Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2015 23:57:06 GMT
Now there's a lull in the action with quite a bit more thoughts and dialogue. Had to get this encounter out of the way. 
27 HOURS LATER
The sun was coming up. The end of the night after Leon became my last shred of family. And somehow, I still could not cry. Was I in shock? Maybe. I tried not to think too much about it.
I saw the sun slowly rise up over the far off houses, the urban and wasted land. More smoke rose from downtown. Less people lived in this dawn than last sunset. There had actually been many hours of break between the bombings. That happened occasionally. It seemed too peaceful, almost unnatural, but I guess even faction dropships give it a rest at least a few hours.
I turned my head back to the gray, cracked ceiling, away from the crudely boarded up window. I slid my feet off the edge of the naked mattress and let them dangle there. And now my feet were cold and coverless. Stupid blanket would never be long enough.
Of course, Leon had pointed out that Uncle Jay had died with half a dozen sheets on, but I was not interested in partaking of any of them. I had a feeling he had intent to clean them and use them again at some point. Blankets were blankets to him. Leon had gotten rid of both of the bodies downstairs himself; I didn’t help him. He buried Jay next to the plantless garden in the backyard by himself. All that was left to show for the grave was a slightly raised dirt mound and a makeshift cross made out of two decayed house boards. I don’t know where Leon took the robber’s body, but it was gone too. The smell of blood in the kitchen and in Jay’s room hadn’t left though.
The one night we left Jay alone was the day a group of criminals came by and wiped our food clean. They had taken Jay’s gun. That left us with one effective firearm. We still had a cache of cans that we had hidden under the floorboards just in case, but that wouldn’t last us more than two weeks if we stretched it out. We had to find more.
Just our luck.
Or worse. What if it hadn’t been luck? What if these robbers had been watching our house, waiting until some of us departed, leaving the house almost completely defenseless? It was less than likely, but it was still possible. And it was enough to make us nervous and take watches through the night. My watch had lasted until dawn, and I had been constantly listening and watching the house. And nothing had happened.
We were both tired and worn out. We slept on the second floor (Leon was in the adjacent room) and had brought most important things up with us -food, gun, stocked items, ourselves, etc. Now we’d at least have time to react if someone else decided to break down the door on the ground floor.
And what’s more, the unconscious girl was taking her sweet time to wake up. More than a day since she’d been clocked by the soldier, and she still hadn’t fully woken up. If today went on like this, we might have to spoon feed her or something. We didn’t know if she could swallow food though. Heck, was it impossible to feed someone as out as she was without an IV or some kind of tube? We weren’t doctors, but we made sure to always have one of us in the room, watching her in case if she awoke or died or something.
I turned my head to the left, away from the dawning day outside the window and the ceiling above and came to rest my gaze on the only other mattress in the room. The girl lay there, sleeping seemingly normally. As if she was going to wake up at any moment. I had to spend the night with a sleeping stranger not eight feet away.
She had semi long, unkempt brown hair that tumbled over most of her thin face. She was on her back and her arms had been arranged beside her to make her as comfortable as she could be while she dreamt (imagine waking up after laying on your arm for a day or two). She was definitely in grade school, a junior or senior probably. Maybe used to play guitar in her old band. I don’t know where that came from, but somehow she just looked like the musical type to me. She seemed like that one girl at school who didn’t care about playing in front of large crowds. Someone who laid down a tricky rift on an acoustic guitar and danced around stage while doing it.
I shook my head. Was I high right now?
I sighed and decided it was time to get up. In fact, Leon was probably waiting for me to get up in the other room. He was probably checking and rechecking how many bullets we had left.
I bounded up from the ‘bed’ and stretched, but fell back to the springy mattress when I realized I’d gotten up too fast. Took a few more seconds until my head cleared, then got up again.
I went to the door to the hall, then looked back at the nameless girl again. Nothing different.
“Don’t move,” I murmured as I left.
Yawning as I entered into Leon’s guest room from the hall, I noticed that he was indeed waiting for me. In fact, he was watching the door as I walked in, just sitting there on his twin bed. How long had he been doing that? Just staring?
“Hey. Nothing happened early morning,” I reported, coming over to sit on the floor for a second.
“Yeah. Good morning,” he said dryly. Hopefully he got some sleep during my shift. He had done a lot of the work yesterday, taking care of the bodies and the mess in the kitchen. He was definitely tired. “You okay? The girl the same way?”
“Yeah, and she’s still sleeping,” I responded respectively. He always asked if I was okay every morning. Without fail. “We got anything else we want to move up here? What’s…on the agenda?”
Wow, why did Jay seem so far away already? He wasn’t He was practically a distant memory and it hadn’t even been two days since he died. There had been no funeral, and I guess I wasn’t ready to fully accept that he was dead. He was dead. He was dead.
“Maybe a few more personal belongings. Biggest thing on the to do list is concerning food,” Leon said. He paused and let a half cough, half laugh escape his mouth. Sort of strange to hear such a strange, bitter noise coming from Leon. “Heh, and now…we’re… it. We’re the bosses of the house now.”
He gestured, raising his hand up as if to motion his disbelief at the lonely house, then letting it drop. I remained silent. It was true. We were officially the bosses. We were left.
I was about to come up with some way to respond to that when a sound made me stop short. The sound of glass being beat on and boards being frantically pulled from their window panes. Coming from the room where the girl was sleeping in!
Like trained police at the sound of a bell, Leon and I shot from our comfortable positions, down the hall and to the door. Leon had his gun at the ready already. Was it really robbers again or…?
I burst through the door just as there was the sound of another board being ripped away. We saw immediately who it was.
…the girl?
There she was, standing right at the window, whirled around to face us like a deer caught in headlights. A tossed board on my mattress next to the window. She held another board half stuck to the pane; she was frozen in mid pull. She looked strangely different than how she had a minute ago. She was standing and awake right there. We must have just stood there looking at each other with disbelief for at least two or three seconds before any of us reacted.
She wildly dashed to the far corner of the room as if some door was going to appear for her to escape through. Leon took two steps forward and rose the gun. And seeing the weapon aimed right at her, the girl stopped, even more terrified and wild than before.
“What the hell are you doing?” Leon said.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I turned to Leon who was seeming quite more malicious than he had been a moment ago. His merciless eyes…
“I don’t take kindly to our window being destroyed. Tell us your name” Leon commanded, still focused on the girl as if she were a criminal.
She hadn’t made a sound and had stopped next to the closet, her eyes crazy with fear and confusion. Her shaking, frail hands rose in surrender to the scary man with the gun. Her eyes flickered to me and back to the barrel. She didn’t make a sound.
“Leon, how about putting down the gun for a second. She thinks we’re with the soldiers,” I suggested with as much force as I could muster into my voice. I stepped slowly between the two. Somehow, I hadn’t imagined the girl’s awakening to be quite like this.
“Okay,” I said, turning to talk directly to the girl, maintaining eye contact with her. “We’re not here to hurt you. You don’t know us, but we saved you from the soldiers camped out in the supermarket. You’re not in danger or anything; you don’t need to escape out a second floor window.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, and didn’t speak. But I could see her relax a hair. She wasn’t completely buying it with Leon standing there with his gun slightly lowered.
“So...I’m Ryker. This is Leon,” I introduced awkwardly, gesturing to ourselves. “We’re just a little jumpy because of the robbers around here. I know you don’t know where you are, but we’re not with gangs or militias or anything; just civilians. What’s your name?”
She only looked at me with pleading eyes. Why wasn’t she responding?
“We asked you your name, girl,” Leon said, still pretty weary of the stranger, especially since she wasn’t talking at all.
It was the strangest moment we had experienced in the war. She wasn’t a threat. She was completely vulnerable and yet she did not speak. She was not defiant or trying to do this. I caught her green eyes one more time through the morning light. I could tell she wanted to respond. And then somehow I knew.
“Leon, she can’t talk,” I said.
“What? What are you talking about ‘can’t’?” Leon demanded. I turned back to the cynical brother of mine.
“I mean she’s mute,” I claimed with strange certainty.
“Mute? We heard her talk at the super market, remember?”
“I don’t know how exactly, but her head must’ve been hit pretty badly by the soldier. I’ve heard of that before; brain damage leading to muteness,” I quickly explained. Then turning back to her again, I asked, “Can you tell us your name?”
She immediately shook her head vigorously.
Leon lowered the gun almost all the way down. “You better not be playing tricks on us, girl. You better not be faking this.”
“Leon, why would she fake?” I questioned. But she was still shaking her head towards Leon’s harsh questions. I spoke to both of them. “Okay, let’s sit down.”
This had not gone too well.
27 HOURS LATER
The sun was coming up. The end of the night after Leon became my last shred of family. And somehow, I still could not cry. Was I in shock? Maybe. I tried not to think too much about it.
I saw the sun slowly rise up over the far off houses, the urban and wasted land. More smoke rose from downtown. Less people lived in this dawn than last sunset. There had actually been many hours of break between the bombings. That happened occasionally. It seemed too peaceful, almost unnatural, but I guess even faction dropships give it a rest at least a few hours.
I turned my head back to the gray, cracked ceiling, away from the crudely boarded up window. I slid my feet off the edge of the naked mattress and let them dangle there. And now my feet were cold and coverless. Stupid blanket would never be long enough.
Of course, Leon had pointed out that Uncle Jay had died with half a dozen sheets on, but I was not interested in partaking of any of them. I had a feeling he had intent to clean them and use them again at some point. Blankets were blankets to him. Leon had gotten rid of both of the bodies downstairs himself; I didn’t help him. He buried Jay next to the plantless garden in the backyard by himself. All that was left to show for the grave was a slightly raised dirt mound and a makeshift cross made out of two decayed house boards. I don’t know where Leon took the robber’s body, but it was gone too. The smell of blood in the kitchen and in Jay’s room hadn’t left though.
The one night we left Jay alone was the day a group of criminals came by and wiped our food clean. They had taken Jay’s gun. That left us with one effective firearm. We still had a cache of cans that we had hidden under the floorboards just in case, but that wouldn’t last us more than two weeks if we stretched it out. We had to find more.
Just our luck.
Or worse. What if it hadn’t been luck? What if these robbers had been watching our house, waiting until some of us departed, leaving the house almost completely defenseless? It was less than likely, but it was still possible. And it was enough to make us nervous and take watches through the night. My watch had lasted until dawn, and I had been constantly listening and watching the house. And nothing had happened.
We were both tired and worn out. We slept on the second floor (Leon was in the adjacent room) and had brought most important things up with us -food, gun, stocked items, ourselves, etc. Now we’d at least have time to react if someone else decided to break down the door on the ground floor.
And what’s more, the unconscious girl was taking her sweet time to wake up. More than a day since she’d been clocked by the soldier, and she still hadn’t fully woken up. If today went on like this, we might have to spoon feed her or something. We didn’t know if she could swallow food though. Heck, was it impossible to feed someone as out as she was without an IV or some kind of tube? We weren’t doctors, but we made sure to always have one of us in the room, watching her in case if she awoke or died or something.
I turned my head to the left, away from the dawning day outside the window and the ceiling above and came to rest my gaze on the only other mattress in the room. The girl lay there, sleeping seemingly normally. As if she was going to wake up at any moment. I had to spend the night with a sleeping stranger not eight feet away.
She had semi long, unkempt brown hair that tumbled over most of her thin face. She was on her back and her arms had been arranged beside her to make her as comfortable as she could be while she dreamt (imagine waking up after laying on your arm for a day or two). She was definitely in grade school, a junior or senior probably. Maybe used to play guitar in her old band. I don’t know where that came from, but somehow she just looked like the musical type to me. She seemed like that one girl at school who didn’t care about playing in front of large crowds. Someone who laid down a tricky rift on an acoustic guitar and danced around stage while doing it.
I shook my head. Was I high right now?
I sighed and decided it was time to get up. In fact, Leon was probably waiting for me to get up in the other room. He was probably checking and rechecking how many bullets we had left.
I bounded up from the ‘bed’ and stretched, but fell back to the springy mattress when I realized I’d gotten up too fast. Took a few more seconds until my head cleared, then got up again.
I went to the door to the hall, then looked back at the nameless girl again. Nothing different.
“Don’t move,” I murmured as I left.
Yawning as I entered into Leon’s guest room from the hall, I noticed that he was indeed waiting for me. In fact, he was watching the door as I walked in, just sitting there on his twin bed. How long had he been doing that? Just staring?
“Hey. Nothing happened early morning,” I reported, coming over to sit on the floor for a second.
“Yeah. Good morning,” he said dryly. Hopefully he got some sleep during my shift. He had done a lot of the work yesterday, taking care of the bodies and the mess in the kitchen. He was definitely tired. “You okay? The girl the same way?”
“Yeah, and she’s still sleeping,” I responded respectively. He always asked if I was okay every morning. Without fail. “We got anything else we want to move up here? What’s…on the agenda?”
Wow, why did Jay seem so far away already? He wasn’t He was practically a distant memory and it hadn’t even been two days since he died. There had been no funeral, and I guess I wasn’t ready to fully accept that he was dead. He was dead. He was dead.
“Maybe a few more personal belongings. Biggest thing on the to do list is concerning food,” Leon said. He paused and let a half cough, half laugh escape his mouth. Sort of strange to hear such a strange, bitter noise coming from Leon. “Heh, and now…we’re… it. We’re the bosses of the house now.”
He gestured, raising his hand up as if to motion his disbelief at the lonely house, then letting it drop. I remained silent. It was true. We were officially the bosses. We were left.
I was about to come up with some way to respond to that when a sound made me stop short. The sound of glass being beat on and boards being frantically pulled from their window panes. Coming from the room where the girl was sleeping in!
Like trained police at the sound of a bell, Leon and I shot from our comfortable positions, down the hall and to the door. Leon had his gun at the ready already. Was it really robbers again or…?
I burst through the door just as there was the sound of another board being ripped away. We saw immediately who it was.
…the girl?
There she was, standing right at the window, whirled around to face us like a deer caught in headlights. A tossed board on my mattress next to the window. She held another board half stuck to the pane; she was frozen in mid pull. She looked strangely different than how she had a minute ago. She was standing and awake right there. We must have just stood there looking at each other with disbelief for at least two or three seconds before any of us reacted.
She wildly dashed to the far corner of the room as if some door was going to appear for her to escape through. Leon took two steps forward and rose the gun. And seeing the weapon aimed right at her, the girl stopped, even more terrified and wild than before.
“What the hell are you doing?” Leon said.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I turned to Leon who was seeming quite more malicious than he had been a moment ago. His merciless eyes…
“I don’t take kindly to our window being destroyed. Tell us your name” Leon commanded, still focused on the girl as if she were a criminal.
She hadn’t made a sound and had stopped next to the closet, her eyes crazy with fear and confusion. Her shaking, frail hands rose in surrender to the scary man with the gun. Her eyes flickered to me and back to the barrel. She didn’t make a sound.
“Leon, how about putting down the gun for a second. She thinks we’re with the soldiers,” I suggested with as much force as I could muster into my voice. I stepped slowly between the two. Somehow, I hadn’t imagined the girl’s awakening to be quite like this.
“Okay,” I said, turning to talk directly to the girl, maintaining eye contact with her. “We’re not here to hurt you. You don’t know us, but we saved you from the soldiers camped out in the supermarket. You’re not in danger or anything; you don’t need to escape out a second floor window.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, and didn’t speak. But I could see her relax a hair. She wasn’t completely buying it with Leon standing there with his gun slightly lowered.
“So...I’m Ryker. This is Leon,” I introduced awkwardly, gesturing to ourselves. “We’re just a little jumpy because of the robbers around here. I know you don’t know where you are, but we’re not with gangs or militias or anything; just civilians. What’s your name?”
She only looked at me with pleading eyes. Why wasn’t she responding?
“We asked you your name, girl,” Leon said, still pretty weary of the stranger, especially since she wasn’t talking at all.
It was the strangest moment we had experienced in the war. She wasn’t a threat. She was completely vulnerable and yet she did not speak. She was not defiant or trying to do this. I caught her green eyes one more time through the morning light. I could tell she wanted to respond. And then somehow I knew.
“Leon, she can’t talk,” I said.
“What? What are you talking about ‘can’t’?” Leon demanded. I turned back to the cynical brother of mine.
“I mean she’s mute,” I claimed with strange certainty.
“Mute? We heard her talk at the super market, remember?”
“I don’t know how exactly, but her head must’ve been hit pretty badly by the soldier. I’ve heard of that before; brain damage leading to muteness,” I quickly explained. Then turning back to her again, I asked, “Can you tell us your name?”
She immediately shook her head vigorously.
Leon lowered the gun almost all the way down. “You better not be playing tricks on us, girl. You better not be faking this.”
“Leon, why would she fake?” I questioned. But she was still shaking her head towards Leon’s harsh questions. I spoke to both of them. “Okay, let’s sit down.”
This had not gone too well.