Hope After The Fall



  HOPE AFTER THE FALL

  by Eli Taff, Jr.

  Copyright 2016 Eli Taff, Jr.

 

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  The shot was clean. The wolf dropped like a rock.

  Leland exhaled, his breath frosting before his eyes.

  He lowered the bow slowly.

  The beast had not been easy to track. It had led him on a merry chase, and more than once Leland had thought he'd lost it.

  But as the snowstorm died down, Leland had seen it, skulking through the bushes.

  It had looked up and locked eyes with Leland just as he raised the bow.

  The arrow had flown true and now the beast was dead.

  But Leland had to be sure.

  In this new world, nothing was as simple as it used to be.

  Dead things sometimes did not stay that way for long, and the simple rules that used to govern Leland's existence had all gone out the window the day the bombs fell.

  Crunching through the snow, he pulled a wicked-looking knife from his belt. It had once belonged to Captain Parekh, and she had been obsessive about maintaining its sharpness.

  It glinted in the sunlight.

  "Oh shit."

  The beast was gone.

  Leland's mind raced. Where-

  The snap of the twig and a low growl were Leland's only warning before it hit him like a freight train.

  In another lifetime, Leland had played college football. One game, he had gotten tackled so hard that his collarbone snapped, even under the padding.

  That night in the forest outside the compound, as he fell under two hundred pounds of savage rage, Leland thought the same thought he had twenty years ago: "Sharon, don't laugh..."

  She had sat with him in the ambulance, even though she wasn't supposed to.

  She waited for him outside the ER all night, and when they wheeled him out, she had laughed in his face before giving him a big kiss on the lips.

  “You big, dumb man.” Sharon whispered, her tears falling on his cheeks.

  He decided that night that he would marry her.

  Leland dropped the knife when he fell.

  The wolf was smart.

  Even with the arrow embedded in what had to have been its heart, it had worked back and around, then jumped him from the opposite side.

  Its jaws clamped down. It tried to shake him, hard. Kill him by snapping his neck.

  Sharon.

  His hands fumbled clumsily at his belt.

  The pistol!

  Hot, foetid breath reeking of spoiled meat and blood.

  His blood!

  Oh, Jesus, please…

  Sharon...don't laugh...

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  “Happy New-OUCH!”

  Sharon cried out as the firecrackers popped and jumped at her feet.

  Leland smiled, watching her run back to the porch.

  They were completely alone. His uncle had built the large cabin himself, deep in the Michigan wilderness. Their own private retreat, away from the world.

  "You light the next one." Sharon fell into his lap.

  He kissed her. Long, lovingly.

  "I love you. You're more than enough firecracker for me."

  "Shut up. Moron." She laughed.

  Her hair smelled like vanilla. He held her hand, watching the light sparkle on their wedding rings.

  “They’re pretty, huh?” Sharon turned her hand, admiring her ring.

  "We'll go to Hawaii next year. I promise."

  "Okay."

  An owl hooted in the distance. She looked up into his eyes.

  "So your uncle was...what?"

  "A Prepper."

  "Okay..."

  "'Doomsday Prepper'. Living off the grid, preaching the fall of society, all that."

  "Wow." She kissed the top of his head.

  "He was cool, though. Taught me a lot. Visiting him was like going to boy scout camp on steroids."

  “Really?”

  “Taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow, make rain catchers, that sort of thing.”

  "He couldn't have been that bad, then. Plus, he left you this amazing cabin.”

  "Well, you know," Leland smiled, "he was a little crazy."

  "RAAAAARGH!"

  Leland pulled himself out from under the carcass.

  He screamed.

  He laughed, leaning back against the giant bulk of the dead monster.

  He whooped.

  He laughed again, despite the pain in his back and his neck.

  He was alive.

  "Oh. Shit."

  The gunshots.

  Leland looked around, his heart starting to pound again.

  The commotion.

  He got to his feet, shakily. He was light-headed.

  Blood loss.

  Need to get back.

  Snow was falling again. His breath turned to steam in the cold air.

  "Come on."

  "Come on!"

  Leland honked his horn, adding to the cacophony.

  Sharon's breathing was ragged, strained. A thin sheen of cold sweat beaded her forehead.

  The baby was coming and the biggest highway in the state was a parking lot.

  Hundreds (thousands?) of terrified citizens fleeing the city.

  "Leland..." Sharon was pale, her face clammy. "What's happening?"

  Sirens in the night. Panicked newscasters trying to make sense of it all.

  Who had attacked first? Didn't matter. Bombs were falling in every country. Missiles fired off as a reaction to missiles already fired off.

  The end of the world, his wife was having a baby and all the hospitals were closed. What was he supposed to do?

  Fall of society…

  "The cabin!"

  Leland gritted his teeth, and hit the gas.

  "Hold on, baby!" He cried in joy. "We're going to be okay!"

  "Going to be okay...be okay..."

  Leland hobbled through the snow.

  Almost there.

  Fever setting in. Hope it’s not infected. That would be the worst…

  "I'm coming, baby..."

  The compound loomed ahead. Safety from the madness outside.

  The gates opened. His daughter ran out to meet him.

  "Daddy!"

  He scooped her up, wincing back the pain in his joy to see her again.

  She was perfect. His light in the darkness.

  He remembered delivering her in the car the night the world ended. She had seemed so small and fragile. His little angel.

  Has it been six years?

  "Daddy? Are you all right?"

  "Yeah, baby. Daddy's fine."

  "You're bleeding."

  "Just a scratch."

  Her eyes searched his.

  "Did you find anyone?"

  "No, baby. Not this time."

  "Do you think anyone's left?"

  "Out there? Maybe."

  “I hope we find them.”

  He didn’t know how to answer. Did he want to find anyone else, wandering in from the ruins of the world that was? Did he want to be found?

  Thomas was coming out to meet him. He was bundled up, trying to stay warm in the freezing cold.

  "How’d it go, chief?"

  "I got her."

  "Purestrain?"

  "No. Third gen mutant, maybe fourth. Three eyes. Quills on its back like a porcupine. Took an arrow to the heart and it only got meaner."
>
  "God Damn."

  "Language."

  "Sorry. Sorry, Hope. Getting to be where I don’t even remember what a real wolf is supposed to look like."

  “Two eyes, no quills.”

  “Right.”

  "Double sentries for the next few nights, okay? I had to use my sidearm to finish it."

  "We heard the shots. Coleman and Dowd are rounding up extra hands now."

  "Good. I'm gonna see Doc Orly."

  "Okay, Chief. Oh, hey…"

  “Yeah, Thomas?”

  “Do you think…I mean, when you checked in with her this morning, did she seem…”

  “She likes you, Thomas. She got the flowers, she says they’re very nice. Just ask her out already, son.”

  “Haha, you think? I mean, well, all right. That’s great.”

  "Poker tomorrow night?"

  "You know it."

  Leland and Hope continued walking. He waved at familiar faces.

  So many people had found their way to the cabin.

  “How’s school?”

  Hope made a face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Mr. Marsh says I need to study my plants more.”

  “Ha!”

  “I hate plants!”

  “I’m sure you do, baby. But knowing the difference between poison ivy and a blueberry bush is very important.”

  “Okay.”

  He was lucky. They were all good people. Skilled people. Smart people.

  But many brought with them stories of the bad people that were still out there.

  People that hunted, and pillaged, and killed.

  In this bad new world, the strong were not afraid to take from the weak, and just leave the world to die.

  So the survivors endured, keeping firm to the ideals of a civilized society. They fortified. They built. One cabin became two, then four, then more. Walls went up, and their little community survived.

  Together, they would continue to endure, until the world either righted itself or they all died of old age.

  The scent of vanilla greeted Leland seconds before she walked through the door.

  Sharon emerged, holding Leland's newborn son in her arms.

  She laughed when she saw him.

  Thank you for reading my short story! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a review, and check out some of my other work!

  Cheers!

  Eli Taff, Jr.

  About the author:

  Eli Taff is an aspiring writer of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror short stories and novellas. He is pursuing a degree in Creative Writing – Fiction at Southern New Hampshire University and currently resides in the Bay Area with his beautiful muse/fiancé, and their rascally Pekingese pup.

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