Everyone Dies in the End #11

Artemis

It was all sad, so very sad. Artemis stood inside the shattered doors of the Best Buy on 3^rd and South. He had been one of the early looters. Grabbing his stack of Nintendo consoles a couple of weeks back. I mean I never claimed I was an angel. But with Battle Tank finished he had returned in hopes of finding something else to play.

“Doesn’t look too promising,” Susan monotoned, the master of understatement.

She stood beside him. Baggy khaki shorts today, black and red-checked flannel shirt, and a sleeveless quilted jacket as insurance against the autumn chill. On her feet were thick, wool socks, and well-worn hiking boots. She had a pink, canvas book bag on her back, the words “Harm None” stenciled in black below the zipper. He was glad for her company. Worried that he was too glad.

The store was a wreck. No, Artemis corrected himself, it looked like the Best Buy had passed being a wreck a week ago. It was an unmitigated disaster. The shelves, at least the shelves that were still standing were bare. Most, however, had been tipped, one falling into the next like a giant set of dominoes. Before Armageddon, hundreds of televisions had lined the far wall, now one, loan set sat forlornly on the top shelf, its screen shattered. Papers, smashed fax machines, crushed answering machines, and even a Xerox copier without a lid lay on the floor. The air reeked. Someone had made a feeble attempt to start a fire with a pile of cassette tapes, and the stench of burned plastic mixed with the disgusting order of urine and feces.

“Ugh,” gasped Susan. She pinched her nose and shook her dark locks of unruly hair. “This is worse than the dorm.”

The running water had stopped two days previously, and although they had plenty of bottled water, there was nothing with which to flush the toilets. They had been using the facilities two floors above their rooms, but the smell still hung in the air.

Artemis held up a warning hand, “Please, don’t remind me.”

“Let’s see what we can find,” he mumbled moving deeper into the store, careful not to step in anything he would regret. The late afternoon light, wasn’t the best. The back corner held the video games, and the back corner didn’t look good.

They had only taken a couple of steps when a strange voice stopped them.

“Well, what do we have here?”

Artemis spun around, conscious of the 9mm Glock in the black holster strapped to his jean-clad thigh, and also conscious of his inexperience with the gun. He was an ace at killing stuff on the TV screen, but had only practiced with the Glock a couple of times. It was liberated from a local pawn and gun shop and was the only weapon he had ever owned. Susan was unarmed. That was just Susan.

There were two of them, and they stood inside the Best Buy double doors.

“They look like a nice young couple, don’t they Chops?”

The speaker was a heavily-tattooed, man. Late teens, Artemis guessed, shirtless, ammunition belts crossing his chest, machine pistol in his hand. Three-inch, red-hair spikes adorned his skull. It didn’t take much imagination to understand why his buddy was called Chops. Standing next to, and slightly in behind, the spiky-haired speaker, Chops held two, meter-long, broad-bladed machetes in his hand. Several other sheathed knifes hung from the leather belt circling his waist. Like Spikey, he was shirtless, wearing only a pair of blue jeans, and heavy boots.

Chops didn’t answer Spike’s question. Instead he focused on Susan and licked his lips, licked with a tongue that was thick and yellow. Smack addict, thought Artemis. The yellow tongue was a dead giveaway.

Chops lack of response didn’t phase Spikey. He stepped toward Artemis and Susan, his eyes never leaving Artemis’s. Chops followed, his eyes never leaving Susan.

Artemis, held out his hands. “We don’t want any trouble.”

Spikey grinned. Most of his teeth had crude gold caps. “You should have thought of that before you broke into my brother’s store.”

Artemis glanced about the store incredulously. “Broke in, broke in? What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, dude. Broke in. This is my brother’s store.” He laughed, “Hell this whole damn city is my bro’s. Didn’t you get the memo?” This really cracked him up, the laughing degenerating into a fit of coughing, coughing that nearly doubled the skinny body over. Artemis hand drifted to his holster, and Spikey was erect in a flash, machine pistol pointed at Artemis’s face.

Again Artemis spread his hands. “We don’t want any trouble.”

The grin returned. “Oh, no worries there, dude. You won’t be any trouble. I’ll just pop a couple in your head, and then we’ll have some fun with the little lady.”

A sneer directed at Susan made obvious what Spikey considered fun. She stood still, trembling, her skin paler than pale, eyes shifting nervously from Spikey to Chops. She looked so small to Artemis, and the muzzle of Spikey’s machine pistol, which still pointed at a spot somewhere between Artemis’s eyes, seemed so large. He imagined he could see the bullet in the chamber, smell the gun oil, feel the ganger’s fetid breath.

          “Say your prayers, dude.” Artemis could see Spikey’s finger whiten on the trigger, and then the gun spoke.