The Leaning Gun
Doris was surprised she missed it.
The Drum was over.
The monsters were still lurking about, but they were mostly calm unless you fired a bullet in their direction. It was difficult to resist this urge after nearly a year of killing, fighting, and maiming. Even at Doris’s age, she still helped other survivors battle the Unnamed in the streets. She had lost countless friends in the process, but she was still happy she participated.
When the Drum started, she was retired, widowed, and somewhat abandoned by society in her small home in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. The monsters scared her at first. She hid in a crawl space beneath her steps. However, after watching so many people fight and die in the streets, between houses, and underneath beds, she could not hide her seventy year old self anymore. She found an assault rifle and learned how to use it. She became effective, quick, and stealthy, hiding in the layers of wreckage and greenery.
As quickly as Doris had begun to unleash bullets into the wandering shadows and fight for her home against the plants and illusions, the Drum was destroyed. The Unnamed were no longer tearing apart her home night after night, frustration and vendetta powering their golden claws. The conflict that had ravaged the world and carved it into a verdant ghost of its former self was over. There was still violence and monsters, but it lacked the same edge. They were no longer being hunted to the demonic percussion.
Peace had become surreal, off putting, and seemingly unattainable after such sustained rage.
Doris had found it surprisingly easy to fight the monsters.
She had always been quiet, especially in her older age. Nobody around the neighborhood really acknowledged her existence. She took walks along the streets alone, delicately minding the uneven bumps in gravel and asphalt. She never imagined she would be sneaking, bending, and hiding behind rubble while fighting otherworldly monsters. She did it anyway, and now it was time to stop.
Some survivors were forming ragtag bands to hunt down the Unnamed spread throughout the neighborhood and city. After a few engagements, most were killed. Refugees from the north, where the Drum had been destroyed, said the Unnamed would defend themselves. In doing so, they appeared more violent than before, if that was possible.
That afternoon, in the alleyway behind her home, Doris felt a violent pull toward her newfound but retired abilities. The corridor of abandoned houses was a green, debris laden tunnel of flowers, ivy, and partially crumbled walls. A few cats and dogs scrambled among empty cars and homes, looking for food and shelter. The winds were heavy, billowing the overgrown trees into long, bubbly shadows.
Doris stood beside her old vegetable garden at the end of her backyard. Some cherry tomatoes had come back. She picked them slowly with her veiny fingers, placing them into an old ice cream bucket. Doris was pale, her long gray hair tied into a ponytail with a black hair tie. She wore a white gardening apron embroidered with flowers. Behind her stood a silver tool shed that she had pruned free of plants and their extensions multiple times throughout the apocalypse. Leaning against it was her assault rifle. She did not know the exact name or brand of the weapon, but she knew what bullets it took.
A long, aching grind groaned from down the alleyway. It was the sound of golden bone being dragged along rock, grass, and every surface beneath its spiked edge. Doris’s green eyes fell on the black metal skeleton of the gun because of what was moving toward her.
It was the Red Unnamed.
A towering crimson cloud of points, claws, and ribs, adorned in a moving ruby storm that fluctuated between afternoon sunlight and shadow. It stood higher than some of the nearby homes, especially those whose roofs had collapsed beneath excessive foliage. Doris followed it with her eyes as it passed quietly, without interest, its obscene golden claw leaving a sediment wake behind it.
Doris’s gun would do nothing against this Unnamed. She had watched them shrug off bazooka blasts. It took dozens of survivors to kill just one.
“Don’t know what to do with yourself? I hear that,” Doris said, stepping into the alleyway behind it. “Me too. Though it is sort of nice we are both in the same position.”
The Red Unnamed stopped.
Doris laughed nervously.
“Uh oh,” she said. “You do understand me, don’t you?”
More flash fiction from the Greenland Diaries. You can learn more about the series right here. Thank you for reading my work. Writing about a character like Doris is something the post-apocalyptic setting offers me, and I might not have found her without it. One of the reasons I love writing fiction and monsters. The characters that reflect off that mirror.
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