Peace Lenrow was hungry. The door to his room hadn’t been opened in days. He had heard loud noises but had seen no sign of life. The electricity seemed to be down too. Something wasn’t right but he had not cared until now.

He stood up, flexing muscles that had not seen much use lately. It was beginning to dawn on him that he should be in pain. By now the hunger should have been eating at his stomach and seeping his strength. Instead he only felt a slight pang, almost a craving for flavour more than sustenance. 

“Hey! Anybody out there? Nurse! Anyone!” he shouted to the door. 

There was no answer. It would have been a surprise if there had been one since the building was empty except for Peace and another patient who was enjoying the solitude. The staff had ceased coming to work and most of the other patients had left. Super strength and a sound mind had done wonders for them.

His door was locked every night and had not been unlocked since his last visit from the nurse days before. He knocked then paused. His knuckles had left dents in the wood. He knocked again, harder this time, and the door shook in its frame. He shrugged then stepped back before ramming into it with his shoulder. 

The door burst open and Peace staggered into the corridor beyond. His concerns were confirmed as he took in the state of his surroundings. It looked like a storm had passed through the building. There were broken doors, shattered glass and several large holes in the walls. 

He walked over the debris in his cotton pajamas and fluffy slippers without feeling a thing. Glass crunched but no pain registered. A vague sense that his soul must finally have died washed over him slowly. He was truly numb to the world.

Only, he wasn’t. In reality he was more in tune with the world than ever before in his life and the reason that he could feel no pain was due to the strengthening of his body after the Change. It is strange though that reality has a tendency to bend itself around the beliefs of particularly delusional individuals. Personal reality trumps actual reality so often that you could be forgiven for thinking that we actually live in a truly chaotic world.

As such, it was not important what the universe had done to Peace Lenrow but what Peace thought that the universe had done to him. For all that he knew, the world could have been in perfect order and all of this was a product of his own delusional mind. 

Peace felt surprisingly happy. Whether it was the breakdown of society or the breakdown of his sanity, he was free. His biggest problem with life had always been other people so any reality without them was close enough to Heaven for him.

That sense of liberation didn’t last long though. No sooner had Peace left the hospital to be greeted by the ruins of his town, than his dream of escaping humanity was shattered. Swaggering down the centre of the road was a group of men who laughed loudly among themselves. Peace felt a vein twitch on his forehead.

I, as an omnipotent narrator, can tell you that the men had been washed up wrecks sustained by drugs and alcohol after never achieving anything in life. A successful football career cut short from an injury, a young love brought to an end by uncontrolled anger, and children born too early in life were the kinds of hallmarks worn by these bitter individuals.

“Old Jonesey didn’t know what hit him,” one cackled. “How many times had he and his lads beat us up? Then wham! I hit him with a car. Just picked it up and smacked him like it were a cricket bat. The look on his brother’s face. Ha!”

“They didn’t stand a chance,” sniggered another. “We run this town now.”

Another man suddenly noticed Peace and pointed him out to the others. “Hey look. Someone’s just come from the loony bin.”

Peace suppressed a sigh as every head in the group turned to focus in on him. He wasn’t very good with people. They had a tendency to annoy and confuse him. He tried to ignore them and keep walking but they had other ideas.

“What you doing out of your comfy little pillow cell, eh?” grinned a bald man with the build of a rugby player and the face of a crashed plane. 

Peace didn’t respond, instead changing his direction to try and avoid the group. One of the men grabbed his arm and pulled him back around.

“It’s rude to ignore someone when they’re speaking to you, boy. Maybe you’re a bit behind on the times. See, things have changed. We are the top dogs around here now. You do as we say. Got that?”

Peace frowned. “Sorry. What did you say? I zoned out for a minute there. Something about dogs. I like dogs.”

The man’s grip tightened on Peace’s arm. “Who the hell do you think you are, retard?”

“Who do I think I am?” Peace mused aloud. “A better question would surely be who do you think I am? I know who I am. I think.”

Cogs were turning inside the man’s head. Understanding dawned on him with about the same speed as an English sunrise in December. Anger sparked at the boy’s insolence and he lashed out his fist with a grunt.

The fist connected with Peace’s face with the force of a freight-train. The man, who was called Nicolas Drager but still thought of himself as the lad about town ‘Dray’, expected one of three things to happen. The boy could be sent hurtling backwards through the front wall of the hospital, his head could be torn off and bounce across the roofs like a stray football or his skull could implode under the pressure. Dray had seen all three happen. 

He had never seen somebody stand and take it though. He took a quick step back after letting go of the boy’s arm. Peace stood still, his eyes unfocused. Blood dribbled from his lips and nose. His brain felt like it had been put through a blender. Agony crackled through him. He laughed. To feel anything brought a sense of euphoria to him.

The sunrise effect was again spreading through the group of men. Common Sense screamed that perhaps the best thing to do would be to leave the area as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, common sense is in fact one of the rarest of human traits despite its misleading name. Fight or flight battered at the instincts of the men but it was testosterone that ultimately led to a scrawny man yelling “Get ‘im!” Mob mentality took over from there while Common Sense looked on in disgust and facepalmed.

Five fully grown men with plenty of fighting experience versus a seventeen year old fresh from a mental hospital. It should have been over very quickly. It was.

Peace felt as though he existed beyond the usual confines of time and space. He saw the men move, not exactly in slow motion, but as though he had seen each action a million times before like a favourite movie. He knew where their fists would land and where they would leave themselves open. Images filled his head, processing all of the information around him so quickly that he didn’t understand what was going on. 

He wove around the flurry of attacks without a care in the world but never fought back. Peace disliked fighting. Not because he was afraid of getting hurt but because it was a situation where all of the emotions that he tried to suppress came venting uncontrollably to the surface. Showing emotion made him less human. Pure rage would consume him and strip him of his humanity.

It had been a fight that had sealed his fate to be committed to the mental hospital. Self harm could be hidden, ignored, but biting off someone’s ear was somewhat more visible. It didn’t matter how horrible the person in question was. How many times they had bullied others, disrupted lessons and made life hell. The second someone snaps and puts them in their place they suddenly become the victim and you are a psychopath. 

One of the men caught him a blow across the back of the head with a brick that shattered on impact. Blood bubbled from the wound. Seeing that he could be hurt the men redoubled their efforts. Peace took a deep breath.

“That wasn’t very nice,” he said in a voice that was too calm. 

Peace’s fist drove hard into the gut of the man in front of him. It didn’t stop until it had passed straight through his body. Blood splashed across Peace’s face. The man screamed and flopped to the floor. He was still alive but couldn’t move due to the hand sized gap in his spine. 

This moment marked the second important decision for the men to make. Common Sense stood up to make its case again then decided that it wasn’t even worth the effort and left to find a can of beer and a good seat to watch the show.

The men dove at Peace and he offered them a feral grin. His conscious thoughts stepped away from his brain and took a seat beside Common Sense. 

Every punch that Peace threw connected then continued on its merry way unhindered by such simple obstacles as flesh and bones. Screams and blood filled the air in a symphony of pain and suffering. It was only a matter of seconds until five writhing, bloodsoaked bodies littered the floor and Peace stood in their centre panting as he wrestled to regain his composure. 

It was a scene of utter carnage. Peace surveyed the damage with dead eyes. A butterfly fluttered past the groaning mess, catching Peace’s attention. The sight of it lifted his spirits and cast any memories of his actions from his mind. He wandered after the butterfly with a smile on his face, everything else forgotten.

Previous – Chapter 2. A Father’s Duty.

Next – Chapter 4. A Flock of Faithful.