Humanity

by 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

  http://ladyxboleyn.deviantart.com

  http://facebook.com/ladyxboleyn

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20 - Gideon

  Chapter 21 - Gideon

  Chapter 22 - Candace

  Epilogue – Candace

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  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 b
e 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.

  Chapter 2

  Horror filled my chest at the sight that met my eyes, and I finally stumbled up to my knees. My mother lay to my right, facedown, blood forming a pool in her skull and spilling out onto the dirt.

  My shock was muted, though. Out of everything that I had seen in my life, how could it shock me that someone I loved had finally been killed?

  Not someone. Everyone. Everyone I loved. Two people. Dead.

  I snapped my head around, peering around me. My eyes landed on his back, the beige color of his shirt fading into the trees. Too late, I realized he was alone. Nausea filled my gut even as hatred filled my heart. Why? Why? For that doe? That was our hunt! And my parents were dead for his theft.

  I brought to mind the image of their faces: Mom, excited to give me something beautiful, to give me the silver and blue bracelet. Dad, indulging her impractical wish because he loved her. Dad, kissing each of our foreheads.

  I couldn’t handle the pain the image caused me, and so I focused on what I could understand.

  I rocked forward, toward my mother’s body, detangling the backpack from her torso. I placed it on my own back, then gently touched her hand one more time. I didn’t turn her over; I didn’t want to look at her face and see the blank, staring eyes that matched my father’s. I kissed her hand, then shifted to where my father lay. As a rule, his own pack didn’t have anything valuable in it, so I simply kissed his unblemished forehead. Then I stood, knowing I didn’t have any time to spare.

  “Do you remember that couple my parents were talking to before the hunt?” I asked Alice, not looking at her but instead surveying the area, eyes landing on each body I could see before skittering back to the retreating figure. He had yet to completely disappear, slow under his burden. He wouldn’t be able to keep even that pace for long. I could catch up, as long as I knew where to find him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where did they fall?”

  I looked at her, ready for her to point me in the right direction.

  She was
looking at me suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m taking back what my parents gave them,” I told her scathingly. “Do you know where they fell?”

  “Over there,” she said, pointing toward the clearing.

  I jogged in that direction, down the dip of a hill, and found them lying against the base of the statue, hands still loosely clasped. I wrinkled my nose against the display of emotion, beginning to pat down their bodies in search of the bottle.

  And there it was, in the deep pocket of his dirty khakis. I pulled it out, trying not to notice how his leg was still warm, and then replaced it in my mother’s backpack.

  I turned away from them. Then, I started running.

  “Where are you going?” Alice called softly, falling into step with me.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I murmured; the flame of anger burned like fire in my chest, fueling each stride.

  “That’s not going to bring your parents back,” she told me, still keeping pace with me.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “He deserves it.”

  “I understand – I did the same when my parents were killed.”

  I snapped a glance at her, startled by this new information. She had never shared so much of herself with me. We kept company, but not much else. I hadn’t known her for long, but she’d always been drawn to me, drawn to my family. I’d already known that she hadn’t always been alone. She knew what it was like to be a piece of a greater whole, and craved what came from that.

  But I’d puzzled that out for myself – she hadn’t offered that information.

  “What are you going to do after he’s dead?” she asked.

  “I don’t know; I’ll figure it out.”

  She paused, keeping pace with me, before speaking again. “After he’s dead, come find me, if you want. We can stick together for a while.”

  I glanced her way, meeting her eyes for an instant before continuing to propel myself forward, toward my target. She might have been willing to help me, but I didn’t ask; this was something I needed to do myself, and she seemed to understand that.