This Dark, Dark World

Chapter 1

Goosebumps erupted over my skin as the shotgun was held tauntingly in front of me, only inches away from my forehead.

"Outta there," the man behind it said. I could barely breathe, never mind move. My legs were still cemented to my chest, my feet planted firmly to the floor of my closet.

"Oi! I'm talkin' to you! You get the hell outta there or I swear I will blow the head right off your shoulders, do you hear me?" he demanded.

I suddenly heard the sound of feet thundering against the stairs just outside my room.

"Gus!" the man on the stairs hissed from outside the closed door," the hell you doing in there?"

The man outside my closet, who I guessed was Gus, lowered his shotgun and I let out a shaky breath. I heard him walk across my room and open the door.

"There's someone in the closet!" Gus called down the hall.

"No shit?" the man on the stairs said.

"No shit. Saying nothing though," Gus grumbled, "and I'm getting impatient," he stressed the last word to make sure I heard.

My breath had disappeared again. I was not going to be dragged from my own closet. Not again.

"N-no!" I stuttered, "I-I'm coming out!"

Gus quickly got in front of the closet again, his shotgun poking between the long sweater and dress I had pulled over my face.

"Slowly now," Gus said menacingly. I took a deep breath and raised my hands above my head, like they did in the movies.

Then, with my eyes squeezed tightly shut and my legs as heavy as lead, I stepped out of my closet. I heard a gasp.

"Y-you're just a kid!" Gus muttered.

I opened one eye a crack and saw a kind of old man standing in front of me, lowering his shotgun. I say kind of old because I didn't know that old people could still stand tall and have muscles. My grandma certainly didn't.

She was pale and hunched over, with veiny claw-like hands on the ends of her ropey arms. She always wore the same flower-pattered dress, with her tattered lilac cardigan. She only ever permed her grey hair, even though it was falling out.

She hated it when little clumps of it appeared on her cardigan. She'd be in a bad mood all day. And those hands may have been gnarled and twisted into claws, but she could still slap with them.

Although the man in front of me did have wrinkly skin and white hair, his skin was still tanned, his hair still thick. He wore thick gloves and a cap on his head, along with a large jacket and pants tucked into his huge brown boots.

Most of the other things he wore were camouflage-patterned, like the soldiers who were being interviewed on the news a few weeks ago. I had asked grandma who they were going to be fighting but she was in one of her bad moods and I had to quickly leave the room.

"Are you in the army?" I blurted out before I could stop myself. Gus chuckled.

"No, darlin', I'm not. I just like to go hunting once in a while, that's all," he said gently, planting his shotgun firmly on the ground as he bent down to my level. He noticed my uneasy glances towards the gun and smiled reasurringly.

"S'alright, sweetheart," he said, "I ain't about to use this 'less I see one of them things." I shuddered as he said that.

Those things were close to clawing their way onto the bus. They kept piling on. Four of them. And only two of us.

"Why don't you tell me your name, eh? So I can stop using these silly pet names," he said as he stood back up, leaning heavily on his gun as he did so.