Sammy and Marshall
All was quiet in the ruined metropolis. The chaotic rush of traffic and commuters had been silenced by the atomic bombs almost a decade ago, although there was only one person still alive who remembered them, to whom a silent city was still eerily unnatural.
A moment later, that same person's voice broke the silence.
"Marshall-Lee, look!"
A woman ran along the cracked road. She was around forty years old, had long, wild white hair and tinted blue skin. She wore a formal, black blouse and trousers, with a small, golden tiara tied to her belt with a bit of string. On her nose, were perched a small pair of circular, blue glasses.
She held the hand of a small boy, who ran along with her. He was around eight. His hair was shaggy and jet-black. He grinned happily, showing a pointed fang on either side of his upper jaw.
The two of them reached a mobile food shop, abandoned at the side of the road. The woman grunted in effort as she picked the boy up and sat him on the counter.
"Oh my, you're getting so big, Marshall-Lee!" She said, endearingly. Her voice was warm and loving.
She walked into the food shop through the open door and looked around. She lifted out one of the cooking trays and grimaced. It was full of barely identifiable sludge, reeked and had flies crawling over it.
"You want some fries, Marshall-Lee?" She chuckled, holding it up to him.
The boy screamed jokingly and pushed the tray away.
"Sammy, that's so gross!" He cried.
"I've seen you try to eat worse!" She smiled, putting the tray back.
Sammy turned around and opened a fridge at the back of the shop. It wasn't working, of course, but a number of the canned drinks were still there and intact. She began to take them out and put them into her camping bag.
"Can I have one of those?" Marshall-Lee asked, hopefully.
Sammy turned around to face him. "Are you thirsty?" She asked suspiciously.
"Yes…" Marshall-Lee said, quietly, without making eye contact with Sammy.
Sammy ruffled his hair lovingly. "You can have one tomorrow, it's a little late for one now, sweetheart. I don't want you up all night. You can have some water when we get back to the camp."
Marshall-Lee sulked silently as Sammy finished emptying the fridge. She walked out of the shop and held out her hand to him. After a few seconds, Marshall-Lee smiled reluctantly, hopped off the counter and took her hand. The two of them walked through the city and back to their camp.
The next day, Sammy and Marshall-Lee ventured back into the depths of the metropolis. Sammy knew which areas of the city were hotspots for mutant attacks and which areas were more likely to be safe. She made sure Marshall-Lee memorized the areas too, and was always alert. Living in a post-apocalyptic city could be exhausting sometimes.
She had often considered taking Marshall-Lee to live somewhere in the countryside, but it was unlikely that very many crops survived the war. And even if they found any, there was no way to preserve them. For the foreseeable future, processed and canned foods were their only hope.
As Sammy walked along the street, Marshall-Lee ran ahead, excitedly. True to Sammy's instructions, he stayed close to her and approached street corners from afar to avoid running into anything.
"Hey Sammy. What do we need to get today?" Marshall-Lee asked, as Sammy caught up with him.
"Nothing in particular." Sammy said, sounding somewhat relieved. "We're pretty well stocked right now, but I'd like to keep it that way. Remember that shopping mall we saw the other day?"
A few days ago, Sammy and Marshall-Lee had had to run from a swarm of mutants, and had seen the mall in the distance.
Marshall-Lee frowned. "We're going there? Is it safe…?" He stole a look at Sammy's tiara, hanging from her belt.
"We'll just have to be a little careful. Hey, you know most malls have toy stores!"
Marshall-Lee's face lit up. His only toys were his teddy bear, Hambo, and a slingshot Sammy had helped him build. He didn't seem to notice how Sammy had changed the subject. She hadn't lied, they were doing fine for provisions… for the time being. But the fact was that they were rapidly running out of places to search, and there simply weren't any places left where Sammy could feel sure that there would be no mutant intervention.
As the two of them approached the mall, Sammy held Marshall-Lee's hand a little harder than usual. He picked up on her fear and looked around nervously. Suddenly, there was movement in front of them. Sammy instinctively wrapped an arm around Marshall-Lee defensively and her other hand grasped her tiara. A moment later though, they both relaxed slightly.
A dark pink ball, the size of a basketball had rolled out of an alleyway in front of them and had come to a stop in the middle of the road. The two of them approached it cautiously. When they were a few feet away, Sammy let go of Marshall-Lee's hand.
"Wait here, sweetheart." She said, before approaching the thing herself.
She picked it up carefully. She squeezed it and the surface seemed to fracture around her hands. Gobsmacked by the realisation that was slowly dawning on her, Sammy leant forwards and sniffed the thing.
"What is it?" Marshall-Lee asked, slowly walking forwards.
"It's a gumball…" Sammy mumbled, the confusion clear in her voice. "Oh, it's a kind of candy." She added, once she noticed the confusion on Marshall-Lee's face.
Sammy looked down the alleyway, but there was no sign of whoever, or whatever had set it in motion. Even though the gumball itself didn't pose any danger, Sammy was troubled by how little sense it made. What confused her, was who had made the gumball, why they had, and most importantly, how. Maybe there was a working factory making them for some reason, which would double as a fortress against the mutants.
Snapping herself back to the present, Sammy put the gumball down and took Marshall-Lee's hand again.
"Come on. It's not important." She said.
Marshall-Lee pulled against her and looked at the gumball longingly.
Noticing what he was doing, Sammy sighed. "Darling, that's been on the floor!" She pulled on his hand encouragingly. "Come on, we'll see if we can find a candy store in the mall."
Satisfied, Marshall-Lee walked with her up to the mall's entrance. There wasn't a single pane of glass in any of the mall's windows or doors, they had all been destroyed by looters during the riots that preceded the war. The shattered remnants of the glass had been strewn across the floor. Sammy carefully guided Marshall-Lee across the threshold and into the mall's entrance plaza.