Empty (draft 1)

Empty

“The group has discussed it and we think you should go for supplies,” Jack said. Jack was a short man whose hair was perpetually disheveled. The rest of the group had appointed him as their spokesman.

“I’m not sure it’s the best time to make a supply run,” I said without a hint of emotion. “The last few weeks have been pretty dicey. I think we should try to wait it out.”

“We think the need for supplies outweighs the risk.”

“I’m guessing I don’t have much say in the matter. I’ll get my shit together and do it, but I want everyone to know that I think this is a horrible idea.” With that I headed to my corner of the barn and started sifting through my remaining possessions noting anything that might prove useful on my supply run. This was mostly an absent minded activity because I knew what I had and what I would take.

It was hard to believe that it had only been a few months since life had been good. I was living with my fiancé Elle in a nice but not extravagant apartment in a small town in central Minnesota. I had a management position for a company that manufactured components for medical equipment. The job paid a decent wage and I enjoyed it for the most part. In addition to my fiancé, I had a nice group of friends. Most of them were either married or in a committed relationships, but the group would occasionally go out for drinks or to a dinner party.

All of that changed on a rare rainy day in August. To this day I’m not sure what exactly happened. I’ve heard a variety of wild theories, but none of them have ever been substantiated. All I know for sure is that in the early evening we were plunged back into the dark ages. All at once telecommunications and electricity went down. Panic immediately set in. The police attempted to maintain order, but after a few days without any improvement or communication from higher levels of government even they gave up. Since then we have been living a lawless existence. Most people were civil at first. People shared supplies and food. However, as weeks wore on and supplies and food dwindled, the seeds of communal animosity were planted.

Things got significantly worse after water became hard to come by. People began to organize into various gang-like factions in an effort to protect themselves. All of these groups go by different monikers, but they are generally referred to as marauders. In my experience the marauders are brutal and only interested in self-preservation. As the marauder movement was gaining momentum, Elle and I, along with a small group of friends, decided that it would be safer to get out of town.

My parents owned a farm about 30 miles away. The farm had two wells and a variety of sources of food, so we decided to go there. I hadn’t been able to communicate with my parents since communications had gone down, but I assumed things would be fine in the rural area where the farm was located. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

A group of ten of us, five couples, set out for my parents’ farm. We arrived while a band of marauders were there. We piled out of cars and I approached the house. The leader of the marauders met me at the front door. I was greeted by the butt end of a shotgun. I was knocked unconscious. I never asked Elle or anyone else for the details of what transpired while I was out. I woke up to the smell of burning plastic. I was in the barn. My parents’ house had been reduced to cinder. The marauders had either killed my parents and brother before burning the house or they had died in the fire. I’m not sure which version of that story is more comforting. The marauders had taken everything that they wanted including all of the canned goods and several containers of water before they moved on. The rest of my group had made a deal with them that they would have access to the water and a small offering of food that they would pick up once a week in exchange for the lives of everyone else.

In the following weeks we kept our end of the bargain. The marauders came once a week to collect water and whatever food and supplies we offered to them in exchange for not being slaughtered. Two weeks after we arrived on the farm Elle started to lose it. She couldn’t adjust to our new reality. To overly summarize, she went insane. She became a threat to everyone’s safety. I tried everything I could to bring her back to reality, but I failed. The group collective determined that she was a threat to our understanding with the marauders. She had attempted to sabotage the offering the previous week. The group collective decided that she should be left as part of the next weeks’ offering in order to preserve the “treaty” with the marauders. I argued and argued to the point that I was subdued and tied up for two day before the offering. I begged and pleaded unsuccessfully and the group locked Elle out of the barn the day of the offering. I never saw her again. This alone is enough to break my spirit, but she was gone long before the marauders did whatever they did with her.

I had given this group of people everything: water, a supply of food, my parents and brother, my fiancé and essentially myself. Yet that wasn’t enough. In the following weeks I was excluded from any of the group meetings. Everyone else in the group had coupled up. Even the previously single people had found a partner for this new world. I was on the outside looking in. My former friends had abandoned me for new alliances in this new type of existence.

I went on the supply run despite my reservations. I drove the 10 miles to the nearest town and hit the drug store and convenience store. They were already picked over, but I was headed back to the barn with some limited food and supplies. When I arrived the barn door was locked. I pounded on the door and eventually Jack came to the door. He explained that the door was not going to be unlocked. All of the supplies that I had collected and myself were going to be the sacrifice to the marauders because there was nothing else to give them. Jack and I had a heated discussion through the barn door. I still cannot understand how I could be the choice for sacrifice. I had given these people everything I had. I had given my family, my fiancé (not by choice), a safe haven with food, water and other supplies. I asked Jack how the group had come to the decision that I would be the sacrifice to the marauders. He explained that the group knew that a member of the group would need to be offered up to the marauders in exchange for not having much else to offer them in the weekly offering. Apparently there was a discussion about who would be sacrificed. I wasn’t involved in this discussion. Whenever anyone else’s name came up their significant other vouched for them and explained that sacrificing them was unacceptable. When my name came up I wasn’t offered the same courteousy by any of the other group members. That discussion had sealed my fate. Jack said that he was sorry and the group was thankful for all I had done for them, but I and the supplies I had gathered were the offering to the marauders. My “friends” sure had a funny way of expressing their appreciation for all of the personal sacrifices I had made for their survival. After hearing from Jack I simply sat down at the locked barn door and awaited my fate at the hands of the marauders. I realized that my spirit had been completely broken as I heard the marauders’ motorcade approaching…