He is in the kitchen, waiting for his glass of water in the microwave to complete the forty-five-second timer and get warm. Drops of blood dripping on his t-shirt a handkerchief in his right hand drenched in crimson blood. He cleans the gash on his head, which appears to have been caused by another man’s elbow during a hand-to-hand scuffle. He is lean, appearing as if he runs the marathon daily to keep himself in shape, veins popping in his hand and long grey hair and scruffy beard making him look like a middle-aged man. The timer is complete, he opens the microwave, heads out with his glass of water, and pulls out his silver-colored revolver from the back of his jeans. At the entrance of the kitchen, a stream of blood has dried up and looks pitch black and a few steps away there’s the body of a young male, roughly twenty-four years old, lying lifeless with a huge bullet hole in his head gushing and spurting blood. He heads to the drawing room, whose floor is made out of marble, with a bamboo table with a glass top in the center, a digital watch on the wall right side of the table indicating Six AM, a sofa made out of bamboo with cushions on them covered with beautifully embroidered flower designs of different colors. There’s a small statue of an angel on the stand below the digital watch hanging off the wall. He keeps the glass of warm water atop the glass table and pulls off a chair from the dining table with the revolver pointed at a man, who has been tied down to a resting chair generally meant for senior citizens, seated beside a bamboo table. He has a swollen grey eye and bleeding nose appearing as if he had been punched several times in the face.
He sits down on the chair, and sips the warm water, with the gun still pointing at the tied-down man. He breathes heavily and asks, “ So, do you know why you are in this state?”.
The man moves his head from side to side indicating a no from his gestures. “ The young kid, lying there, who I shot to death, what is he to you?”, He asks in a montone voice.
Spitting the blood out of his mouth on the floor, the man replies, “ Cousin. His name’s Rishu. My aunt’s only son.” He, raising his eyebrows, says, “ I see.” He approaches him, frisks him, and pulls out his wallet from the back of his jeans. Gets a hold of his driver's license, PAN card, Aadhaar Card, and a couple of debit and credit cards. The name on the PAN card says, “ Anirrudh”. “ I see you’ve got a couple of credit cards here, seems you were pretty wealthy before all of the world went down the drain, what did you do before all of this?”, He asks in an interrogative voice.
“Brand strategist manager,” says Anirudh, with the bleeding from his nose partially stopping and the stream of blood drying up in the space between his nose and upper lip.
“ Wow. Couldn’t afford to muster some cash and get yourself one of the exclusive rides out of Noida? You seemed to be well off, why not go for it?”, He asks with a pint of anger and curiosity in his voice.
“ I was scammed off all of my money. Before I could even contemplate approaching a lawyer to sort things out, things went to hell. People turning into cannibals. Killing one another, devouring one another. Lord only knows what happened that turned the world upside down.” Anirrudh answers with a sense of calmness in his voice.
“ You’ve got a family?”, He asks.
“ My sister and my son. You already killed one.” Says Anirrudh with a blank stare.
“ Wife?”, asks He.
“ Divorced”, says Anirudh while staring at the ground.
“Huh.”, exclaims He.
Having another sip of his warm water, He asks, “ What have you witnessed so far, because the way I see it, I’ve got a very powerful revolver in my hand right now pointed at you, and you don’t seem to be trembling at very sight of it and you’ve got a no sensation of fear or nervousness whenever you answer the questions I ask you.”
Locking eyes with Him, blinking a couple of times, and spitting the blood out of his mouth, Anirrudh answers.
“ Three weeks ago, we were at a CNG pump, waiting to refill. Escaping from the hordes of people turned into monsters, we arrived at this remote pump at some remote location. As we were filling our car, we saw another man with his child in his arms, probably twelve years old, asking us for help. We first draw out our weapons and ask him to stop wherever he is. He then goes on to explain that he doesn’t need medicines because he knows there is no cure. He said that his son was bitten hours ago by his wife who got infected somehow. He fought hard to save his son, from his wife, but he ran out of luck. The wife managed, or whatever was left of her, managed to get a bite on his son. He managed to lock her in her room but didn’t kill her. He was stranded up on the road looking for the rest of the survivors to help him.”
“ So, what did you do to help him?”, He asks.
“When he saw our weapons, he asked for one of them. It wasn’t to defend himself or his dying son in any manner whatsoever. He said he needed them to execute his son. He couldn’t witness his son turning into one of the monsters.”, Anirrudh explains while locking his gaze on He.
“ Did you help him?”, He asks, pointing his revolver, while seated and observing him carefully. Aniruddh takes his gaze off of him and looks down at the ground.
“ Do you know why I’ve got you here all tied up and why I killed your cousin?”, He asks. Aniruddh shrugs his shoulder indicating a “no” as his answer.
“ My medical store, a few blocks away from here, where I had calculated and kept the last of my medicines and resources, not for myself, but for my niece, who just took her last breath the day before yesterday, because you stole her box of medicines and food, which she desperately needed because apparently before all this went to hell, she was on insulin to help her curb her liver cirrhosis. And when you stole that, she ran out of her last line to hold on to. I very well knew I couldn’t bring her back or stop her from turning into one of those animals and before I could let that happen, when she was unconscious I decided to put a bullet right between her eyes to end her agony” " he says in a melancholic, mournful and calmly angry voice.
“ We thought nobody was in the vicinity. There were no signs.”, Aniruddh exclaims in a confused manner.
“ You didn’t notice the arrangement of the store, you couldn’t gather from the management that somebody could still be managing this place amidst all of the ruckus just to protect someone close and dear to them?”, He asks with a sense of anger emerging in his voice.
“ Haven’t we all lost someone close and dear to us?”, asks Aniruddh.
“ Don’t play the game with me. Comparing the losses or agony of different people and asking them to brush their pain aside, move on and just look forward, towards the future!”, He kicks his seat angrily, resulting in his seat to fall, and puts the gun on Aniruddh’s head. He asks him with a harsh baritone in his voice “ You get to decide, who moves on, whose pain is worth mentioning about and what is right or wrong?!”.
“That little girl was just nine years old when I decided to put a bullet in her. She could’ve been saved, had you and your people not stolen our supplies. How do you plan to salvage this loss?”, asks He while pointing the gun at his head. Aniruddh looks him in his eyes not flinching, with a deafening silence circulating both men and then, the digital clock strikes Midnight.