The Bullet Factory

The Bullet Factory (Full Story)

The plan was to get to Utopia. Back when me an' my bro Damian an' my cuz Zeke was kids, we was always makin' some plan to get there. 'Bout five miles from where we live, there's this big wall, see. It goes on probl'y forever in both directions. It's probl'y twenty feet tall an' has barbed wire on the top o' it. The wall is real ol', probl'y from the ol' days when Grammy was a kid. But Grammy used to tell us stories 'bout Utopia on the other side o' the wall. When we was kids, we was always nickin' supplies the store room 'cuz we was wanting to go one day to climb the wall to Utopia. We hid it all 'neath the stairwell that go to the roof. It's probl'y still there.

My family and me, we live in the ol' Bullet Factory. Pa says it ain't really a factory, it's prob'ly a shippin' bay for a comp'ny that made bullets in the ol' days. The Factory is dark an' dirty an' fallin' apart in places, but Ma an' Pa do their best to keep it clean an' fix the broken bits. Ma says it's strategic to live in the Bullet Factory 'cuz we can trade the bullets for supplies an' food. Damian taught me tha' word, strategic.

Some o' the time, Ma an' Pa go out to get food when there ain't many people that come to trade. But I ain't been very far outside the Bullet Factory, and I ain't never been outside on my own. Ma an' Pa says it ain't safe outside, what with them raiders an' all.

These days them raiders are pretty bad. They come in big group an' surround the Factory an' Ma an' Pa' an' Zeke an' Damian go up on the roof an' shoot at them 'til they scatter. I stay down on the first floor with Grammy, 'cuz Grammy can't go up the stairs no more, an' Ma an' Pa say fightin' the raiders ain't no place for chillins. But I ain't a chillin anymore. I'm seventeen, an' that's only two year younger than Zeke and three years younger than Damian.

But the raiders is getting' worse, an' so we don' go outside too much these days. Damian, he spends his time squintin' at a book from the light o' an oil lamp, an' Zeke folds his lanky arms and sulks in a corner. Those are words that Damian taught me, lanky an' sulks.

Some o' the time, I go down an' see Grammy an' listen to her stories of the ol' days. "When I was a little girl," she'd say in her funny way o' talkin', "We had these machines called computers."

I know what computers is. I seen 'em 'fore. Course, I ain't never seen one workin' 'cuz we don' got 'lectris'ty.

Grammy nods, an' I sees that she's thinkin' deep. "When I was, oh, perhaps eight or nine years old, it became very dangerous to be outside. There were riots; people fighting over food. There were too many people, you see. The population just kept growing and growing. When I was bored I would go onto a website on my computer and watch the number of people in the world go up," Grammy says. She smiles an' I smiles back, even though I ain't understood half of what she's said.

"But when I was ten," Grammy says, "everyone in the government vanished. One day they were there, trying to keep order, and the next day they were gone. Well, we knew that they couldn't have just disappeared into thin air. People speculated that they had created a Utopia for themselves, far away from the rest of the world's problems. Some people even said that this Utopia was located on the other side of that wall, not five miles from us now."

O' course, I'd heard this part o' the story many times before. But I don' tell Grammy that. Instead I asks what happened after the gover'ment left.

"Oh, it was anarchy," Grammy says, shakin' her head.

Anarchy. I like the sound o' that word. I remember to ask Damian it's meanin'.

Damian, he taught me to read, an' Zeke, he taught me how to shoot. Zeke can't read. He don' have the patience for it. Damian don' like to shoot. He's got my Pa's bad eyes, an' he can't see anythin' far away from him. I don' like to shoot as much as Zeke, but I don' like to read as much as Damian.