OH, LUCKY DAY – a post apocalyptic short story

If anyone is interested, this Conspiracy theory actually exists. Google CHEMTRAILS to see more.

Oh, Lucky Day

“The road to Hell” they used say – when there were still people alive to say it – “is paved with good intent”.

Whatever the aim was it must have seemed like such a good idea at the time.

I sat under a tree in the corner of the car park, watching and waiting.

I thought I had seen someone shadowing me. It was just a feeling, a flicker in the corner of my eye. It was days since I had seen anyone, even at a distance. In these days of dwindling food supplies people, the few people who were left, tended to hoard what they had and avoid contact with anyone who might steal from them – killing them in the process if necessary.

The once landscaped car park was overgrown, with only a few rusting cars dotted here and there.

It had been a very quiet and polite sort of Armageddon in the UK, no riots or public disorder. Most people had just stayed at home and died, watching TV as the news from around the world dwindled.

That had been three years ago.

The Death Rain had been followed shortly afterwards by the Great Stink as the bodies decomposed and melted into fertilizer.

The glass double doors to the supermarket stood open, the name TESCO still bright above them. The chances of there being anything in there worth scavenging were slight to say the least, but it was worth a try. The supply of canned food I had stashed under the floorboards of the house I was using was okay but it wouldn’t last for ever.

One of the problems was that, when death had rained from the sky from the aircraft contrails that weren’t contrails at all, it hadn’t just taken the humans. It had soaked the grazing lands, taking the herds. It had been carried on the winds, taking the birds, and rainfall and the rivers had washed it into the seas, taking the fish. With no chance of replenishing foods stocks survival was finite. I doubted that I was going to make it past the coming winter but I was certainly going to try.

With plenty to choose from I had helped myself to the best in outdoor clothing and I zipped up my fleece jacket against the early autumn chill as I slowly came to my feet. I hadn’t seen any movement and there was little point in delaying any longer.

A man I had met the year before outside the town of Winchester had told me that survival had been down to blood groups. He’d tried to explain but I hadn’t understood and, to be honest, I didn’t much care. He’d died and I had taken his supplies.

“Chemtrails”, the Conspiracy Theorists had called them. They looked like decaying aircraft contrails but they were actually the products of tanker aircraft spraying the populace for reasons unknown. The theories had been debunked by the scientists but then, to misquote a lady from recent history called, if memory serves, Mandy Rice -Davies

“Well, they would, wouldn’t they.”

If the aim had been population control they had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Apparently, there were now between twenty and thirty thousand people left in the UK.

I moved slowly through the scrub towards the supermarket entrance that was yawning at me.

COME IN, COME IN – YOU’LL LIKE IT IN HERE

Just inside the open doors there was a pile of clothes with a desiccated corpse inside them. Post Death Rain – he would have been killed by another scavenger for what he had.

I seriously didn’t want to venture into that spooky, gloomy interior. If I had been a dog my hackles would have been standing up.

Off to the left was the Customer Service and tobacco kiosk with the little restaurant beside it. To the right rows of empty Checkouts stretched into the darkness. Dead ahead was what was left of the Fresh Produce Section with rows of aisles, still stocked with goods that no one would ever want again, stretching beyond it.

As I moved further into the shop the floor became littered with debris left by previous visitors. I kicked something and it rolled away with an echoing clatter.

SOMETHING IS BEHIND YOU

I spun round but, of course, there was nothing there. It was just the animal in me, whimpering at the darkness and the confined space.

There was nothing for it, either I moved right into the shop and conducted a detailed search, including the warehouse area at the rear of the premises, or left now and missed an opportunity.

IT’S ONLY A SHOP – YOU USED TO USE THEM EVERY DAY

But that was when there were lights and people. Cursing myself for being a coward I moved further into the gloom. Outside the Sun was shining but in here the atmosphere was cold and musty.

JUST GET IT DONE

Suddenly, from deep in the bowels of the cave this place had become, there was a sharp noise. It came and went so quickly that I could not identify or fix a location to it. I crouched by a BOGOF SPECIAL OFFER stand of deodorants and froze. The noise wasn’t repeated, all I could hear was my breath and my pulse.

Too deep inside the building to retreat safely, I could do nothing but wait.

Perhaps it was a foraging rat.

THERE ARE NO RATS – THE RATS ARE DEAD

Time passed. Nothing happened.

Eventually, I stood and moved on. The noise remained a mystery and I began to wonder if I had heard it all – like the noise in the dream that wakes you from a deep sleep.

I came upon the Delicatessen counter right at the back of the store and there, jammed hard under the counter, it was. Dropped by someone no doubt in a hurry to vacate this trap of a place it made everything worthwhile. Not just a single can, a double pack.

SPAM – Chopped Ham with Pork.

My lucky day.

I reached down to pick it up and, as I rose, I saw him reflected in the dusty glass of the counter.
Bigger than me, broader than me, with what looked like a crossbow up at his shoulder aimed at me.

I stood very still and felt my stomach drop and my hair stand on end as my Adrenal glands opened.

He said nothing – there was nothing to say. He was going to take what I had.

Very, very slowly and carefully I held the pack of Spam out to one side.

I opened my hand and let it fall.

“Take it”, I said. “I will go and find something else. We can both walk away.”

He said nothing.

I took a wavering, deep breath and, even more slowly, turned so that I was facing him.

I could see his eyes glinting over the top of crossbow, expressionless. He was going to shoot and then go on his way and I would dead. Finis.

“Look”, I said, “You don’t have to do this. Just take it and go. You’re not really a killer, are you”.

The crossbow started to droop and he breathed out hard. As the bow came down he shifted his attention to the prize lying on the floor between us.

I looked down at the bright, orangey arterial blood as it pumped out between the hands trying desperately to staunch it.

He thrashed on the floor, gurgling, and in less than a minute he was still and lifeless on the grimy, rubbish strewn floor.

As his attention had shifted I had pulled the saw edged hunting knife, taken from the same shop where I had found the outdoor gear, from the sheath under my fleece jacket. In one swift movement I had slashed him across the neck backhanded, severing the Carotid Artery and the Trachea, pushing the bow down and away with the other hand.

I stepped clear of the blood and picked up my spoils. Spam and a crossbow too – oh, lucky day indeed!

I had guessed correctly when I had said that he wasn’t a killer – but I am.

THE END