Clarity is a funny thing.
There are moments that define a life, sparks of time that are the milestones of memory and imagination. The points where you can clearly see the what, why and wherefore of a single person and their place in the scheme of things. Personally those moments had been few and far between but of all the stupid clichés I had found a way to pick this one.
Pain rushed through my body from stomach to head, I had managed to prop myself up against the heavy door even though I could hear them scratching and hammering on the metal. Testing for weak spots with a methodical precision that dead flesh was not supposed to have. I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to sleep even though I was pretty sure that at this point there was very little point in trying to stay alive. Call it a bad habit.
Bad habits had lead me into the factory in the first place, I rarely ventured out into the ruins of the city so lightly armed and I suppose I had gotten blasé. Instead of the usual kit of assault rifle, sawn-off shotgun, 10mm pistol and various other small arms, I was carrying only a hunting rifle and a pack knife. Both of which I had left with my rucksack of food, water and medical supplies when I had decided to wriggle onto the outlying beam to grab the full bottle of whiskey that was wedged there. Yes, whiskey. I may have a minor drink problem. Anyways half way out that gantry had given way and down I went.
The fall had been quite short, any other time and I might have landed better and escaped with nothing more than a twisted ankle but somehow I spun in the air and landed on the floor debris on my side. I had heard and felt something break, the pain when I tried to breathe and cough had suggested a rib which would have been bad enough but when I had pulled myself up, well let's just say I knew I was pretty much screwed.
Opening my eyes again I looked down and felt a little sick at the sight of the jagged piece of metal that was now protruding from my left side. Blood was staining the balled up rags I had rolled up to wedge around the wound and the smell made me gag. They could smell it too; I had only just managed to stay ahead of them as I staggered down the corridor and hid behind the metal door at the end.
A dead end as it happened. A windowless room, no way out.
So here was the great moment of clarity. You're dead meat kid, all that running, killing and hiding, doing all the nasty things necessary to stay alive and in the end it meant nothing. Not the lies you told, not the people you left to die, not even those odd chances of redemption that you gave up along the way. In the end you're still going to die, either alone in a pool of your own blood or at the hands and teeth of those things at the door. None of it made a damn bit of difference.
With a smile, I closed my eyes again and allowed my mind to drift back. Back past all the fighting and war, back past the goods times and the miserable ones to the time when the world had been halfway sane and I had known something like peace. A strange peace, always uneasy but something like home.
Back in the vault…..