As I was walking out of the house, I pondered how Artemis was doing. I realized that she probably would hate me if she found out what I was doing. I would hate me too if I were in her place. I could never imagine how it would feel to find out that your father was stealing supplies from people who need them more, even if they refused to share them with outsiders. My train of thought was lost in my twisted sense of ethics and I stirred to the feeling of sweat dripping down my body as the outrageously blisteringly hot sun licked the tips of my skin. I noticed the crusty old chair that my great-grandfather had made when he built this house in the middle of nowhere, reminding me of how my father would always lecture me about how I have to be willing to do anything to survive. I took a seat in the thing and the floorboards squeaked and creaked under my dusty, sand-covered boots. I reached for my half-empty water bottle on the porch table only to find that the bottle was no longer half empty, but being drunk by a crusty, brown Horned Lizard with a missing eye, that looked like it hadn't had water in months. The lizard's skin was flaky, almost to a pattern, but it was constantly twitching, which made it impossible to keep track of the thing's skin. I was about to grab my little lizard friend and throw it into Artemis's snake's mouth when I saw a dark green pick-up truck with dust trailing behind its old, rubbery tires. As it pulled in the driver rolled down the window with its hand-crank and yelled “Hey, Jack, you coming or what? If you bail on this plan, I'll kill you.”

I knew he was serious, as he never backed down on his word. With a sigh, I said, “Yeah. Yeah, I-I-I'se coming.” But in reality, I was still trying to talk myself into it.

“Good. Because this was your idea, you know. No second thoughts now. And we gotta get a move on. A sandstorm’s coming in our direction, and I bet that they will be here in arouu-" He checked his watch “-nnd five hours.” 

“Well then, we better get a move on. C'mon Max!” I whistled and clicked my tongue, waiting for the ginormous boxer to squeeze out of his undersized doggy door, hoping that the mutt didn’t knock the whole door down with its big body.

The brown, fat, and sleepy-looking dog waddled its way out of the door with its signature misshapen nostrils flaring and its tail sadly drooping to the ground as one would hang its head, but when the thing saw its master, its tail perked up and started shaking violently. It sprinted as fast as it could go, (albeit not very fast, due to it weighing more than me) and hopped into the old, inefficient, rusty pick-up truck that Ryan had had for years. He called it “Global Warming.” (Apparently, in the Golden Age this was a big problem, something about CO2 and the ozone, whatever those are. Artemis said that trucks like his were a big cause of the whole “global warming” fiasco.) 

I slipped into the passenger seat and Max hopped on my lap, slobbering all over the car. Ryan jammed the keys in the ignition and turned them. The car stuttered. And stuttered. And stuttered. 

“Damnit. Why won't this thing start?!” He yelled and slammed his boot onto the gas pedal. I always knew he had a nasty temper, but it was never this quick to rise. I assumed it must be due to the stress of breaking into a fucking city to steal the most precious thing in the world and only having an acquaintance and a big-ass dog to help. The car started. “Oh. Thanks, car.”

I reached into the back of the truck to grab a warm beer from an abandoned brewery I found, one that preserved their beer. Ryan flipped through the CDs until he found his favorite Lead Belly song: “You can’t lose-a me chollie,” and put it on repeat. We drove to the shelter solemnly and went over our plan...

Two hours later….

The security guards at the gate signaled for us to stop, holding their guns clumsily. One guard asked, “You got a pass?”

Ryan handed him our forged pass, and the guard raised his eyebrow as he looked at the poorly crafted pass. I started sweating profusely while he was staring at it for what seemed like hours.

“Alright, you can go in. But since you're an outsider, you have to be back by sundown.” 

“Okay, okay. We get it.” Ryan said as he put his hands up innocently.

The massive steel gate slowly opened with a CREEEEAAAAAKKKK. Almost a second after we drove through it, it slammed shut, almost like a rubber band. When we got to the supply headquarters, there was another gate, but this one was wooden and had more guards(although much more clumsy-looking), who would ask for our pass, but this time, Ryan put his foot to the gas and drove through the gate. He drove straight to the vaccination room, which was placed right next to the entrance so that people’s lives could be saved even a little bit faster. I had my head down and bullets zinged past me as I did a silent prayer to a God I didn't even believe in. 

We drove through the doorway but came to a sudden stop when the truck's front met a wall. Ryan and Max hopped out of the truck. They went to go distract the guards while I slipped out with a revolver and headed to the radiation poisoning care center. I snuck past the doctors who, due to the soundproof walls, did not hear a thing.

 The off-white halls and checkerboard black and white floors seemed like they were straight from a horror movie. I saw four doctors attending the vaccine cabinet.  I shot the first one I saw in the back of his head, his blood and brains splattering on the doctor he was talking to. The doctor with blood on their face dropped their coffee mug and sputtered until her gasping turned into a scream, and all the other doctors turned and looked at me. The blood-covered one fell to her knees and started sobbing hysterically. Not wanting to waste my 2nd bullet out of 5, I ran over to her, grabbed her by her hair, and slammed her face into the hard, tiled floor with as much force as I could muster until she stopped crying. With a *CRUNCH*, I felt her body go limp. When I checked her face to see if she was dead, I saw that the tiles had chipped and a chunk had gone through her eye and into her brain. I dropped the dead corpse and found another doctor hiding poorly behind a cabinet. I could see his leg, and I almost felt bad for these hoarders.  I immediately ran to the cabinet, stepping over the dead body in the way.  I leaned over to see the doctor covering his ears with his hands, closing his eyes, and quietly whispering to himself “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.” over and over again until he opened one eye, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a revolver. I shot his ears, then his jaw. To finish the job, I ripped out his eyes and shoved them up his nose. I knew that I was incredibly sadistic. I didn't care. Before he could get away, I crushed his balls with the heel of my boot. He screamed. I laughed. I shot.

There was only one syringe left, but I grabbed it and ran as fast as I could towards the nearest exit. I saw the last doctor running away from me, but my bullet was faster, and as the first shot hit his liver, he realized he was doomed. I knew this because when I found him alive and breathing, he whispered "Fuck you, you goddamn son of a bitch" and bit his tongue.

Once I was out of the building, I found the nearest car and jammed open the door. I drove around to the front of the building and yelled “HEY, RYAN, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! GET YOUR DOG AND LET'S GO!” into the earpiece over the gunshots. 

Ryan didn't respond. The gunfire stopped.

“RYAN!” I repeated. “RYAN!!”

Then, I saw Ryan's body and his dog on top of him, licking his face, oblivious to the situation around us. I knew he was dead. But I still slammed my foot to the gas and made a turn for him, stopping just before his body and swerving to the left, when a bullet pierced through my chest, and my world went grey. Time was frozen. I saw a man in a tuxedo with golden stripes up and down and a fedora slowly walks towards me. He opened the car door. I could not see his eyes, as if a blind spot was covering them. He turned his head towards me, opened his impossibly wide mouth with what seemed like an infinite number of teeth, and said “I like you. I like you a lot. You are the most needlessly brutal person in this era. And I looooovvveeee gorey movies. So I'm gonna put you in a spot where you can make all the gore you want. See you in a minute, Mr. Gorey.” I watched his mouth expand slightly bigger than the size of my head, and the strange mafia-boss-looking demon bit down on my head.