La Mort et ses Merveilles ✔

1. Memento Mori

The young man lowered his pistol, his sunken eyes studying my little sister intently as she stepped out from behind my back. Grabbing my palm in hers, she stood beside me, facing our assailant. The man who killed our father.

"I don't have anyone else," she said. "If you kill my brother, I won't have anyone else."

For a brief moment I could see the young man's expression softening, or perhaps it was just my eyes playing tricks on me, in the midst of the adrenaline and hysteria. But before I could make sense of it his face grew tense once again.

"Give me your stuff," he ordered. "Now."

Raising my hands, I gestured to the cabinet to the side of the room. The gun still pointing at us, the man opened the cabinet, to find exactly what he was looking for. We had a small stockpile of food and a few bottles of water in there. Well it didn't matter anymore, it was all his now. He carried as much as he could, cartons of water bottles as well as a few cans of tomato soup.

"Don't you move," he ordered the both of us as he stood there in the doorway.

He then stepped out and walked out of the motel room which had been my family's home more or less for the past few weeks. Looking through the open door, I stood there, frozen in fear as I watched his movements. I was sure it wasn't his first time, given by how he just shot my father without even wincing. How could someone even do that? I could understand killing the dead but to kill a living, breathing person. . .only a monster could do something like that without even batting an eye. I saw the young man in his blue jacket loading our stuff into a blue pickup truck that he had parked in the parking lot below. There were already a considerable amount of supplies in the back of it. I spotted cartons of juice, cans of soup and fruit, as well as a few jerry cans of what I presumed was gas. He couldn't be just robbing people for his own survival. I guess he must be looting to supply a large amount of people. A community perhaps? I didn't know. I've heard of survivors congregating together forming small bands of their own through the ham radio network, small enclaves of civilisation in the sea of collapse and decay. But whatever people he was feeding I'm sure they must be a bunch of outlaws or the very least amoral to the point that they were fine with killing and taking supplies from innocent people.

Downstairs I noticed the man talking to a few others, burly men by the looks of it. Some wore black leather jackets while others just had T-shirts. But one thing was for sure though, they all had tattoos on their arms. So they were all part of a gang? That made sense.

One of them, a pale man in glasses seemed to approach the staircase leading to our floor of the motel, but the man who robbed us seemed to stop him. I couldn't really make out everything that he said, but I heard something about him 'already having it covered'.

It was then when Isabella quickly ran over to the cupboard and took a board of water bottles as well as a few tins of sardines and baked beans.

"What are you doing?" I asked her, raising my voice in a panic. "He's going to kill us if we move!"

My little sister quickly dumped whatever she had picked up and dumped them in the closet behind her. I could hear footsteps come up the staircase.

"Come here!" I called out to Isabella through gritted teeth.

The young girl immediately ran back to my side and held my hand, as if nothing had ever happened. Soon enough the young man had returned. He narrowed his eyes as he examined us, but he went on to the cupboard, stepping over where Dad's body lay. He squatted in front of the opened cabinet, whistling nonchalantly as he rummaged through our belongings –until suddenly the whistling stopped. There was a short pause. My heart skipped a beat. He caught us.