Angela knelt in front of her and whispered. “What… what are you trying say?”
The woman’s eyes were gone, melted clean out of her skull. All that remained in the left socket was a three-inch piece of glass. She tried wagging her head in an attempt to speak through her charred lips, but could only manage her pathetic mewling. “Ellleee…. Ellleee… Ellleeeee.”
Help me.
How could Angela help the poor soul? She was melted into an armchair. “Can I… would you like a glass of water?” It was the stupidest thing to ask, but Angela had no other idea how to assist the dying woman. The burned skull wagged its head again, side to side, and then up and down.
“Aaawwwwerrrrr.”
Water.
Angela stood up and went to pat the woman’s arm. She changed her mind, imagining the simple gesture likely to cause even more unimaginable agony. And she didn’t want to touch her. She held her hands up at the woman instead in a ridiculous motion that said stay right where you are, I’ll be right back. Angela backed away from the chair and went to find the kitchen.
The glass in the window frame had been blown in to that room as well. The drapes had burned away but the flames hadn’t taken anything else. It would’ve been a mercy if the house burned to the ground. It would’ve saved her from hours of suffering. A small round table was sitting in the room’s center and two chairs were tucked up beneath it. A bowl had shattered to the floor depositing the last bits of an oatmeal breakfast against the yellow tiles. Dust and ash had settled over every square inch of surface in the modest little kitchen. Angela tried the sink faucet, but it only groaned back at her. She grabbed a plastic cup from the floor, rubbed the ashes off against her equally filthy dress, and went to find the bathroom.
Angela wondered along the way how old the lady sitting in the armchair was. She had obviously been living on her own for some time, subsisting on very little and managing to get by. Old folks liked to display family pictures on the walls; there were at least a dozen more in the short hallway. But she hadn’t been too old to have her family ship her off to a care home. That had to put her somewhere between sixty-five and eighty. Angela would’ve have been just like her in another twenty or twenty-five years if the bombs hadn’t wiped all the houses and care homes away. She would’ve collected an old-age pension and dined alone on oatmeal breakfasts until someone deemed her even to useless to do that.
The washroom taps grumbled back at her and the bathtub moaned its protests as well. The toilet bowl was empty so Angela lifted the tank cover away from the back. Bone dry and stained brown at the bottom. The old lady was going to die in complete and utter agony.
Angela remembered the single bottle of pop she’d stolen the day before. She checked the pockets of her dress and found a few globs of chocolate bar stuck inside their wrappers. The drink must have fallen out while I was sleeping. She moved quickly back to the living room and found a man standing over the old woman.
Chapter 8
“Hey,” the stranger said.
“Hey,” Angela answered back. He wasn’t a man, she realized. He was as big as a grownup, but the voice was young, and his build was slim. He was a teenager, probably fifteen or sixteen. A grey hoody was pulled up over his head, but Angela could see the long strands of greasy black hair poking out around his neck. The boy stared back at Angela with dark, guilty eyes.
“Starting to think I was the only one.”
Angela was gripping the plastic cup too tightly. “Pardon me?”
“The only one left… you know, like the last man on earth.”
What was he doing in this house with Angela and the old woman? “You… You’re the first person I’ve seen since… well, you know… since it happened.”
He moved towards her a half-step. “Yeah, what the fuck was that all about? Did we like get hit by an asteroid or something?”
Angela leaned up against the open doorway leading into the kitchen. Whoever the boy was, he didn’t keep up on the world around him. He had no clue what had happened, or how much the planet’s governments hated each other. She tried to control her breathing, not wanting to reveal to the teen how scared she was. Somewhere in the back of her terrified brain she realized the old woman had finally gone silent. “It was a bomb. Nuclear. They’ve probably dropped them all over the continent.”
He stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. He never blinked. “We got nuked. Yeah, I wondered that, too. Fuckin’ shame.” He glanced quickly at the woman in the chair. “Too bad about that old lady. Was she your mom?”
“My mother died years ago.”
“So then you don’t who this is. You came in to like take stuff?”
Angela could feel the hard plastic in her hand starting to squeeze in. Any more pressure and the cup would snap into a dozen sharp pieces. “I used the couch, stayed the night. I just needed somewhere to sleep.”
“You trespassed.” The boy came closer. She could smell liquor on his breath. Now probably wasn’t the time to tell him he was too young to drink. “What’s your name?”
“Angela.”
“We have to stick together, Angela. We have to be a team and take care of each other.” He reached up and rubbed his dirty knuckles gently down her throat. The fingertips settled at the top of her chest. “You don’t got to be scared… I won’t let nothin’ bad happen to you.”
Angela turned her face away from him. She looked down and saw the old woman sitting perfectly still. Something had changed. The knitting needle was no longer melded between her fingers—it had been stuck deep into her throat. The glass finally splintered in Angela’s hand, she pushed the teenager away and made a run for the open window.
He grabbed at her hair and yanked her back towards him. “What’s your fucking problem? I’m trying to save your life.”
He backed into the overturned coffee table and they both tumbled onto the chesterfield. Angela felt one of his arms wrap around her neck. The other hand left her hair and started groping between her legs. He was trying to pull her dress up. Something hard and warm was pressing up against her panties. My God, he’s going to rape me.
She gasped through the choking pressure. “Please… don’t do this…you don’t have to do this.”
“Just you and me,” he whispered back. “There ain’t no one else. I’ll take care of you.”
A part of Angela wanted to stop struggling. Let him do what he came here to do. He’s young. It will only take a few seconds. She could see the charred corpse through her flailing legs, four inches of white knitting needle sticking out from under its chin. This wouldn’t end with just the violation of Angela’s body. He would do more to her. She could feel something warm and wet in her hand—the plastic cup fragments. She worked the pieces in her fingers, settling her bloody palm around the longest shard. The boy’s forearm was crushing Angela’s windpipe, dull yellow stars were swimming before her. She tried pleading with him one last time. “Let me go… I won’t tell… anyone.”
His hand was digging between her legs, his nails cutting the insides of her thighs. “I know.”