or be killed, and she'd end up killing them.

Madison protested. He should’ve expected her too; she’d always been an amazing mother. He’d tried to make her see reason. He didn’t want to live without her. Hell, he didn’t want to live without June either, but the truth was obvious. Somewhere along the line, it’d be her or them.

She’d grabbed his grandfather’s pistol. The first gun he’d ever shot. The gun he’d taught her to shoot. She held it in her trembling hand, their daughter wailing on her hip.

“Do it,” he’d told her. It was that part of him that knew even then what he was doing was wrong.

She didn't. She left the gun on the ground when she left. The last thing he’d ever seen of her was her back.

His stomach lurched again. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself creeping up on the camp the night before. He felt the rifle in his hands, heard the shot, smelled the gunpowder. The woman—Madison, he now knew—fell. She was dead before she hit the ground. He hadn’t looked at her face. Hadn’t looked at her body at all. Maybe a part of him knew. How many times had he seen that silhouette?

He looked back down at the locket. June’s face, barely recognizable in his bloodied hand, beamed back at him in her permanent smile. His heart ached and, for the first time since the night they left, he realized the weight of his terrible mistake.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, for June who he’d so casually abandoned.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, for Madison who he’d promised to live ‘til death did them part.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he wailed, for the years he’d deluded himself into thinking they were still out there somewhere, happier without him.

Marris emptied the contents of his duffle into Madison’s pack. He held the canvas into the flame for a moment until it lit, then tossed the burning bag at his tent. The battered shelter erupted in flame.

He hung the bloodied locket around his neck and slung his wife’s bag over his shoulder. He watched the fire for a while before turning into night. He’d bury Madison. He owed her that much, and if there was any chance their daughter was still alive, he’d spend the rest of his life searching.