Hope
by Brian Dorsey
Vita leaned away from the intensity of the fire.
Too far. The bitter cold at his back gripped him like the icy hands of a witch from one of his aunt’s fairy tales.
It was always cold. And dark. It had been that way since before he was born. His father had told him stories about the Beforetime, when everyone had so much: water that flowed from pipes directly to people’s homes, food stored in public ‘stores’ without armed guards, and…warmth. But his father was gone, just like the old world he naively hoped to recreate.
But Vita had accepted this world. It was his world. He was born in a shelter six months after the first bombs fell and was five when the remains of civilization evaporated under the death and savagery brought on by the Sickness. The Sickness took half the known survivors, including his mother and sister. The raiders took his aunt. And the fallacy of hope consumed his father.
Vita knew better. There was no hope, only life and death.
The crackle of the fire sounded like accentuated the frigid stillness of the afternoon dusk, the two-hour daylight having passed an hour ago.
The fire’s too large? he feared. Vita scanned the boundaries of his encampment before scooping a handful of rocky ash into his hands and dumping it onto half of his fire, extinguishing that portion. Hoping he had reduced his chances of detection, Vita pulled a piece of flesh from the squirrel carcass suspended over his fire.
Shifting the grip of his fingers frequently, he gave the steaming meat two quick puffs of his breath before shoving it in his mouth. Repositioning the meat with his tongue to prevent it from burning, he pulled a small container from his pack and placed it in the red-hot embers of his fire.
Next, he pulled a small plastic bottle of brownish-green water from the pack and poured it into the can, returning to his afternoon meal while the water worked itself to a boil.
***
The snap of a twig echoed from the darkness and he spun toward the threat, his rifle at the ready.
“Step forward!” he shouted, glancing to the left and right. “Who’s there?”
The figure of a girl emerged from the unknown that existed outside of the faint light of Vita’s fire.
He knew he’d made the fire too large.
“Don’t shoot us,” begged the girl with a voice so melodic it reminded him of a lullaby he had seen mothers sing to their babies in New Nashville before it all went to shit.
“Step closer. Who’s with you?”
“Just me and my baby,” she answered, stepping toward the fire.
The girl held a bundle close to her chest. She had blonde hair, he thought, but it was hard to tell as it was a dirty, tangled mess falling over the front of her shoulders. Her dirty and pock-marked face told him two things—she had been in the nothing for a while and she was one of the few to get the Sickness and live.
Vita hated meeting girls in the nothing. Road gangs, collectors, and a dozen other names for the monsters roaming the nothing often used them as decoys.
“Stop!”
The girl stopped and he swung his rifle in a 360 degree arc to check for threats.
Nothing.
The cooing of a baby slipped from the bundle in the girl’s arms.
“You alone?”
“Just us,” offered the girl. “I saw the fire and…I’m so hungry and she’s so cold.”
His father would’ve invited her in, sharing everything. But that’s what got him killed. Vita knew the right thing to do was to put a bullet in her head and let the baby freeze.
He moved his finger into the trigger guard.
“Please don’t kill us,” pleaded the girl. “I’m just trying to keep my baby alive,” she confessed, tears rolling down her dirty cheeks.
“Damn it,” he cursed. Even from the grave, Vita’s father and his damn moral code still nagged at him. “Put the baby on the ground and drop any weapons you have.”
The girl hesitated, gripping her baby tightly.
“Just making sure you’re not a threat,” said Vita, lowering his rifle slightly to put the girl at ease.
“Thank you,” exhaled the girl. “My name’s Raven Planos and this is Hope.”
Raven rested her child on the ground. “Here,” she said as she reached into her coat pocket and gently pulled out a small caliber pistol. “That’s all I have.”
“No knives, nothing else.”
“Nothing. I promise.”
Vita made his way to the girl, his senses heightened. “Hands in the air,” he ordered.
She complied.
Vita touched the girl’s waist to check for other weapons. She recoiled but kept her hands held toward the sky.
“I’m not gonna hurt you if you don’t give me a reason.”
“Just check me,” she replied.
“Where is the baby’s father?”
“I was…Hope doesn’t have a father.”
Vita had figured that was how a girl her age ended up with a child out in the nothing.
He heard the fire crackle again.
Or was it the fire?
Vita spun around to see a large man barreling toward him, a machete held over his head. Vita raised his rifle and the cold silence of the afternoon erupted with gunfire. The man tumbled to the ground and Vita turned back toward Raven just as she pulled a knife from her baby’s blanket and lunged toward him.
He raised his rifled to block her attack. Deflecting the blade, he pulled the pistol he taken from her from his waist, pressed it against her forehead, and fired.
In a flash, everything was silent except the cooing of a baby.
Panting, Vita looked down upon the child.
He squeezed the pistol in his hand and inhaled deeply as his gaze shifted from the baby to the darkness of the cold afternoon sky.
“You win again, dad,” signed Vita as he looked down toward Hope.
