All had Been Reclaimed Now by Ryan Sayles

They were reduced to eating each other.

By the waning light of what was left of their dinner fire they absently fed themselves, eyes scanning the surroundings. Shadows could no longer be trusted. The sun was setting and they were on the beach.

The lifeless ocean still made its susurration in the background; but now it was devoid of that white noise no one could ever quite put their finger on that made it sound vital. That made the ocean sound alive. The Earth had been put to an end.

There were only two of them now; whittled down from a larger mass composed of strangers mashed together by the cataclysm. One man. One woman. Their own reverse Adam and Eve. Peering about without real concern. An end was inevitable; only the degree of violence in which it swooped in was in question. There was no life left in their eyes. They were tapped out. Weary. Ruined. In many ways feral.

He took in their scenery and felt agony for what was lost. It was worse knowing what was lost cannot be recouped.

She took in their scenery out of honest curiosity. Oblivious. The shock of their reality turning inside out had erased her.

“Look at how the buildings took the wave’s impact.” She said, nodding toward the remaining husks of the city’s former skyline. Little more existed on the horizon than shattered concrete clinging to warped rebar and I-beams bent so far out of true it was comical. They were all bent westward. The direction in which the Atlantic rose up and kicked. An aquatic titan large enough to bowl over mankind.

Even at this distance he could see petrified tangles of long-dead seaweed dangling from the buildings. It took months for the ocean to recede and unveil the ruined coast again.

“The weather man said that wave was something like a mile tall. Actually, more I think. Can you believe it?”

He swallowed, said: “Yes I can believe it.” He thought about keeping silent, and then decided it didn’t matter either way. He said: “My brother moved his family here. To this very city. They didn’t get out before the mega-tsunami made landfall. I’m sure no one did. I remember watching the traffic on TV. Bumper-to-bumper for miles. People began using the lanes that went into the city as exit lanes. Didn’t matter. It became anarchy. The news coverage started showing a sea of cars driving every which way to escape before the water came. People were running. Motorcycles were cutting every which way. Cars were driving on the grass and hills. Fires broke out. It was the highway. The water hadn’t even come yet.”

He stared off in the distance for a minute. “Not that it would have mattered. The tide came to the Appalachian Mountains. Illinois flooded. You know that.”

“Your brother, huh?” She said, mouth full.

“Yes. We all lost people, blah blah blah. I lost my brother here, is all. When the group made the decision to come this way I just kept my mouth shut.”

“I’m sorry.” She said, looking anywhere except in his direction. “I didn’t know this was your home town. We met so far inland…”

“My parents raised us out west. Quite a ways, actually. My brother got a job here working-” He scanned the horizon, looking for the structure’s remains. His eyes lit.

“-there. That building. It’s coincidence.”

“How do you know they didn’t get out?”

“He never called. My mom always hoped he would reach a pay phone that still worked or something…” He looked away, fiddled with his meal.

“Or maybe he’d just show up at the house. They never did.” He set his food down, wiped his hands together. Anyone who had family on the coast entertained the same fantasies. “Besides, no one made it out. No one.”

“I’m sorry to bring it up.” She said. “I just- I’m still so surprised it happened.”

“You’ve had two years to get used to the idea. So get used to it.” He was sitting Indian-style. He disturbed the pile of clothes left behind from their meal. His stomach turned, but he forced the nausea down with two rationalizations: 1. The man died on his own; they didn’t murder him, and 2. The ethics of cannibalism and the moray against it died with civilization.

He kept eating. It stayed down. He tried on the shoes, they were too small. He kept them anyways. Might cut the toes out and see how that worked.

Out of the blue, as alien and out-of-place as a chicken and waffles joint in the middle of Chinatown. She said: “So, when everything gets started again I think I’ll open a hip boutique where I can sell jewelry and clothes. We’ll need that.”

He looked to her, incredulous. Shock. It’s got to be. She’s been mentally reduced to a child. The stress of losing another member of their party, the foot-trodden journey through a former pillar of American society now reduced to little more than rubble and fleeting memories, the cost has warped her. This is her form of coping.

A recognizable cityscape slapped by the hand of a god of war. Annihilation drew a breath and passed it over this globe. She saw it; experienced it; suffered its wrath firsthand. Everything covered in ash and death. The stench of ruination and rotting life simply became what the air smelled like no matter where one could smell it; here or the next state inland. This hemisphere or the next. Antarctica was as wretched as The Amazon was as disconsolate as The Mojave was as afflicted as the Alabaman Cathedral Caverns.

Shock.

A week back they walked down an ancient dirt road and they saw what were the obvious remains of an extensive flower garden. She lifted the barely recognizable form of a lily in her hands and cried for an hour. Inconsolable, retching sobs. No explanation. She didn’t speak of it then; didn’t now. Never offered any reason for her breakdown. It just was.

“Whatever you think.” He said, watched her pick small bits of meat from her piece and enjoy each morsel. Quadricep. She got the left, he got the right.

“Jeffery said he used to be a jeweler. You ever hear him talk about that?” She asked.

“Yes I did.”

“His wife was a real downer. What a pill. I bet before she was pretty and all, but after the impact she was just… she just sucked the life out of everything.”

He watched her sitting there, eating burnt meat and complaining about a dead woman, he could imagine her asking next if they had any barbeque sauce in their packs.

She’d been getting stranger by the day. Detached. Goofy.

She continued: “But Jeffery always had a story from when he was in the Navy or when he worked in New York City. Or the time he spent in California.” She smiled, giggled even. “I wonder how he wound up in Tulsa.”

Behind her the sun was setting. Its weak, strangled light slithered through the twisted dead bodies of skyscrapers and the few remaining columns the highways were pedestal-ed on. The wind was eerie. Haunting. It carried the miasma of dusted-over carnage with it. The way a grisly tomb would smell a century after it was last filled.

The winds had a strange hiss to them now; they whispered in the ear and told stories of how life hadn’t survived anywhere they’d been lately.

And the wind had been everywhere.

“Where did she go, you think?”

“Who?” He asked.

“Tara, Jeffery’s wife.”

He looked at her sidelong. Tara had slit her wrists a month ago. Jeffery found her almost a quarter mile away from their camp. He never explained how he located her. No one had the guts to ask.

Jeffery cried all day. The two other men they were traveling with-gone now, thank God-wanted to eat Tara. Any kind of hunting game was sparse to begin with and had all but vanished a year ago. Food of any kind was as scarce as hope. Maybe more so.

Jeffery would have nothing of it. Eating Tara.

The sight was pathetic and horrible all at once. Tara, dead, just laying there amongst dead trees and the ash-covered forest floor. Jeffery, tear streaks making gray wet lines down his cheeks from the ash constantly raining. Morris and Brian trying to convince him no matter what Jeffery’s heart said Tara shouldn’t go to waste.

Tensions prevailed. More blood on the forest floor.

After he killed Morris to defend his wife’s corpse, things cooled down. Brian sulked, slithered away. Ate Morris instead.

Jeffery never said what he did with his late wife. Again, no one had the guts to broach the subject.

“Well?” She asked.

“She took off. No note. No nothing. Just left.” They never told her what Tara did.

It would be too much. The woman here with him had already lost her husband and child when they were jumped by rogues last fall. No more bad news. She was fragile above her shoulders.

“I hope she’s OK wherever she is.”

He mumbled: “A better place.”

Time passed. They could smell the cuts he was smoking in a hastily built pit. He tried not to waste anything. He was glad his father was an avid hunter and liked to prepare his catch start to finish. Taught him well. Coming in handy now.

He had looked for a place to tan the hide but the sun never shone anymore; the dust eruption and ash cover was too thick. But the sinew, the bones, the rest, he had it worked out how to use.

“Anyways, you think Jacksonville is OK?” She asked.

“No. It was on the coast.”

“What about Tampa? It wasn’t on the Atlantic side, right?”

“Florida is a thin state, all things considered. The weather man said the impact wave was… intent on reaching inland quite a ways. We’re better off not worrying about reaching Florida.”

“That weather man became a legend after the impact.”

“Yes he did. Stupid, but he earned it.” Another bite. “I guess.”

Florida had been Brian’s idea. He was consumed by it. Said his ex-wife, their three kids and his ex-wife’s new husband lived there. Apparently in life Brian was not a good man. Then one night he went out for a piss, never returned. There might have been a choked scream in the woods, might not. Rogues. Pacing them like they were game. Probably were.

He wasn’t so sure they’d lost them, but they hadn’t seen any signs of being tracked for over a month now. No new attacks or disappearances. The only thing easing his conscious on still being hunted was that he was sure Brian would not feed them for thirty days.

But, they might be a small number, or disciplined in their food rationing. They could just be biding their time.

With every bite he wondered if he could taste the love for Tara. He searched his taste buds and his tongue for any sign of the morose guilt and agony filling Jeffery with her suicide.

She interrupts: “I bet Denver is fine. God, I would love to be skiing right now! What about you?”

“Never have been.”

“Oh, you’ll love it! And I could set up my shop right next to a resort and tourists will stop by, picking up things for each other and part of my store can sell skis and boots and ear muffs-”

She droned on. He looked away. The sun retracted itself from them they same way they felt God had. The shoreline was flat, pulverized. The impact sent all ocean life floating tits up. The shores were still covered in annihilated bones from that day.

Here he was, finally eating a meal on the beach and it tasted the way he figured the final meal of a death row inmate would taste.

Oh, the beach. The weather man, broadcasting live barefoot in the sand as the tidal wave reached to the heavens behind him, transmitting even as the boom of the impact stole every sound from him. Then the wave hit the beach and their feed disappeared from the world. Liquefied live before his audience. Legend, all right.

She sat by the fire, still talking and eating. They hadn’t had a good meal in weeks. Nothing warm. Nothing they hadn’t scrounged or taken off a dead body found along the way. Nothing fresh.

Fresh had been taken out of the dictionary. If it were to be put back in it would be a synonym for cannibalism.

He looked on, contemplating killing her and then himself. He still had five bullets and a knife. Jeffery had done it this morning. Maybe when the meat ran out he would do it. Just get it over with.

He watched her, wishing he had his own jewelry store dream to escape to. All he had was reality, and the sea had risen up to reclaim that.

Ryan Sayles has been published at Shortstory.us.com, Heroin Love Songs volume 7, Powder Burn Flash and has an upcoming publication at Beat to a Pulp. He’s Midwestern and prior military.