Sick Bastards (7 page)

Nothing Stopping You

“We’re leaving!” I told him. “You can’t keep us here.”

“How many more times are we going to have this conversation? Same old, same old...You eat a little food, you start to feel guilty about your desire to survive and what you’ve done, you talk about leaving, you go quiet, you bang your sister, all is right in the world...You eat...You feel guilty...Just go. We don’t want you here. It’s hard enough surviving without someone as negative as you trying to make things harder for us. So - yeah - leave. You want to go, I want you to go and your mother wants you to go...Your sister, though, she isn’t going anywhere.”

“I’m not leaving her here with you!” I told him.

I don’t know why I said that. I should have just gone whilst he was letting me. That little glimmer of the sister I once knew flashing in her eyes though - I didn’t want to leave that. I didn’t want to lose it. I wanted to bring her back from the dark place she found herself in at the moment. I still felt I could. The blackness in Father’s eyes now showed me that for him, it was too late. He was lost for good. But not my sister...

“Then we have a problem.” Father turned to my sister and asked her, “What do you want to do? Do you want to leave too?”

“Not without you and Mother...”

“We’re not leaving though. Someone will come by and find us. They’ll come and take us to safety. It’s just a question of waiting...”

“And when they do come - what makes you so sure you won’t just kill them before they reveal who they are? After all - how do you know they’ll be your saviour as opposed to another lump of meat for the table?” I blurted out. I turned back to Sister, “We need to leave - he’s lost the plot. Look in his eyes.”

Sister looked at Father and then back to me, “What about them?” she asked.

Her own eyes had dulled once more. The sparkle had once again slipped away.

“Please,” I begged her, “come with me.”

She shook her head, “Not without Mother and Father.”

“And we’re not going anywhere,” he said with a smug look on his face.

I wished I had the axe to hand. I would have stuck it in his face right there and then. I’m not sure whether the thought was from the darkness battling inside of me or whether it was part of my good side. After all, killing something evil - surely that’s not a bad thing to do? The line between right and wrong has become blurred since the bomb.

“I can’t stay here,” I told Sister, trying to ignore the look on my father’s face.

“And I can’t go. Not without my family.”

I wanted to tell her that they weren’t her family but I couldn’t. At the end of the day - despite what they have become in the bad days - they’ll always be her parents. They’ll always be our parents.

“What are you waiting for?” Father asked, that same smug look on his face. “We’ll even move the barricade from the front door. Save you from having to leave via the window again.”

I hate him.

“Fine,” I said after a slight hesitation - trying to decide whether Sister would change her mind or not. It appeared not.

“You might want to eat that,” said Father as he pointed to the meat on the bedroom floor, “you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday. You’ll need your strength out there if you’re going to survive for long...Lot of walking to do. Could be miles.”

I looked at the meat. Father was right. I didn’t want to eat it but I had to. If I left on an empty stomach I’d get hungry even quicker once I had walked for a bit. At least staying in the house, doing nothing, kept hunger at bay for a little longer. Out there, doing the exercise, though - I’d definitely need a full stomach before I left...

“We’ll leave you to your meal.” He smirked at me as he beckoned Sister from the room. She didn’t even look back at me as he closed the door behind them.

I walked over to the meat and picked it up. Certainly not as fresh as it was yesterday but it will do. In my mind I pictured a nice fillet steak. And then I bit down on a section which squelched between my teeth.

To think - this used to be hard.

PART SIX

Before

The First Bite

We were all sat around the dinner table, empty plates in front of us. Father was sitting at the head of the table, Mother was sitting next to Sister and I was alone on the other side despite having the option to sit at the other end of the table opposite Father.

He had called us there to discuss what had to be spoken about. The man I had killed earlier, with the axe, was still lying in a pool of clotted blood at the front of the house - no doubt already attracting the attention of swarms of flies and other insects all looking for an easy meal.

Father had told us that it was just meat. He had told us that we were supposed to picture something else - like a steak - when we bit down into it. He told us that it would be easy if we didn’t think about what we were doing. If we over-thought it then we would find it harder.

Of course it wasn’t just a case of Father telling us how to go about eating the meat. There was also some protesting too. Mother didn’t really say anything; she agreed with Father that we didn’t really have a choice. Sister was against it though. One hundred percent. I was too - despite my initial thought that it was the best option. Now it was laid out in front of me (so to speak) the idea repulsed me.

“I’ll take the first bite,” said Father, “I’ll tell you what it tastes like. Prepare you.”

Sister still didn’t look convinced. Would it really have made a difference whether Father went first or not? The idea of him reporting back saying it tasted as disgusting as we thought it would be surely wouldn’t have helped us conquer our own fears of eating human flesh.

Can’t think of it as human.

It’s not human.

It’s meat.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Meat.

“Anyone want to say anything?” he asked.

No one did say anything. Whether they wanted to, or not, was another matter altogether though. I’m sure we all had something to say but realised there was little point. At the end of the day there was no sense dragging it out any longer than entirely necessary. Father nodded his head and stood up. He picked a knife up from the table - a large butcher’s knife Mother had brought in - and headed towards the door to go and get the meat.

I nearly offered him a helping hand. Nearly. I couldn’t though. The thought of what needed to be done (cutting skin off a still-warm corpse) before having to eat it...No way. There was no way I could see the body and then stick the pieces of flesh in my mouth. At least sitting here, in a room away from where the meat was being
prepared
, I could pretend that everything was normal. I was just sitting in my house, waiting for Father to bring me my dinner.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Just meat.

Steak.

A nice prime piece of fillet. Fresh from the butchers. Blue - just the way I like it.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

My mind played back the mental image of seeing the head separate from the neck of the body. My mind played back the spray of red into the blue sky. My mind played back the sight of the head rolling to a stop and the way the eyes seemingly settled on me (the latter part of the thought clearly an extra detail my imagination added for whatever reason). Stop thinking about it. What’s happened has happened. It’s finished. It’s over with. No need to dwell on it. It was a question of him or me (and the family). I did what I had to do. And I’m certainly not about to eat a piece of his body. Certainly not. I’m just sitting here waiting for Father to bring me my steak.

I love steak.

Shame I don’t have some chips to go with it.

I’m not sure how long Father was out of the room for. When he came back in he had a plate of meat with him. I didn’t dare pay any attention to the plate, nor the blood on his hands. Instead I just stared at his face. His pale face. A look of horror in his expression that I’ll never forget despite wishing I could. I wanted to ask him whether he had taken a minute to try a small piece for himself but the words didn’t come from my mouth.

Mother asked, “Are you okay?”

He nodded as he put the plate down in the centre of the table.

“Plenty left over if anyone fancies it!” he tried to joke.

No one laughed.

No one moved either. We all just sat there - none of us able to take our eyes from the plate. It’s a shame we knew what the meat was because there, on the bloodied plate, it looked like a kind of ham.

Father took a deep breath in and sighed it back out again. “Down the hatch.”

Quick as a flash he picked a small piece of meat up (thankfully most of them were cut fairly small in size) and threw it into his mouth which promptly clamped shut. He paused there for a second or two. You could see, on his face, that he was having an internal battle with his thoughts about whether to chew or spit it back out. Slowly he chewed. We all watched for his reaction. It was clear the meat wasn’t the best yet he hadn’t spat it back out which (on some levels) was a positive.

“Pork.”

He swallowed.

“Shame there isn’t some brown sauce in the house,” was another attempt at a mood lightening joke. Again no one laughed.

Mother picked a small piece up, and I did too. We both put the pieces of
fillet steak
into our mouths and slowly chewed down. Father was right. There was an element of pork to the taste. The texture was...Chewy, uncooked ham. I couldn’t help but wish there was some gas in the house with which we could have cooked some of the meat. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to light a small fire, outside, with which we could have cooked a little of the meat? Perhaps that would have made it more bearable.

“It’s not as bad as it could be,” I said to Sister.

She didn’t look convinced. She was clearly struggling with the whole idea of eating a fellow human despite it being our best chance of survival. I don’t know for sure but starvation must surely be a horrible way to die and whilst it’s fair to say none of us would have starved immediately - it wouldn’t have been long before the effects of hunger started to take their toll on our bodies; especially as none of us was particularly large to begin with.

“We’ll need to keep our strength up,” Father told her, “just in case those things outside come by...We can’t be weak.” You could see by his face that he sympathised with Sister. He hadn’t wanted to eat the flesh either. None of us did. “You can do it,” he added.

“Forgive me Father for what I am about to do.”

Sister quickly picked up a piece of meat (the smallest on the plate) and threw it into her mouth before promptly chewing down on it as quickly as she could. Seconds later she swallowed it down. The speed she ate with, I’d have been surprised if her taste buds had the chance to register any flavour. She gagged and (for a minute) I thought it was going to come back up and land in a mushed up state back on her plate. Thankfully for all concerned, it didn’t.

Father reluctantly took another piece from the pre-cut sections. He put it in his mouth and began the chewing process once more. I looked at Sister and Mother and they both reached forward for another taste knowing that the small pieces already swallowed would not be enough to sustain us.

I guess we aren’t taking it in turns anymore.

“How about if we lit a fire?” I asked Father. “There are papers in the lounge - we could use those...Perhaps cook some of the meat? Might make it...”

“And where would we cook it?” he asked as he swallowed his second piece. “There’s nowhere indoors where we could safely keep a fire under control and - if we light it outside - the smoke might attract those things to us. We can’t risk it.” He took another handful.

I didn’t argue with him. He was right. He was always right.

I took a second piece of flesh for myself.

Here we go again.