Survival of the Monsters

Survival of the monsters

It wasn’t a particular event or news story. There was no explosion in newspapers, no pandemonium and people building bunkers to hide from the impending doom. It just happened. Slowly and gradually maybe, but it still happened. The world has always been full of good and bad people and most of the time they balanced each other out. That was until one by one, the good people started dying.

Think about it. When was the last time you heard of a school bully dying in a car crash? The manipulative psychopath who got cancer? The child abuser who drowned? It was always the good people: the saints, the caring, the loving and the loved. With families and hearts of gold, they were the ones who suffered, who died in tragic, unfortunate circumstances. It was just that nobody noticed until a plane went down and every single one of them was said to be ‘the <insert relation here> you dream of having.’

Scientists tried to explain it. The believers did too. Most people just said we were too afraid of speaking ill of the dead to tell the truth about them. It wasn’t until extensive research showed that it was a virus in their blood that was causing good people to die that things got worse. Crime levels spiked. The death toll soared. People were committing unspeakable crimes as if that was the way to vaccinate against fair morality.

That was 2 years ago.

“Holly, you can stop now. I think he’s done.” I pushed myself off the top of the bins as my little sister took her knife out of someone’s head. The body fell to the ground with blood oozing out of the gash in its head as Holly turned to me anxiously.

“Was that good, Katie?” I was too busy admiring the sharp blade now dripping with death. We were in an abandoned shopping mall car park looking for corpses to deface because when you’ve killed everyone within a 5 mile radius, there isn’t much else to do on a Saturday night.

Holly is 6 years old. She’s young and innocent so I’m trying to prolong the inevitable, no matter how pointless that is.

“No, it was horrific.” I rolled my eyes and took the knife from her, wiping the bloody weapon on my jeans. My little sister beamed, the compliment lighting up her eyes like a firecracker. She grabbed for my hand but I shook her off, irritated. “What did I tell you about that, Holly? Stop holding my hand. It’s stupid.” I walked on ahead, the bitter coldness nipping at my fingers and a relief from the pungent stale air of rotting bins and bodies. 

“Sorry.”

There are 2 rules about living in this world. Rule number 1: Don’t show love. Rule number 2: Never apologise.  Nowadays there is no such thing as wrong.

Suddenly my sister screamed. I whirled around to see a man gripping my sister in the tightest headlock I had ever seen.

“Put her down.” I growled, my shaking hand grabbed the knife in my back pocket. “She’s not worth it.”

The man must have been in his late 20s. His knuckles were bleeding red, his eyes wild with the thrill of killing. Holly squirmed helplessly in his grasp.

“Is that why you keep her around then?” He retorted sarcastically and dug his fingernails into her flesh that was caked with blood.

“We’re related, unfortunately.”

“Great, so I’m going to break the neck of a little girl whilst her older sister watches? It can’t get much more traumatic than that.”

 A small tear leaked from the corner of Holly’s eye and even as I tried to repress it, I could feel the desire to save her rush through my veins just like the disease that wanted to kill me.

“Just take me.” I found myself saying. “It’ll be worse for her to see me die than it would be if I saw her go. She’s just a burden to me: always has been. It would be a sweet relief to finally be selfish again.”

The man regarded me and I waited in anguished anticipation for him to make his mind up. Just then my little sister crashed onto the gravel and I hurtled towards the man, plunging my dagger into his heart before he even had the chance to scream. He flailed but I pushed him down, twisting the knife further into him.

“Katie, you did it!” I felt Holly hug me from behind and smiled, even as tears dripped down my own cheeks for the first time in months.

The next morning I watched from above as my little sister found my dead body. Because these days you can escape your own morality but you can never escape your own humanity.