When I take her into the first empty apartment I see, she grins, licks her dry cracked lips, thinks she's hit the jackpot. I am prime meat to her. To me, she is survival for me and my sister.
"Ya know," she tries to look seductive, "we have to keep this from Ritchie or he will kill us both." Taking a manicured nail, she traces my jawline with it.
Like I give a flying fuck if I live or die. I'm not suicidal, but I damn sure am not scared to die. I don't deserve to be alive. The only good thing that ever happened to me was Hensley. If it wasn't for her, I could give two shits if I open my eyes again.
Fisting her hair in my hand, I pull it back, capture her mouth with mine, and try not to grimace at the feel of her cracked skin. I could feel pieces of her dried skin flaking off inside my mouth as she lets out a throaty moan. I pull my knife out of my jacket, thrust it into her stomach, pulling it up to eviscerate her.
She gurgles in shock, then drops to the ground. Pulling my knife out, I wipe it off on her hair to get all the guts off of it, then slide the weapon back into my pocket.
Rummaging through her clothes, I take all the money and drugs she has on her. Robbing the drug dealer's girlfriend is a death wish for most people. For me, it is a way to make ends meet.
Between the money and what I pick up at the store after this, Hensley will eat good tonight, and that's all that matters to me. I remember a time when neither of us had a crumb to put in our mouths. I still can hear our stomachs rumble, night after night, aching for just one morsel.
Hell, I remember a time that the only way we could get our mother to provide for us was when she whored Hensley out. The shudder that runs through me almost makes me drop to my knees.
I can still hear the echoes of the screams of my seven-year-old sister being held down, made to do things most grown woman wouldn't want to do, let alone an innocent child. I tried to help her, honestly, I did, but my cunt of a mother would shove me in the closet and lock me in.
I thrashed, kicked, and fought trying to break the door down, but I was never strong enough. Through the slats in the door, I could watch every cruel, vile thing enacted upon her. I didn't have to watch, but it wasn't fair making her go through it alone.
A loudcrackbreaks me out of my reverie. Something is brewing outside; it’s time for me to go. Walking out of the building, I try to blend in, seemingly oblivious to my surroundings but keeping an eye on everything around me.
Seeing a group of people at a storefront huddled, trying to stay in the light of the sign, all whispering fervently, means they do not feel safe tonight. The common theme these days is how to stay alive.
They barely spare me a glance when I vault myself into one of the large green dumpsters on the side of the parking lot. The store throws away outdated produce, and other perishables. When I first land, my gag reflex almost lets me down. Between the maggots and fruit flies, the stench is overwhelming. Gathering as much as I can stuff into my bag, I climb back out of the dumpster, trying to hold my breath from the putrid smell wafting around me.
We used to joke that everything we endured in life, it would probably be the old, tainted lettuce or bananas that killed us. Our quest for food would be our downfall.
Hensley and I talk about death constantly as children and even now. It’s always looming right around the corner. “I always imagined that’s what death will be like. A cold, dark cell, unable to move or do anything. Trapped in your own head with no one else to guide you out of the dark places you end up in. An eternity of conscious nothingness.”
My sister will nod her head, and smile, but I was never sure if she really understands where I am coming from or if she is trying to humor me.
When Mom was lucid enough to hear us and comprehend, she would pipe in, "Humans need company. They go a little crazy without it. You hate me so much Tieran, perhaps you’d prefer to be on your own, hm?” She would turn to face me, head tilted. That was her threat always, that she would keep us apart. As twins, we wouldn't survive one without the other.
Now, we know all we will ever have is each other, and the only thing in this world I give a shit about is Hensley. Come after me, good luck. Come after her, I will fucking eradicate you.
CHAPTER2
HENSLEY
Where the fuck is he?I wonder as I walk into the dilapidated hotel we’ve been calling home for a while.
While it sucks that we have to live like this, it’s nice to know that we have each other.
Protection isn’t easy to come by these days.
Not after the disaster happened. Three-quarters of human life was wiped off the face of the earth, and the quarter that remains is literally the garbage left behind.
No one has it easy anymore. We all scavenge when we can, though some seem to have gotten a knack for this easier than we have.
For instance, the store I just walked out of, while it looks like it’s standing on its last legs, is actually pretty well protected from everything outside.
The monsters that hide in the dark aren’t nearly as bad as the twenty-five percent of what got left behind.
No, that’s not right,I tell myself as I unwrap another lollipop and slip it between my lips.If twenty-five percent got left behind, and some of them have turned into something else, that means that only—
“Watch where you’re fucking walking!” a lady barks at me after I bump into her.
I stop walking and tuck a strand of my long, white-blonde hair behind an ear. She gives me a dirty look as she walks on, far away from one of the monsters that hide in the dark.