Two

I took the gun from a soldier. He didn’t need it any more. In this dead world I loot the dead. He was someone’s son, someone’s brother. We all were.

It is a dark black thing, heavy. I don’t know enough about guns to know the type. There is a cracked leather grip and a trigger and a lever on the back that I think is the safety. A button on one side ejects a plastic clip stacked with bullets. Twelve in total. Plenty.

I hold it turned against my temple. It’s heavy and I can’t keep my arm from shaking, my finger above the trigger from shaking. Wavering like the moment before you step off a high dive. All it would take is for me to close my eyes and squeeze down. One short, sharp pang of noise and then the world would go away forever.

There is no noise anymore. It gets to me. No traffic, nor planes in the sky, nor people’s voices. Even the Creatures are near enough silent and it feels like the world is dormant now, going to waste. It plays tricks on me. Lying half asleep on the bed I’ll hear voices, talking aloud in the street outside, the babble of car engines, a mobile phone. All just dreams now.

Sometimes I look at the gun and I’m terrified. Sometimes I look at the gun and I want to die.

It’s going to happen, one way or another, whether by my hand, or at the claws and jaws of the Creatures. My way, I think, is infinitely preferable. No more pain and no more fear and no more sick, guilty sadness. But I can’t. Cannot make that one tiny, finger-jerk movement that will end it all.

So this morning, just like all the other mornings, I put the gun down, sweat-sticky and cold and miserable. London burns and Creatures stalk the street at night and I hide here, too afraid to die.