Darling, I...

Stanley froze. How could they tell that he was there? Stanley couldn’t take a chance, he had to take action.

He decided if he had to die, he would die fighting.

He readied his newly acquired M4, and prepared to open the door and...kill someone.

Could he really do it? Could he kill a human being? He had never done it before. He hadn’t even seen other humans killing humans before. Stanley himself didn’t think he could do it.

But it was only a matter a time. Only a matter of time before they found him in that closet. Stanley was panicking, not thinking rationally. He thought his situation was fight or flight, but he was missing the fact the he could just sit tight and wait for them to go elsewhere, and after that he could just walk through the front door. But Stanley’s lack of experience with human conflict was working against him, and his mind was telling him to fight...so he did.

With a blood-curdling cry he thrust the door open and let out a fiery barrage of 5.56 rounds all over the hallway. He didn’t even know where he was aiming. He just held down the trigger.

When his magazine finally ran out, the man and the woman were a red mess. Stanley could hear them struggling to breath, as their lungs and necks had been pierced by bullets.

The reality of what he had just done rushed upon him, and he vomited. Several emotions struck him at once and he began to weep.

He wept for the man and the woman. He wept for the action he had just committed, and for the situation he was in. He wept for some time, until a loud piercing voice disturbed him.

“Jack? Tanya?” a deep voice called from down the hall. Stanley did not respond. He was frozen in place. The deed he had just done was taking its toll on him. He was not strong enough to kill another human being. He wasn’t fit to be roaming the wasteland scavenging for supplies. Stanley didn’t belong in the wastes. Stanley was a coward.

Stanley was a coward in the eyes of the murderers of the wastes. The raiders, soldiers, scavengers, scouts, snipers, survivors, bandits and the like. You couldn’t survive if you didn’t kill, and killing was surviving. Killing made a switch from one of the worst things you could do, to a necessary action. It was moral to kill someone. Or at least it was perceived that way.

People like Zane had killed many times, and Stanley was like all the others-- a coward. Someone that was too weak to live in this new world of killers, thieves, rapists, and drug addicts. A world of chaos and sin. People like Zane loved it. They had finally found a place in the new world. A place worth calling home. Where you wouldn’t be bossed around, controlled, or contained. People like Zane had true freedom.

Zane turned his flashlight on. He then saw the shaking silhouette of Stanley, who was still weeping over what he had done. Zane assessed the scene. Stanley was obviously the one who had killed Jack and Tanya, so Stanley had to die. It was simple. Zane pulled his trusty .44 magnum out of his holster at his right hip, pulled the hammer back and…

Before he knew it he was on the floor and heard heavy footsteps sprinting away from him.

"That slimy bastard!" Zane thought, furious that he let Stanley get away.

He quickly got up and sprinted after the shaking beam of Stanley’s flashlight in front of him. Stanley was a lot faster than Zane, and Stanley was out of sight in a matter of seconds. Zane didn’t want to lose him, so he started sprinting even faster to try and catch up. He suddenly heard the piercing noise of a steel door being slammed. Zane knew exactly where he was.

“I have the combination to the door,” Zane called out to Stanley. “I’m going to count to a hundred and give you a chance to come out of this alive.”

There was no response. He then continued:

“When I open this door I want to see you face down on the floor, buck naked with your hands on your head. If you so much as flinch I will put a bullet right in your freakin’ skull. Do I make myself clear?”

There was no response from the room.

Zane put his ear against the door. He could hear soft sobbing from inside the room.

“I highly recommend that you take up my offer,” Zane called again. “You can go home to your loved ones, your wife if you have one. We can pretend like this never happened. I’m going to start counting. When I come in and you’re not on the floor, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

Stanley knew that he had to comply. How else would he get out of this situation? Yet, something in his brain told him to find another way out, a different solution. His mind was racing trying to think of ideas. It came down to one decision: Either spare a life...or take one.

He didn't have much time to make that decision. It wasn't an easy one to make.

Zane started counting. One...two...three...four. He finally made it to one hundred and began to enter the combination to the door.

He had only made it to the third number when a deafening gun shot rang in his ears and echoed throughout the hallways. He couldn’t believe it. The man had killed himself.

He quickly entered the barracks. There on the floor lied Stanley’s body, motionless, with a pool of blood by his head.

"The cowards’ way out," Zane thought.

He turned his attention to Stanley’s right hand which had a small piece of paper in it. He reached down and grabbed it from Stanley’s hand. On one side it read the combination to the barracks, the other side had two words on it: ‘Darling,’ and ‘I.’

"It’s the beginning of a suicide note," Zane thought to himself.

He let the small piece of paper flutter back down to Stanley’s body, then turned to leave.

BANG!

Smoke rose from the muzzle of Stanley’s newly acquired Glock. Zane had fallen for it.

Stanley had proved that he could survive in this cruel world. But at what cost?

"I’m not going to let this world change who I am," he thought to himself. "I’m not a killer, I’m a survivor," he concluded.

He ripped off a piece of his sleeve and wrapped it around the cut wound in his arm, then proceeded out of the prison. He couldn’t believe what he had just done. He decided to not let it define him, and to keep moving forward. He also concluded that he wouldn’t tell Aubrey. She had enough to worry about.

Stanley had come up empty on this scavenging run, minus some combat armor and a new rifle. But something he had found was a thing that you can only find in times of trouble. Something that doesn’t exist for some people, but is very real to others: courage. He had found courage that day, and aimed to keep it from now on.

But was it really courage that he had gotten, or was it his own humanity that he lost?

Stanley walked leisurely down the oak-lined road, happy he got out of that situation alive.

Stanley had sensed change in the air, and he had gotten it. Only it wasn't a change in the environment, or where he live; it was very much a change in nature.

He was a killer, but he would never let Aubrey find that out.