Free Decaying Humanity by James Barton Page A

didn’t get any closer to find out,” Marc explained.
        “Well I figured I’d ask.”
        We finished up our meal and said our goodbyes. The rest of the group came to say their farewells, but we could barely make them out through the barricade. We departed the fortified pier and made our way back to the car. There was still no activity on the beach and all was quiet up to the walkway.
        As we turned the corner, we could see the station wagon’s trunk open. There was a single leg extended from the trunk and before I could even say anything, Harvey was bounding towards the vehicle, shotgun in hand. He made it to the trunk and reached in, I could barely see what he was doing when I heard a gunshot ring out from the condos across the street. The dune on the other side of the car spurted up sand 10 feet from my position. I ducked and clung to the car as I scanned the buildings for a shooter. The door to a condo directly across from the car was wide open and an elderly woman was standing in the doorway.
        She was in a long oversized gown with cartoon cows on it. She still held the revolver out, her hands clearly shaking. There was a tussle inside the car and I could hear grunting from Harvey and a second person. I peeked around the car to see that Harvey had drug out an older man with a thinning white comb-over. Harvey pressed the shotgun up against the back of his white checkered shirt. “Alice, don’t shoot,” the man called out.
        She didn’t fire again, but she kept the revolver pointed at us, her arms shaking to hold its weight.
        “Why are you stealing from us?” Harvey asked, jabbing the barrel into his back.
        “I didn’t know anyone was coming back and we don’t have anything left,” said the old man. I walked around to where Harvey was standing and looked in the trunk. We were missing an armload of food. That cut down our supply to two weeks at the most. If he had been faster or earlier, our trunk would be empty. The old man had probably made multiple trips this morning. I gave Harvey a look that said, “
What the hell do we do?
” He seemed to respond with one that said, “
I don’t know.
”
        “Please just let me go, I’m just trying to take care of my wife. We’ve been eating cat food the last four days, and when we ran out of that …,” he trailed off.
        “I don’t want to hurt you, but we need our food just as much as you do.” Harvey said.
        “You still have a lot and we have nothing. We are going to die without some food,” the man pleaded.
        “Want me to shoot them, Alfred?” the old lady cackled out with a shaky voice.
        “No! Get back in the house!” he shouted back, somewhat annoyed. “She couldn’t hit the car if she was three feet away,” he said sadly.
        “Look, we can let you go and you can bring our stuff back. You stole from us and we need it,” Harvey said. The man spun around defiantly and looked him right in the eyes.
        “Son, if I bring back that food, we will starve to death. I have never stolen anything in my life and I am very sorry if I have to start today, but you might as well shoot us both. I can’t and won’t bring it back. So just do it and get it over with if that’s what you are going to do,” he scolded.
        Harvey looked at me unsure. We had done so much self-preservation and perhaps this would reduce our food supply but, I couldn’t just sentence them to death. How could we expect people to help us if we ever needed it, if we couldn’t help two old people? “Let him go, I can’t, I mean
we
can’t,” I said.
        Harvey looked somewhat relieved. I think we both needed to do something good to clear our murky conscious.
        “Thank you, we can’t thank you enough for…” he began to say before being cut out by a shrill cry and gagging. Everyone spun around and there it was. Alice was splashed from her face down to her knees in red