REMNANTS OF THE FEAST

Life had gotten hard, ever since the end of the world.

The collapse of civilization wasn’t the party scene that some idiots had thought it would be. Their stashes of "TEOTWAWKI" supplies had only lasted them long enough for them to regret ever wishing for the end of the world.

If they could have gone back to their comfortable, largely worry-free lives they would have. But they had disdained the banality of a comfortable life to the point of resenting a working society. So they had toppled civilization just to prove that they could.

And then the interdimensional tear had opened and the demons had come pouring out. And everything had already been so broken that there was no real resistance against them. All the weapons had already been turned against other humans, and the resources had already been spent. There was nothing to support the fight against the invaders.

The only silver lining was that the demons had never intended to stay.

They attacked and pillaged and returned back through the rift, taking millions of human slaves with them. But they hadn’t stayed.

They had taken everything they wanted–food, gold, gems, priceless minerals–and destroyed so much more, but they hadn’t stayed. Hadn’t declared themselves the rulers of the Earth and conquered humanity.

They had simply come, trampled everything, and left. Leaving humanity to pick themselves up from the wreckage and struggle to survive.

Whatever their weapons were, they had changed the magnetic poles of the planet. Warped them somehow in ways Zayne didn’t understand even after it was "clearly" explained to him.

All he knew was that electricity no longer worked the way it used to. Most electronic devices had become useless scraps of metal and melting plastic. The few electronic devices that could still work were the most basic ones without magnets or circuits or whatever had made humans so proud of their cleverness.

All he knew was that cars didn’t work. Boats didn’t work. Oil and gas had somehow been turned into useless sludge. And even the simplest click-to-turn-on rice cooker had become nothing more than a paperweight.

It was a luxury to be able to start a fire and cook over it with a pot. Because there was no longer the technology to extract iron ore from the ground, much less transform it into stainless steel.

"Humans have been mining for resources for all of existence!" one of the loudmouths had yelled. Then he’d gradually gotten quiet and slunk away once it was pointed out that humans had long since dug up every bit of easily reached resource, and it was only the stuff buried so deep that it took heavy machinery to pry it loose that remained. And none of those machines worked anymore.

Humans had been relegated back to using shovels and pickaxes. To backbreaking labor and dying in the depths of the earth as oxygen tanks and air conditioning were no longer possible.

The things that already existed might very well be priceless artifacts. Especially since anything made from plastic had melted into goo as their molecules had shifted.

The first month after the demons left had been horrifying. Everyone was reeling from the shock of what had happened and were scrambling to stay alive and to check if their loved ones were still alive.

It had been a time of grief and guilt and a growing awareness that everything had changed forever. That the technological age had been brutally ended and would likely never be coming back.

And then the first nuclear meltdown had occurred. Completely unstoppable as there were no machines to pump the water. No rad counters to scream the warnings. Nothing for technicians to do but to try and run, but where could they go?

Because there was a second nuclear meltdown. And a third. A fourth. A fifth. More.

All around the world, the toys of humanity began to break.

Bioweapons were released. Containment failed. Nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons began melting down. Publicly known labs and hidden labs no longer had working failsafes. Everything began breaking down in a domino effect of destruction.

The end of the world happened and kept on happening and every day was worse than the one before. And there was nothing to be done to make any of it better because the choices that damned them had been made long before most of them were born.

Zayne had been relieved to survive, but now he wondered what it had all been for. So that he could face a slower, more drawn out death with hope dwindling away to nothing as despair took its place?

"I’m hungry," a small voice said.

Zayne turned to look at his little sister. She was so small, the baby fat melted away until her head looked too big for her skeletal body with only her unnaturally bloated belly protruding before her. Her hair was thin and lank, the strands brittle and unhealthy due to malnutrition. There were mottled red and blue bruises on her face and neck and down under her sweater; they had started appearing one day without any obvious cause, though he knew it was a bad sign.

He smiled at her. "Let me get you something."

He saved all the best food for her, trying to make these last days a bit less miserable, though there wasn’t much he could do. There was less and less edible food to be found, and he’d had several rough encounters with other people scavenging through the wreckage.

A teenager facing down full grown adults didn’t often have a good result. There were too many times when he’d had his supplies snatched away soon after he’d found them and there was nothing he could do about it. He simply had to accept his own helplessness and keep doing what he could. Maddie depended on him to keep her alive now that their parents were gone.

He went to his favorite hidey hole and opened it up to take out a single can of SPAM. "Look what I’ve got," he said with forced cheerfulness. "We’re going to eat good tonight."

He’d been saving the SPAM, but looking at Maddie he felt that it was better to eat it now rather than later. If he waited much longer… He didn’t want to think about it, but he didn’t think that they had much longer.

Even without a mirror he could see that same bruising on his own skin. His teeth ached and felt loose in his mouth. And there was discomfort when he went to the bathroom. Added all together, he figured their days could be counted in single digits. So why save all the good things until they could no longer be enjoyed?

Maddie hovered at his side as he open the can and used a knife to help wiggle the block of SPAM out onto a small plate. She clasped her hands under her chin and licked her lips, her eyes trained on the food.

"Honey," he said, "go get a couple of juice cans."

"Juice cans? We can have juice cans? I thought we were saving them," she said.

"We were saving them. We were saving them for right now," he said. "Go get one for each of us. We’re having a feast tonight."

She smiled, and he tried not to notice that her gums were visibly inflamed. "A feast! A feast! We’re going to have a feast! Is this Christmas?"

Zayne knew that it was sometime in September, but he still agreed. "Yeah. This is our Christmas time. We’re going to fill our bellies and sleep so good tonight, and tomorrow there will be presents, because you’ve been such a good girl."

She stumbled to where the juice cans were hidden, no longer able to run with her spindly legs, but her excitement was clear. She came back with two 7.2 ounce sized aluminum cans of apple juice. The small cans looking large in her tiny hands.

He pulled her close against his side to share his body warmth. He split the SPAM equally with her and opened her can of juice. "Eat up."

He’d cut the SPAM into small pieces and she ate them slowly, chewing each bite into mush before swallowing. He could hear her making a happy humming sound as she chewed, pausing only when she swallowed. She savored each sip of her juice, swishing it around in her mouth.

He felt like crying, but he refused to show any sign of his sadness. She was so young, she deserved to have a happy moment. And if she didn’t understand how completely dire their situation was, he would protect her from that truth. Because he was all she had and he refused to abandon her.

The world had fallen apart and everyone was going to die, but the two of them were alive for right now. And if right now was all that they had, he would make the best of it. He would give her all the Christmases and birthdays she was going to miss. Would fill her last moments with as much happiness as he could squeeze out.

It was with a sense of purpose that he finished dinner then settled her on the bed and began telling her a fairytale of happier times. Kissed her forehead and wished her sweet dreams just as their mother used to do when she was still alive.

Then, once he was sure she was asleep, he wandered around the house searching for something he could wrap up as a gift.

It was when he was searching through their parents’ closet that he came across a shoebox hidden far back on the top shelf. When he brought it down, he laid it on the floor and lifted the lid.

His breath caught. He sorted through the things in the shoebox, his hands trembling as he realized what he was looking at.

His eyes filled with tears. Not of sadness or loss but of rage.

Ever since he accepted that his parents were dead and never coming back, he had grieved them and tried to do the best he could do for his sister. He didn’t want them watching him from the afterlife and hating him for not being a good brother.

He had struggled so hard because he couldn’t stand the thought of his dead parents being disappointed in him.

But if what he was seeing in the shoebox was true, his parents weren’t dead.

They had abandoned him and Maddie. Had chosen to leave them behind because including them would have cost more money than they were willing to spend.

He flipped through the "apology" letter his mother had left him. And it didn’t feel like she was really sorry, more as though she was preemptively soothing herself so she didn’t have to feel guilty for what she’d done.

Her letter started with "Dearest Zayne," but it felt more as though she was saying "Fuck You," as everything that followed the greeting was nothing but a betrayal.

His mom and dad were in some kind of fallout shelter somewhere. They had known the end of the world was coming. Had known that the Earth’s magnetic poles were going to shift. That the "demons" were coming and that civilization was going to break down and technology would cease to work.

They had known what was going to happen because there were no demons. There was no interdimensional tear. There were only people in biohazard suits that made them look like demons, attacking and stealing everything so they could hoard resources while they let everyone else die.

They had kidnapped everyone they thought might be useful, killed those that tried to stop them, and helped to hasten the end of everything. Because they were selfish. Cruel. Evil to the core.

There hadn’t been real demons attacking the Earth, but there had definitely been monsters. Human demons bringing Hell wherever they went.

His parents had chosen to join those monsters. Had paid money to join them. To save themselves from the horrors they knew were to come.

And when he looked at the included pamphlets, he realized that even in this letter his mother was obscuring the truth to make herself feel better.

They had left him and Maddie behind to die horribly because they weren’t willing to pay the extra money required to bring children into the fallout shelter.

She had hidden this letter in a shoebox in the back of her closet. It made him think that she wrote the letter to absolve herself of some sense of guilt, but she hadn’t really wanted him to find it. Had wanted him to die never knowing that she had abandoned him and Maddie.

Because there were letters in the box from the organizers of the facilities. Proof that payments had been made, accounts had been arranged, and that his parents had booked themselves the deluxe package that would have them living a life of luxury in their assigned shelter.

If they had bought a basic package, they could have afforded to take him and Maddie. But instead they had focused on their own comfort.

And for their comfort, he and Maddie had been left to die.

Zayne sat on the floor of the walk-in closet, surrounded by the clothes his parents had left behind, and he cried as much as he could with a body so dehydrated that it could only produce a handful of tears before his eyes were dry and sore.

His parents had known the world was going to end. Had planned for it. And in their plans, he and Maddie were sacrifices they hadn’t hesitated to make.

His parents could have taken him and Maddie with them. Saved them. But chose not to. Chose to leave without a single goodbye while he struggled every day to keep himself and his sister alive.

Finally he stumbled to his feet and left his parents’ room, not wanting to know anymore. Instead, he climbed into bed with Maddie and wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close through the blanket. Pressed his face against her dry brittle hair and silently promised that he would never leave her.

Their parents had abandoned them to die. But he would not leave Maddie.

He would keep her alive and safe for as long as he could and he would make every moment as happy as he could. Because their parents were monsters. But he was human.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

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