When the demons had spotted them leaving the apartment building, a sudden jolt of abject fear had seized Kamiyo’s higher functions and left a caveman in charge. When an ape-like monster leapt at him from behind a Volkswagen, he had shoved Sonja into its path without thinking. His survival instincts kicked in and protected him, even at the expense of someone else’s life. The memory of it sickened him.
And yet, he was still alive when everybody else was dead.
Kamiyo gathered his rucksack and started walking, and it wasn’t long before he spotted something in the distance he valued—a large home. One might assume petrol stations and supermarkets the jewels in the apocalyptic desert, but most were looted early on. You’d be lucky nowadays to find a tube of toothpaste or unused toilet paper. No, Kamiyo had stayed alive these last few weeks by raiding rich people’s homes.
Well-defended and secure, the owners had typically stayed put during the early days of the invasion. Furthermore, the largest homes were rurally situated. It meant they’d avoided any damage from the mass riots and arson of the towns and cities. Despite all that, the wealthy only held out so long before running out of food or being exterminated by roving gangs of demons. Now the big houses were empty—mansions and cottages ripe for the picking. A house last week even had power, drawn from solar panels on the roof. He’d spent the night kicking back, playing Fable on a dusty old Xbox. It had seemed like Heaven, and he only left because the place was empty of food and water. You had to keep moving to keep living.
Kamiyo approached this latest house with a near-swagger, so used to the apocalyptic-procedure by now he had little to fear. He would enter through a back door, out of view of the road, and re-supply himself with whatever he found inside, perhaps staying a while if it suited him. The house was a modern dwelling, probably custom-built for some businessman or other. While it possessed brick foundations like a majority of UK houses, it also featured a great amount of wood, making it more akin to an American farmhouse, or the New England colonial property his parents had owned in Maine. Whitewashed wood panelling covered the brickwork beneath a large triangular roof, and a balcony jutted out beneath a pair of elevated French doors.
In the rear garden, Kamiyo discovered a cavernous workshop and a large shed, both unlocked. A chainsaw hung inside the workshop on a large hook and Kamiyo grabbed that first. In his previous life as a registrar on a maternity ward, he never would have dreamed of firing up a chainsaw like Ash from the Evil Dead or something, but nowadays, power tools were the first thing he sought. Like a pro, he fired up this chainsaw now with confidence, and he carried it towards the house. When he got there, he sank the spinning blade into the back door, cutting around the hinges in two neat semi-circles. The door was still snug in the frame, so he had to yank it three times before it came free.
Open sesame.
A familiar stench met him.
That Kamiyo found the home owner dead in the kitchen was not a shock—it was to be expected more often than not—yet this particular scene took him by surprise. The deceased gentleman lay sprawled face down on the kitchen tiles. There was no blood. Kamiyo presumed an overdose, and again that wasn’t an anomaly, but what was out of the ordinary were the two Alsatians rolled up beside him, and the fluffy white cat next to his head. All three animals were uninjured too, yet also dead awhile. The home owner had presumably dosed his pets so they would die alongside him. A kind gesture—or selfish? Who was to say? Kamiyo had not seen the demons show much interest in animals, so the owner might have released them into the wild to fend for themselves. They might have been fine. Or they might not have.
As a child, Kamiyo had begged for a puppy, especially when it had become clear he would not get a sibling. The response had always been a firm, decisive no. Two working parents, and a host of after-school clubs for Kamiyo, meant no one at home to care for a hound, which were filthy animals anyway, said his father. Childhood had been the loneliest time, and a dog might have changed that. A loving lick to send him to sleep each night might have filled his head with pleasant dreams instead of mundane nightmares of schoolwork and piano lessons. What kind of man would he have been if his parents had given him a dog in his formative years? Did such things change a person? He wondered what the grizzly scene in the kitchen would look like if the home owner didn’t have pets.
Kamiyo moved on through the hallway and into the lounge, feet sinking into its plush carpet. A granite fireplace dominated the room, and an enormous television hung above its mantlepiece, an obsidian slate reflecting the room like a dark mirror. What Kamiyo wouldn’t give to sprawl on the room’s sumptuous sofa and spend an evening in front of Netflix. He’d much prefer watching an apocalyptic drama than living through one. If he’d known civilisation was due to end a year before his thirtieth birthday, he wouldn’t have spent
