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It's a warm spring day as the tide recedes from a Californian beach whose name has long since been forgotten. Primarily sandy, the beach stretches on for miles and miles. Encrusted like freckles on a face, rocks jut out intermittently from the grainy floor. The rockpools that form enclose many denizens of the sea. Fish and crustaceans find themselves trapped in a marine prison, at the mercy of any beachcomber who looks hard enough.
A soft metronome of footsteps cuts through the calming waves, a man moves between the different pools picking out the largest crabs, lobsters and fish; and placing them into a wire basket. The critters scuttle against one another in a futile effort to escape.
The man stood like a crane over his trapped prey, a spear in hand with a basket dangling off the haft. Afa Veikoso brushed a stray piece of hair away from his face and squinted against the sunlight. Whistling a tune unknown to even himself, the stocky man gazed into the glassy waters and tore a lobster from under its rock.
Stopping when a noise cut through the serene waves, Afa moved a pair of sunglasses that held his curls back from his forehead to cover his eyes. The brown-skinned man could make out a figure standing against the sun’s glare.
Afa didn’t need a sign to tell him what exactly he was looking at. A tall and thin man stood twitching, facing away from him. His body convulsed in a jarring, painful manner. The man’s clothes were torn. A bleeding, blistered bitemark rested above his ribs.
Runners as they came to be known were a scourge on many lone survivors. Whilst the later stages of infection were more resistant to damage and far more powerful, runners were ridiculously fast, the fungal infection pushing its victim's muscles into overdrive with speed that would give an Olympic sprinter trouble.
Placing down his basket catch, Afa took his spear, a weapon over five feet in length with a machete blade at its end, in both hands and moved towards the infected man, crouched low and with slow deliberate movements, he maintained the powerful precision of a panther. Afa swung his spear at the legs of the runner. The legless creature fell unceremoniously to the ground and began snarling and crawling towards its assailant. Its eyes were burst and bloodshot and its bleeding mouth let out a deafening shriek. Afa silenced it with a final strike to its head.
Rubbing his beard, the beachcomber looked out over the rest of the area, surveying for any sign of movement that would signify a potential attacker. With no trace of an impending threat, Afa turned to the deceased runner, wiped his spear clean on the sand and began to rummage through its pockets and backpack. Whilst the pockets were empty, the bag held a few cloth wrappings and a canteen of water.
Just before he placed the bag down, the bearded man pulled out a picture of a man with his wife and daughter. The runner’s handsome face looked out from the picture with a mirthful glint in his blue-grey eyes. Next to him was a pretty lady with black hair. A small child was nestled between them, a toothless smile on its face. Afa let out a sigh and placed the picture of the family into the dead man’s jacket pocket. After a moment of silence, Afa spun on his heel and walked back towards his basket.
Later that night Afa hunkered down in a small shack on the shore. Crouched over a metal pot and campfire. Afa mindlessly hummed a song from his childhood, a Samoan church hymn that his mother would play the tune of. Two lobsters and some small fish were cooking in a pot with some scavenged herbs and sea salt.
Lost in his thoughts, Afa allowed his eyes to trail over the beach and the gently rolling waves. He scanned the surroundings, illuminated by lunar beams, the beach took on a grey-blue tint. Constellations danced above in the air uncaring of the dying planet beneath them. The lone man froze. Something was shambling up towards the shack. A person limped his way. Pulling out his revolver and grabbing his spear. Afa prepared to defend his life and supplies with equal ferocity.
“Wait!” A man’s voice called out, clearly not a runner.
Lowering his spear but keeping the revolver trained on the man, Afa turned on his flashlight. The darkness split apart to reveal a much younger man in perhaps his early twenties. His skin was darker than Afa’s and he wore jeans with a flannel shirt.
“What do you want?” Afa said, his voice raspy with underuse. He would not tolerate a raiding party tonight.
The figure was holding its hands up in a gesture of surrender. Gently the younger man eased forward. “I promise I’m not a raider sir,” he gulped “Please sir. I’m so hungry, could you share your food?”
“What’ve you got to trade?” Afa couldn’t just give away food willy-nilly to anyone who turned up to ask.
The man showed his backpack, “I’ve got bandages, water and some medicine. It’s all yours.” He said, calmly.
“You must be pretty desperate to sacrifice those supplies,” Afa said suspiciously.
“I have no use of them, sir.” The man’s face told Afa exactly what he meant.
“You’re infected,” Afa stated, his finger itched on the trigger.
“A couple of hours ago, sir.” The younger man confirmed. “I would like to eat something nice before I leave this world, please.”
Afa hesitated, If he just killed this man it would be a kindness and he needn’t share his catch. Yet a small voice came to his mind, a memory from before the world went to shit. He was briefly transported to a time when he still looked up at his mother to talk to her. A church service had concluded and his neighbourhood had gotten together for an Umu, the Samoan ground barbecue. His mother had started handing out food to people who he didn’t even recognise. The young boy tugged at his mother’s skirts and asked why they were handing out their food.
“Because, my little shark, it is an easy thing for us to hoard the foods provided to us by the lord. But it is that we open our hearts to others that makes our culture so special.” She touched his shoulder, “Look out there, do you see?” Afa couldn’t tell what his mumma wanted him to look at. She chuckled at his puzzled expression, “Everyone is welcome here, the background of the people doesn’t matter to us.” Afa nodded slowly. He could see couples of different races and assortments of pairs; men with women, women with women and men with men. She continued, “We can always get more food, but a stranger may not be as fortunate as us.”
Afa’s mother, a tall yet thickly built woman, bent down to look her son in the eyes. “Be strong enough to be gentle, my son.” She smiled, ruffling his curly hair. “I know that makes no sense to you right now, but one day it will.”
Blinking back to the present, Afa holstered his gun and gestured the man towards him.
“Afa.” He said holding out his hand to the younger man, barely a boy.
The younger man took his hand and shook it, “My name’s Amir.” The smaller man smiled at him gratefully.
A few minutes later, the two men sat opposite one another on the floor, bowls of seafood stew in their hands.
“What happened to you? How did you get bit?” Afa asked.
Amir gave a sad-sounding sigh. “I was part of a settlement in Nevada, we had a farm, running water; the whole thing you know?” Afa nodded and prompted him to continue. “I lived in a house close to the walls with my wife and my family, we even had a dog, Ruffy.” The man smiled.
Afa allowed the smaller man his moment of introspection, looking him over, he estimated that Amir was a similar age to himself when outbreak day occurred. The younger man’s shoulders were slumped with a weight he was far too young to have.
“The infected came for us, broke into our settlement, they tore apart my family. My friends too. By the time I got back from a hunting trip, everyone had turned and my dog, dead on my porch.” A sob caught in his throat. Amir looked him in the eyes, “ I ran. I ran so fast and so far. Eventually, I ended up in Cali a couple of months later.” He said.
“The story’s not very interesting,” Amir gestured at his injured leg, “I was looting a shack and was pretty careless, Clicker came at me and bit my leg. I stabbed it in the head so at least the bastard won’t get anyone else.” Amir snickered.
Afa nodded and lowered his gaze to his seafood stew.
Amir cleared his throat, “So, you were alive before the world went to hell?”
The older man chuckled, “Calling me old now?”
Amir smiled.
Thinking about what memory to tell him, Afa trailed off to the better times. “When high school was finished my friends and I would always go to this old-style diner, oh what was it,” Afa put his hand to his face and pulled down, It clicked, “Buddy’s! That’s what it was called!” Afa found a small bit of joy in the long-lost memory.
“I always used to get a double cheeseburger with large fries and a vanilla milkshake. Afterwards, we’d go to the arcade and spend way too much money on these fighting game machines.” Afa smiled.
“Sounds like a hoot,” Amir said, he had looked as though he held onto every word Afa spoke.
The rest of the meal was enjoyed in a comfortable silence. The two men savoured the seafood’s salty and umami flavours.
Amir finished second and with a quiet thank you gave Afa a nod. The younger man got up from the floor and walked out of the shack, attempting to maintain a straight dignified posture.
Afa sighed and picked up his spear, following the younger man. Outside with a symphony of sea birds and rolling waves, Amir knelt on his knees looking out over the sea.
Afa readied his spear, bringing it up past his face.
“That was a great stew, sir. Thank you.” Amir said, a finality to his voice.
“Tell me about your wife,” Afa requested.
“My wife was called Britt, god she was amazing. The kindest woman I’ve ever known. She had long blonde hair and green eyes. She used to tie it up in a br-“ Amir was silenced when the machete blade at the end of the spear was brought down on his head.
Afa let out a small breath and looked out at the sea. Looking down at the man at his feet, Afa spoke, “I hope you find her and the rest soon, my friend.”
Wiping his machete-spear on the grass, he turned and walked back into the shack.
The following morning, Afa Veikoso left the shack behind with a buried mound on the ground, decorated with rocks arranged into one lone word,
Amir.