Sick Bastards Read Free

occupants of the house know something we didn’t? The amount of preparation they appeared to have done. No. Had to just be luck. After all - if they had prepared for the end of the world then I am sure they wouldn’t have left their house. Certainly not without taking the candles and food anyway.
     
    The first few weeks were spent using the car’s radio to try and get a station - any news from the outside world that could be useful to know. Father hoped that there’d be a camp set up, or something, nearby that we could make our way to. Father would fiddle with the radio. The girls were in the house and I would be instructed to stand outside of the car keeping watch for possible looters.
     
    Of course the radio was useless. Static on every channel we continually tried and then - after a while - the car’s battery just gave up the ghost entirely, killing any chance of finding salvation on the radio. In the end we ended up doing nothing. We had food, we had each other and we decided, as a group, that sooner or later help must come by; hopes raised by the fact that, from time to time, we’d see what must have been military aircraft flying overhead.
     
    Food-wise - we ate well. Looking back, it was silly really. We should have rationed what we had. Tried to make it last longer than it actually did. I think we managed to eat well for just over a month, maybe longer but not by much. When Father realised the food supplies were diminishing quicker than anticipated - he did start rationing but, of course, by then it was too little too late. Our meals had been reduced to nothing and we were living off the smallest of portions, all of us getting hungrier and hungrier.
     
    I think I miss shortbread biscuits the most.
     
    And real steak.
     
    The slices of meat we got to eat before this happened.
     
    “What did happen?” Sister would occasionally ask Father.
     
    He’d sit next to the open fire - burning away logs we had collected from outside with an old axe we found in the garage next to the house - and tell us bits and pieces of what led to the bomb being dropped. To this day I’m not sure if he was telling the truth or simply using his imagination to give what happened a reason.
     
    The summary: one man’s greed led to the end of the world.
     
    Father told us how he saw the mushroom cloud billow up into the air and the bright, near- blinding light of the explosion. He described how the bang vibrated his guts to the very core making him instantly queasy and fearful that something important was going to rupture. Again - I’m not sure how much of it was truth and how much of it was fabricated for our benefit; a little bedtime story to tell the children.
     
    Soon enough the day that we feared came by. The food was practically gone (other than a few crumbs here and there) and our stomachs were rumbling.
     
    “We need to leave the house,” Father told me as I came down to a non-existent breakfast one morning. “We need to see if we can find some food before we all starve to death.”
     
    I didn’t argue with him. I knew if we didn’t do something (and soon) then his words wouldn’t be as melodramatic as how they sounded. I didn’t even question whether it was worth one of us staying behind, at the house, with one of the women whilst the other woman went out with Father. That way, there’s a man outside to find food and a man inside to defend the property.
     
    Chauvinistic thoughts?
     
    Before the bomb went off and things changed, I’m sure women would have been just as capable as men (in some ways more so) but now - in this new world - I couldn’t help but feel that way. No doubt something to do with all the tales of looters Father told us during the cold nights.
     
    Armed with a knife from the kitchen, an axe from the garage and a torch - Father and I left the house in search of supplies. We didn’t know what we were going to come across. Perhaps some wildlife wandering the woods with the same goal as us?