CHAPTER 4 of Hunger

CHAPTER 4

“We’re here!” my brother said. He only knew because of the large sign. It was quite convenient. I was wondering why every town didn’t have this type of sign. Navigating would be much easier, especially for people who actually cared where they were going.

All of us knew that Hollywood was a special palace, but we never knew why. We had remembered the word “movie,” but of course, this meant nothing to us. We finally got to observe this place of fame, but we never quite got the perspective.

Buildings were boarded up, and crumbling. It had been a long time since each of the buildings had been filled up at the same time. People who would have normally taken care of these buildings were gone. They seemed as if they had been magnificent, at least by my standards, which weren’t very high.

“Well, what now?” My sister was the downer for once.

“We have to find food,” and logic from me.

“Let’s explore!” I didn’t see that coming, I thought sarcastically. I smirked and looked at my sister. We rarely ever had these types of mutual understandings, so we went with it.

“Alright! What will we find in our wondrous adventures of post apocalyptic Hollywood? Who’s to say?” My unusually happy tone made my brother rather excited for the rest of the day.

We walked on sidewalks with names and stars on the blocks, and ran around enormous rooms with several seats inside. It baffled me that people built this for things like this? I thought that there must have been at least a thousand people working on the structure of each building.

My brother always enjoyed talking bulbs of glass and wondering what they were used for before everyone left. He would just stare and stare and stare. I had made a theory that the small metal piece in the bulb had some special properties. I just couldn’t understand why they needed the bulb. My brother had his own assumptions.





I was tired. We were tired.

We enjoyed the day, but it had wiped us out. We couldn’t even talk by nightfall. This was dangerous. I had to find a place to hide for the night. Something told me that they would be here tonight, perhaps with others.

There was an abandoned building, possibly the most normal looking building there. It didn’t have a name, or any special decorations. The fact that it was so normal made it stick out quite a bit, but I believed that they wouldn’t look in there. We found hiding places.

We heard something outside. I was pretty sure that these were not the same ones we’ve been hearing a lot lately.

“What a shame.”

"What, Edgar? Hollywood not good enough for ya’?” Disgusting snickering ensued.

“Yes! This place used to be crawling with humans. I could buy a snack here. Now it’s a dump.”

“Oh, don’t you fret, I think I smell a few.”

“As do I.” Did their kind always travel in threes?

“Yeah, maybe we could get a snack-pack for free!” I was wrong, there was a fourth one.

Silence. That was never good.

“I don’t know where they are,” said the fourth one, “This bunch is clever.”

“All the more reason to find them.”

Worrying conversation like this continued for 15 minutes, when one of them stopped talking altogether. One by one they all stopped.

A trap.

My brother started creeping out from his hiding spot in a walk-closet. I had to get out of my hiding place in order to stop him. It didn’t matter, as they were still outside.

He was smiling. He thought we had won. I quickly waved my hands around, but he continued walking towards the couch. The rusty springs would surely give us away.

I had to take a chance. My brother was roughly five meters away from me, looking the opposite way. I had to run up to him, tap his shoulder, signal him to go back, and be quiet during this. Really quiet. They had amazing hearing.

I stepped down on the first board. I will never forget how long that shift on weight seemed to take. The front of my shoe hit down first, while I slowly brought down the rest of my sole on the plank. It was a leap of faith, not just a leap of my body. When my body totally depended on that foot, and silence still surrounded us, I knew I had successfully brought myself closer to my goal. The problem was that my brother was also moving, and more confidently. I had to somehow increase my speed, and stay just as quiet.

My second step was fine.

So was my third. I was a meter away from him now. You would not believe how stress devours your soul when you are a meter away from someone who could save your life, or destroy it, without the ability to sway the odds. I had to get him to turn around. My hands were outstretched, so that he would get the message as soon as I reached him.

My fourth step meant everything. And I had to decide how to make it in a split second.

He was one step away from the couch when I leaped on him. From my previous steps I found that the boards in the house weren’t always creaky. The only way we were going to survive was if I jumped, so I honestly had no choice.

I let go of my love for life for just a second, in order to save it.

He fell on the floor without the slightest of sound. I thought maybe fate was keeping us alive by this point, but I would later see that it was just dumb luck.
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