Peaches and Shotguns

Wham!

Wham!

Wham!

John drove the hammer on to the nail with more strength in each hit than the last. This was the third board that John had nailed across his door, and he had much more to do. His entire home consisted of two doors; One of the back and one for the front. Many different windows, and many holes in the roof that he had been meaning to patch up.

John never considered himself a very fortunate man. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He had just barely read in the papers that a plague had come to the city. This plague had swept through the many port cities and had killed thousands. Nobody knew the source of the plague but many began to speculate immediately.

Many assumed it was the many travelers from different lands. Of course, John knew thinking in such manners was childish. Many began to speculate that it was some new animal that brought this deadly disease. There were many types of animals that lived far away from these lands that it was possible they brought one carrying hundreds of unknown diseases on it.

It didn’t matter to John how the plague got started. What mattered to him was staying alive until it was done. John had barely finished the third board and began to work on the fourth. He took a board from a large pile of plywood that had been gathering dust in his shed and got to work. He removed a nail from his coat pocket and began to hammer it on the board. 

John could not trust anyone. He found it easier for him to live when he was not surrounded by people. While many houses probably held children or animals, laughing or crying about recent events, Johnathon’s house only held the most important person in his life, himself. He did not care for others, especially not when people carried a new disease that could potentially kill him.

John did not hold much of value, but he knew people would come knocking to see if he was compassionate enough to share. In John’s eyes, he was preparing for the inevitable. John was preparing for society as he knew it to collapse. Soon the people would arm themselves with large knives and pitchforks and attempt to raid houses for supplies when their stocks ran low.

John took a quick look over his shoulder to look at his home. His place of sanctity and solitude. There truly was not much. The most expensive thing being a couch that he got a bargain for and held a massive stain on the left side. Hopefully from a spilling of a drink of some kind. But pasted across all four of the walls were posters and signs that had been posted around the city.

John was a collector, of sorts. While many collected coins or some even collected stamps. John, in his time off, wandered the city in search of many different posters. It did not matter what the contents, John would find a poster on the wall. Detailing an advertisement for a new show to be played down at a local theatre, and take it. He’d roll it up when no one was looking and take it home with him. Then he’d post it on his own wall. 

John was very proud of this hobby. He was able to collect so many that there were two layers of posters hanging proudly on his living room wall. John knew no one would be coming for those posters, the raiders that would eventually come would be looking for shiny gold or fresh food.

And John wasn’t willing to share any of it.

***

John turned the handle on his can opener once in one swift rotation. Once the lid popped off, he threw the lid aside and grabbed his spoon. The contents of the can were sliced peaches, swimming in a pool of their own salted juices. John dipped the spoon, that he had previously used to eat beans with, inside the can and took a large piece of peach. 

John had not stopped working on boarding up every potential entrance to his house. The sweat dripped from his forehead and even began to stain his shirt. But after hours of laborious nailing and adjusting boards, John had secured his entire home. Now no one would even dare come close to his sanctuary. If they did, John had a twin barreled shotgun sitting in his closet.

John had maybe a couple boxes worth of ammunition stored with his gun, but he was hoping that the sight of such a weapon would scare off any wannabe attacker. He doubted that he would not have to fire a single shot. All he would have to do was poke the barrel out of his home, through a crack just big enough for the gun to slide through, to scare them away.

John dipped his spoon once more into the can and took another slice of peach. The peach seemed to melt the inside of his mouth as he took another bite. The juices stored deep within the peach gushing out as his teeth clamped on the tender fruit. Once the last piece of peach was on it’s way down, John took the can and began to drink the peach juice left inside.

Not one thing would go to waste in these trying times.

***

John looked through the crack once more. The streets were completely empty, save for a few guards on patrol. There was now a curfew underway. It did not affect John, though. He was not planning on leaving his home anytime soon. As he had no need to. He had all the canned goods he would need in a secret storage container under the floorboards.

This storage was to last John months into any type of apocalyptic situation such as this one. Speaking of which… John thought as he removed the floorboards. His stomach growled, demanding to be fed some sustenance to be satisfied. As John reached his hand inside to grab a can, all John grasped was a handful of dirt.

John reached around more. Hoping to prod some can that had managed to slip its way deeper into the crevice, but John found no such can. Once again, this time in a panic, John swept the entire under compartment. Desperately searching for another can. There was no way that John had managed to burn through a half a years stash in just a matter of a week!

But John had. He had eaten every single can that was left inside that small compartment within days. John’s body began to tremble. 

“How? How could this have happened?!” John screamed as he began to search every cupboard in his house. Throwing anything that wasn’t food to the side to search for something. Glass plates shattering against the walls, metal pans clanging against the ground.

But as he searched, he knew it was hopeless. Somehow, John had burned through his entire stash in less then a week. John slumped against the wall, tears in his eyes. He felt his hope die inside him as he fell to the floor. He would have to go out into the real world. Amongst the diseased populace and possibly catch this killing plague himself.

Until John heard rustling outside. 

John’s eyes widened. His heart pumping with a new kind of fear. The fear of the unknown. John crept up to one of his many boarded windows and looked out through the biggest crack he could find. Once his eyes adjusted to the outside, he saw the back alley of his home. Where he had taken out the garbage for many a year.

There wasn’t a large pile of trash, there were just a couple of bags placed into a corner. It seems the garbage man was late this week, given all the chaos of a plague. One bag was torn open, however. The garbage strewn across the alley floor. John looked closer at the bag and saw something that made his heart leap out of his chest. 

Something had torn into the bag. It wasn’t that large, but it was bigger than John had expected. It’s fur was a pure black with the occasional piece of filth clinging to it’s matted fur. Near the backside, was a long snake like tail that slinked about a few inches back behind this horrific creature. Which John could easily recognize, as a rat.

John screamed at the sight of the creature. He immediately backed away from the window and reached for his shotgun. He then ran back towards the window to peak at the creature once again. He would soon come to regret this decision, as the last he saw the creature, it had found a small hole in his home and had managed to crawl through it.

The thing was now inside the walls.

John could hear the rat scratching against the wallpaper. It’s small dirty claws clattering against the wooden structural supports. John aimed his shotgun towards the source and pulled the trigger. A large boom came from the gun and several small pellets flew out from the barrel and ripped apart the wall. As the dust settled, John did not see any blood. He missed the rat.

“I’m not dying to you…” John grumbled before loading two more shots into his gun and blasting wildly at the walls. Hoping to kill this creature. He screamed at the top of his lungs as he fired each shot off in any random direction. Once he had run dry of his ammunition John stopped to breath. He heard the ringing in his ears and felt his throat scratch each time he breathed. 

John fondled his pocket to search once more for another round. He didn’t feel any metal slugs left in his jacket. John had run out of ammo. John slumped back against the wall of posters, some now torn apart by John’s crazed firing. John did not feel safe, he felt confident that he did not kill this creature. That it was still in the walls.

But John was tired, and he only hoped that his end would be swift. As John closed his eyes to embrace his end, the last thing he saw was a small pair of blood red eyes staring at him from inside one of the many holes he had made in his wall.