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Until None Were Left

A short story featuring a heart-shaped locket

By Mishael WittyPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
3
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

“There she is.”

“Go after her!”

“Right. Can’t let her get away.”

I ducked into a metal storm drain as the voices of the Precious Metal Police, or PMP, closed in on me. They’d spotted me. But did they know which way I went? Did they see me run in here?

Leftover water from last night’s storm soaked through the legs of my jeans, and I shivered. My heartbeat thudded in my chest and up into my ears. I took a few shallow breaths and willed my pulse to slow.

Fingering the heart-shaped locket hidden underneath my purple cotton t-shirt, I fought back a wave of tears. At least I still had it with me. For now.

The soft glow of the solar-powered streetlights was fading fast. Ten days of clouds and rain took a toll on the already-depleted solar energy reserves.

Remnants of the latest mushroom cloud from the nuclear bomb set off half a world away to extinguish the other humans remaining on the earth showed in the reddish tint of the clouds in the night sky, still visible from the light of the full moon suffocating behind them.

The red clouds made the lesser light look like a blood moon, although the latest blood moon appeared at the end of the previous year. Right around what used to be known as harvest time. That’s what Mom called it.

Now there was no harvest. All our food was created in labs by scientists who mass produced seeds and replicated cells of something Mom called animals. I never saw a real-life animal. Just pictures of them. They were all annihilated twenty years ago because their gaseous emissions destroyed the environment.

Cows, the biggest culprit, had to go first, but the other animals soon followed. Once no more cows existed and the ozone continued to recede, the scientists and politicians decided the other animals needed to be extinguished too. Killed one by one after the harvesting of their crucial DNA.

Until none were left.

To save the atmosphere, they slaughtered all non-essential life forms. Including my mother because she got in their way. Or tried to.

“Oh, Mom. Why did you do it? Why did you leave me?” I sank to my knees, not minding the cold or the wet. Exhaustion trumped them both.

The locket was all I had left. A remnant of life with a family and a home. A place to belong. Now I was a fugitive. An enemy of the state. A possessor of the last thing in the world that could be assigned non-digital monetary value. Even though it was worth so much more than money to me.

I had to protect it at all costs. But how?

Not by hiding in this storm drain forever. I’d have to get food and fresh water somehow. At the thought, my stomach growled, and the sides of my throat closed in like the edges of a burning piece of paper crackling in on itself.

Slowly, I crawled on hands and knees back the way I had come, shoving floating trash out of my way as I went. I huddled at the opening and peered out.

The street was empty, the artificial light almost gone. The putrid water, stirred by my movements, lapped at the sides of the tunnel. The only sound shattering the silence of the night.

I inched out a hand and set it on the cool asphalt. Immediately, light from a solar LED lantern blinded me. I would’ve tried to stifle a scream, but someone’s hand beat me to it.

“Rina, it’s me!” A deep masculine voice hissed.

The scent of stale coffee and old books invaded my nostrils. Werner. My mother’s coworker. Her partner. Friend.

I exhaled into his strong hand. My body relaxed against his chest.

When he was sure I wouldn’t make any noise to give away our position, he lowered his hand to his side. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“But you found me.” The words came out in a tone betraying the fact that I had only spent sixteen years walking the earth. Werner didn’t deserve that. He was loyal and protective. The closest thing I had to a father after my own was killed in The Great Resistance.

Dad was fool enough to think a handful of men with homemade illegal firearms could stand against the government forces who commandeered all existing weapons for use against the citizens a decade before. Individual freedom was the stuff of ancient history. Of legend.

As a six-year-old, I stood at the window and watched as my father was executed in our driveway, along with his friends and fellow freedom fighters. Until none were left.

Except Werner and my mom.

As my father fell to the ground, my mother yanked me up and escaped out the back door, into Werner’s waiting car. For the next eight years, we all lived together as a family in his underground library. Underground, because it contained books that had long since been deemed anti-establishment, like The Holy Bible and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

He saved everything possible from the fact-checking fire pits. Sometimes I helped him. Mom was usually too busy fighting against the annihilation of those deemed useless to society, like the elderly in nursing homes when they still existed, to worry about the annihilation of words deemed useless. She championed the people. He championed the words. I helped them both.

Two years ago, the government locked my mother in the last nursing home standing, and then they blew it up. I quit trying to save people then, and Werner stopped rescuing books. We both just tried to protect ourselves.

Werner’s hand on my arm brought me back to the present. “What are you doing?”

“I had to run. I came up to the surface, and the PMP drones found me.”

He ran a hand through his graying hair. “Why did you surface? I told you never to do that. You’re not safe out here.”

I studied my feet and bit my lip. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t stay down there anymore. The cave walls were closing in on me.”

He patted my shoulder. “I know, child. I’ve experienced that too. Anxiety. But you have to choose. Discomfort or death.”

I pulled my lips into a moue.

Werner laughed and leaned in closer. “Or you could just leave the locket in the cave the next time you surface.”

I gasped and clutched at the silver heart. “I couldn’t do that.”

He lowered his eyelids and shook his head. “Then your choice isn’t discomfort or death. You have to choose between the locket or death.”

“I can’t let go of this locket, Werner. It’s the only thing I have left of my family.”

“I’m your family now, Rina. We’re family. You and I.”

I sighed as his words sank in. Not comforting. Depressing. And they did nothing to lessen my resolve to hold onto this locket at all costs.

Werner grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. “Come on. Let’s go back underground.”

I nodded wordlessly as I walked in step with him. Suddenly, something darted across the path in front of us. Then it circled and came back, brushing against my ankles.

It stopped.

I stopped. My breath caught in my throat, and my blood turned to frozen yogurt in my veins. A roborat!

It whirled in place and sounded a beeping alarm that reverberated off the skyscrapers and shorter buildings, where the city’s hive-minded residents slept. Lights winked on in several windows as people woke up.

Werner’s hold on my arm tightened. “Don’t move. Don’t say a word. Let me do the talking.”

Instinctively, my hand went to the secret place under my shirt where the heart locket rested next to my own pounding heart.

In minutes, the PMP surrounded us. A tall officer with black hair and dark chocolate eyes retrieved the roborat from the ground and stared at me.

He held out his hand. “Give me the locket.”

My thudding heart sank to my stomach. I shook my head.

“Now, wait just a minute—” Werner’s protest was cut short by a hard blow to the back of the head from a rifle wielded by a second PMP officer.

A third officer laughed behind him.

Werner loosened his grip on my arm as he staggered from the jolt. He wiped away blood from his hair, turning the graying brown a disturbing shade of pink. His hand was stained red.

The tall PMP officer turned and pointed his pistol at Werner. Right at his heart. “Give me the locket, or I kill your friend.”

I glanced at Werner. His hard jaw line radiated quiet strength, but his hazel eyes swam with fear.

My friend. Werner was my friend. The closest thing to family I had left. Could I trade his life for my mother’s locket? Would the PMP let Werner live if I did give it to them? He was the enemy. And so was I.

Enemies of the state had to be killed. Until none were left.

Werner was wrong. My choice wasn’t the locket or death. In that moment, I had no choice.

I turned and ran with all the strength and speed I could muster toward the safety of our cave.

When the first shot rang out, I knew Werner was dead. No time for tears. I kept running until the second shot rang out.

Pain exploded in my chest. I heard the metallic ding of the bullet against my mother’s locket as I slumped to the ground.

Short Story
3

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