X: A Short Story Read online

she died, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. I don't have a photo of her, only guitar girl's. Her bed is the only thing of hers I have left. And she didn't even sleep in it that many times.

  I'm crying as I write this. Tears of sorrow, shame and regret.

  It happened as we were searching a row of houses just off of the main road. We'd used Old Trusty to get inside the smallest, and I'd rushed straight into the kitchen to find the food. We'd run out more than a day before and I was famished. My sister followed me into the kitchen, a wide grin on her pretty little face because I was sitting there with an open can of beans. Then one of them came at her from behind. I must have walked right past it on my stupid way to the cupboards. It bit into her neck and blood gushed over the tiles in a torrent. As she yelled out in agony, I leapt up and implanted the crowbar right into the thing's skull. It crumpled to the floor, but the damage was done.

  'Don't let me lose myself.' That was the last thing my sister said to me before she passed out. Her wound was much more severe than mine is, and much closer to the brain. That seems to make it quicker. I took grandpa's revolver from behind my back and blew her brains out.

  I buried her in the back garden.

  After my sister died I went kind of crazy. I took Old Trusty out across the fields and pulverised every ugly I could find. I don't even remember it that well, it was just, find, kill, find, kill ?

  We'd only been going out in daylight before then but, in my anger, I carried on through the nights. That's how I learned about their inability to evade in darkness. Eventually, though, one got me. I found three munching on a dead cow and ran straight at them. Took out the first two easily enough, but the third managed to scratch my leg with a bloody fingernail just before I clobbered it into oblivion. Once I realised its nail had broken the skin, it was like a switch had been flicked inside me. That's it, I'm dead too.

  I lost my bloodlust and came back here. Came back here to die.

  If none of this had happened, I think my sister would have eventually gone into medicine. I was doing well at school but she was top of her class. And she had a really kind nature too. She'd never squish any bugs that got trapped in our house; she'd get a glass, scoop the little critter up and seal it inside with a book. Then she'd take it outside and release it, even if it was a wasp.

  I've decided that here's not the place. I'm going to do it in those woods I wrote about. The sun is just starting to rise and, if I leave soon, I'll be able to find a nice spot to sit and stare at the bright autumn colours. I'm going to leave the picture of guitar girl in this cellar, she belongs in this house. The leaves will remind me of my sister more than any photo ever could anyway.

  I've left out three cans of food I didn't eat for you. Maybe you've already had them. There are lots of tools on the shelf at the back of the cellar too. You never know, one of them may just help you out of a tight spot.

  I guess all that's left to say is thank you for listening.

  I know it's possible that I'm the last, and that no one will ever read this, but that's not really the point is it?

  Love,

  X

  Also by the Author

  Wye

  (A full-length novel based on the X story/format)

  Wye is losing hope. Sixteen and travelling through a rich wilderness with three other teenagers, she should be having the time of her life. And she might be if it weren't for the thing hunting her; the tireless creature desperate to tear her and her friends limb from limb.

  Anchor Leg

  Humanity has spilled out into the solar system, into a succession of giant space stations known as the Relay. Seren Temples is a security apprentice running the Relay's Anchor Leg. Her ship forced off course, sensors detect an automated distress signal. The ship responsible for the signal is a zero-G graveyard. Inside its vast hold, nothing but a single vial of frozen blood.

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