Left Of Grey The End Of Men

The sound of crickets chirping happily in the late afternoon sunlight combined with the sight of his faithful three year old white and tan little Basenji hound lounging contentedly on the end of the worn black leather couch he had been sleeping on for the past year allowed Vlad a small measure of comfort against the stress of staying alive as he awoke from his regular daytime slumber.

He placed his hands on the bed and lifted himself up off the couch and rummaged around for a second in his large dark green duffel bag, his fingers eventually wrapping themselves around the handle of a small but razor shape red Toledo swiss army knife which he thrust into his pocket. He then padded his way across the polished floor of the abandoned office he had taken up residence in, making his way in between a dozen lacquered dark oak wood-stained desks whose value would have been considerable before the crash, the former letterbox company that had resided here quickly abandoned like the rest of the commercial real estate due to the events of eight years ago.

Vlad glanced across at the front entrance of the building, quickly ensuring that the fishing wire he had rigged against the back of the door was still in place, its other end had been tied tightly around the trigger of an old Remington 12 gauge shotgun mounted on one of the wooden office chairs and was pointing directly at the doorway, this nasty doorbell surprise had saved his life three times in the last eight years.

The dog quickly got up and followed Vlad across the office, the sound of its paws pattering softly against the concrete reminding him that it was time for doggy dinner. Vlad bent down and picked up a small steel bowl from the floor along with a large white enamel bucket then pushed open a white wooden door revealing a simple office bathroom and made his way to the same bathroom you would have found in millions of workplaces across the world before the world ended, a small but practical room with plain white tiles, frosted shower door with a conventional white ceramic sink with a small vanity mirror above. He looked directly into the mirror of the bathroom and studied himself.

The stress of staying alive for the last eight years had not been kind to Vlad, the crows feet in the corners of his eyes seemed more pronounced than yesterday, his wavy unkempt thick ebony hair and matching thick beard desperately needed to feel the love of his scissors. His eyes were still fetching, the unusual royal blue eyes which had serviced him with such distinction when dealing with the opposite sex in the nightclubs of the city a decade ago remained intact, and his teeth were still impossibly white due to do the habits he had picked up as a child from a dentist mother. He decided as always that he was looking every day of his thirty seven years.

He stared briefly into his own cold royal blue eyes and saw those of his late father Malcolm. Thinking of his father briefly made his mood a melancholy one but a small whine from Benji, his Basenji dog companion swiftly brought his mental state back to the needs of the day. He bent down, moving his lips to the tap and turned it on, again thankful for the foresight of the original owner that installed a rain tank and purifier on the side of the office building which allowed him to drink his fill every morning.

Once the tap had satiated his own drinking needs, he half filled up the steel bowl with water and placed it on the ground in front of his canine companion. The terrier sniffed the water for a second before lapping up nearly all of the water in the bowl, the terrier seemed to know to drink as much as he could when there was food or drink available because he was not always sure when the next meal or drink would be forthcoming . After the dog drank, Vlad filled up a small chipped enamel bucket from the tap.

Once this was done, Vlad then picked up the bowl and exited the bathroom and made his way back to the main area of the office. He moved purposefully over to the rear of the office, retrieving the knife from his pocket. In front of him, at the other end of the office sitting next to a large exterior full length window were six large potted plants, in varying sizes with the smallest being the height of a small child and the largest already pushing up against the three metre roof of the building. Next to the plants was a small foldable white plastic indoor clothesline with a large dead rabbit hanging from it. It was to the largest plant that Vlad walked too, the three metre avocado tree had recently started to once again bear fruit.

Vlad looked up at the tree and saw four avocadoes were growing, one of them looked very ripe and close to falling off the tree. Vlad quickly distributed the water from the enamel bucket evenly amongst the planted trees before returning the bucket and picking the ripe avocado from the tree. He expertly brought the knife down quickly twice on the avocado, the resulting three pieces sat on the desk he was using as a bench. He then placed a piece between his lips and dropped a second piece of avocado on the floor that the dog hurried over to and crunched down between its teeth faster than Vlad could blink.

He moved back towards the clothesline and picked up the rabbit before moving back to the nearest office desk and quickly stripping its skin and fur back with the swiss army knife from his pocket. This being done, he cut the rear hindquarters from the hare and dropped them in front of Benji, who seemed to crunch them down in an instant. He ate the remaining piece of avocado before picking up the stripped carcass and walking to the rear door of his temporary home, a large lockable steel door that led to the old letterbox manufacturing warehouse.

The warehouse relatively small affair, about the size of five buses standing in a line. It had steel walls all around with crude drilled holes in the roof for ventilation. Vlad assumed that once this warehouse was used in the production of letterbox making which would have been a rare thing in Australia even before the world ended but now its primary function was for him to store his stuff and so that he could cook his food without smoking out his home in the room next door. He had erected a small fireplace in the centre of the warehouse amongst its various defunct machinery and it was to this he strode to.

He quickly lit a fire, and placed the rabbit on top of the thin sheet of scrap stainless steel that served him as a makeshift pan. He stared idly around the inside of the warehouse, wondering if the world would ever need the use of letterbox manufacture again as the rabbit slowly cooked on the fire.

Once it was burnt to his liking, he walked back out of the warehouse through the steel door to his home. His task done, he cut himself a large piece of rabbit meat and began go chew it, savouring the smoky taste of the freshly cooked rabbit before placing the rest of the rabbit in a plastic bag. He wrapped the plastic bag up in another plastic bag before putting them both inside his green duffel bag on the couch. He then removed a blue drinking bottle from his duffel bag and filled it with water from the tap in the office, the bottle joined the rabbit inside his duffel bag.

His provisions for the day safely packed, he sat on the couch and thrust his arm down in between the couch and the wall, his hands closing around two valuable possessions in the new world, a white wide brimmed cricket hat that had protected his face from the sun for so long and his most prized possession, a custom 1892 Winchester Lever action rifle.

Before the events of eight years ago, Vlad had never fired a gun. He had inherited the rifle and a large bagful of ammunition due to his grandfather's passing barely a week before what he now deemed the end of the world, a little over eight years ago. Necessity had made him an excellent shot, these days the rifle felt like an extension of his arm, its woodgrain stock had worn to the shape of his armpit and he could reload the thing with one hand in the dark in three seconds flat.

The rifle itself had a long oak wooden stock, dark gray thick steel tubing for a barrel underneath black iron sights for aiming. Vlad knew its aim was true, he consistently was able to hit targets five hundred yards away, usually being able to down his targets well before they even knew of his presence. The gun itself he theorised would have been a collector's piece before the world ended. He had long since lost count of the amount of humans, animals and megas that he had taken down with his reliable weapon.

Looking at the gun made him think of the events immediately after he had received the weapon. A little over eight years ago, his grandfather Tony Kettleworth had finally given in to old age, the old man fell one shy of making triple figures, dying relatively peacefully in his sleep at ninety nine. The funeral was sparsely attended, Tony was a brash, abrasive man who had made more enemies than friends during his ninety nine years, the only people who did attend were the Kettleworth brood, Vlad himself, his wife Rebecca and their five year old son Dustin, his father Malcolm and his mother Anetszka, his aunt Cassidy and her new toyboy lover Paul along with Tony's former mistress Ivana.

In his later years, Tony had squandered most of his estate in a series of ill advised investments, but at the time of his death he still had about three million in liquid assets that Vlad had assumed would be split evenly between his father and his aunt with maybe a little something left over for his ex mistress. Vlad had been a normal if slightly neglectful grandson but figured he may get left a little something also.

They were all surprised to learn from the executor of the will that barring a few trinkets, the entire remaining estate was to be left to Pamela Sue Anderson of Baywatch fame, Tony's reasoning was that the leaked video of her performing fellatio on her ex husband Tommy Lee had given him far more joy than any of his family ever had. The only things he had left to his family were his Winchester rifle and ten thousand 44-40mm rounds to Vlad with a note that he should shoot his mother ten thousand times with it, and a bottle of expensive port to his aunt which was later discovered to have been opened and urinated in by Tony, his grandfather's version of a final fuck you to his family.

Malcolm had just shaken his head, he had loved his father but long ago since realised that his father was at heart an asshole, he had never come to grips with his English son marrying a Russian bride despite the two of them recently celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary. Unlike his father, he enjoyed a much better relationship with his own sun Vlad, he had shaken his son's hand, wished him well and asked him whether they were still coming over to his and Anetszka's sizeable mansion for the annual Kettleworth Christmas feast next month. His wife Rebecca and his aunt Cassidy had assured them they would definitely be there, they had all left on good terms despite the venom intended to them by the deceased.

When he had arrived home, he was not sure what to actually do with the rifle. He had no license for it and his wife Rebecca had not wanted a gun in the house with Dustin bouncing around. She wanted it handed over to the police and destroyed. He had wanted to see if the thing was actually worth any money, and had told her that the best form of revenge against his grandfather would be to sell the rifle and give his mother the money it had sold for. Rebecca had grudgingly admired this plan and had relented, allowing him to place the rifle inside their panic room, a 1990's era basement converted into a small steel completely sealable room, the panic room was like a small bank vault constructed by the former paranoid owner. It was the only lockable room in the house, so Vlad had assumed it would be safe there.

He was inside the basement panic room climbing a small foot ladder, the rifle in his hand attempting to place it on a high shelf when the first bomb hit. Vlad was thrown off the ladder and fell backwards, landing heavily on his head and rendering him unconscious. He remained in that state for the next three hours while the world ended outside.

In the next minute, twelve more nuclear bombs were dropped on Sydney, effectively eradicating over two hundred years of civilisation in less time than it took to order a pizza. To this day, Vlad had no idea who had nuked Australia and no one he had talked too since knew either.

When he eventually regained his senses, he had emerged from the panic room to scenes of utter devastation. As he attempted to open the panic room door, the handle was so white hot that he felt his flesh burn just trying to grip the handle. The pain forced him to regain his wits, he found a blanket from the cupboard in the room and managed to open the panic room door without burning himself, but the sight he saw once he opened up the panic room door scarred him more than fire ever could.

He had initially thought he was dreaming when he stuck his head up, his house was not where it was meant to be. Small chunks of burning wood and smouldering ashes made of red brick lying scattered all around him on the floor were all that was left of his house. He stared wide eyed in disbelief out of the panic room, desperately calling the names of his wife and son, but the only answer was the crackly of the flames around him.

The sound of Benji's quiet warning bark snapped Vlad back to the present. He had never trained the Basenji but Benji had obviously been trained by someone before coming into contact with Vlad and he was forever grateful for whoever had trained the little tan beast. Vlad had learned the dog had three methods of warning, the first one was a short very quiet bark was that someone was within sight but had not seen them, the second slighly louder more nasal whine was that something was heading towards them and the third more desperate regular repeated dog barking was the sign imminent danger was approaching.

The bark was the first type, so Vlad quietly hefted the rifle and silently padded over to where the dog sat looking out the office showroom window. About five hundred metres away, he saw two figures, both women, walking slowly across the road away from his position towards another commercial property, a roadside service station. Vlad had long since picked anything worthwhile from the service station and knew it was uninhabited, so he surmised the two women must be from somewhere close enough to walk but far enough away for him not to have come into contact with them before.

He lost sight of them as he entered the service station building. Their presence worried him, he had managed to live in his present location for about a year being completely undisturbed from regular humans and only lightly disturbed by megas ever since he moved into the abandoned office.

Eight years of surviving taught him that women killed men on sight he assumed due to the virus, he had yet to actually see another man not turned into a mega, the term he had invented for himself to describe the affliction the virus seemed to have on all other men. Vlad was a scientist before the bombs dropped but his field was laser and solar energy so the mystery of the virus was essentially unknown to him other than what he had seen first hand.

Every male human he had come across since the bombs dropped had four things in common. The first was that their eyes had all gone pure white save for the pupil of the eye which seemed normal, the second being that other males now seemed to have lost all rational thought and ability to talk or communicate, they had become far more primal and savage beings focused on basic survival. They never associated in packs, always solo, whenever he had seen two come across each other they had instantly started to engage in a bloody struggle of blood, teeth and brutal savagery that only ended with death for one and blatant cannibalism for the other.

He knew the megas could tell women from men and that their response to women was different to men, their sexual primal instinct was to capture a woman and breed with her but once the mega had filled her with his seed his initial killing instinct would take over and the woman would not survive the encounter, he had seen this behaviour twice in his eight years, the women was brutally subdued and raped and then killed and then the mega would gorge on her flesh until satiated. Such thoughts made him silently grateful his late wife and son did not live to see this new world.

He knew this affliction to the eyes of the megas meant that the night vision of the megas was very poor, far poorer than his own unaffected vision, so generally stayed indoors during the day and did his roaming at night. This knowledge made him wonder at the experience of the two women roaming around during the day. He continued watching the service station and saw it, a large mega, creep silently around the back of the service station in sexual pursuit of the women through the front door. From where Vlad sat, he could see the mega was a large solid man with a thick ginger beard.

Vlad's natural instinct was to pick up his rifle and run over to the service station, but he knew the welcome he would receive from either mega or women would not be friendly if he just ran over there and he also guessed by the time he covered the five hundred or so metres to the service station the encounter would be over but he still lifted his rifle up over his shoulder and moved purposefully over to the shotgun trap near the door, disarming the trap.

He opened the door and exited his home, Benji trotting alongside him as he jogged quietly up the centre of the road in the direction of the service station. As he neared it, the sound of a male mega grunting and flesh slapping on flesh led Vlad to believe that the encounter had not gone well for the women. He crouched behind the doorway and lifted the rifle to his shoulder and pointed it forwards before looking down at Benji by his side and whispering a single word, "Speak."

On cue, the dog barked once, a shrill bark he knew would get the attention of the mega inside. He heard the mega growl menacingly in response to the dog's bark and heard the sounds of a running male head towards their position. Benji stood in the center of the doorway, the mega's attention completely focused on the little dog, the primal desire to kill and consume clear in the primitive brain of the mega but Benji was too clever for that, the little dog waiting until he had the mega's undivided attention before scampering away just out of reach of the mega who sprinted after the dog as fast as his legs could carry him.

For Vlad though, this was as easy as it got, he calmly lined up his rifle at the head of the mega as it chased Benji and fired once, his bullet ejecting smoothly and impacting the mega to the back of the skull, the .44-40 bullet entering the brain of the mega and killing it instantly, the creature collapsed to the floor in an ungainly bundle of oversized arms and legs.

Ordinarily Vlad preferred to not waste bullets on megas, he just avoided them where possible or used a large machete on them but the two women inside changed that situation.

Benji raced back to Vlad's side, Vlad could not resist patting the little tan dog on the head and whispering "Good Boy" before flicking his lever rifle outwards, chambering another round into the gun before pointing it forwards and entering the service station.

For the women though, it was too late. As he walked into the service station, the sight inside was not a pretty one. A woman Vlad guessed to be in her sixties was lying on her back, her head fully decapitated, her neck a mess of ripped tendons and flesh, blood scattered everywhere on the floor, the pistol lying uselessly on the white tiled floor nearby. Compared to her younger counterpart though, she got off lucky. The younger woman was still breathing but probably wished she wasn't.