This is in some ways a sequel to my previous story.

Here is the link /s/4084316/1/LastRites Should you want to read it.

I know that there is some character, either comic book or regular literature with the name Red Sonja, but I liked it so much that I thought that it was a nice title for my story and my character. Enjoy my story for what it is.

Sonya is your typical girl of the 70's. I tried to be as historically accurate as possible. And I apologize for spelling errors. I try to catch them if I can.

This is rated M because of subject matter and description.

PART ONE: JULY 8TH, 1979

They say that it's darkest before the dawn, when all is silence and shadows. It's been silence and shadows for me some six, maybe seven years. I've lost count. I can't remember when the plague struck. Maybe it was '71, or maybe it was '70. I don't remember anymore. All I know is this life, this endless monotony of scavenging, working daily to survive. Here, in this eternal purgatory, there is no beginning and there is no end.

The sun inched closer to the horizon, a red and bloody cocktail. Clouds of mist scooted along slowly, causing everything in my rearview mirror to look eerie, despondent. In the back seat I could see Charlie was playing with his commando toys. I'd found them in a toy shop some years back. He never put them down, always playing save the day with his commandos. A blond Barbie in a pink bathing suit sat helplessly in the Hummer's back seat, the damsel in distress that Charlie's Captain Midnight was trying to save. His little boy voice hit a high note as he pretended Major Barbie was about to be thrown off the cliff, shouting for a rescue.

I turned onto Wisteria Avenue, allowing the Hummer's steering wheel to slide smoothly under my fingertips. It was worn in places, the rubber peeling off. This baby was old, but it was bulletproof, durable, and got fifty-five miles to the gallon. Along the road empty houses sat, black eyes following, looking out upon endless rows of dead wood built into a parody of a house. The trees, green in this hot summer, rustled gently, quietly. There were no birds hopping about as they had when I was a child. Everything was dead.

I checked the sun again. It was sinking quickly, but I had two hours before the monsters came. The street behind me vacant, those empty houses glaring sinisterly from their walks, creaked with the wind. Charlie hated the monsters. We'd lay huddled in the living room, holding onto Blackie, listening to their howls and moans, the constant tortured screams of ones who yearned for a life that would not be theirs again. Their rotting joints would scratch at the gates. I'd peeked out through the high windows, through steel bars placed over the glass for protection. Alan Moore was their leader. He wasn't like the others. The others were remnants of death. They were dead.

But he was still alive, still fighting the plague. He'd been alive all this time, trying to lure me and Charlie out to play, playing he called it. Alan, he was a crafty sort. He'd tried to hop the high security fence more than once, tried to get in and devour us, but he still sported scars from the electric barbed wire infused with jagged glass all along the top of the security fence.

Pulling the car around another corner, our house came into view, large, empty, and completely forlorn in every way possible. My mother's flowers that she had planted before I was born were blooming today, their violent oranges and yellows, reds, purples and pinks fluttering quietly in the breeze. For once the heat of summer was not devastating. For once, as I pulled up to the security gate, our home looked like it had before the plague destroyed everything, and I was fooled into thinking that life was as it had been. I glanced at the bars of the security fence, how prison like they looked against the large, quiet house with its vibrant flowers. I'd been keeping them up, not out of vanity, but as a homage to my mother, to our mother. Charlie was too deeply engrossed in his playing to notice that we had pulled up to the house. I got out of the hummer and went to the gate. I punched in the security code, the keypad hidden by a loose brick that only I knew about. As the gate swung open, the electric buzz ringing loudly in the empty street, I hurried back to the hummer and got in behind the wheel., stepping on the gas gently, easing my baby through the open gates. As I pulled past the gate, my wheels went through the sensors eye beam and the gates immediately, quickly, swung shut. If one was to get caught in the gates as they closed, they would get hurt badly. I shuddered at the thought and pulled the hummer around the drive and towards the garage. Blackie, sitting quietly next to me on the front seat perked her ears upward, her amber eyes wide and alert. She sensed that we were home, getting food.

I put the car in park and turned to Charlie, now undoing his seat belt, figures clutched in his hands. "Okay kiddo. We're home."

"What are we having for dinner tonight?"

"Well, I can make fried Spam, with four bean salad, cranberry sauce, and some milk."

"Okay." Charlie smiled sweetly at me, not bothering to argue. He knew as well as I that what we had was limited, but we had a lot of it. I'd raided every damn supermarket and store within a fifty mile radius for the canned food and supplies that we had. Besides, we had the green house and whatever we could grow in there. Charlie and I left the hummer in the garage and as he headed toward the door, I hung back to check on the generators. We had five, all hooked up and ready to go in case one broke down. If it hadn't been for the plague, I would never have become the skilled technician that I was. The nearest one, towards the back, was still functioning. The air conditioning unit, which I'd repaired twice, was still working outside, it's hum echoing through the house. The garage was dark, and was 28' by 32'. My parents had been very rich, well-off educated people who could afford any expense. I was thankful for the room, but the house in general was quiet and empty. It should have housed a whole family, not just two children struggling to survive. As far as I knew, Charlie and I were the only survivors of the human race. I headed into the house, removing my shoes and stepping into a pair of bunny slippers. It was a small vanity compared to how sparse we tended to life.

I'd insisted after our parents and practically everyone else we knew had died, that Charlie move his room onto the first floor. So did I. We turned the dining room into a bedroom for him and the living room as my personal space. He didn't mind. The dining room was bigger than his old room, now disused and locked up. I went and prepared food for Charlie and myself, heading to the greenhouse and pulling some lettuce for supper. We ate in silence, Blackie nibbling at her food on the floor. We'd gone hunting today. I'd made Charlie stay in the car, doing math work and studying science. He deserved an education, and why should it be denied to him just because the entire world had fallen apart? Besides. He was still a little boy, and he didn't need to see what it was I did to the monsters that I found.

"Sonya," he asked meekly, "what do you want for your birthday?"

Sadly I smiled at my little brother, and said , "All I want is for you to be a good boy and do your work. Okay?"

He nodded slowly and continued to munch his beans quietly, pushing them against the rim of his plate. I studied him, his perfect little blonde head and clear blue eyes, eyes that were empty of laughter and childhood innocence. I know that he played with his toys only to make me happy. This life we had, where the only other living person he could speak to was a sister too old to play children's games, was bleak for him. I was nineteen. I should have graduated high school last year and been on my way to college. I should have had a boyfriend, and had the chance to enjoy putting on makeup and dressing myself in pretty summer dresses as I went out with handsome boys. I should have done all the things that my mother and I talked about doing. I should have gotten an education like my father wanted. But all of that changed in such a short period of time. What I wanted for my birthday, that I wished for every year, was not my parents or my life back – I had stopped wishing for that long ago – but someone that I could talk to, someone who was my age and had my interests.

And then I faced the facts. I'd taught my brother how to walk. I'd potty trained him. I'd taught him to read and write, to clean up after himself, how to hunt and how to fight, and I given him the freedom he would have been missing had I not done all these things. I was his mother and I was his sister, his best friend, and his teacher. Where was I at nineteen? I was raising a son that I would never have had otherwise. I had a family that would have never really been mine.

Charlie had been born in the fall of '71, to my mother and father who had had me in March of 1960. Charlie would be turning eight this year, and for an eight year old, he was surprisingly bright and quick on the uptake, but then again, he had had to grow up quickly in an empty world. Our father had been taken by the plague in early '72, not long after Charlie had been born. Then our mother had died near Charlie's second birthday, fall of '74. After that, everything became a blur. I raised Charlie as my little brother, and my son. He loved me unequivocally. If I told him to hide he would without question. If I told him to take the cyanide pill that hung in a locket around his neck, he would.

We had a plan, Charlie and I. If we were ever captured, or in a situation in which there was no escape, we would both take the cyanide pill. It was better than being eaten alive by cannibalistic monsters. I reached out and smoothed Charlie's hair. He had never asked me where I had gotten the pills, and so I never had reason to tell him. Our father, a former veteran of the Korean war, had carried with him a double dose of cyanide pills with him lest he be captured by the enemy. I knew very little about my father's time in the war, and even less about the secret military missions he had gone out on. He had never spoken of them and I had never bothered to ask him. He'd taught me how to make bombs, how to fire a gun, and how to survive a war. My father had owned an extensive gun collection, of which he had never let me touch unless I was under strict supervision as he taught me how to shoot.

My father's Kalashnikov stood powerfully against the front door's frame. Tonight I would be watching for Alan, and tonight I would not miss when I pulled the trigger.

I sent Charlie to bed early and slipped him some L-Triptophan. It was a natural made drug that would put him to sleep quickly. Tonight was going to be noisy. I couldn't have Charlie waking up.

I waited outside in a lawn chair, watching as the sun set on the boulevard, the trees lining the horizon. As the sun set, I closed my eyes, remembering my life as it had been, as it should have been always.

In my memories, I saw Alan's face, handsome and smiling, recklessly driving the Firebird his father had bought in 1965, tale fins gleaming in turquoise blue Technicolor, the silver chrome polished to a mirror shine. Alan had been about five, no, six years older than me. He'd been the handsome jock all the girls in the neighborhood had a crush on. He was tall, rich, but not as rich as my family, and handsome in an Adonis kind of way. Hair that was the color of flax, this sandy blonde, and crisp blue eyes, strong and wiry, he was every girl's dream. Many of the older girls had said to me that he was more handsome than Frankie Avalon. At ten, when the first waves of the plague started to hit, before the disease had touched the little haven of my life, I hadn't really cared. I was ten and he was sixteen, out of my reach, and one of the town hot shots. Alan Moore didn't really mean anything to me. I was too busy living the dream of a little girl.

In 1971, when I turned eleven, and Alan was about to turn seventeen, he'd offered me a ride in his car. My mother, who'd known his mother, had agreed, knowing that Alan was being nice, letting a little kid in his car, letting me drive around town with him for a ride in that shiny new cherry colored roadster convertible. Though white wall tires were out of style, Alan made them look good, his cool demeanor and handsome visage bringing back a memory of the good old days.

We'd driven along Wisteria Avenue, heading for a soda at this old mom and pop place. I'd sat happily bouncing along in his car, just having a great old time as we cruised, listening to an old hit from the Beatles.

"Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better," crooned the radio. I crooned with it too, and Alan laughed.

"You sure are one happy kid."

"Well," I said, smiling as I waved at a redheaded woman carrying groceries, "I'm sitting in a real pretty car with the most handsome boy in Farris Springs."

"You think I'm handsome?" he asked me, smiling with a look on his face at how funny it was an eleven year old was telling him he was the most handsome boy in town. I think he was being patronizing if you want to know the honest truth. But at eleven, I didn't have a social intelligence about what was appropriate to say to someone who was only driving you around in his car because he was being nice.

"I think you're okay, but all the other girls think you're dreamy. That's what Candace Crawford said." It would turn out that Candace Crawford would be one of the first victims the plague took when it came to Farris Springs, Utah.

"Well I think I'm okay too. You know Sonya," he said, leaning in close as he slowed down at a stoplight. "I think you're going to be one of the most beautiful girls in town when you grow up."

I giggled like little girls do, and I responded, "I'm only eleven. How can you tell?"

And sure enough, like adults can sometimes know, he whispered as we pulled into the drive way of the soda shop, "Because I can see it, little Red Sonya."

I was snapped out of my reverie as someone howled like a wolf. Looking at the fence I saw Alan, hanging onto the bars, howling madly, panting and making obscene gestures that referenced sex.

"Come on Little Red Sonya!" he crooned. "Let the big bad wolf in! It's not going to hurt much what I'm gonna do to your sweet little body! Aaarooooo!" He was naked, his muscles taught and convulsing because of the strain he put on them, but also because of the plague. His skin, no longer the rich tan it had been was now white like the moon that was rising. It seemed his skin was sallow.

I stood up carefully and held the gun in both hands, watching. It was such a shame that he hadn't been immune like Charlie and me. He was such a well-built handsome man. But I stood and watched. As I looked on, I noticed something very odd about the whole situation. Alan was normally never this rabid, and I had never known him to go completely naked. Usually he prowled around the perimeter with only his shirt off, howling, but never jumping in a hysterical fashion, never acting so strangely out of control. Perhaps he had finally gone insane.

As he launched his body upward, his sex flopped about, engorged by his frenzy, completely erect. I forced myself not to stare at it, this waggling worm, the pleasure of something natural turned ugly by his display.

"Keep that up and I'll shoot it off," I shouted, pointing the gun towards his sex.

Immediately, Alan stopped and stood, staring hungrily. I'd killed every last one of these bastards, these things that had come by, and still Alan had managed to survive and feed off of scraps. When he'd disappeared for the previous five months I'd thought I'd seen the last of him. And then he'd reappeared two nights ago, trying to get me to come out and play with him. On occasion, the monsters would come prowling, and I would come out and shoot them, separated and safe from them trying to get me by the twenty-two foot high security fence. Usually the men would go stark naked, as would the women, and they would fornicate on the spot and then, if they were starving, they would fight and try to devour each other, displaying their sex, telling me in taunting, jeering voices what I was missing, how I would love to be one of them.

Now Alan stood silently, watching me with contempt. I approached him, slowly, till I was no more than five feet away. It was then, as I stood facing him, that I could see the figures behind. They were men, tall, monsters as well, all dressed in black, carrying machine gun tommy's.

"What is this," I spat. I brought the butt of the Kalashnikov up into my armpit and held the gun steady, my finger on the trigger.

"You wanna touch it?" he asked. His eyes were bright and vivid, like fire, shining wickedly in the half light. The electric lights would soon come on, their timers kicking them into life. Alan held his penis in his right hand, gently stroking it, grinning. There was an intelligence in his grin, in his stare that hadn't been there before. "I showed you mine, now you gotta show me yours Red Sonya."

"My name is not Red Sonya you piece of filth."

"Really?" he asked feigning disbelief, mocking me. "I thought it was. You got such pretty red hair."

My mother had told me that my hair was auburn colored, this deep, reddish brown color. At the moment, I had it tied back, braided tightly.

"Come on," he begged, pressing himself against the bar, letting go of his sex as both hands clutched bars, jutting it outward as it stuck up, red and brown, throbbing. I could see the pre-seminal fluid leaking out of it at the tip. "Why don't you place those pretty pink lips around my friend here? And then, when you're done, I might let my little snake entire that tiny little cave of yours. You've been waiting a long time for me. Why wait a little longer? Come out and play. We've been something awful lonesome." Alan put on his voice, whining and pouting, jutting his sex out to me. "Don't you wanna good fuck?"

I brought the barrel of the gun down and pointed it straight at his crotch. "One more word you thing and I will put the lips of my cold metal friend right against your weak little snake."

Alan let the pout fall off only to stare at me with loathing. "You're gonna be sorry that you didn't cooperate." He pulled away from the gate and walked backwards towards the men dressed in black, their tommy's glinting with steely malice.

"Alright, let her rip!" cried a voice. I searched for the origin but it was too late. In less than thirty seconds, large grenades were falling all around me as the men in the suits launched them over the fence, throwing them with great precision. My first thought was to run, but it didn't matter because the brick of the house wouldn't be able to withstand as many explosions as there were going to be. All that ran through my mind was getting to Charlie. What would happen to him? My legs pumped as I avoided the grenades that fell like rain.

The first grenade exploded. But it wasn't an explosion. Where was the explosion? White smoke poured out of the end, thick and pungent. I couldn't understand. White smoke? And then, like lightening had hit me in the head, I realized that it was knock out gas and I began to run faster. The door wasn't much farther; I had to get there. The putrid smell of the smoke was terrible, and I found it difficult to breath. The smoke was everywhere, pouring in like moor mists, surrounding me, covering the air. It was so thick I thought I was going to choke, covering my field of vision, just this endless plane of white smoke where figures became unidentifiable, everything converging into one shape.

Everything around me became hazy, clouded, blackness enveloped my vision, inching in past my eyes. I fell to me knees, not far from the door, reaching for it, for Charlie. I couldn't lose him. Not now. My fingers just scraped the door's wooden frame, feeling and yet only air was beneath my tips.

And then everything went black.