Humanity
Authors: J.D. Knutson
HUMANITY
By
J. D. Knutson
Copyright
Notice
© 2015 J. D. Knutson
All rights reserved. This
publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976, and all other
applicable international, federal, state, and local laws. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the express
permission of the author.
Any trademarks, service marks,
product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their
respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied
endorsement if we use one of these terms.
The characters and
events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons,
living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover Art by Beccy
Dancer
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
I loaded my gun with ammunition. Others
around me did the same, murmuring under their breath and crunching leaves under
their boots.
“So, where did you go last night?” Alice
asked, counting bullets before stuffing them into her weapon. She leaned down
on one knee, testing the knots in her shoelaces. Her red hair hung from its
ponytail, splaying across her shoulders as she did so.
Her question brought a round of images I
wasn’t ready to face: the weight of the man’s arm holding down my entire upper
body as I clawed at his throat; the way his sharp, ragged nails grabbed at my
flesh; the sour smell of his breath against my neck. Then, worst of all, the
way Dad had to avert his eyes after he shot the man, so I could pull my pants
up with as much dignity as possible, and the way I myself had averted my eyes
so I would never know what my attacker’s sightless eyes looked like.
I had to take one of our pills afterward.
It wasn’t like it was the first time, though, and it probably wouldn’t be the
last – and Alice certainly didn’t need to know about it.
“I needed some air,” I told her roughly,
running a hand through my long bangs and glancing around at the others, all of
us waiting for some sort of signal from a man named Jared, someone whose name I
could barely remember. He stood at the front of the group, counting us and
calculating how to split us so we could herd our prey effectively when the time
came.
Of our group of twenty, I knew the names
of only a few. The group had been formed out of convenience, not out of any desire
for company. My parents and I hadn’t been with them long, and it was rare for a
group this large to last more than a few months without killing itself off. Our
group far from trusted each other, but we had a sort of treaty: share shelter,
don’t kill each other, and we could join forces when necessary – in this case,
to hunt.
“Right, just like I need a baby,” Alice
responded, watching me.
I ignored her, glancing around at our
surroundings instead. We stood right outside of the old Town Hall, a white stone
building that had long since been cracked through by the vines racing up its
surface. Greenery was everywhere, nothing abnormal considering the majority of
the buildings around us were uninhabited. The road forked around a group of
trees, the trees getting thicker the further from Town Hall they stood. Those
trees were our key to finding something to hunt.
Mom and Dad stood a few yards away,
chatting with another couple their age; I could tell this couple hadn’t been
together for very long – the man held the woman closely, protectively, their
hands tangled together – which didn’t completely explain why Mom’s face was lit
up so brightly, her blue eyes shimmering. After all, this couple had been in
our group for three weeks. I might not have known either of them by name, but
they had arrived at the house as an already-formed couple, no matter how
atypical that was.
Why did Mom seem so excited?
After a few more moments of conversation,
I was surprised to watch my mother reach behind her to her backpack and pull
out a plastic pill bottle. She was trying to be inconspicuous about it, but I
recognized the motions too well to miss it. We kept all our valuables in that
backpack, after all.
Even more surprising, though, was that
she handed the bottle to the other woman, and then the woman handed her
something in return.
An exchange? Mom never made exchanges,
unless we needed something specific. As far as I could recall, none of us did.
Because of that, it didn’t make sense for her to be exchanging something, since
we never knew what we might need later on.
The woman said something short to her,
probably thanking her, and then the couple moved on. Mom looked up at Dad, who
smiled indulgingly at her, and then the two of them came towards us.
Alice took a step back, crossing her
arms, though she didn’t walk away – she didn’t have anyone to walk to – and Mom
glanced at her before offering me what she still held.
“For you,” she said, beaming.
“But I don’t need anything,” I reminded
her, wondering if she’d somehow forgotten.
“Oh, I know,” she said. “But that woman
did.” She glanced back at the couple; the woman was chugging water, a pink
tinge to her cheeks; her partner’s hand rested on her back, watching her with
what was unmistakably love in his eyes.
“Everyone
needs something, Mom.”
“But she’s pregnant,” Mom whispered
excitedly. “And it’s so rare for someone to be doing it as a family. . . I
wanted to help.”
“What did you give her?” I asked wearily.
Mom rolled her eyes. “Nothing important
to us – just some prenatal vitamins – and she gave me
this
.” She opened her hand.
Nestled inside was a silver bracelet,
tarnished with age; deep blue beads caught the small amount of sunlight beaming
down from overhead.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, though I
wanted to whimper from the amount of excitement still on Mom’s face. How could
she be so thrilled by this?
“I’ve always wanted to give my daughter
something beautiful,” Mom said, taking my hand. She offered the bracelet to
Dad, who forcibly unlatched the clasp and placed it on my wrist, the wrist Mom
held out to him. “And now I have.”
“Thanks,” I told her, trying to give her
a little emotion in the response. “But what if we need those vitamins some
day?”
“She needs them now,” Mom told me firmly,
patting my wrist before tucking the bracelet away in my sleeve so no one could
see it.
I looked at Dad to see how he felt about
this, but all he did was lean in and kiss my forehead, giving me a small,
compassionate smile. He followed by kissing Mom’s forehead, his touch soft and
gentle. He didn’t seem concerned in the least by Mom’s impractical trade.
“Ready!” Jared called out, raising his
rifle in a sort of salute to the group. He beckoned everyone forward, down the
main street of the deserted city, and all twenty of us broke into a jog. Each of
us were equipped with some sort of firearm, a luxury that only started about a
decade before – when the United States’ numbers had dwindled far enough that
almost everyone managed to be armed with a gun.
It had been a few days since I’d last
done any form of running, and it felt good on my legs – the motion, my feet
pounding the pavement, my hair slapping my neck. The safety of compound life
was nice, but it always left me feeling restless – a legitimate feeling, when
you didn’t know when the arrangement would end.
We ran for about twenty minutes before
Jared came to a halt in front of us. Everyone stopped, listening with him.
Then, he beckoned for half of us to go left, and the other half to go right.
We had found a herd.
The foliage of the city was dense, with
plants covering buildings, and trees growing where there had once been nothing
but grass. Abandoned as the city was, wildlife came and went as they pleased;
the city was nothing more than a part of their forest now.
I could hear the beat of hooves to my
right as we took a steep hill, and so could the other nine of us. Alice took a
chance and shot into the trees, barely missing a doe. The herd turned away from
us, running toward the other group, and we followed, our ten breaking into two
fives to surround the herd on either side. Now, each of us fired our guns at
different intervals, careful not to hit the people on the other side of the
herd – we needed each other after all.
Jared and his unit waited in a clearing
up ahead, one that had a statue of a man atop a horse at its center. He started
firing as soon as the herd was within range, careful to aim in strategic
directions – it wouldn’t help anyone if he shot one of our own number. The deer
panicked, rearing up and turning the other direction, only to be met with more
gunshot. Their blood was beginning to be spilt, but there had been no fatal
shots yet. There were only six of them, and they had been met by twenty humans
armed with guns.
That’s when more gunfire came from right
behind me.
I hadn’t expected that, and twirled
around to see what was happening. None of our group had been behind me, and
none of our group seemed to realize anything was amiss, save Mom, Dad, Alice,
and I. They wouldn’t have, because everyone else was on varying sides of the
herd, and so would assume that the gunfire they heard came from us.
But the bullets were definitely not ours.
Someone was encroaching on our hunt.
I spun around, firing at the new arrival,
knowing Mom, Dad, and Alice would do the same. From behind us, the buck
recognized the party’s newest point of weakness; even though gunfire was still
coming from our direction, it was not nearly as strong as from the other
directions, since the four of us were now shooting towards our unknown enemy.
I couldn’t see who that enemy was before
all six deer started storming toward us. A hand grabbed my arm and pulled me
behind a tree, protecting me from the small stampede. Still, guns fired.
Abruptly, the hoof beats stopped, and the
gunfire halted. I looked around, realizing that Dad had been the one to pull me
safely behind the tree; he still held my arm, and Mom stood by his side. The
two of them were surveying the area, putting together the pieces of what had
happened.
A single doe lay by another tree, very
obviously dead. Several human bodies lay scattered, killed in the chaos and
confusion. All the other deer were gone, and the survivors of our party began
to congregate around the doe.
“What happened?” Jared demanded, glancing
around at the seven of us remaining; Alice stood a few feet away from me, mouth
pursed.
“Another party began shooting at our
rear,” Dad told him, gesturing what direction it had come from. “We were forced
to turn around to protect ourselves, which left the herd an escape route. I
didn’t see the rest.”
“That same party shot a few of our
number,” Alice answered for him, “and then I think some of us shot each other
by accident.”
“Obviously,” another man retorted angrily,
shoulders tense as his eyes skirted the trees. “Can we just get the deer back
to the compound before anything else happens?”
“Sure,” Dad answered, his tone
sarcastically cheerful. “Just as soon as we identify the unknown party so we
don’t fall into another trap.”
I looked around and realized the couple
from earlier weren’t two of our seven survivors; they must have been killed,
too. An ache filled my stomach at the thought of the pregnant woman and her
bracelet that I now wore around my wrist.
“Traps are inevitable,” Jared said,
barely hiding his distaste. “Whoever it was could have guns already trained on
us as we speak. I suggest we just get ourselves to safety and eat.”
“Agreed,” said the woman standing behind
Dad.
Dad nodded, moving forward to the
opposite end of the deer from Jared, and bending down in synchronization with
him to lift the animal’s body.
As if their simply touching the deer was
the trigger, more gunfire went off.
I hit the ground out of instinct, knowing
that the bullets would be directly targeting our small circle of survivors, and
unsure that any of us could find cover quickly enough.
Only five shots sounded, and then they
stopped.
My hands trembled as I realized what
those five shots might mean: five shots, five people, no misses, and no firing
back.
But there had been seven of us.
I slowly lifted my face from the weeds I
rested in, raising my head only an inch or two. My eyes met Alice’s. She shook
her head at me an imperceptive amount, then placed her head back in the dirt. I
followed her example.
I could hear the rhythm of boots coming
closer. Whoever wore those boots, they were heavy and careful. They walked to
us, stepping directly beside my head before reaching the doe. I peered through
my hair, not daring to shoot for fear the pair of boots weren’t alone.
A bulky figure leaned down and hoisted
the doe onto his shoulders; each large hand wrapped around two spindly legs
before the man stood again and began to draw away from us.
I couldn’t blink, even as I heard Alice
slowly sit up. No, I couldn’t even move because, as the man had leaned down and
stolen our prize, my eyes had caught sight of the eyes of my father – staring
blankly. Unseeingly. Dead.