Papa K Vs. Tony

The Earth is a shadow of what it once was. After the asteroid struck Earth nearly two years ago and decimated most of its population, those of us who survived are now living in a post-apocalyptic society where the strong bury the weak and chaos rules over unity.

Food mostly consists of dirt and bone marrow with the occasional mutant rat.

After the asteroid hit, the sun quickly became heavily concealed by a thick blanket of dust and volcanic ash blown into the heavens. This makes every day on the new Earth feel as though another day in December. The weather is cold and windy and it chills you to your very core.

The asteroid hit somewhere in Africa thus decimating the entire continent. Last anyone had heard before worldwide electrical failure was that Tsunamis wiped out most of the surrounding countries. Earthquakes swallowed entire cities and once dormant volcano’s spewed molten lava until they ran dry.

That was now a distant memory.

We hadn’t known each other for more than a few minutes but he had something I wanted: a sandwich.

Sliced ham had expired long ago and all mayonnaise had boiled to a point where it resembled flat domestic beer. The Asteroid had wiped out all vegetation thus tomatoes and lettuce were hard to come by. Tony had all of these condiments slapped between two of the most succulent slices of bread I’d ever seen. I had no idea how Tony was able to acquire such a rare object nor did I care… I just wanted it bad and knew I’d have to fight him… most likely to death.

In this world, there were no polite questions to ask for a bite or notions of sharing. It was kill or be killed and Tony sans sandwich was my target for today.

I initiated the duel by reaching over my head and grabbing the two machetes I had criss-crossed across my back. They made a “schwink” sound as they made their ascent out of their hard leather sleeves.

Tony stared at me as if to say, “Really? All this for a sandwich?” Simultaneously he swept the left side of his trench coat over his hip to reveal a rather helpless looking metal object. It appeared to be the hilt of a sword, yet… with no blade!

“Is that supposed to intimidate me? A bladeless sword!!!? I screamed with overwhelming sarcasm, “Perhaps before you run me through with your bladeless sword you can shoot me with your gun that has invisible bullets!”

The small, tattered crowd that had assembled to see our little duel chuckled at my horrible attempt and making some snappy, intimidating joke. I think they chuckled more out of pity than actual amusement.

“You know Papa K,” said Tony menacingly, “I’m going to have to split you from stem to stern.”

I must say, his assuredness threw me off a bit, but I thought my chances with two machetes against his bladeless sword gave me about a 99.99% chance of complete, undeniable victory… and a tasty sandwich.

I’d had enough talk… it was time to slice Tony into nice, square-inch cubes.

I yelled a rebel yell and began my offensive charge against Tony and his non-weapon.

As I was making the distance between the two of us increasingly more personal, Tony began to raise the hilt of his bladeless weapon over his head when from it rose an intense blue light: