by Graeme Hurry
The silence that followed this was perhaps the worst part of it, for all I could do was hover there in a state of near-paralysis, unsure whether my unwanted visitor had slunk off into the night, or was still present, contemplating another means of ingress. When I suddenly heard a clunk of metal at the front of the house, I shrieked hoarsely and stumbled through into our entrance hall, but not without first taking my mother’s rolling pin from one of the kitchen work-tops. I still remember vividly how that hall seemed to elongate before me, to telescope out to inordinate length, as I stood at the kitchen end and peered down it, past the evergreens draped over the stair banister, past the telephone table, past the wooden coat stand, to the front door itself, which, even as I watched, began to open.
I dashed down there with rolling pin raised, like some fearless warrior, screaming. But I was actually on my last legs, and I tripped on the rug before I got there, and found myself pitching forward – into the arms of my astonished father.
Neither he nor my mother could speak they were so taken by surprise, but it soon became clear to them from my flow of semi-delirious gibberish that I was not playing some silly game. Despite my pleas that he lock all the doors and call for police assistance, my father went promptly down the side alley to the rear of the house. He found nobody lurking there, but with the aid of a candle, he noted extensive damage to our kitchen door. Afterwards, he listened again to the tale I had to tell him, and I left nothing out – but though he turned a trifle pale at my mention of the department store Santa Claus who’d appeared to know me and looked like Uncle Klaus, I don’t think he really believed that part of it.
Though I was eleven years old, I spent that Christmas Eve in my parents’ bed, alongside my mother. My father slept in the armchair downstairs, next to the fire, which he stoked up to a good blaze before switching off the lights. Apparently he spent an uncomfortable but undisturbed night, and never once relinquished his grip on the poker. By morning, a fresh snowfall had obliterated all traces of footprints on our property. In a strange way, I was quite glad of that – I had no desire to see the shape of those left by our Christmas Eve intruder.
Grandpa Ludwig lapsed into distant memory as he sipped his port wine.
“Surely there was some kind of investigation?” my dad’s older brother asked. Clearly, this was the first time he’d ever heard this particular story.
Grandpa Ludwig nodded. “Absolutely. At the first opportunity my father sought out the general manager of Halley & Meredith’s to officially complain that their Santa Claus had frightened me, and that he might well be the same person who had followed me home. Even the police became involved, and the Santa Claus in question – his name was William Harrison, and he was an out-of-work actor – was spoken to at length. Of course, Harrison denied any responsibility, and insisted that he was of good character. Others vouched for him, including fellow staff at Halley & Meredith’s, who also provided an alibi, claiming to have shared a festive tipple with him once their work that Christmas Eve had finished. And indeed, when I was eventually shown a photograph of Harrison, it was a completely different man. This ended police enquiries at the store, for Halley & Meredith’s had no other gentlemen employed in the role of Santa Claus.”
“That can’t have been the end of the matter?” someone else asked.
“Far from it.” Grandpa Ludwig shifted to get comfortable in his armchair. “The news had got out, and there was wide concern in our town that someone – nobody knew who – had followed a child home and tried to force entry to his house. The police continued to ask questions for quite some time. It was perhaps two years later when my father finally contacted them to say he was sorry for all this trouble, but that he felt I had simply fallen asleep while alone in the house on Christmas Eve and had suffered a nightmare.”
“Did you?” my mum asked gently.
“Not a bit of it.”
“So what brought your father to this conclusion?”
Grandpa Ludwig shrugged. “It’s anyone’s guess, but it was quite a coincidence, I think, that around this time we learned the fate of Uncle Klaus. It seemed he’d been taken as a prisoner of war by the Soviets in 1944, and eventually, when hostilities were over, had been put on trial, accused of leading his unit in the massacres of civilians in Poland and Belarus. He was found guilty as charged, and executed by hanging. I’m not sure of the exact date… but it was some time in December 1948.”
Even my dad was speechless; evidently he was another who’d never heard this story before. The snapping and spitting of chestnut shells finally brought us round.
“Krampus,” my auntie said with distaste. “What a horrible being to conjure up at Christmas time. The flipside of everything that is good and kind and forgiving.”
Grandpa Ludwig nodded. “As Uncle Klaus said to me.”
“When did he say that?” my dad asked. “If you never saw him again?”
Grandpa glanced up, his spectacles glinting with firelight. “Why… that final night before the war, after the argument with his twin brother, when he left our house in Mittenwald. At the time his exact words were lost on me, but since then I’ve remembered. He said: ‘Be warned, Ludwig… in your father’s stories there aren’t just good fairies. There are bad ones too’.”
COCKROACHES
by Ryan Priest
Jens took stock. He had six bullets, one machete, three hundred meters to cross and nine men in his way, each apprised of his presence and already running to stop him. Things could be worse, the terrain in front was your typical dustbowl flat ground littered with bits of scrap metal, rotted out wood heaps and the rest of the crap any settlement can’t find a use for but fears to burn.
Jens blinked.
The first of his attackers was almost on him now. Running at him waving a dull but still very lethal machete of his own. This slob didn’t merit his own bullet, Jens knew that but still it was all about momentum. Best to start this all off with a big BANG.
All that energy he’d spent running was now sending his body flipping back propelled by the tiny chunk of metal still burning in the back of his skull. It’s like tai chi, you take your opponent’s momentum and use it against him.
The bullets hit the hill behind Jens choking out little bursts of orange Earth where they made their silent impact. No use trying to dodge handgun fire. At these distances there was no way they were going to hit him and the psychological effect of showing utter fearlessness was worth the chance of a lucky shot hitting its mark.
He holstered his gun and lifted the dead man’s machete. Now he had five bullets and two machetes, two hundred and ninety meters to go.
The next two runners were on him. One had a bat and the other had a long knife, if they’d had guns they’d be hiding way back like the others wasting ammo on impossible shots.
Jens moved forward without slowing. When the time came he’d move fast but that time hadn’t come yet so there was no point wasting the energy.
The guy with the baseball bat was first. It was a wonder some of these idiots had even made it this far. The man closed his eyes and swung his bat with all he had. Jens stepped back missing the bat’s wide upswing and he kicked the man, Louisville slugger and all in the stomach. He lurched forward exposing the crown of his head.
Jens regretted sullying his hands with such a pussy. It wasn’t about being macho, all those macho guys were dead now. It was about facing the situation, about staring down the oblivion. How dare this man squint shut his eyes and throw his luck over to the gods? As if the gods or fate or destiny would just coast him the rest of the way. The impertinence! If he hadn’t figured it out yet then he never would, there are no gods. No one was coming to save them, ever.
Five bullets, one machete, the other buried in the crown of a coward’s head. His friend with the big knife wasn’t running anymore. He was standing in place but his legs were quivering. His knife in his little hand wobbled and shook.
Jens looked him dead in the eye and proceeded towards him steppi
ng over his dead friend’s body.
“I’m coming to kill you.” Jens said with a hateful leer, he didn’t want to smile but he couldn’t help baring his teeth. The crack of the gunfire was dying off, they were running low but they weren’t stupid enough to run out completely. Jens made mental note as he walked up face to face with the knife wielder.
With a machete, if you’re serious about killing your enemy, you have to jam it hard right up into his stomach and upward through his body. If you didn’t want him flailing at you with a superficial cut then you made sure to go deep. And if you didn’t want to risk losing your blade in the harmless fat of his gut you go up. Deep and up and lung and hearts and another coward dead, this one with his unused knife still clutched in his bony hand.
Jens yanked his machete from the corpse and flung off the blood and chunky viscera with a flick of the wrist. The blood got all over his pants but he didn’t look down nor would he have cared if he had. Pants don’t rust and this wasn’t about vanity, just survival and a rusty blade chips easier.
No one was running towards him anymore. They could all see that he was a killer and that in no uncertain terms, they weren’t. He kept coming forward like cancer or hunger or any inevitability.
He knew what they were thinking, what they were planning. He knew them better than they knew themselves. They were hippies or religious nuts who’d missed the catastrophe by living on the outskirts. They’d watched the slow death of sickness and sores begin to eat through their numbers. They’d given themselves over to death, said goodbye to the world and then they waited, just as they were waiting now.
Jens licked his lips mindful not to let them chap under this harsh Nevadan sun. From under the brim of his hat he could see their heads and toes sticking out from various hiding places. He knew them without even seeing their faces.
They’d sat watching everyone die and then the fifth or six day when all seemed lost they realized something marvelous. This group of people and those three already dead weren’t getting the sores. Surely they were sick, everyone got sick but not everyone got the sores and the ones that didn’t have sores got better. No doubt they’d seen this as some sort of miracle. Taken it as some sort of heavenly ordainment of whatever weird beliefs had kept them out of the major population centers. After all god had saved them.
What they didn’t figure out was that a lot of people were saved just like them all over the country. One in twenty seemed to be able to survive the sickness brought on by the bombs.
Jens was getting closer and closer and he knew they were waiting for just the right moment and then they’d all pounce at once. He could hear the hum of their susurruses as they planned in whispers. They were protecting the house and they were surrounded by open range in all directions. Of course they’d all try and attack at once, what else could they possibly do? The very fact that they’d have to coordinate such a plan out loud showed that they weren’t qualified enough to carry it out successfully.
He didn’t feel sorry for them either. In fact Jens resented these pampered provincials. Where were they when the bombs struck? How dare they mistake surviving the sores for luck? They weren’t in the cities where the millions of decomposing bodies brought rot and death. There were too many bodies to get rid of, even with bulldozers and fires. They finally had to abandon the cities to the bacteria and rats.
By the time they’d made it clear of the cities only one in two thousand was alive. And sure, it’d have been easy for them to mistake themselves as holy. Surviving odds like that but it wasn’t over. It’s never over no matter what you try to hide behind.
Jens took out his gun, aimed and put a hole in a particular head that had been poking out behind a rusted out car frame.
The air thundered with the fire of four guns spending their last ammo, exactly as Jens had wanted. He could make a shot but he knew these sissies, these non-combatants would miss a barn door at this distance.
Families hadn’t survived. It obviously had nothing to do with genetics. A woman here, a man there, barely any children and even less once they’d made it clear of the cities. Every life was over, no one had a past, no one had an identity to nurture. Accountants, bus drivers, school teachers all turned into rapists and thieves and murderers. No one could trust anybody else so no one trusted anyone else.
Soon the food ran out and all sense of civility went with it. They fought one another and without hesitation killed one another for cans of food or simply the promise of food. Women became defacto slaves. Commerce all but stopped, no one traded, they only killed and took. As the years passed every man surviving couldn’t help but think himself a god. Ever decreasing in numbers those surviving this had brought killing to an art form, predation as a way of life.
Now he was within fifty meters of the front door. In his way the remaining five readied for their inevitable attack. This wouldn’t even be challenging. He’d eaten more people than this. He’d killed scores of far better trained men in far greater numbers.
Thirty meters and closing. He didn’t feel his pulse elevating even though he knew what was coming next.
Target three, the one behind the refrigerator, popped his head up and aimed his gun. There would only be one bullet in the chamber but this was the one that could hit him.
He jumped to the side and then zigzagged forward at full sprint. The other heads all popped up now and readied their assorted baseball bats, wrenches and shovels. This would all be over in seconds.
Jens continued his crisscross strafing until he heard it. The mini explosion of that last bullet leaving the gun. Of course it missed him, scarcity of ammunition meant that no one ever practiced shooting targets.
It’s not like he hadn’t been shot before anyway. Twice in those first years of nonstop killing. He’d taken one through the arm and another through his stomach at different times. It hurt but he’d killed the men who shot him making it hurt somewhat less. The third time he’d been shot was the first one of these communes he’d run into.
It had been filled with a band of holy rollers who believed they were waiting out Armageddon. Maybe they were too but sooner or later Armageddon comes knocking at your front door. They’d answered with a rifle and before he could speak they’d blown Jens off of their porch. By this time he’d already gotten a hold of his bullet proof vest Such a powerful blast at close range to the chest hurt but it didn’t kill him, a mistake no one in that house would live to regret. He killed them all, one by one and stole every piece of food they had.
Now there was a new commune and new rubes with weapons about to have their theories of divine providence put to the ultimate test.
Behind the lenses of his sunglasses Jens set his focus on the horizon so he could see all the men in his periphery. One with a shovel was coming in fast. Jens dashed towards him and swung his machete up. The poor bastard made eye contact as he realized he couldn’t pull his body back in time and brought himself down across the blade with his own weight.
The machete came out his other side and for a moment Jens was immobile but that was all it took for the one with the wrench to come charging out waving his oversized tool like a medieval mace.
Jens pulled out his gun, fired once and had his gun back in his waistband in one quick motion not because it was cool but because he needed both hands to tear his machete free and he couldn’t waste a single movement.
Three bullets, one machete, three men left. But bullets are hard to come by. So Jens went with the machete. Machetes were initially used for cutting through thick brush and jungles. Now they were the primary weapon of the survivor for much the same reason, they allowed you to chop through most anything and keep coming forward and that was the new law of the jungle, always keep pressing forward.
Jens hacked two of the men to death. Swinging up and down, up and down like a factory machine. He could see the fingers and other tissues coming away like torn paper leaving bright pink flesh. He didn’t even stop to wipe the blood from his face before bearing down on that la
st one, still behind the refrigerator, still holding on to the gun that let him down.
“Please let me go! I surrender!” He screamed throwing his spent pistol to the ground.
“That won’t do you any good. I’ve come to kill you.” Jens said and with that he buried his machete into the man’s face. If there was a second rule of the jungle it’s “finish what you start”. That’s why he was still alive. That’s why he’d survived the bombs, the cities, the dessert, it was because he finished what he started.
Jens opened the door to the house. He went into the kitchen and began to load up as many knapsacks as he could with their food, canned goods, flower, dried meat from god knew what animal.
There was too much food for him to carry and he wasn’t about to set up shop here. If he’d found this place then others would be sure to follow. It was best to stay on the move.
As he stepped over his fallen enemies he had to fight the urge to feel sorry for them. He forced himself to remember that they’d brought it down on themselves.
It was only yesterday that he’d shown up. He hadn’t even asked for food, only to pass through. They took one look at the knife and gun and knew him for what he was, a killer. There was no telling if they’d ever seen a survivor from the city before. They’d told him with their raised pistols to turn back the way he came. The nerve, they had no idea where he’d come from, what type of hell they were damning him too. So when he came back the next day he didn’t ask for anything.
Jens stacked up the wood and clothes and other flammables and set them ablaze at the front of the house before leaving back to the open dessert. Whoever would be next would get no food or shelter from this house. Pre-emptive starvation, he knew if he made it far enough burning the supplies behind him that sooner or later he’d be too far for anyone to ever follow him and maybe then he could stop surviving and begin to live.
