Whimper

The end is here.

There's a slight creak in the floorboards, a tinny whistle, and then silence. A few seconds pass by. Then, there is a shifting underneath the house, and one of the floorboards springs open. The barrel of a shotgun is lashed out in the open, followed by a wild-haired girl wearing a mask. Dust fills the air and momentarily obscures the area. After the dust settles, the girl swivels the muzzle of the gun around the room, and after a few more seconds, she clambers out from beneath the house.

She cocks her gun. A gold tendril races across the tip to end and a hum fills the air. "Is there anyone here?" she asks. Her voice is hoarse and raspy. "I am armed and will kill you if you try to harm me."

There is still silence. The only thing in the room are broken picture-frames and paintings hanging lopsided on the walls. Dust cakes the area. The furniture is moth-eaten and untouched. Windows are broken. Calligraphy of strange characters have been torn from the walls and lay in tatters on the floor.

The girl lets the gun hang at her side and her breathing hisses through her gas mask. The mask is black like her gun and has gold around the rims. It only covers the lower half of her face and leaves her dark eyes exposed. She is young, appearing to be in her teens, but one could think she is older with her hardened countenance. "Doesn't seem like anyone's lived here for a while," she mutters. The girl adjusts the mask, smooths her unruly brown hair, and moves on. Her muscles are ropy and taut underneath her black clothes.

The interior of the house is charred and torn apart. Furniture is in tatters. Dining room tables snapped in half and in splinters. The girl climbs over obstacles and searches through drawers of cabinets and cupboards. She tosses out many things. Glassware, plates, china. They shatter onto the ground. Cockroaches scatter when discovered, and she ignores them. When she comes across a silver ring in a file cabinet, she tucks that away in the pack around her hips.

Then there is a noise from across the house.

The girl whips her gun up, but the sound is gone. She does not lower the weapon. "Who is there?" she asks crisply.

There isn't an answer. The girl mutters, "an animal," under her breath. She starts forward with her gun high and weaves through the wreckage. Through the dark corridors, she walks into a room at the end of a hall. She opens the door. A rabbit flashes through, the girl gasps, but there is a spark and a loud tseew! and the rabbit is blackened and a smoke rises from its dead body. The girl lowers her gun with a sigh. "Just an animal." She continues her trek into another room.

In this room is a futon on the floor and a built-in closet. A Buddha statue sits in a corner. The girl slides the closet door open and rummages through the clothing hanging from the hangers, but tosses them aside. Shirts and robes fall into a pile. She does not look back at them. She only searches through pockets and takes the items inside them. Some things she does not take. Buttons, sashes, rubber bands, gold necklaces, she leaves those in the pile. She takes glittering earrings and a ruby-adorned bracelet. Venturing further in the dark closet, she finds the remains of a human. They have decayed rapidly and are mostly skeleton. The girl plucks the rings off the dead body's fingers and pulls the necklace off. Then she leaves it.

But when she returns inside the room, she flinches back.

There is a low cry and the girl snaps up her gun. A young man is cowering in a corner, his hands shaking in the air, his face gone white. He says something panicked in a language that is not English. His clothes are soiled and ripped and his feet are bare.

The girl doesn't lower her gun. The color drains from her face and her eyes are wide. "Who are you?" she demands.

The boy jabbers more in the unknown language. The girl cocks the gun and the gold appears over it again. The young man crams himself in the corner beside a dresser and sobs tearlessly. He covers his face with his hands. An empty can of food rolls away from him and clinks softly against the wall.

The girl doesn't do anything. Her arms slightly quiver, but then strengthen, and her finger hovers over the trigger. But after that moment, she lowers the gun.

"You shouldn't be here," she says under her breath. "Everyone in this country should be dead."

The boy says unintelligible things with a quivering voice. The girl shakes her head, turns away, and walks past him. She has gone through the doorway before the boy peers through his fingers.

"E? Chotto matte!" He scrambles to his feet. "Anata wa- anata-"

The girl swings her gun back around. The boy freezes and his eyes widen. "Don't move," she growls. "What do you want?"

His lower lip trembles. The boy is young, probably seventeen, and has slanted, dark eyes. He's wearing a plain blue robe with a sash around the middle. His pants are loose and flowing. "Wakarimasen," he pleads. "Onaka ga suiteimasuyo. Tabemono ga arimasuka?"

The girl narrows her eyes. The boy cringes. She flicks the gun in the direction of the wall. "Go over there and stay. Go."

The boy shakes his head and raises his hands, palms facing her. His hands are filthy and thin, and the bones in his wrists protrude. His blue veins are visible down his arms when his sleeves fall back to expose them. He says more in his language.

The girl points the gun to the ceiling and fires. Tseew! There's a flash of light and the boy screams. He's babbling in his language now. "To the wall, now!" the girl commands and points to the wall.

The boy throws himself against the wood and presses himself against it. Now there are tears streaming down his cheeks. The girl approaches him and jabs the back of his head with the muzzle of the gun. The boy's breaths are rapid and he's sobbing.

"Be still. I won't hurt you," the girl says. She keeps the gun at his head, but pats the boy down. The boy is trembling violently. Afterwards, the girl removes the gun from his skull. "Okay, you're done," she says. "I know you're not a threat."

She takes a step away from him. The boy says some more things and bows swiftly. The girl watches him. Her face is expressionless.

"Come on," she says. "I'm going to take you out of here. Do you understand? Take you. Out." She motions with her hands.

"So so so." The boy nods and scrubs away his tears. His voice shakes. "Arigatou gozaimasu."

"Sure, okay. Come on, kid."