https://Voice.club - Alice sat on the steps looking out at an empty world.
Silent tears slid down her bruised face, her punishment for trying to hold on to her son. She clutched her suckling baby too close and it whimpered slightly, while her skinny little girl-child sat alone in the grit at her feet, pushing around pebbles and a twig too small to be firewood.
Marcus was in the kitchen. He had been a roadhouse cook in the Before, so the task had fallen to him, and he never complained. Behind her Alice could hear the butcher’s knife slamming down, again and again, and each time she flinched. She tried to shut the sound out, focussing on her baby instead, fixing the image of those innocent eyes in her memory. Still, Alice recoiled at every thud of the blade.
Across the yard the remaining survivors slumped in whatever bits of shade they could find, trying to avoid the scorching sun that never went down. There were no elderly, no weak or injured, not anymore. Only strong men who could still fight, and women like her who could breed. Soon, they all knew, there would be fewer still.
But they all stayed anyway. Where else was there to go? At least here there was one meal a day, even though there were no greens and the meat was always tough. Slow cooking required too much fuel, and the barren landscape was almost depleted of tree stumps and dry brush. Soon, probably, there would be no cooking at all.
The remnant stared at nothing with their empty eyes. Alice looked over at them, at each one, really looked for once. She didn’t know why it mattered but it seemed important to see them, to remember them while she could.
Later, when it felt like it should be evening, they would gather at table and they would all chew slowly, not looking at one another, trying not to think about what they were eating.
But not Alice.
Not today.
