I Survived An Apocalypse, And Now Killing Is Second Nature To Me
“Looking good, Addison.“
“Shut the fuck up.”
“What? It’s weird seeing you without leaves or knots or bugs in your hair. I like it.”
“Well, I liked you better when you looked more like a werewolf than a wittle boy.”
He cupped his clean-shaven chin, giving me the finger with his free hand. Even though he was on the opposite side of the pavement, I could still see his smirk.
“Get back to work,” I called out. “This town isn’t going to rebuild itself.”
“Yeah, yeah. Because the ice cream shop I’m working on will make everything better. I swear, I’m—“
That’s when it happened. A truck swung out from a side road, dipped onto the sidewalk, and rolled right over him, crushing his torso with its massive wheels. Blood smeared the street like bird shit, but the truck didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down. Like the driver did it on purpose.
The asshole probably did.
Kids like us, the ones under twenty, were born into the apocalypse. Running and hiding and stabbing our way to survival was all we knew. The society we were trying to create, one with gyms and offices and ice cream shops, was foreign to us.
The adults could remember a time before the chaos, and they longed for it. They slipped comfortably back into their old routines of small talk and evening walks and romantic nights out. Even the toughest ones, men and women I could’ve never pictured in dresses or suits, put down their guns and picked up where they left off.
But the young adults like me had trouble adjusting. We couldn’t imagine dating someone when we were warned against growing attached. We felt itchy sleeping in the same house again and again when we were used to relocating to stay safe. We didn’t even like playing games or listening to music, because we were taught to keep quiet.
Some adults thought it would be impossible for us to normalize ourselves. That’s why they wanted to get rid of us, one by one. I had no memory of life before the undead attacked. To them, that meant I was dangerous.
As I bent over Mattie’s body, instinctively poking a hole through his head with my pocket knife and then rummaging through his pockets for anything useful, I realized they were probably right.
When I walked into the house, my mother, the only living member of my family, was painting the living room walls a soft green. A sundress fell to her knees and sunflower earrings dangled from her ears. She had let her short hair grow out until it reached her shoulders, and now it made ripples against her neck. She looked beautiful, but she looked weak, too.
“How was your day?” she asked without turning around.
“We finished installing the roof on the bank. Scraped myself on a nail, but I bandaged it up, so it should be fine. Oh, right, and Mattie got murdered.”
“What?” She let her brush fall into the container, like the news was some big shock. Like she hadn’t just spent years traipsing through dead bodies.
“A truck ran him over. Hit and run.”
She pursed her lips for one beat, then two. “You don’t have to do that, you know. Act like it doesn’t bother you.”
“It doesn’t bother me.” I grabbed an apple from the end table and bit into it. Processed, not fresh, like I was used to. “Now, the cops interrupting my lunch break to interrogate me, that was bothersome.”
“The police spoke to you?”
“Yeah. I guess Mattie had an audience. Someone else must’ve ran for the police station as soon as it happened. Cops showed up pretty fast. They saw me puncture his brain.”
“Addison.” The word was heavy, weighed down with disappointment and disgust.
“Yeah, I know. They said if they catch me acting out one more time, they’re going to send me off to a school for behavioral learning. Sounds about as fun as getting my tongue torn out.”
“Well, that’s not happening. Not to my daughter. You’re going to that, to that dance tonight.”
“Nuh uh. No way in hell. You were the one telling me not to go, just the other day. That the other kids my age are bad influences and—”
“I know.” She sighed and her words softened. “I know, but I’ve been thinking about it. A lot actually. And after this… I think it’ll help if you’re around people your age. People who are going through the same experiences as you are. You can learn together. You can grow together.” She nodded, like she had made up her mind and mine. “You’re going.”
I wanted to argue, but my mother was the only person I had come close to loving. She’d raised me since I was born, hauling me around in a baby carrier as she fought off creatures. She’d comforted me after my father committed suicide, back when I was a toddler and still had basic human emotions. She’d even killed human women and slept with human men to give us temporary places to live. She’d do anything for me. Back then, she kept me safe by being a warrior. Now, she’d keep me safe by being a mother.
If she fought for years with one hope—the hope to eventually expose me to a world like the one we were recreating now, I supposed I could play along, at least for one night.
Not like it would kill me.
Turned out, I was wrong. Four hours later, I stood in the middle of a recently-erected building in a skintight dress that my mother had forced over my head. (Thankfully, she hadn’t seen me grab a jacket to cover up all the cleavage.) She’d even given me heels, but I’d kicked them off as soon as I got there. I preferred to feel solid ground against my soles.
The event was reserved for teens, so the dance ended up being less of a dance and more of a wrestling match. Guys and girls stood in the center of the checkered floor and took swings at each other, blood sprinkling from their pores.
It felt like a scene out of Fight Club. I had picked up the book from an abandoned library we camped in once, reading at a snail’s pace during my shift to keep watch. I’d read a paragraph, glance around the room, read the next paragraph, and so on and so forth. It made the night pass quickly.
As much as I wanted to jump in the ring and join in, just to see if I was as skilled as I had been a few months back, I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. Just watching the fights made me feel like I was betraying her.
That’s why I stepped outside, walked the perimeter until I reached a fence I could lean up against, and eavesdropped on a group of drunken potheads.
One of them, a guy with a shaved head and scraggly beard, led the conversation. He was saying, “It’s going to be a war, you know. It used to be humans versus creatures. Now it’ll be us versus our elders. And we’re the ones destined to win. We’re the strong ones. The ruthless ones. We’ll do anything to survive while they’re bogged down by their morals. Useless fucks. Give them the illusion of safety and all of their strength goes out the window.”
“I don’t know,” a girl with a cigarette dangling between her fingers said. “I think the adults are just as bad as us. They’re just better at pretending.”
Another girl, with a shaved head, nodded. “Yup, yup. I’ve seen it in their eyes, even in the little old ladies. I mean, how do you think they got to be that old? All the nice, innocent people are dead. They didn’t make it this far. Only the brutal survived.”
I was about to speak up, to tell them that my mother was once the toughest woman I’d ever met, capable of killing anything with eyes, but that our new society morphed her back into the same woman she used to be before the chaos, before the blood and the guts. But no one would’ve been able to hear me. Not over the sound of the explosion. Not over the screams and cries as the flames danced behind us.
I burst through the front door, tears sticking to my cheeks like suction cups. The sobs were fake, but the coughs were real. “Mom,” I said after collapsing onto our couch next to her. “Mom, they killed them.”
She scrunched her brows together, confused. “What do you mean? Who killed who?”
I wiped my eyes, pretending to care about the strangers who had met their fate that night. Pretending to be the child she wanted me to be. “There was a bomb,” I said, reaching for her. “They wanted to get us all in one place and then get rid of us.”
She hesitated for a moment, and then ran a hand through my short hair. “Honey, I’m sure it was an accident. Maybe there was a problem with the electricity. Or one of you kids set off a firework. “
My laugh was smothered by her lap. I had my head on her legs, but kept my right arm against the couch cushions, out of her view.
“Is that what you really think?” I mumbled into her pajama pants. “Or do you know? I think you knew. I think that’s why you made me go.”
“Knew what? That there was a bomb?”
I nodded, my nose rubbing against her pajama pants.
“Addison.” She said my name as a gasp. “You must be kidding. Why would I put you at risk after keeping you safe for so long? That just wouldn’t make any sense.”
“You pushed me to go after hearing about what I did to Mattie.”
“Addison,” she repeated, pushing my shoulder until I was sitting upright. “I’m your mother. That means you’re my responsibility. You have to know that by now.”
“I do know that.” I wiggled my wrist a little, letting the pocket knife hidden in my jacket sleeve fall into my palm. I clutched it with all five fingers, the fingers that used to interlace with my mother’s as she dragged me through the dead. “I also know when you’re lying.”
“Excuse me?”
“I guess I got comfortable in this new world after all, because I didn’t notice it earlier today. But I’m noticing it now.” I rose from the soon-to-be blood stained couch, wiping at my face with my free hand.
She stood up with me, so she’d be the taller one, looming over my hunched figure. “I know it’s hard to adjust to this, to this new society. It’s messing with your mind. Making you paranoid.”
“Or it’s messing with your mind. So badly that you think it’s your responsibility to have your own daughter murdered.” I sniffled, slipping back into the upset act. “I know I’ve caused a bit of trouble lately. I know I can get violent. I know I’m not the daughter you want me to be… I get why you did it. I do.” I lifted my arms, like I was going to wrap my arms around her neck and collapse against her torso in tears.” I just wish you would’ve been ballsy enough to do it yourself.”
I stopped my arms midair, like I had a sudden change of heart, and let the knife peek out from my right sleeve. Let it connect with my dear mother’s neck, skating against her tan skin until it left a deep red line.
She made an unidentifiable noise, clutching at her wound, blood seeping through the spaces between her fingers.
“I can’t believe you,” I said, letting the knife connect again, this time plunging it in instead of just leaving a little slash. “Acting like we’re the bad ones? Your generation is the one killing kids. You miss it. You’re acting like you’re civilized, but you miss it, you sick PTSD fuck.”
I spun the handle, watching her skin twist along with the knife.
“And to think, you thought it was bad when I punctured Mattie’s head with this thing.”
As I saw her struggle for air, I didn’t feel any guilt or rage or regret. I only felt relieved. The potheads at the dance were right. The fight wasn’t over. I’d burn down our blossoming town if that was what it took to keep myself safe. Kill everyone I met along the way if I had to. Anything to stay alive, just like I was taught when I was little.
I liked life better before the apocalypse, anyway.