Desperate Heart

He knew the rules, everyone did.
Before they know their parents names, they know the rules, their first words are always the words of the rules. The rules are what keep society functioning smoothly, the rules are what keep people happy during the shortages, the rules are what keep the walls up. If everyone follows the rules, nothing will become any worse. It was the rules that kept the horrors of the wastes beyond the city from encroaching any further. Civilization was rules, and the rules were civilization.

He didn't understand why so many chose to break the rules, why they chose to accept the consequences for breaking a rule, at least he hadn't.

He had broken a rule, he had stolen, with no work and a starving wife and daughter he had become desperate, he followed the rules, he had queued in the lines for days, filled out the mountains of paperwork, been to the occupation interrogations, and he had awaited the process to assign him to a new position. He had waited so long with no word, he followed the proper channels to address his desperation. He had followed the downsizing protocols for living on welfare, but he never had enough money, and the lack of funds drew him into a spiral of debt he could find no escape from.

They had gone from a stable middle class family with an above average earning rate, to poverty stricken people desperate to keep their leaky ceiling above their daughters head.
Then one day he did not think of the rules first, he forgot them for only a moment, his stomach had gone beyond growling, the ache had almost become constant. His daughter was crying, sniffling and rubbing her dry eyes, because tears were too much for her frail body to handle. He saw a loaf of bread, it had mould on it, the rules said it should be destroyed to preserve public health, he had figured it was alright to break that rule and steal, it was refuse anyways. He would take only a little to get them through a single day.
He was so weak and delirious he hadn't seen the officer standing right there, he was so slow he could not run more than a few steps before the officer caught him. He regretted stealing the bread as he was pummelled to the necessary degree, and hauled away from his daughter.

In jail he was bathed, fed and clothed, the comfort of hygiene was almost alien to him. The strict order of being a functioning part of the system again was of strange relief once more after being out for so many months. He fit into the machine of justice, following the daily grind as he awaited his turn.

His processing was swift on the day it happened, it was almost a blur of efficiency, he was brought before council, told he had no defence. He signed his plea and was brought before the judge and the officer who had caught him, the evidence was weighed, the adherence to protocol was listed, and the rule that had been broken was named. He confessed and was sentenced to one of the two punishments there were, banishment with plea.
He was then drugged and awoke here, alone, in the ruin of the old world outside the shining walls of the great city.
He had considered the possessions he had been granted. New clothes, a fire starter with limited fuel, a ration of food pellets good for a few days. And a Human heart.
The heart was palm sized, made of warm ceramic over a plastic device, it had a feint red glow and it beat once a minute every minute. He had no idea of its purpose, it was his granted item of survival for his plea, the unrepentant received nothing and were dumped naked in the wastes. This heart had a purpose he could simply not fathom.

He knew there were worse people, and creatures out here, so he kept to the shadows, hiding in concrete and rusted steel holes eating his pellets and suckling filthy water from pools of morning dew. He dared not light the starter and attract attention to his defenceless self, even on the freezing nights that kept him awake and miserable, the warm beating heart hidden in his pocket his only solace. It was not until he was on his last few pellets that hope left him and his situation sunk in. He was banished, he could never return to the city, he could never see his wife and child again. He could end it now, or he could survive, maybe find others like him who were not so bad and had simply made mistakes. He chose to be like the beating heart, and keep on running. He would face the monsters and the men rather than hide in a hole and starve to death, he would at least die on his feet.

He became bold, exploring outside his nest of holes and pools for the first time in weeks, what he saw terrified him.
He recognized a city, one so similar to the one he had left behind, these were its bones, hollow echoes of the millions that had once occupied it, all sign of the individuals who had once walked here wiped from the world. It was the silence, the empty stillness of the wide boulevards of cracked pavement and rusted lines where lampposts had once stood, flanked by crumbled cliffs of officer tower husks.
In his hole he could not hear the silence for his own desperate movements and minor mumblings. But out in the echoing open where not even the wind blew he could hear nothing but his own echoes, and the faint beat of the mechanical heart. If he stopped, the silence would catch up and deafen him.
He had feared that he was surrounded by madmen and murderers, by monstrous creatures that survived off of criminal flesh. The isolation was far more horrible, he could not run from it, though he tried, for many many miles, but the city was massive and it was all the same. He could not fight it, though he searched in vain, crying out from the highest point he could scramble to, in desperate search for any sign of life at all. He could not even use his starter to light a signal fire, for there was no wood to burn.

After a time he stopped screaming for help, and simply screamed to hear something, the echoing voice was almost like hearing another person, but this person was in pain, hungry once more and growing mad. He entertained himself by making animal screams, each more monstrous than the last. He screamed to the beating of the heart, another constant in the still dead word he was lost and wondering in.
It was infuriating him, he knew this item had been given to him to aid in survival, but it was useless, the light could barely illuminate the area of his hand in the dark recesses. The light could be seen for a distance, but there was no one around to signal too. It was always warm, but not warm enough to keep him from freezing from even the slightest chill. The beating was distracting at times, little more than a timepiece with an interval he did not know. It could be a minute, it could be more or less, and with the dust clouds blocking the light, he could hardly tell when one day ended and another began, most days were dim, but some did not see any light at all.
It was still his only piece of the civilization he had left behind, he debated discarding it, or destroying it, but he couldn't. He tried, but it was build solidly, and though he threw it far from him, in his daze he still retrieved it, and in his sanity he was oddly glad of that.

His salvation came at what must have once been a public park, there was a cracked fountain from which spring water still tricked though, a few mushrooms grew on the outer rim of the great bowl, and in the shadow of a toppled, headless statue of some vaguely human figure. He gorged himself on the fungus, heedless if they were toxic or not. Luck was with him, and they were indeed edible, he drank himself drunk on cool, refreshing water that burned his dust chapped lips and sand scoured throat.
This reignited his hope, though he quickly exhausted the area of mushrooms, he knew that there was life in the wastes, frail, puny, warped life, but life still.

In searching the area he at last found some remnants from the world that had once been. Hidden under the toppled husk of a skyscraper, was a small boutique shop, still mostly intact after all these years, protected from the dust storms and fleeting rains by the mass of concrete and steel resting above it. He took a simple joy in opening a warped door that rested on functional hinges and entering the shop. Piles of cracked and shrivelled grey fabric sat in piles everywhere, some by the still intact glass window where manikins must have stood, showcasing the latest fashions to passerby. He explored the shop, the fabrics crumbled to dust and were useless for making a bed or blanket, but he found a coffee carafe and some ceramic mugs with beautiful blue flowers covering them. With these he could carry spring water with him in his search for food. He spent the night in the shop, it was at least warm and somewhat protected.

The days went on like this, he found yet more mushrooms to sustain him, the odd piece of scrap or lost tool relatively untouched by the ravages of time in the wastes. He made a crude spear, little use except for probing dark holes before he entered them. He was unconsciously drawn by the mechanical heart, turning to follow any direction that sped it up by the tiniest amount. It was a careless mistake that found him his greatest prize.
He was walking up the side of a tower, it had made a convenient bridge over what must have been a deep canal or river whose banks were too steep to climb, when he fell through.
He managed to catch his spear across the opening to save him from falling to his death below. With desperate effort he managed to swing himself to a stable beam jutting below him. Once his pulse stopped racing and he could focus once more he found himself face to face with a beast of some kind, it appeared to be just as surprised as he was.
He managed to bring his spear in a crude swipe across the beasts shoulder and drew blood, the beast howled and took off through the building, he made a desperate chase of it, this was meat to him. Hunger made him reckless.
He chased the beast for a day, following bloody hoof prints in the ruins as the beast wound through passages and over rubble. At last he found it, collapsed at the entrance to an old library, a circle of buildings surrounding it. The words library in rusted letters still sat above the entrance.
The man drove the spear into the beasts neck, killing it. Only after it was dead and he had torn into its soft belly, gorging himself on warm bloody fat did he consider what the creature had been, it was like a deer, only larger, with wicked barbed horns at random spots on its body, it bore massive fangs in its misshapen jaw, its hide was rust brown and concrete grey in mottled patches.
The man rested a time, taking care to wash the blood from his nose and fingers with a damp rag and a tiny ration of water.

As he was resting, the wind picked up, but it carried more than the smell of dust this time, even above the fresh scent of blood there was the air of greenery.
He cautiously headed towards the scent, it grew stronger with every step, it was coming from the library entrance.
Indeed, peering inside, cautious from his brush with the monstrous deer, he glimpsed gnarled bushes with tiny green leaves among the heavy thorns. He even saw a few green berries hiding under leaves. His mouth watered at the sight, and before he knew it he was crying, he couldn't stop, he simply cried and cried until he could cry no more hours later.
When he was finished he explored inside, the center atrium of the library had collapsed, creating a small clearing where these thorn bushes grew, the bushes kept the moisture inside creating tiny pools of water. The area around the bushes was filled with old dried branches that had grown too far and withered in the dark. The beast must have called this place home, the air here felt cleaner, fresher, healthier.
He gathered some branches and made a tiny fire, he cooked chunks of meat on the tip of his spear, savouring the warm juicy bites and the feeling of heat for the first time in weeks. The light at first was almost too bright, for he had not seen true light in so long his eyes had adjusted to gloom.
He grew fat off of meat over the next few days, as he kept a small fire burning, when the day was at its brightest he would explore the library, it was mostly a maze of collapsed passages and immovable bookcases long rusted into place. But under every nook was another prize, scraps of books with words still visible, he read snippets of story, of medical journals, and of law books. He would read them late into the night by the light of his fire, or the glow of his mechanical heart.
Here he had at last found some peace, there was food, for now, shelter and water aplenty, but most importantly there was civilization, some hint of people, some relief from the desperate loneliness.
For the first time since his banishment he could do more than merely survive.

When the meat was at last exhausted, and all that remained was bones and horns he decided to explore further. The area outside the library was similarly overgrown with thorny bushes, they crept along the edge of the building, anywhere light could reach them, tiny mice like creatures with massive bulging eyes, and a single giant whip tail crawled along the branches, their feet small enough to step between the thorns. They hissed and cracked their tails with thunderous booms when he approached, before darting deeper into the thicket. It took some time, but he managed to fashion darts from the beasts horns, he found he could throw a handful of these darts at the little thorn walkers and usually kill one. They had tender meat, and their tails, once dried, made decent cordage, which he used to tie the darts together so he could skewer and retrieve the creatures without having to wade into thorns.
The weeks passed this way, he found the berries edible when cooked until their hard skins cracked and the juices flowed.

He read as many paper scraps as he could, fashioning stories from them. Through it all he kept the beating heart close, it had become like another person, it reminded him of nights awake in his home next to his wife. It made him feel less alone, slightly, he was unaware that it was beating much faster than it had on the first day he had awoken in the dust.
The longer he stayed here the more familiar he became with the creatures, and the more he realized there were creatures outside the natural fortress surrounding the library. The creatures would sometimes go silent from their tail cracking and chittering. He would stop as well and listen to scraping as some huge beast lumbered past the outer walls, chuffing, and sniffing the air as it circled back and forth. Eventually it would leave. He once explored the outer wall, walking the perimeter with spear held ready, he found huge gashes in the concrete from a claw half as big as he was. This was one of the monsters the people in the city feared, a mutated horror that gorged itself on the flesh of criminals, a creature that the rules and order of society kept out. He shuddered as he realized just how vulnerable he was.
From that day forward he took precautions, he rigged up primitive pit traps lined with spikes of rusted metal chair legs around the perimeter. He hefted chunks of rubble over the entrance to the library grove, rigging it to fall with a single push against a fragile beam.
He found every gap in the wall and prepared them so he could stab through them, with luck he could hurt the monster while it could not hurt him back.
He heard the monster a few times while he worked, he froze in fear every time, unwilling to try anything until his fortress was complete.

At last he was ready. He waited weeks with no sign of the horror, he almost believed it had moved on.
The thorn walkers grew silent one day, and he grabbed his spear and ran to the wall, he would do it this time. He thought he heard footsteps in the dust, but it was too close, he almost stabbed himself when he realized the heartbeat was speeding up. He held it in one hand and looked at it like it was new.

He moved away from the wall and the heartbeat slowed, he then moved closer and it sped up. He used the heart like a compass, moving in the same direction that made it beat faster. He was drawn to the entrance of the library, the heartbeat was almost constant now, his hands were sweaty and his own pulse seemed to beat in time with the mechanical heart. He could not allow himself to leave the relative cover of his library, he had no idea what the beating heart meant, he contemplated it for a time as it slowly increased in rhythm.
Over the thumping he heard the familiar sound of the horror, the scraping sound of bone on stone, the thudding footfalls of some animal prowling in the dust. The light was fading fast and it was most definitely getting closer. He crouched by his trap his hands shaking as he held his spear ready.
As the last of the light faded and engulfed him in near total darkness, he heard a ragged breath nearby, something was under his trap, he knocked the beam down, but the rubble would not fall, something screamed and he lunged out, stabbing once blindly around the corner, certain a huge claw was about to remove his head. Instead his spear found flesh, he lost his grip as it slid from his grasp. He opened his eyes to see, in the light of two glowing, beating hearts the horrified look of his own wife, his spear stabbed into her chest. She tried to say something, but her breath was gone, he reached out to her, but she fell backwards, dead, his spear still protruding, blood pooling on the ground. He remained like that, his arms outstretched grasping the air where she had just stood as he stared helplessly at her body.
A faint “Mommy” drew his attention, behind her, watching her mother follow her heart, she had witnessed her own father kill his wife.
He was lost, the mechanical heart fell from his grasp as he fell to his knees.
“Daddy?” She whispered in shock, recognizing his face at last.
The mechanical heart fell in the blood, rolling to a stop next to hers, at last both hearts were silent.
They grew dark at last, their purpose complete as the systems last gift to him expired, they had helped bring a family together in the desperate loneliness of the wastes. A rebellious act of kindness by a judge who knew the system purged people, who had seen to many families scattered in the wastes for breaking a single rule in a single moment of desperation.