Smoke

"Don't smoke that, please," I said to Richard. "We might need it."

He lit it up.

"Rich, please."

He sighed. "We'll get more."

"You're sharing, then. There's none more to get that isn't half-burnt."

He obligingly passed the cigarette over to me, and snickered as I passed it back.

"What?"

"If your mum could see us now." He laughed again.

"Yeah," I said flatly. My mother was a sore subject between us. I missed her, but Rich didn't understand. He didn't have a mom, even before.

Richard broke the silence. "I need another."

"Me too. Let's raid the houses. Someone would've been a smoker."

He stood and stretched, sticking out his bony chest. "Come on, then." Ever-ready, was Rich, to go get a smoke.

We walked over to the next street slowly, since we had already raided the houses on the first street. We were compulsive smokers, addicted, dependent and in love. Rich swung his bat as we walked, banging it frighteningly into the hoods of every car we passed. I winced every time the wood made contact, but didn't tell him to stop. Everybody has their own way of dealing with shit.

"This one, up here," Rich said. "We've never been up this road."

My boots scraped the sand as we trudged up the path, and I breathed hard, already winded, though we weren't even halfway up. But that was alright. I just hadn't eaten in a while.

"We'd better get some food while we're up there," I said to him.

He grunted. He was having trouble with the climb, too.

The house was pink and pretty when we got there, built of weathered stone, every surface covered in sand, but exhibiting the kind of delicacy that comes with money. The wrought iron gate squeaked as we pushed it open, and the window shattered with a noise like a child's giggles. I was glad we hadn't stayed home. I would never have been able to rob one of my teachers or friends in good conscience . Even here, I was nervous. My heart fluttered in my chest, and I couldn't tear my thoughts from the idea that we were going to be attacked.

Inside, Rich immediately swung his bat into a glass table that smashed open like an avalanche. I jumped out of my skin, though I knew it was him.

"God, Rich. Somebody's going to hear us."

He shrugged in his way. "Well, I've still got the bat."

I laughed. Richard was always a cocky bastard. He really didn't know how to be afraid.

I drifted through the big house like a ghost, looking for a pack somewhere, or for a bottle of water. I wished I had a gun. You need a gun in this world. I didn't have a bat, nor was I skilled enough with a bat to have one. When Rich and I killed someone, I just danced with them. Rich and his bat did the killing.

"Found one!" Rich yelled. I sped towards his voice. "Wow, and I found another. Oh, it's nearly empty."

"Gimme one." I reached over the half empty pack, and lit it up quicker than Rich could sit down. I breathed deep. "Oh, I love these."

Richard didn't say anything. We smoked in silence only broken by the occasional cries of lonely birds. I was calmed.

"We need water, too," I said slowly.

"Go find some, then."

"And you find some food."

"I'm not hungry." He shrugged again, in his way.

I stood up reluctantly. I wanted to sit down and have another smoke, and then another, and then fall asleep in this big airy house with its pink marble walls and glass tables and smashed (Richard) and faded family photos starring a doe-eyed five year old and his happily married parents.

"We can stay here tonight, if there's water."

Rich sat up- he'd been lying flat- "Why?"

"What are we gonna go back for?"

He lay back down. "Yeah. Okay, then."

I found the kitchen undisturbed- no one puts cigarettes in the kitchen- and found a massive fridge taller than myself and yet another glass table. What does wealth matter when you leave it behind? Here I was, stealing their food, sleeping in their beds, smoking their smokes. The door came off as I opened the fridge, and I struggled under its weight for a moment before throwing it away from me. A rotten smell rose from within and I wrinkled my nose in disgust. But we really hadn't eaten in a while. I found some water and crackers in a cupboard on the wall and headed back upstairs.

Rich was on his third cigarette when I got there. I eyed him warily. "Don't smoke it all tonight. We'll be in real trouble if we haven't got any in the morning."

"It's a pack and a half, Mark. Chill, I'll leave some for you."

I let him alone and took a deep swing of the water. It was better than wine, that was for sure. We'd tried everything we could get our hands on so far- wine, beer, rum, vodka, vinegar. Wine tasted like rotting sugar so far, vodka like sedimentary lemon, and rum like tar. Beer was bearable, but it didn't taste like anything good. Richard wanted to try champagne, but honestly that just sounded like hyped-up wine to me. Rich liked the stuff. He's drunk as long as I've known him, before, too.

The world ended when the asteroid hit us, and we're all different now than before, except for Rich, he smoked and drank and got up to no good before, and he's the same now.

I forced the last of the crackers down, and lay down. "G'nite, Rich."

"Goodnight."

But the day wasn't done with us. Before I'd been half an hour asleep, I heard a noise. A small tinkling of furniture, like someone had stumbled while trying to be quiet. All feelings of sleepiness immediately fled me. Rich was wide awake beside me, clutching his bat tight. He caught my eye, and nodded.

We padded softly down the stairs, me unarmed. I saw him first. A shadow moved sluggishly across the moonlight in the big hall with the broken glass table. I looked down at my feet, and cursed myslef. I had no shoes on. Rich didn't have any either, but he was unbothered. He treaded softly across the glass shards, visibly pricking his feet, but silent all the same. I steeled myself and followed.

The man stood in a tiny chamber I had not explored in my search. The house was big. He didn't seem to be looking at anything I could see, he simply stood with his back to us, strange and still. Then he turned. I stepped towards him. Rich had hidden himself well, because the man had eyes only for me. They widened.

"Hey! What're you doing here?" I shouted roughly. "This is our place tonight."

He stepped back, looking afraid. Good. I stepped towards him more confidently, sticking my hand into my pocket. "You'd better leave. I've got a gun." I pushed my fingers out towards him.

He raised his arms up. "I just need some food, kid. A bite, that's all. My son's real hungry."

"Not our food, old man." I gestured to him with my fingers. "Go on. Get out."

He cast a frightened look at my pocket, and moved back a little. And then Rich jumped out from behind an impressively large bookshelf and slammed his bat into his head. The man collapsed immediately, and was dead, dead or unconscious, and Richard bent down to check.

"Dead," he said. "That was easy." He picked at the glass in a foot and winced. "C'mon, Mark. Let's get back."

I pulled my gun-hand out of my pocket and followed Rich up the stairs, wincing. "He probably did have a son," I said.

"He was out for himself," Richard answered.

But the man did have a son. The son, he would be our undoing.

We limped back up to the room, and Rich smoked as I picked the glass out of his feet, and then I smoked as Rich picked the glass out of mine.

The morning was cold. I got up and pulled my jacket on and shook Rich awake. We needed food and water, there was none left in Mr. Smoker's home.

We shuffled up the street like penguins, I was fatigued from days of starvation, and Rich's feet were badly cut. We came across no one else, even at the corner we had once fought off three grown men and an angry child with nothing but my dancing and Richard's bat. That was a lucky day. I didn't like the killing, to be honest, but there was nothing for it. The biggest threats to us here are other survivors. They'll kill you just to eliminate the competition.

The street seemed to wave in the flapping wind, the very street signs bending the way the sand howled. The desert had reclaimed the land surprisingly quick. The wind was slowly burying the town.

"We should get out of here while we've got some water," I said, gesturing to the sloshing bottle. "It's only in the desert we got to fight for water, anyway. It'll be easy in the plains."

"Or the mountains."

"Or the mountains," I agreed.

Richard looked straight ahead as he always did when he talked to me. "I don't really want to leave home."

I laughed. "We've already left home, have you forgotten, or what?"

"Yeah, but the desert is home. I've never been out of it," he admitted.

"Now's as good a time as any. This town will be dry soon, and we're leaving anyway."

He didn't answer.

We sat down for a meal of dry crackers and a smoke at midday, and a swing of water. Rich whined a little about how he missed alcohol, but I paid him no mind. I was swooping over the vast plain I'd studied about at school in my mind's eye.

"Okay," he said suddenly. He seemed to force himself to look at me. His face was haggard from thirst and pain, and it was impossible to tell where his beard ended and the sand began.

"What?" I asked, equally tired.

"We'll get out of here, go to the mountains."

I panted in the heat. "The mountains are the other way around, we've been heading west."

"We'll turn around."

I squinted at him. "Are you sure?"

He nodded, "Yeah, 'course, I said so, didn't I?"

I grinned, and let my head fall back onto the ground. "Thanks, Rich. Thank you." I was relieved. I was thirsty. We're going to get out of here, we really are."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah."

I pushed myself up. "I need a smoke." Richard handed me the pack, and I lit up quickly. The smoke was hot and dry as the air in my lungs, but it felt good all the same, and I was calmed.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get going." He got up.

"Right now?" I asked.

"Yeah, right now," he panted. He offered me his hand and helped me to my feet.

"All the way back?" I asked uncertainly.

"All the way back," he confirmed.

We had staggered two steps before a brown blur swung out of nowhere and took me in the head. I was thrown down, and I clutched at my spinning head, trying to figure out where the attack had come from. Then Richard grunted beside me, and I saw that he was also on the ground, before a young boy who held a shovel in his thin arms and a rage in his face. He slammed the shovel into Rich as he tried to grab the weapon from him, and Richard keeled over, groaning. His bat lay a distance from him where he had been lying, and my stomach turned because at that moment I knew he was going to die. The bat was the omen.

"No," I tried to say, but the boy was having none of it.

"He was my father!" he screamed, the sound ripping at his young voice. His arms shook as if from the weight of the shovel, but I thought he was crying. So this is the son, I remember thinking, still shell-shocked.

The child struggled forward, and I lunged at him, slamming myslef into his side. He couldn't have been more than twelve, but he was strong, and the shovel crashed into my head, and I was suddenly watering the ground with my blood.

Behind me Richard screamed. I was tired and in pain, but this was Richard, and I forced myself up, and barreled into the boy with a roar as he pounded the shovel on Rich's head over and over, screaming. Richard was curled up and yelling for me, trying to protect himself. I grabbed the shovel straight from the upstart's hands and cracked it into his head. I beat him over and over again until I was certain he was dead, and then I remembered Richard and I dropped the shovel and turned to him.

He was bloody and his face was contorted from the pin. Blood streamed down his cheek where the boy had beaten his head, and one of his eyes was a bloody mess.

"Good God."

He laughed shakily. "Good God, indeed, Mark. Good God indeed. Oh shit," he said. "I'm dying, aren't I? I'm dying aren't I, Mark? Why can't I see?"

I didn't know where to start, I hovered over his body, my own hands shaking, and he was so horribly bloody that I didn't know where to begin. "Where does it hurt?" I yelled for no apparent reason.

"Oh," he said. The most honest thing I had heard from his mouth since he was born. "My head for a start, and my eye, yeah, my eye." His good eye swivelled about in his head, and then fixed itself on me as I tried to clean the blood with my sandy rag of a jacket. "Don't do that, Mark. Don't, it hurts. My eye's gone, ain't it?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm gonna die now. I'm gonna die real peaceful like this, out in the desert." He closed his eye.

"No," I said. "You're not gonna die." I dabbed more insistently, but even I could see there was no use. He had taken a band hit to the temple, and blood would not stop streaming out of it no matter how much I soaked up.

"So much water," I said, for want of something to say.

"Drink up," he joked weakly. "Guess we should've smoked less, huh?" he laughed. "I'm hungry," he said slowly, and then he grew very still.

And there I sat with the blood of a child on my hands.