Ultimatum

• Aaron Ding, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2022

The snow was grey.
Rain had fallen at first, each droplet suffocated in black dust. Clouds had buried the loving warmth of the sun until it was just a pale dot hanging limply in the sky.
David could never seem to remember life before the war began. Perhaps the radiation had buried itself too deep into his mind. Maybe it was the hunger and his body’s silent screams for clean sustenance. The years past became a fairy tale, and long-ago David had forced himself to focus on the now.
Sometimes he scared himself.
The deadly mix of radiation, hunger and thirst had begun to tear him apart, drive him to a state of madness. He had been walking for what seemed like an eternity, his calloused feet bleeding as he followed highways and roads towards his destination to the north. David still felt blurred recollections of a home, a family, streak momentarily through his mind as he passed metal carcasses of cars and blackened billboards. He had found a child’s stuffed animal, which had made him cry until he realised that was a waste of water.
David sometimes wondered what the world had done to deserve this. The hatred. The violence. The appalling decisions and cruelty that had led up to the one pivotal moment when the first nuclear missile had landed.
He thought vaguely about dominoes. How after the first bomb came you couldn’t stop the rest.
When he first saw the girl standing in the centre of the road among rubble and wreckage, he pulled back the safety on his cold black pistol until he realised that she wasn’t food.
The scrawny child was simply a burden on the dwindling supplies he had left. A nuisance. He knew kindness would kill him someday. She was then an assistant. Finding precious food places where he couldn’t access. As they trekked across grey fields and burned forests together, Monika told him her name and they became friends.
For David, she was not just a reminder of the hope that they could reach the destination ahead, but of the humanity left in him. He would wrap Monika in his arms as gunfire echoed through distant valleys. She would scavenge dark, broken buildings for medicine when David’s forehead burned like fire. Sometimes, as Monika lay beside him, sleeping soundly as the moon shone high above their heads, he would stare at the one tattered, grimy picture he had left of his past life and pictured her in the middle of the frame - between his two sons.
She then became his daughter.
Finally, as David lay on his deathbed, choking blood, Monika had wiry strength and blazing fire in her grey eyes as she sobbed. He had watched Monika grow up. He had nurtured her. He loved her immensely, and he felt his heart rip apart as he began to close his eyes.
When he handed her the picture with Haven’s destination scrawled on the back in black ink, she became his ultimatum.