Title: The Cannibals of the Last Spring
Author: Kassfinol
Genre: Post-apocalyptic – Moral horror
All rights reserved
The smell arrived before the scream.
Alejandro sat up on his cot, sweat sticking his shirt to his chest. He knew that smell. Fresh meat. Someone new had fallen into the perimeter traps.
—Get up, boy —Ramón’s voice cut through the tent canvas—. We have work.
Outside, the midday sun turned the camp into an oven. Alejandro squinted and saw the group gathered near the containment pit. Six people surrounded something on the ground. Dust rose with every abrupt movement.
—What is it this time? —Alejandro asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Carmela, her muscular arms crossed over her chest, spat to one side.
—A woman. Alone. She was carrying strange tools.
Alejandro approached. The woman was on her knees, her hands tied behind her back with rusty wire. Fresh blood ran from her eyebrow to her jaw. She wasn’t crying. That was unusual. Most begged or fainted. This one looked at them with an expression Alejandro couldn’t identify right away. Then he understood: it was pity.
—Water —the woman said, her voice hoarse but firm—. I just want water.
Ramón laughed, a dry sound like burnt paper.
—Everyone wants water, sweetheart. That’s why they’re here.
The woman moved her head slowly, as if speaking to children.
—You don’t understand. I can help you. I’m a hydraulic engineer. I saw your pipes from the hill. They’re shit. You’re losing thirty percent of the water to leaks.
Silence fell over the group. Alejandro felt the others exchange glances. Ramón crouched in front of the woman, his knees creaking.
—And what else did you see from that hill of yours?
—I saw that you have a source. A real spring. —The woman coughed, spat blood—. I saw that you’re wasting it like idiots.
Carmela took a step forward, but Ramón raised his hand.
—Take her to the warehouse —he ordered—. Let me think.
Alejandro helped lift the woman. She weighed less than he expected. When their eyes met, she smiled. A small, sad smile.
—You’re young —she said—. There’s still time for you.
The warehouse was actually a half-buried cargo container. Inside, the heat concentrated like in an oven. Alejandro left the woman sitting against the metal wall and untied her wrists.
—Why are you doing that? —she asked, rubbing her marked skin.
—Ramón didn’t say to keep you tied up in here.
The woman studied him with those gray, calculating eyes.
—How old are you?
—Twenty. More or less.
—Were you born here?
Alejandro nodded. He sat on a wooden crate, keeping himself between her and the door.
—Three years after the Collapse. I don’t remember the before.
—And this? —she gestured vaguely outward—. Does this seem normal to you?
Alejandro scratched the back of his neck. The scar behind his ear itched when it was hot.
—Normal is what works. We have clean water. Enough food. No zombies within fifty kilometers. —He paused—. We survive.
—At what cost?
—Whatever cost is necessary.
The woman laughed, a bitter sound that bounced off the metal walls.
—God. They brainwashed you since you were a kid, didn’t they?
Alejandro felt something hot climb up his throat. Rage. Or maybe shame.
—You don’t know a damn thing about us.
—I know you eat people. —She said it bluntly, like someone commenting on the weather—. I saw the bones. You use them to filter the water, right? Bone charcoal. Old technique. Effective.
The silence grew dense. Alejandro didn’t know what to say. Nobody talked about that so openly. It was simply what they did. What they had always done.
—Zombies are poisonous —he said finally—. We can’t eat them.
—But humans aren’t.
—Travelers come alone. Desperate. If it weren’t us, it would be the zombies. Or thirst. At least this way they serve a purpose. They nourish the earth. They purify the water. It’s… —he searched for the word— ecological.
The woman looked at him with something that might have been compassion.
—Do you know what you are, kid? You’re a farm animal defending the farmer.
Alejandro stood up abruptly, the crate falling backward with a metallic crash.
—Fuck you.
—Wait. —Her voice changed, softened—. Wait. I’m sorry. Look, I… let me show you something. Let me explain what I can do for you.
Alejandro stood there, his hand on the rusty doorknob.
—I have an hour before they come for you. Ramón will decide what to do with you.
—Then give me that hour.
And Alejandro, without really knowing why, stayed.
For the next hour, the woman, who said her name was Elena, drew diagrams on the dusty floor with a piece of charcoal. Filtration systems. Sedimentation tanks. Pipes with fewer leaks. A future where water could be purified without using human bones. Where food could be grown without fertilizing with corpses.
—It would take two months of hard work —she explained, her hands moving fast, animated—. But after that, you’d be self-sufficient. Truly self-sufficient. You could even trade with other communities. Clean water is worth more than gold these days.
Alejandro watched, fascinated and terrified at the same time.
—Ramón will never allow it.
—Why not?
—Because… —Alejandro stopped. Why not? The question floated in his mind like smoke—. Because he says this is the only way.
—Or because he likes things the way they are?
That night, during dinner, Alejandro couldn’t eat. The meat on his plate — they always told them it was from the new batch — looked different. It tasted different. Or maybe he was the one who had changed.
Ramón ate with appetite, grease shining on his lips.
—Tomorrow we process the woman —he announced—. Carmela, prepare the tools.
—What if we listen to her first? —The words left Alejandro’s mouth before he could stop them.
Everyone at the table went still. Ramón slowly raised his gaze, wiping his mouth with his forearm.
—Excuse me?
—She says she can improve the system. Less water waste. More efficiency —he answered with more enthusiasm than necessary.
—We’re already efficient.
—But we could be better. —Alejandro felt the others’ stares pinned on him like needles—. We might not have to… you know.
Ramón leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his considerable weight.
—Ah. I see. The whore filled your head with ideas. —He smiled, but there was no humor in that smile—. Do you know what happens with ideas, Alejandro? They make you weak. They make you doubt… And boy… doubt kills.
—I’m just saying we should listen to her.
—And I’m saying tomorrow we butcher her. —Ramón stood up, the chair scraping the concrete floor—. End of discussion.
Alejandro clenched his fists under the table. He felt something break inside him. Something that had been cracking for years without him realizing it.
After dinner, Carmela found him smoking near the perimeter.
—You’re playing with fire, boy.
—Maybe it’s time someone did.
Carmela exhaled smoke through her nose, looking at the stars.
—Do you know why Ramón is fat and we’re not?
Alejandro turned to look at her.
—Because he eats more. He always keeps the best parts. —Carmela crushed the cigarette under her boot—. It’s not about survival, Alejandro. It never was. It’s about power. And Ramón likes power. He likes how it tastes.
—Why are you telling me this?
—Because you’re the only one young enough to remember there should be something more. —Carmela walked away, her silhouette dissolving into the darkness—. Do what you have to do.
Alejandro entered Ramón’s tent at three in the morning, the knife trembling in his hand.
Ramón slept on his back, snoring. On the table next to his bed there was a plate with food remains. Alejandro recognized what it was. He felt bile rising in his throat.
Do it fast —he thought. —Like with the travelers. Fast and painless.
But this was different. This was choosing. This was killing without the excuse of survival.
—Are you going to stand there all night?
Alejandro almost dropped the knife. Ramón had his eyes open, looking at him calmly.
—I knew you’d come —the man said, without moving—. The question is: do you have the balls to do it?
—Let her go. Let her build the system.
—And then what, Alejandro? Do you think we’ll become saints? —Ramón sat up, his bulk occupying half the bed—. The world went to shit. The zombies ate everything good that was left. We are what survived. What works. Do you want to change that? Go ahead. Kill me. But when the supplies run out and things get hard, what will you do? How long will it be before you do the same as me?
Alejandro took a step forward. The knife stopped trembling.
—I want to find out.
The cut was deep. Ramón tried to scream, but Alejandro was fast, as he’d been taught. Blood soaked the sheets, hot and thick. Ramón’s eyes looked at him with something that might have been pride or disappointment, until the light in them went out.
Alejandro stood there, covered in blood, the knife dripping on the floor. He felt no triumph. He felt no relief. He only felt a huge void where certainty should have been.
Three months later, the filtration system worked. Elena had kept her word. The water flowed clean without needing human bones. The crops grew with fertilizer made from vegetable compost and animal manure from livestock they’d started raising.
But things weren’t easier.
Alejandro stood by the spring, looking at the crystal-clear water. Elena worked nearby, adjusting a valve.
—It’s working —she said, smiling—. I told you it would work.
—Yes.
—Aren’t you happy?
Alejandro didn’t answer. Instead, he looked toward the camp. People looked thinner, hungrier. Carmela had challenged him twice for leadership… and supplies lasted less and less, and to make everything worse… fights were more frequent.
And sometimes, at night, Alejandro dreamed of the taste of meat. Rich, filling. Easy.
—Alejandro?
He turned. He saw Elena, her tool in her hand, vulnerable. Alone. A solution to a problem that wouldn’t quite go away.
—Are you okay? —she asked.
Alejandro smiled. It was a small, sad smile.
—Yes. I was just thinking.
—About what?
—That you’re right. —He put his hands in his pockets, feeling the knife handle—. That there’s still time for me.
Elena smiled, relieved, and went back to her work.
Alejandro watched her work. The sun set behind the mountains, dyeing everything red. The water kept flowing, clean and pure… The perfect solution.
But he was still hungry.
And the knife in his pocket was still there.
Because Ramón was right about one thing: the world had gone to shit. And what survived wasn’t the good. It was what could live with what it had done to stay alive.
Alejandro wondered how long it would be before the perimeter traps activated again. Before another lonely traveler appeared, desperate for water.
Before he had to choose again.
Only this time, he already knew what he would choose.
Because monstrosity doesn’t disappear with a filtration system.
It only disguises itself as progress.
The End.
We are what we are, and that always comes to the surface.