Execution - post-apocalyptic short story

He was prying open a can of beans, becoming frustrated.

“Where’s Mom and Dad?” I murmured.

“Gone.” Simple as that.

“Where?”

“Just gone.”

“Just you and me?” I wrapped our only blanket tighter around my shoulders, looking at the scar slashed across his lips from when he fought the government bandits who had tried to take us.

He glanced up. Pried again. “Always.”

“What happened?”

“What do you mean?

“To everything.”

“Collapsed.”

“Did Mom and Dad collapse? Is that what happened?”

“No. Just the world did, Blue.”




I was five minutes away from having my body ripped apart by bullets. I was most likely going to be blown back by the hits, or crumple down on top of the body killed before me. That’s what was expected. That’s what the boss had ordered, and it was what was going to be done. It was funny how he thought he could actually kill me.

The crowd shuffled from the barracks. I wasn’t supposed to be with the crowd, wasn’t supposed to be destined to this horrible fate, but even the greatest leaders of the Resistance could be captured. Luckily, I wasn’t the only leader, so I knew Shade was taking good care of the army.

My body was clad in rags of red; the used uniform of one who had died before it had been dropped in my lap. The women around me wore the same. Their eyes were lost and dead, and they seemed disgusted with the light in my eyes. We shuffled through the underground tunnels, ushered to the stage by the guards in green where we would be lined up, twenty at a time, and wiped out with one long streak of the aligned machine gun. The children would be taken out easily in the face, their tall mothers gutted through the stomach.

When I reached the end of the dirt tunnel that faded into one made of barb wire and fence links, I heard groans around me from the bright sunlight that hadn’t hit our eyes in weeks. The boy’s camp was being unloaded through the tunnels, all dressed in broken uniforms of blue. Immediately, calls broke out.

Fathers separated from their daughters shouted names that mixed with others, hands grabbing at the fence for a better look. Sisters screamed for their brothers. Eventually, the two tunnels met together in one large stretched cage of wire. The two camps were pushed together, and the travelling slowed down on account of family members finding each other and clinging hard. Some sobbed, some smiled for the first time in forever, and others were still frantically searching.

I felt like little hands were grabbing my lips, trying to force me to smile. Yes, it was all sad, but if they all knew what I knew, they’d be smiling too. I wished I could calm them, although the enemies would figure out the plan then.






Shade tied a bandana tight around my forehead and then took my smaller hand in his. We continued travelling. I looked back at the group of one hundred other people that followed us. Some were complete families, some were orphans, and others were older and highly skilled runaways. No matter how experienced, no one ever disobeyed Shade.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We’re going to find a place to camp.”

“All of us?”

“Yes.”

“Who are they?”

He looked back at our followers. “The good guys.”

“Are we like a club?”

Shade chuckled and ruffled my hair. I smiled up at him, but no matter how safe he made me feel, I still held my pistol tightly in my hand like he had taught me, no matter how young I was to be holding one. I was born on a blanket and raised with a gun.

“Yeah… like a club.”

“What do we do?”

“We fight the bad guys. Kinda like those video games you used to play with me before the power collapsed. We’re the good guys beating the bad guys. We’re not going to let them change us. Kinda like when Mom used to try an’ make you eat broccoli.”

“Yeah, I was good at resisting. Yuck!”

He chuckled again.

“What are we called?”

“We’re the Resistance.”

“Are you making that up?”

“I just did. But now that I did, I guess it’s true, right?”

I shrugged. “I ‘unno. You’re the genius.” Once again, I glanced back. “Will more join us?”

Shade paused and looked back. We stood together, like lions looking over their pride. Then Shade rested a hand on his hip and nodded. For the first time in a long time, he looked very serious. “Yes. Lots. We’ll get back what we once had.”





My shoulders were shoved some, but that was because I wasn’t shoving like the rest of them. I ignored the yells of the guards, avoiding the edges of the barb wire tunnel as they swung their guns like bats at us from the outside, taunting. I brushed arms with someone beside me, their touch cold. I glanced up.

He was a teenage boy, my age, but quite a bit taller. He was as thin as I, due to a lack of good meals served to us, and just as pale. His hair was a thick and messy blonde that hadn’t been cut or washed in weeks, and there were blotches of dirt and dried blood on parts of his body. What I noticed the most was the way he stared down at his cut feet rather than looking for a family member from the female camp that had just joined him. There was no father or brother or cousin or even a friend that walked with him.

Finally, he noticed me staring at him, his eyes only snapping sideways with the smallest visual of a flinch. “What?” His voice had to pass a hoarseness. He probably hadn’t talked in a long time.

I shrugged. “No one waiting for you?”

He paused, seeming quite confused by the strength in my voice, as if I had never been taken down and dragged to this hellhole. Then he murmured, “I was the only one taken.”

“That’s good, right? Means you’re too smart. Government hates you,” I said with a growl, wiggling my fingers as if they held some type of mystic powers. “Besides, we’ll be fine.”

He gave me a look as if I was the dumbest person to walk the earth. “Fine? It was ordered for every prisoner here to be ex-eh-cute-ded. They’re digging our graves outside of the base this second.”

Every emphasis on the word made me annoyed with him for a split second. “You could just say we’re gonna be killed. I don’t get it. Why don’t they kill us in the graves? It’d save them time. Hmm.”

His face turned horrified. His lips worked for a bit until a simple, “Wh-what…?” worked its way out.





“What is it, Shade?”

Shade rested his chin on his crossed arms, peering over the stacks of logs that we were hiding behind. “Watch tower.”

I put the binoculars to my eyes again, studying the structure. “They’re watching us, right? They knew we’re moving closer.”

“Mm-hmm.” He had a little smirk, though. And I knew that smirk. It was the fun one, the one that used to scare me, because it meant crazy thoughts were entering his head, but by now I’ve found that those thoughts have only prolonged our survival.

I was speaking aloud our problem for him, like always, so that his mind could work around it. “It’s in open land. Watching us. We’ll die if we get close. We’ll lose too many soldiers if we move at once. But we can’t move around it because of the open desert it’s placed in.”

Shade nodded at everything. Paused. Then: “Well, come here. I want you to do something for me.”

I scooted closer and watched as Shade took his 30-30 rifle off of his back, placing it in my hands. I knew how to use it, and I did often for hunting, but I was pretty excited now, because I knew I wouldn’t be hunting innocent animals. Only the humans who had wronged us.
Shade held the binoculars to his eyes while I was already aiming the gun at the tower that stood four hundred yards away. “Look,” Shade chuckled. “Propane tanks. On the bottom. Idiots… Blow ‘em sky high.”

“Way ahead of you.”

I listened to my heartbeat level out in a way where it could match anything. I lined the scope up like Shade had taught me and felt his hand rest on my back and his voice whisper, “Aim above, the bullet will drop.”

I waited until everything stopped moving, as if the whole world had froze its rotation. A simple twitch set the trigger off. When I heard the hissing far off, Shade made a sound that was similar to a girl’s squeal. He had a vice grip on my arm, pulling hard. “Let’s go, let’s go! Make sure you watch!”

My legs moved fast to keep up with him. As we disappeared into the woods to find our camping army, I glanced back over my shoulder. A flashback of Dad’s old Fourth of July fireworks came to my thoughts for a bit, but I remembered right away that this was the life now, and that the explosion before my eyes right then was the prettiest thing I had ever seen.





I raised my eyebrows at the boy, perplexed. “What? We’ll be fine. Just stay with me.” I even gave him a smirk.

“How can you smile at a time like this?”

“Because we’re going to be fine. Clean the crap outta your ears.”

“There’s only a few people who would be ‘fine’ in this situation.”

“And they are?”

He was still disgusted with my peppy attitude. “The Resistance leaders. Blue Jay and Shade. Everyone knows that Blue Jay got caught ‘few months back, though. She’s probably rotting in a barrack somewhere. Maybe dead.”

I giggled in the middle of his words, making him turn harshly. “What now?”

I pointed two thumbs towards myself. “Yours truly!”

He paused in his walking, a few prisoners running into him from behind, so I yanked him forward with a roll of my eyes. He kept up this time, but his own eyes were bulging. His voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “You’re Blue Jay? Thee Blue Jay, co-leader of the Resistance?”

I swung the back of my hand into his stomach. “Shush! Just stick with me, kid.”

“Kid?” He thought for a bit, chewing on his lip. “How did you get caught?”





Shade was laughing. He always laughs when we’re facing danger. I was sitting in the passenger’s seat while his foot was like a brick on the gas petal. We were ten jeeps full of Resistance soldiers and rescued prisoners fleeing from twenty government vehicles.

Shade always made sure his jeep was last in our group. He wanted to take all hits instead of his soldiers. He used to pressure me to ride with others in the front lines where it was safer, but I’d never leave my brother.

Finally, the first bullets started striking the back of our vehicle. This only made Shade giggle while I had already been grinning a long time ago. “Take ‘em down, Blue!” he whooped.

I dove into the back and found the bazooka stored in latches on the inner wall. With a few quick flips, the weapon was mine, and in record time I had it readied and aimed at the lead truck that was chasing us down.

“Let ‘er rip, sis!”

With one button, a rumble and hiss took place, some smoke pluming my face for only a short second until the jeep’s speed took me out of it, giving me a clear view of the explosion that was taking place behind us. I raised my arms with a cry of triumph while Shade honked our vehicle’s horn. The sun set behind the enemies, as if signaling the end of our highly practiced scene.

That’s when a feeling as plain as a paper cut cleaved through my thigh. My sound of celebration turned into shock, and then into Shade’s name as I toppled in a flip right over the back of jeep. I don’t remember how long I rolled and got cut by loose rocks and debris, but I knew I was in a state that felt like a dream when I finally came to a stop.

Slowly, my head fell sideways. I watched Shade’s bumper slow down. He was coming back for me. But the rest of our army was still going, and the bullets were hitting him harder than ever, and I don’t know if I was happy or scared when I saw his vehicle kick into drive again and speed off to safety.  

Always, he had said. So even as my flesh wound bled out, and the enemy trucks pulled to a stop by my body, I grinned.





“Ah, you know,” I finally answered, fingering a hole in my pants to rub the scar. “Everyone screws up.”

“But not Blue Jay. Where the hell is Shade—”

“Shut up. Just stick close.”  

He was silent then, along with the whole crowd, which caused an uneasiness for everyone. They all knew they were going to die. Even the strong men of the families were starting to break down. The young children’s ears were covered, their guardians and parents wanting them not to know their fate.

I felt the blonde boy gently grab my sleeve. It didn’t matter how old anyone was. He was scared. Hell, I even had some nervousness in me. I tried to give him a smile, seeing as how he had no one else to be with, and I could feel his grip loosen.

I focused ahead again, seeing that disgusting tunnel finally come to an end. But everyone was still in a fenced area, around half a mile in diameter. There wasn’t any stress of blinding sunlight because of the huge brown tarp spread fifty feet over the area, providing shade to all those under it. In the very middle of the “arena” was the stage, a fifteen-foot stage of rotting wood and dried blood. On a platform before it, soldiers readied their machine gun. Other guards were yelling and randomly whipping weapons around to force the huge group of prisoners into a single file line that started at the steps leading up to the stage surface.

I quickly grabbed my company’s hand and began dragging him through the crowd. He yelped, probably terrified, but I kept at it. I squirmed through the frantic prisoners until I reached the front of the line, actually volunteering to be one of the first to be executed. I stayed still there, holding my ground, not wanting anyone on that stage to dare go before me.

While waiting for the line to form, I looked up at the stands. Rows of bleachers surrounded half of the stage, home to the rest of the soldiers and top hotshots to speculate. I glared at a few, disgusted by the way they drank and smoked and laughed, as if watching us get gutted was as normal as watching a good game on TV.

A whistle slashed the air then, making silence like in the tunnel come back, only the whips of the wind and the scared weeping of children. A soldier standing posed at the end of the stairs screamed for the first twenty to take the stage.

I tried to act like I was scared. It was so hard.

Quickly, my bare feet slapped across the stage as I took my spot at the far end, yanking the boy with me the entire time. To my right was a large pole holding up one corner of the tarp cover. I studied it, finding its weak spots, ignoring the chaos around me. It was now or never.

“What are you doing?” the blond whispered without moving his mouth.

It was so difficult not to start smiling. “Stay with me.”

When the last people were coming on the stage, when the gun was lined up, when the main soldier prepared to give the shooting order, that’s when I kicked. I kicked my heel as hard as I could into that pole, knowing exactly where to kick, and felt that satisfying crack as it came apart. Right then, that’s when I let my crazy grin show.

The pole fell in slow motion, making everyone around us pause, even the soldiers. The world became a darker tint as the tarp came down right after. People started screaming and running in random directions, while I gripped the boy’s hand and turned, leaping off of the stage with no preparation that time. My feet pumped only air, my companion’s hand ripped out of mine during the fall, and a shock slicing through my ankles and aligning my back as it came up my spine when I rolled into the ground.

Nearby, I heard the boy groan. I stumbled to him as the pain left my feet, gripping his shirt and jerking. “Go!” A bullet split the wood of the bleachers above our heads, causing me to shove my new friend, yelling louder at him to move his ass.

And he did. That bullet put him in gear, and he followed close as I ran and dove under the bleachers, appearing in a world of metal beams and supports that held up all those stands. At the far back was the fence that led out to freedom.

I knew the blonde would follow, so I grabbed the first beam I could find and pulled myself up, stepping across a few. I started hearing my name screamed out by the guards. Blue Jay, Blue Jay, where the hell is Blue Jay? they cried. I was so desperate to get out of there that I was almost cocky enough to scream back, “Come get me!”

I kept my mouth shut, jumping from more beams and army crawling my way under a few more. I was better than a mouse in a maze. That’s when another bullet made a loud twang off of a support that was a few feet to my left. Seeing that the boy was keeping up, I tried not to worry about him as I hauled it twice as fast, squeezing my body through several tight fits until I fell out at the end, a puff of air forced from my lungs.

“Shade!” I yelled out.

He was already there. He flew past the cocky stage a long time ago. He was wearing a huge grin, an unlit cigarette clenched between his molars and a giant shotgun posed on his hip. His lip scar was detached from his giant smile. “What’s up, Birdy?” he greeted ecstatically. “Already cut a hole for ya.”

I mirrored his smirk, grabbing the fence links and ripping back, exposing a huge hole in the perimeter. I shoved the boy through first, listening to Shade whoop happily as he swung his shotgun, bullets smacking more targets than I could count behind us, while I snaked through the fence after, making sure to yank the hole even bigger for the other prisoners that I could see following us.

“Who’s the kid?” Shade asked, throwing his shotgun to me and pulling out the big guns now. As if rehearsed, I pulled out two magazines from his vest, holding them tightly while he loaded them, and covered my ears while he tore them loose on following enemies.

When he took a break, I replied, “I dunno. Thought he’d be a good add on.”

Shade looked the blonde over. Then shrugged. “He’ll do. Let’s get going now, little kiddies. Soldiers to kill, wars to start!” He threw me one of his guns, a toy that I hadn’t held in months, and it felt like I had just gotten my baby back.





The meadow is soft. Half of the prisoners escaped with our small army that came to the rescue. I wonder about the fate of the prisoners that didn’t escape, but half of them saved is much better than all of them dead.

We’re surrounded safely by a wall of trees, many of our own soldiers as lookouts. Food and shelter is being set up, since we’ll make base here for the time being. I sit back against the wheel of Shade’s big truck, smacking my jaw on a hard piece of candy and watching a few of our soldiers jab knives into our canned goods to access meals for the new people.

Shade is teaching the new kid to use a gun. So far, he’s only managed to almost blow off his teacher’s foot. Shade is scratching his scruffy jaw, attempting to keep composure, but I know how he is. I give it two minutes before he plays the “let’s take turns” game with me.

I check the ammunition and weapons stored in my vest for the umpteenth time, and then the knives strapped around my thigh, fixing my baggy pants into my big black boots. I lace them up a few times, just to look busy, but it doesn’t work. Shade walks over and holds out his pistol.

“Teach him. He’s useless.”

“Aw, come on. He’ll take the bad guys down like everyone else you’ve taught. Just like the video games.”

His lip scar becomes an unfixed puzzle piece with his sideways smirk. “The only thing he’s gonna do is spray the enemy in the eyes with his own blood after he shoots his freaking toe off.”

I grin. The blonde boy nearby is scratching the back of his head awkwardly, trying to apologize, but Shade ignores him. I take the pistol finally and stand up, switching with Shade who sits down now.

“I hear you’re trying to take off limbs now,” I say with a sigh as I rest my hands on my hips, looking over the treetops.

“Never held a gun,” the boy admits.

“I was eight when I shot my first gun. Took a turkey’s eye out. You’re, what? Fourteen?”

“Nineteen…” he says, as if hiding annoyance.

I’m almost angry he’s older.

Shade throws a stick at us. “I’m twenty-four, suck it!”

I stick my tongue out at him, and we make a few indistinct noises at each other before I turn back to my student, slamming the gun back into his palm. “Look. Real simple stuff here, kid. Grip it, don’t touch the safety, bullets go in the chamber, it fits eight, you close it like this, pull this back to put the safety on. You watching? Look, off, on, off, on. Watch. Now it’s on. Don’t touch the trigger. This is your scope, you just line them up.” I point across the field. “Shoot the tree.”

It looks like my information is draining out of his eyes and ears as he stares at me. But with a gulp, he turns and aims. I sigh and smack his elbows. “Straight arms! Two hands.”

“See?” Shade yells. “She’s no better than me!”

While the boy takes his time to get his stance down, aiming, he speaks at a more quiet tone, as if suggesting I do the same. “Where you from?”

“Forgot. West Coast or something. I don’t own the map.”

“Oh… Got a favorite food?”

“Whatever we find. Shoot the gun.”

He pauses. “Favorite gun?”

Ah, he’s a fast learner. “Look, instead of learning how to pick me up, why don’t you learn how to shoot the thing first?”

He smiles for the first time since I met him and raises the pistol once again. I glance around, waiting, but it only takes three seconds until a bang took the air. I jump and look from him to the tree, scrutinizing the hole in the middle of it. Even the boy looks shocked.

Shade bursts out laughing. “Looks like he only responds to pretty girls! ‘Guess we’ll have to put him on our team, eh, Blue?”

I roll my eyes and then look at the new kid. “Keep shooting like that and maybe we’ll continue that conversation about my favorite gun.”

His first smile turns bigger. With a grin and a pop of my eyebrows, I turn away and return to Shade, kicking his boot. “Your turn.”

He laughs and stands, weaving his fingers together and resting them on the back of his neck. “Nah, I’m gonna go take a nap.” With a spin of the heel he’s gone, travelling through the camp while I slowly turn back to the student who looks a little more excited than he should be.

“Better obey,” I warn him.

He salutes me. “You’ve got it, Miss Blue Jay!”

With a huff, I approach him again, but inside I’ve got a smile bigger than ever.





It was freezing out, but I was only feeling half of it. I was wrapped in a blanket cocoon, trapped in Shade’s lap and arms. His head was tucked down, and I could feel his hot breath streaming through the blanket and against my cheek.

“Come in the blanket,” I said.

“N-no. You need the warmth. You’re… s-smaller. I’m big. I’m fine.”

I listened to the crackling of the fire go out from the chilling wind. I struggled to move in the blanket, pulling it over Shade’s head to hide us both. “It’s okay. Momma always said to wear a hat.”

I could see him smile in the dark, and we hugged each other tighter to survive the cold. “Where are we going?” I muttered.

“We’re g-gonna find help.”

“What kind of help?”

“They’ll help us get things back.”

“Like what?”

“Our l-lives.”

“Really?”

Slowly, I felt him shake his head. “No.” His voice was like the wind. But, like the beauty of the snowflakes, it’s works its way in. “But we’ll start a new life. And it will hold more hope and happiness than ever before.”

I tried again. “Really?”

This time he was positive. “Really.”

“You and me?”

No pause. “Always.”