5 OLD PINE ELEMENTARY
I am hot and tired. The venom of the giant scorpion lingers in my veins. It's the end of the day, time to hole up somewhere and be very, very quiet. The sign outside says Old Pine Elementary and I enter.
I see a filthy mattress with a body strung up in the air above it, dried blood, body parts and head missing. I touch it and it swings a little in the air, creaking back and forth, and my heart jumps as though it is a scorpion. My sixth sense tells me I am safe. The doors are all closed, and this man... He had died a long time ago.
I drop my pack and collapse onto the mattress. This dead man, he had sought solitude. Oasis is not far away, a few days walk. But he had been living here, until the raiders came. We call them raiders and slavers, they are wastelanders like us who’ve gone bad, who trade in death, drugs, and worse.
This man is obviously too old to make a good slave. Probably too hard headed like me. They say if you're captured by slavers the best thing to do is insult them and achieve your death for they are quick to anger. Better than living out life on a chain. There's toilet paper there, pencils, turpentine and a teddy bear. I open a nearby bottle. It's alcohol.
I take a swig and spit everywhere. I hate rotgut. But I drink it anyway and soon my worries ease. I pick up the teddy bear and hold it in my lap. Brown and burnt, with one button eye hanging by a thread. I rip it off. I wave its little arms and hold it up as though it were dancing. What am I doing? I should be looking for supplies.
"What do you think little one? Are they coming back?" But I know they aren't. I feel safe. Feelings are everything. The goddess still watches over humankind. God has forsaken us, his creations turned to dust and monsters, but you can trust your feelings to get you by when your head is aching, tired, losing its senses. Trust your feelings. That's what mother said.
I hug the bear fiercely and a puff of dust goes up. I stifle a cough. The place is dark, dingy, trash everywhere, lockers littering the halls, chairs piled up in rooms, and burnt skeletons of children all around. It was ground zero and I knew I couldn't stay long because of radiation. One night probably won't kill me too much. My Geiger counter had been taken by the law man.
Law man. What a joke. Self-appointed officiandos, waving their guns and telling people what to do. Don't rest your hand on your gun hilt or you might just get shot. They were usually drunk with alcohol they 'seize’ from some unlucky wastelander. There was only one in oasis but one was enough. People are sheep and they follow. If you are strong you are the leader... Or tyrant. That's the rule of the wastes.
I feel better than I have been. I lay down on the mattress and in my imagination I see the little girl who must have carried the teddy, probably brought for show and tell, every wastelander's favorite game.
I hear a clattering and my senses jump. I listen hard for several minutes, but all I can hear is my own breath. I hear a child crying and I listen harder, but I'm not sure what I'm hearing. It could just be the wind. It's probably just rats.
I toss the teddy-bear aside and lay back, hugging the rotgut, my .22 pistol in my other hand. I stare up at the body rigged to the ceiling above me. It is strangely beautiful and foreboding.
So much death. The wasteland is filled with it. Everyone's a murderer. Killing to eat, killing to survive, killing yourself with radiation just for a safe place to sleep or to scavenge some tech. I flick my flashlight off and wonder in the dark if I will survive the night but am too exhausted to care. It's nice just to lay on a mattress and not the hard, burnt ground, dug into the trash somewhere to keep away from predators.
My eyes close and sleep comes to me. In the night I awaken and scratch at my head with the barrel of the .22 pistol the guard had given me. My finger twitches involuntarily and I hear a click. Empty. I had better load it, just in case.