Warm world

Warm World – The Turning

Thick moving mud. You could smell it for miles. The blackish brown stiff flowing river. Too slow to even seem to contain water. But too fast to wade across. Anyone fool enough to try to make their way across without using a bridge, or boat was just trying to commit suicide.

He wasn’t the suicidal kind. He was a survivor. And he didn’t need these two kids. But the boy might be a ticket. And the girl was attached to him. At least they weren’t crying.

He would have to paddle the boat by himself. It was little more than a canoe but it was metal. It would get hot. but he lined it with the canvas and blankets.

At first he thought, I could just take the locket off his neck and leave them. But he wasn’t going to just yet. Not the move to make right now.

Always wait for the right time before you move. That’s how he had stayed alive so long.

Not many had. Gone, just like those before the turning. Burned or bombed. Or killed some other way.

But he was smart. By himself he knew what and when. Now with too sickly children. He was feeling the sick himself.

So there was no use getting rid of them. And what’s more they owed him. He pushed the boat that he had taken from a woman yesterday. She probably took it from someone first.

“Get in the boat and do exactly what I say” he growled at the children. The boy helped the girl in the boat.

“Let her help herself or she will never get stronger,” he said.

“Can you swim?”

They nodded no”

“Good.” He said to himself.

“If they fall in it will be over quicker if they don’t know how to save themselves.”

Because he had no intentions of saving them. Well maybe the boy or maybe just the shiny heart shaped locket around his neck.

He pushed the boat in the mud and got in and started pushing the mud behind him with a makeshift paddle.

“They better have medicine.” He told himself again.

He would trade them. Better than what the woman with the boat was gonna do.

He only wanted the boat.

He told her so.

He grabbed her from behind. His hand over her mouth. Holding her tightly and yelling.

“Don’t fight woman!”

“Tell your brats not to move!” He said when the two children popped their heads out of the canvas tarp she had made like a teepee over the boat.

“They can’t move.” The woman said gasping for breath.

“I’ve got them tied good and tight.” She said wincing a smile.

He was confused.

“We can share them. “ They’re fat They’ll last a while. I been eating on that one for days.

She nodded her head over to a fire with a turning spit on it. There was a carcass on it. There was only a torso and one arm and leg left but he could tell. The woman had killed and cooked a child.

Cannibal!

The man looked at her then at the children and he understood the situation. The white woman with dirty red hair, had kidnapped the old woman’s kids. But one black and one Asian. There was a little boys severed head on stick. Blonde hair blue milky dead eyes.

“Help us please.” One of the pitiful creatures said.

“Shut up!” The woman yelled as she grabbed at the man’s hand that was now around her throat.

He looked at her in disgust. He was a thief and a murderer, but eating people was not the level he had sank to or at least not to his knowledge. He had eaten some questionable meat from the old woman whom he had found in a cave about a day or two ago. She was dying. She had fallen and broken something running after someone who took kids she was looking after. But she said it was cancer that was killing her. She had been waiting for someone to come back to get the children.

He should have just robbed her and left. But he was still humane enough to knock the rats off of her gangrene leg.

They smell the meat in my pot, but can’t get to it. So dey eattin’ me.” She said.

“You can have it, and some whiskey if you just put one of those bullets in me.”

She pointed toward the AK-57 he had strapped to his back. He also had a shot gun on his back and a pistol in his belt.

“ I ain’t wasting a bullet .”

Then take your knife out cut my throat. She said with the last bit of fight in her.

“Find the kids and they’ll tell you where to get medicine for the sickness.”

“Don’t lie, I know sickness when I see it.” She added.

“He went over to the pot and removed the top. It was a heavy duty cast iron roasting pot.”

“I see the sickness in your eye.” She said.

The meat was in some kind of gravy he pulled the cold greasy meat into his mouth. It was seasoned! He looked around and saw the woman had different seasoning on makeshift shelves in the cave.

She had been here for a while. Set up shop. She must have owned a shop or restaurant before the turning.

“Find the children. Take them to the aquarium. They got medicine there.”

“Aquarium?”

“Children?”

She was dying. And losing her mind.

The warming earth with its sick smell and musty air made people sick. He was looking for cold country, not an aquarium.

But he ate the food and left the old woman dead. And now he was about to kill another woman. A woman that deserved to die. Then he saw it. He heard it first. A heavy footstep and a shadow. He knew it was a man. Probably her man sneaking up behind him. So he swung around holding the woman out in front of him and it was too late.

Too late for the woman, because her man was in full gallop to attack the man holding her. The broad knife that was meant for the back of the man was thrust full to the hilt into the woman.

Time stopped for the attacker and his woman as he realized he had killed the wrong person. The man holding the woman, threw the dead body onto the attacker and pulled out his shot gun and cracked it over the man’s head killing him instantly.

He cut the children free.

They weren’t fat like the woman said. They were skinny and scared. The boys head on the stick looked healthier than them.

They looked at the roasted body of the child on the spit.

Not a sound came from their opened mouths.

“Get out of here’ he told them.

They stepped back and look at the brown dead forest and sticky stinking ground beneath their feet.

“Where?” the boy asked”

His hair was a matted mess of an afro. He couldn’t have been but six or seven. He was small and a looked weak.

“Don’t know, don’t care”, said the man.

“But you better stay away from people” he added.

“ If you don’t want to be cooked for dinner.”

He wished he hadn’t said it. He was a murderer and a thief, but he wasn’t cruel.

But it was said, and it was true.

He knew that starvation and madness had driven some people to eat their own babies. After they had eaten all of the dogs , cats and rats that they could find. Most people didn’t, but there were some who did whatever to survive.

He wondered how the two found the woman and the kids.

Then he saw it. Under the boy’s shirt. The locket. He wondered why the woman or man hadn’t taken it. It could be traded.

But those two were interested in eating not trading.

This is what they had turned into.

The world had turned crazy and killed itself and most of its inhabitants. He thought about what he had turned into.

Even the old lady in the cave. She had told him the others left to find the aquarium and were going to send someone for the kids. The adults left the sick children with her.

“It was the rapture you know”

She talked about the disappearance of people before the world turned. Ten years ago some religious people said God had taken a lot of people straight to heaven and left all the unbelievers. After that, she and a group of people, grabbed what they needed and ran.

Then countries started blaming each other for the disappearances, and the wars and bombs started. Millions of people had disappeared now millions were being killed.

The rapture was a Christian belief. But people from everywhere of every faith were suddenly gone.

The old woman said she was left because she really never believed. She said the truly faithful who believed in their hearts that there was a God, they were taken. Because God knows you heart.

“Find my children.”

She coughed out blood.

“Somebody took them” she said

“I ran after them , I fell”

“If you find them help them.”

“ The Aquarium, it’s got food and medicine. It’s a fortress. In the old Chattanooga , Tennessee.”’

“My grandson has a locket like the one on his mother in the picture up there ”

The old woman had pictures on a rock like she was decorating a shelf in her house.

“Why did she leave him?” He asked.

They left the little sick ones with me to care for”

He listened to the old woman and in the end he was ready to cut her throat. But thankfully she died on her own.

He buried her. Then he took what he needed, stayed one night, and left.

Now he was pushing a boat through the mud headed for an aquarium.

He was feeling the sickness.

The old woman told him someone was supposed to pick up the children. But something was wrong with the two who came. That’s why she ran after them..

How did they know to come to the cave and tell the woman they were picking up the kids.

The boat felt funny.

He felt a pull on the boat. Something was in the mud. He saw something bubbling. The little girl screamed. Something man like was rising up. He took the paddle and stood and swung, hitting the mud covered figure. It went down and another rose in it’s place he hit it twice.

Behind him a horrible sound as one rose up screaming and before he hit it a shot rang out and the thing fell. He saw where the shot came from a woman on the shore.

He paddle the boat up. He got out and pulled it up. And he her the woman from the pictures.

“Moma” the boy said hugging the woman.

“How did you two get here?” his mom asked.

“Your mother wanted me to bring them. I want food and medicine”

She looked terrified about something.

“this way” she said.

They stepped into the Aquarium. It was a fortress.

The young woman grabbed two medicine kits.

“Take us with you.” She demanded

“What? No!” he said.

“They sold my oldest and they will sell these two again. Take us with you I’m a doctor I know how to make the medicine.”

He didn’t want this but he needed the medicine.

He knew a lie when he heard it. But there were voices and footsteps approaching.

“Let’s go” he said.

I’ll get rid of them later”

His world was turning again.

The End