Post by Admin on Aug 11, 2016 0:52:38 GMT
REBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT, REMAAAAAAAAKE, REVISIOON SORT OF
Wacky Wednesdays officially start in October, since it's more of a Halloween thing, but meh, this is the first honorary Wacky Wednesday of 2016.
I've unanimously decided to restart Mute. There are parts that needed mending and revision obviously, but the main change is going to be the addition of a new rogue to the team, Pavle. The points of view are supposed to be more divvied up between group members other than the mute herself (Ryker, Leon, Pavle) to give their perspectives on Myra and the situations they're in.
Mute
City – Late September, 2031
Ryker Sunderland
I don’t know what time of night it was. I didn’t check my watch, but it had to be just past midnight when Leon and I reached the supermarket parking lot. The hazy nocturne light, fed by the close fires of downtown and smoke riddled moonlight, illuminated our discreet way. As we stepped on the fringes of the lot, I noticed someone else, a figure, scurrying along the pavement not 60 feet away, headed in the same direction as us. I was about to alert Leon to the guy’s presence when an explosion decided to go off, fragmenting the figure into tiny pieces and sending Leon and I to our knees out of the tremendous shakes in the earth. There was no warning. Obviously the stranger hadn’t even had enough time to scream.
I never could get used to those surprise mines. No matter how many times I witnessed it, it always sent me into a fit of shakes.
We instinctively ducked behind a burned out car, probably a Mercedes, though it was hard to tell. I didn’t normally pay attention to cars anymore, especially at times like these, but still… it probably used to be a real sweet ride when it wasn’t dead. Probably could go over 60mph easy. And that rusty metal driver’s seat that cloth used to cover would’ve been real comfy to sit on. And sleep on.
Damn war, taking good people and good cars. And food. Supplies. Comfortable beds. Fun. Modern fighting seems to drain those all away. Honestly, when was the last time I had kicked back in a decent recliner?
Thinking about it made me sad, so I stopped and tried to focus again.
Only when the reverberations subsided and the concrete had returned to its normal, metronomic tremble from downtown bombings, I looked back at Leon who was crouching along with me behind the mighty calloused car, his comforting glock pistol clutched in his fist. By his blank but also tense expression, he heard the same thing as me – silence (even though the bombastic noise had left ringing in both our ears).
I allowed my shoulders to slacken a hair.
It was a random mine. Troops don’t target civilians for no reason.
Actually, that was a blatant lie. But odds were that the mine wasn’t meant for a lowly scavenger.
Leon glanced at me to see if I was okay. I gave a light nod, anxious but more annoyed than anything. Why did he always have to think of me as a fragile liability? I had been on tons of these runs with him, and whenever any mishap arose, there was that look. I swear I could hear the overprotective thoughts yelling in his head every time I noticed that look.
We moved forward. Silent, cautious, watching closely for any more concealed detonators or anything that might cause us to lose our limbs, we covered the remaining ground to the side entrance with short jogging bursts between car coverage. As inconspicuous as we could try to be, we were probably pretty easy to spot from anyone that might be lurking nearby. I could easily imagine a soldier watching us as we ran through the dark lot. There was always a possibility that a sniper actually had us on their scope, ready to pick us off just for target practice any second. Barrel steadied on a bombed out building’s window sill. The omnipresent, elusive, sometimes imaginary, sometimes dangerously real sniper. Completely apathetic to the petty civilian souls caught in the constant urban crossfire below him. It wouldn’t matter which side he was on. By this point, no side really cared about the people that had died or survived in this long torn city.
Troops don’t target civilians for no reason. Ha. Sometimes I actually wonder if I am as stupid as Leon thinks I am. Ha.
Despite these trepidations, we made it the darkened doors containing our one remaining source of food and stuff that could let us survive another day or two. Above the smashed up glass doors and windows, a series of giant, browning letters, most listing to the right or left or missing entirely, read: W LCO E TO WA –M T.
It was time to stroll in.
That being said, we were pretty damn desperate to be looking around the super market when we were sure at least a dozen faction thugs were crawling around inside. I wasn’t blaming them for crashing here – after all, it was one of the best place to camp out in a warzone. We were just going to help out by relieving them of some of the decrepit store’s clutter.
Anyway, the entrance was wide open, and we slipped inside – uninvited as usual. No lights on, duh, so we had to go by the timid nighttime light sifting through windows and various holes in the wall and ceiling. Even with all the openings in the structure, it was almost too dark to see where we were going, which was both good for stealthy movement and bad for spotting anything useful.
Our footsteps seemed to echo out our arrival to the ex-shopping center. I stayed beside Leon, basically following his lead, no surprise there. We knew where to go. There was no time to stick around and browse yu-gi-oh cards or $5 DVD’s, even if they were tempting.
As we moved deeper into the building like solemn monks shuffling along in a monastery, I was able to make out more of our surroundings. We were in the gardening department of the store. A few thoroughly decomposed plants were lying haphazardly on the shelves or concrete floor. Litter littered the floor, and we each had to take our steps carefully. We passed by the useless items quickly.
Leon looked back at me, this time with an expression of be-completely-quiet-cause-here-we-go.
Thanks bro, it never dawned on me to be FUCKING QUIET.
Sticking close to the walls and low to the ground, we approached the threshold into the main depot. From our view, the looming area seemed dejected, beams of light cutting through the slanted, broken up ceiling.
That was about the time we heard something coming from deeper within the building. Voices. People. Danger.
Looking to Leon, I was surprised to see him move into the first open aisle across from the garden center. I guess Leon thought the risks were less costly than the possibility of supplies. I also guess I was just a scared pussy that went along with whatever my older brother did. So I didn’t protest and slunk into the dark aisle along with him.
There was no way either of us could afford to back down now. We needed those meds for Uncle Jay, and admitting defeat in the name of the willies and heebie-jeebies was unacceptable. It was an unavoidable fact. Uncle Jay would die if we didn’t get him some real help fast.
It was as we passed by the mucky tanks of belly up fish that I could discern the nearby sounds of someone talking. But it seemed like it wasn’t a conversation at all. All I could hear was one voice, as if the stranger (presumably a man, judging by the gruff cadence) was talking to himself. I tried to listen as I skirted around a ray of weak moonlight splayed out on the tiles, afraid hitting its beam would set off an alarm.
“…got a pretty face,” the deep voice spoke.
A small pause.
“Hey, there’s nothing to be afraid of here. You just come along with me and I’ll take care of you tonight.”
I looked to Leon. He wasn’t paying attention to the single sided conversation at all. He was busy looking down the clear shot between aisles, checking both ways before making a swift scoot to the shelves of medicine. I followed him, scurrying below the large Pharmacy sign.
When we both made it out of the open, he turned to me and point over my shoulder. Glancing in that direction, I spotted a flashlight’s beam reflecting on the dusty tiles three aisles away. From what I could see, a silhouette outlined itself in the intense beam.
“Don’t you worry, baby. I have plenty of food in the back. We can dine and have some fun.”
Now I could hear the talker more clearly, as Leon selected a few antibiotics carefully for Uncle Jay on the back of the shelf and slipped them into his back pack. Though he gave no acknowledgement of the talking, it was clear what was going on here. And I didn’t like the sounds of it.
There was another breath of silence and then some sort of scuffling noise. I could imagine whoever that man had been talking to tried to move away. And then they’d been stopped. The thug let slip an expletive before returning to his sleezebag voice.
“C’mon baby, don’t be stuck up now. There’s no need for you to try that.”
His voice was getting more aggressive. Leon suddenly grasped my shoulder and gestured to the counter of the pharmacy (our next and probably last stop), which would lead us further out of the view of danger. One of the big rules of scavenging: we needed to get away from the people, not get caught up in their life story. That’s all Leon could think of.
Another short commotion. Another obvious struggle. Just three aisles away…
“Come on, there’s nothing we can do,” Leon whispered urgently, sensing the gears whirring away in my head. He apprehensively clutched my arm.
“Like hell we there isn’t,” I hissed, turning back to the aisle in havoc and breaking away from him with a quick yank of the arm.
“You wanna try that again?! You wanna try me again, bitch?!” the man shouted. The flashlight glare went wild and flew to the ceiling like the bat signal. Quick footsteps slapping the floor. There was grunting, scuffling and then a heavy thunk.
Dashing full speed ahead for rape aisle, I did my best to transform my starved body into a bullet train, ready to tackle down an unseen stranger. That being said, I weighed about a hundred pounds sopping wet (and boasted all of ten brain cells).
Next thing I knew, I was tackling a soldier’s broad, armored back (Black Banner faction, judging by the uniform). A crumpled form lay on the ground near my feet. My ‘bullet train momentum’ was only able to cause the man to stumble away from me. It wasn’t rocket science – simple physics, actually. He had army gear; he was well fed and trained; he was not going to be pushed over by the likes of me. Instead, his elbow immediately swung back and clocked me in the jaw. I was thrown backwards to the ground. I scrambled to a kneeling position as the flashlight mounted on the soldier’s gun swung around and pointed right at my nose. He had a rifle. I had fists. He regained his footing and hollered, “Son of a bitch!”
A single shot rang out in the building.
The soldier slumped forward, flashlight beam and rifle falling from my face to the ground. His arm made a flailing attempt to catch the shelf of discounted beach towels and ended up with a brightly colored bunch of blankets toppling on top of him. He twitched beneath the vibrant cloth and made a gurgling noise deep in the bottom his throat. The light from his gun scattered across the floor like spilled fluid.
My eyes, blinking in shock from the rapid fluctuation of light, focused on the girl still on the floor. She couldn’t be older than 18. Or maybe it was the way she lay curled into a little ball and making slow, quiet half-moans, half-sobs that made her seem so small.
Leon ran up behind me, breathing a lot harder than me. I could guess shock and adrenaline was still in effect, stunting my immediate reaction.
“What the – why the hell did you do that?!” he exhaled.
In his hand, he held the pistol that had saved me and taken the soldier’s life. Well, would eventually take the soldier’s life (he probably had about minute more of terrible spasming and gurgling before the last drop of soul left his body). Thank god Leon actually had a bullet left in that thing.
“You were going to leave her here? You were going to let that happen?” I retorted, my heart struggling to catch up with the present. Leon was not having such an easy time controlling himself.
“I was going to let - holy crap, you are an IDIOT. You really think I want you to get killed for a stranger? That guy was a second away from blowing your head off your shoulders!”
“Yeah, I didn’t think it through... I’m sorry. I thought if I was able to catch him off guard-“
“Oh god, now you think you can catch armed troops off guard – Damnit, Ryker. We need to get out of here before the rest of his squad shows up to get revenge,” he said, turning to the soldier whose weapon lay a couple feet away from his rapidly flexing and unflexing fingers. Without a second thought, Leon stooped over and grabbed the rifle off the floor.
“We aren’t leaving her behind. She’s definitely been hit in the head,” I said looking back at the almost catatonic girl. She still hadn’t given any sign of thankfulness towards her saviors. “And what makes you so sure there are more of them?”
Right as I opened my mouth, multiple lights and voices burst to life from the back of the super market. A sizable group coming from the back storage room, rattling off orders and spreading out among the aisles like buzzing insects in a disturbed nest.
“Hey, you all right there, Jake?” a loud voice called out above the din of soldiers. Leon switched the light on the end of the rifle off. We didn’t move or scarcely breathe, scared that flinching would trigger another mine. “JAKE! Hey, quit dickin’ around. We heard a shot.”
“Let’s move, now,” Leon hissed, turning to go.
The dying soldier by my feet couldn’t make so much as a peep with his failing vocal chords. The girl was rocking back and forth, holding her head in her hands in a perpetual, nodding grovel.
Leon glanced back at me hastily. I wasn’t going to leave someone to die after I’d just risked my life for them.
Why do I have to be such a compassionate moron? I thought as I crouched to gather up the flimsy, thin girl in my arms. I followed Leon as best as I could after that.
As the soldiers searched for their fallen buddy, Leon, the girl I was toting along, and I were quick in going back the way we had come – the closest and safest way out. We weren’t seen, or at least, none of the soldiers said anything. We had an easy, quiet exit.
The night air, lathered in smoke and early autumnal chill, hit us in the face as we ran in-between the first row of ghostly cars. We hiked up through the middle of the two by two column of permanently parked vehicles, low to the ground, partially hidden. Hopefully, if the soldiers looked outside the shopping center to see if we had escaped, we wouldn’t be noticeable right off the bat. Or better yet, we’d be in the next block. We would be in the clear in another block, maybe two. Then just a little further back to Uncle Jay’s house. Despite our meager haul, we were ready to call it a night.
The girl, still silent with eyes closed off to the world, rested in my barely manageable hold. Her head bobbed lightly up and down as I tried to be as quick and quiet as I could while carrying her shrimpy weight. She was in a deep sleep. The soldier must’ve conked her head pretty hard.
We did so in quiet, the rest of the night undisturbed except for the occasional echoing explosion popping off in another place the Crimson Crown or the Black Banner saw fit.
We passed a series of tree stubs that had once stood tall along the sidewalk but eventually became fuel and makeshift, rinkey dink weapons for desperate civilians. Back alleys always required our attention. But tonight, nothing jumped out, yelled boo, or shot at us. Past the familiar street corner crater at the cross between Pine Avenue and Harvard Street.
Shooting away into the north, Pine Avenue offered a spectacular view of Herrings Villa, burning away anything that wasn’t already ash. But it was quiet and devoid of life, and that meant no one was chasing us.
“Look, Leon, I think we’re good,” I broke the silence nervously, sensing the strong disapproval he’d been holding in since my heroic stunt.
“No, we don’t have those canned peaches or dried green beans or canned anything we needed. Thank God we were able to get the simple antibiotics for Uncle Jay. But damnit, we would’ve had time to search for meds behind the counter if we hadn’t gotten involved,” he replied without looking back at me. He looked both ways down the streets, then motioned for me to follow behind. “And keep quiet a little longer, won’t you? You know that’s the rule about going out the front door.”
Right. Rule #8 – keep your pie hole shut while outside.
Then, breaking his own rule once more, he whispered, “You still got that girl?”
He hadn’t even looked over his shoulder to see if I had left her.
“Yeah. Where else would she be,” I said with a touch of bitterness, hoisting her up one more time as she was slipping from my arms. It seemed she was getting heavier in my tired arms every second - like a limp bag of sand that kept adding a pound a minute.
“Ryker,” Leon spoke again, and stopped for a brief second as if he was debating whether or not to officially kick the girl to the curb. But he resumed walking and I followed. “You know we can’t sustain four people. We just don’t have enough to-“
“-So why don’t we forget that other people exist in this damned city. According to you, we’re the only people worth keeping alive-“
“Enough. We’ll talk once we get back. Not another word now,” he said, officially closing any discussion and continuing home on the double. I followed on the double, allowing a four-letter word to slip under my breath.
We were able to get all the way back to the house with no immediate problems. The first signs of early morning were showing up in the clouded up sky as we came into view of Uncle Jay’s house. We had made it another day. With less food than before, but at least with badly needed medicine. Medicine that would hopefully drive out the sickness eating away Jay that had been cured long before this war. Thanks to the war, a variety of diseases had risen from unsanitary conditions and everyone’s third world living style.
He really was going to make it, wasn’t he? Uncle Jay, the only other family member I had besides Leon. Jay had been the one to take us in after mom and dad were crushed by our house’s collapsing roof on the first day of bombing. Tough luck. Jay gave us shelter in his house, which was situated on the edge of the city where the last complex buildings and apartments gave way to the mazes of suburbs outside official city limits. And so it had remained as our kind of safe and secure abode for the months following our parents’ deaths and the commencement of the siege.
Part of the roof was fallen in. Half a wall had been taken with it. The almost endless shakes of the city had weakened the aged estate’s foundation. Electricity had quit since last Christmas. And we had a series of ditches in the backyard to serve as toilets. But it held up surprisingly well for being so old, offering better accommodations than the streets.
The brown, dried up lawn welcomed us as we walked around the perimeter of the picket fenced estate and to the gate that led to the front door.
I could hear the slightest stirring from the girl, as if she was trying to talk in her sleep but couldn’t make a sound. I adjusted my hold on her and followed Leon through the gate as he unlocked it with a brass key.
We strode up the creaky porch steps to confront the lion knocker on the front door. Leon reached out to knock it once, pause, and then knock it twice more (to let Jay know it was us and only us). Leon then unlocked the door with the same key.
We had made it and so would Uncle Jay. No more raging fever for him. And we had someone to take care of for a day, maybe two, before she could go back to wherever she came from. Everyone was going to be okay. We entered the large, safe house foyer and Leon closed the door behind us with a relieved click of the lock.
Maybe this girl even has a mom or dad, worried to death right now. When she doesn’t return from the store, will her parents panic? Or does she even have parents anymore? Anyway, we’ll take care of her for as long as it takes before she’s well enough to go back to… wherever she came from…
My thoughts died off, not just from a familiar wave of inexplicable sadness welling up in my throat, but from a feeling – yet another feeling of foreboding. It was just as I was about to ask Leon where to put the unconscious girl down that I saw him stop in his tracks. He stood in the doorframe of the empty dining room.
Just standing there. And then, the smell hit me like a ton of bricks. The stench of slowly filled the room. The reality set in.
Jay.
“…Jay? Un…Uncle Jay?” I said, my voice just barely wavering above a whisper.
Leon slowly walked into the kitchen, and took a left to the door of the room Jay had been resting in when we left for the store. He paused at the door, raising a hand to his mouth and nose, and stepping inside. I just stood there; I didn’t want to move from the spot. I only heard the creaking of floorboards in the other room and the sound of Leon gasping out, “Oh God.”
I slid to the ground, dropping the girl to the floor in front of me, almost as limp as her. The sense of relief had been violently overcome by a fresh batch of devastation.
We blew it. We waited too long. We had no way of knowing the time limit, and now it had expired overnight.
Leon reentered the foyer a few minutes later and sat down next to me on the cold, lifeless floor. He wordlessly brought me into a tight embrace, and it was all I could muster not to scream. He wasn’t able to cry and I wasn’t able to either.
Pavle
Kids always want to grow up and be something cool and fun and whimsical. Some want to be an airplane pilot or the ever popular choice, an astronaut. Their little dumbasses can’t understand that things almost never work that way.
As for me, when I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be a super hero. Of course, in the back of my mind I knew that being a crime fighter with supernatural powers was impossible. I think kids know better than to believe in Santa Claus and mythical fairytale stuff by early elementary, but most continue to believe in it until the faith reluctantly fades away with innocence. Like me. I knew better, but I chose to indulge that dream job until I was beaten up for it in 2nd grade. Then it became less fun to believe, so I didn’t. Good times, good times.
A punch flew into the side of my face and sent my sight into a sparking mess. I allowed my head to rest back on the comfortable cloth seat for just a moment. Mmm, if I weren’t being pounded every twenty seconds, I would’ve slept right there in the car.
It was late. Early morning light sifted through the sooty transport car windows and illuminated the commander’s grinning teeth as he saw me slump back against the seat. He took it as a sign of pleading resignation. My back and tied up hands pressed into the soft fabric of the seat, away from sight.
These shitheads are easy to fool.
“A shame your journey on the lamb had to end like this,” the commander’s voice guffawed beside me.
Flanked by two guards in the back seat left little room for error. One slip, and my ticket out of bondage would be discovered and taken away. As my ringing head cleared up a bit, the secret shiv in my hand continued to work its way up and down against the restraints on my wrist, tightly concealed behind my back.
Although I swore I could hear that tiny rope being cut over the roaring engine, my captors didn’t seem to notice. Instead, they just heaped on the insults. Which only fueled me.
“Betrayed by his new employer and offered to us as a peace offering. Damn. Sucks to be the back stabber that gets back stabbed, eh, Pavle?” the commander lolled on. My body burned. Not from the scrapes and bruises and cuts inflicted by my captors in this transport, but from the pure, searing anger building up inside me.
Not rage. No, rage is something different, something much wilder and thoughtless. Careless.
No, I was not careless. I had an aim and a means to reach that aim. Get out of these restraints. I was about halfway done with that task, no problems there; no reason to concentrate so much on that one. Instead, I was calculating exactly how it would feel to sink my soon-to-be-revealed blade into the neck of the driver and allow a dead man to drive this carousel. Yes, I would have to be quick. Very fast and precise.
Otherwise, my two backseat buddies might recover from their initial surprise and get the upper hand. If I missed and struck the driver’s seat or he was able to duck in some freakishly fast reflex, I was as good as dead. I had to move quickly, and it was exactly the fear of so many potential failures that sped my shiv deeper and deeper into the bindings.
I lifted my eyes to the silent driver, gauged the distance yet again. He was little over an arm’s length away from my current position. I could close that distance.
“No comment. I got you,” the commander sighed. “Well, I wouldn’t have much to say if I was in your position either. After all, it seems like you already did enough talking to last a lifetime… and the lifetimes of your entire squad.”
“Good one, chief,” the guy on my left commented. I didn’t know suck ups still existed this far into the war.
Then came another blow from the commander, this one to my rib cage. I made an urf noise. My back stiffened and almost let slip my life line. Thankfully my fist was as good as glued to the shiv. If I dropped my shiv, my hand would drop away too. Almost there. Less than a minute more, and I was ready. I had the kinks of my plan worked out for the most part.
“Then again, what I just said was a little insensitive, yeah? They were the lives of our own faction, after all. Looters, deserters, street rabble, even the fuckin enemy don’t compare to you,” the commander hissed in my ear. He had a fresh dose of inspiration now. “You’re below the lowest of them all. If you believe in hell, you’re bound for the ninth level, for sure. For sure.”
“And what is it exactly that you know about hell?” I couldn’t help but murmur.
A predictable punch to the gut.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Pavle? I know that you’re paving the way for me, and that’s all I need to know,” he glared into the side of my head. I refused to raise my head to him. It was all I could do to stifle the growing laugh. I was practically crying from restraining the yuks as I shifted my shiv hand a centimeter to the left and found my bonds no longer clutching my wrist.
I’m no super hero. But I like to think my quips have a superhuman quality to them.
“Trouble is… I never liked trail blazing,” I said.
Nice.
I lunged forward, within an arm’s length from my target. Arm swing tight, not perfect, but quick. It met its mark well and stayed there as I brought the back of my skull into the nose of my buddy to the left. A shout and a bellow from each backseat companion. The commander, clumsily hoisting up his assault rifle from his side as if to fire a gun in the car (It’s not safe to use a firearm in the vehicle. It could distract the driver.), almost managed to take aim. As my right hand shot forward and connected with the barrel, shots rang out and sent my sight and hearing into chaos. The world began to go tipsy, twisting first to the left and sending all the passengers swaying to the right, then vice versa, like we were all part of some swingin’ dance. Gravity went wild. Blood was the last thing I saw. Blood spurting out of the still silent, twitching driver and onto the passenger seat.
Then an unseen impact flung me forward into the black.
Yeah, I don’t have superpowers… but I feel like I’m flying…
Wacky Wednesdays officially start in October, since it's more of a Halloween thing, but meh, this is the first honorary Wacky Wednesday of 2016.
I've unanimously decided to restart Mute. There are parts that needed mending and revision obviously, but the main change is going to be the addition of a new rogue to the team, Pavle. The points of view are supposed to be more divvied up between group members other than the mute herself (Ryker, Leon, Pavle) to give their perspectives on Myra and the situations they're in.
Mute
City – Late September, 2031
Ryker Sunderland
I don’t know what time of night it was. I didn’t check my watch, but it had to be just past midnight when Leon and I reached the supermarket parking lot. The hazy nocturne light, fed by the close fires of downtown and smoke riddled moonlight, illuminated our discreet way. As we stepped on the fringes of the lot, I noticed someone else, a figure, scurrying along the pavement not 60 feet away, headed in the same direction as us. I was about to alert Leon to the guy’s presence when an explosion decided to go off, fragmenting the figure into tiny pieces and sending Leon and I to our knees out of the tremendous shakes in the earth. There was no warning. Obviously the stranger hadn’t even had enough time to scream.
I never could get used to those surprise mines. No matter how many times I witnessed it, it always sent me into a fit of shakes.
We instinctively ducked behind a burned out car, probably a Mercedes, though it was hard to tell. I didn’t normally pay attention to cars anymore, especially at times like these, but still… it probably used to be a real sweet ride when it wasn’t dead. Probably could go over 60mph easy. And that rusty metal driver’s seat that cloth used to cover would’ve been real comfy to sit on. And sleep on.
Damn war, taking good people and good cars. And food. Supplies. Comfortable beds. Fun. Modern fighting seems to drain those all away. Honestly, when was the last time I had kicked back in a decent recliner?
Thinking about it made me sad, so I stopped and tried to focus again.
Only when the reverberations subsided and the concrete had returned to its normal, metronomic tremble from downtown bombings, I looked back at Leon who was crouching along with me behind the mighty calloused car, his comforting glock pistol clutched in his fist. By his blank but also tense expression, he heard the same thing as me – silence (even though the bombastic noise had left ringing in both our ears).
I allowed my shoulders to slacken a hair.
It was a random mine. Troops don’t target civilians for no reason.
Actually, that was a blatant lie. But odds were that the mine wasn’t meant for a lowly scavenger.
Leon glanced at me to see if I was okay. I gave a light nod, anxious but more annoyed than anything. Why did he always have to think of me as a fragile liability? I had been on tons of these runs with him, and whenever any mishap arose, there was that look. I swear I could hear the overprotective thoughts yelling in his head every time I noticed that look.
We moved forward. Silent, cautious, watching closely for any more concealed detonators or anything that might cause us to lose our limbs, we covered the remaining ground to the side entrance with short jogging bursts between car coverage. As inconspicuous as we could try to be, we were probably pretty easy to spot from anyone that might be lurking nearby. I could easily imagine a soldier watching us as we ran through the dark lot. There was always a possibility that a sniper actually had us on their scope, ready to pick us off just for target practice any second. Barrel steadied on a bombed out building’s window sill. The omnipresent, elusive, sometimes imaginary, sometimes dangerously real sniper. Completely apathetic to the petty civilian souls caught in the constant urban crossfire below him. It wouldn’t matter which side he was on. By this point, no side really cared about the people that had died or survived in this long torn city.
Troops don’t target civilians for no reason. Ha. Sometimes I actually wonder if I am as stupid as Leon thinks I am. Ha.
Despite these trepidations, we made it the darkened doors containing our one remaining source of food and stuff that could let us survive another day or two. Above the smashed up glass doors and windows, a series of giant, browning letters, most listing to the right or left or missing entirely, read: W LCO E TO WA –M T.
It was time to stroll in.
That being said, we were pretty damn desperate to be looking around the super market when we were sure at least a dozen faction thugs were crawling around inside. I wasn’t blaming them for crashing here – after all, it was one of the best place to camp out in a warzone. We were just going to help out by relieving them of some of the decrepit store’s clutter.
Anyway, the entrance was wide open, and we slipped inside – uninvited as usual. No lights on, duh, so we had to go by the timid nighttime light sifting through windows and various holes in the wall and ceiling. Even with all the openings in the structure, it was almost too dark to see where we were going, which was both good for stealthy movement and bad for spotting anything useful.
Our footsteps seemed to echo out our arrival to the ex-shopping center. I stayed beside Leon, basically following his lead, no surprise there. We knew where to go. There was no time to stick around and browse yu-gi-oh cards or $5 DVD’s, even if they were tempting.
As we moved deeper into the building like solemn monks shuffling along in a monastery, I was able to make out more of our surroundings. We were in the gardening department of the store. A few thoroughly decomposed plants were lying haphazardly on the shelves or concrete floor. Litter littered the floor, and we each had to take our steps carefully. We passed by the useless items quickly.
Leon looked back at me, this time with an expression of be-completely-quiet-cause-here-we-go.
Thanks bro, it never dawned on me to be FUCKING QUIET.
Sticking close to the walls and low to the ground, we approached the threshold into the main depot. From our view, the looming area seemed dejected, beams of light cutting through the slanted, broken up ceiling.
That was about the time we heard something coming from deeper within the building. Voices. People. Danger.
Looking to Leon, I was surprised to see him move into the first open aisle across from the garden center. I guess Leon thought the risks were less costly than the possibility of supplies. I also guess I was just a scared pussy that went along with whatever my older brother did. So I didn’t protest and slunk into the dark aisle along with him.
There was no way either of us could afford to back down now. We needed those meds for Uncle Jay, and admitting defeat in the name of the willies and heebie-jeebies was unacceptable. It was an unavoidable fact. Uncle Jay would die if we didn’t get him some real help fast.
It was as we passed by the mucky tanks of belly up fish that I could discern the nearby sounds of someone talking. But it seemed like it wasn’t a conversation at all. All I could hear was one voice, as if the stranger (presumably a man, judging by the gruff cadence) was talking to himself. I tried to listen as I skirted around a ray of weak moonlight splayed out on the tiles, afraid hitting its beam would set off an alarm.
“…got a pretty face,” the deep voice spoke.
A small pause.
“Hey, there’s nothing to be afraid of here. You just come along with me and I’ll take care of you tonight.”
I looked to Leon. He wasn’t paying attention to the single sided conversation at all. He was busy looking down the clear shot between aisles, checking both ways before making a swift scoot to the shelves of medicine. I followed him, scurrying below the large Pharmacy sign.
When we both made it out of the open, he turned to me and point over my shoulder. Glancing in that direction, I spotted a flashlight’s beam reflecting on the dusty tiles three aisles away. From what I could see, a silhouette outlined itself in the intense beam.
“Don’t you worry, baby. I have plenty of food in the back. We can dine and have some fun.”
Now I could hear the talker more clearly, as Leon selected a few antibiotics carefully for Uncle Jay on the back of the shelf and slipped them into his back pack. Though he gave no acknowledgement of the talking, it was clear what was going on here. And I didn’t like the sounds of it.
There was another breath of silence and then some sort of scuffling noise. I could imagine whoever that man had been talking to tried to move away. And then they’d been stopped. The thug let slip an expletive before returning to his sleezebag voice.
“C’mon baby, don’t be stuck up now. There’s no need for you to try that.”
His voice was getting more aggressive. Leon suddenly grasped my shoulder and gestured to the counter of the pharmacy (our next and probably last stop), which would lead us further out of the view of danger. One of the big rules of scavenging: we needed to get away from the people, not get caught up in their life story. That’s all Leon could think of.
Another short commotion. Another obvious struggle. Just three aisles away…
“Come on, there’s nothing we can do,” Leon whispered urgently, sensing the gears whirring away in my head. He apprehensively clutched my arm.
“Like hell we there isn’t,” I hissed, turning back to the aisle in havoc and breaking away from him with a quick yank of the arm.
“You wanna try that again?! You wanna try me again, bitch?!” the man shouted. The flashlight glare went wild and flew to the ceiling like the bat signal. Quick footsteps slapping the floor. There was grunting, scuffling and then a heavy thunk.
Dashing full speed ahead for rape aisle, I did my best to transform my starved body into a bullet train, ready to tackle down an unseen stranger. That being said, I weighed about a hundred pounds sopping wet (and boasted all of ten brain cells).
Next thing I knew, I was tackling a soldier’s broad, armored back (Black Banner faction, judging by the uniform). A crumpled form lay on the ground near my feet. My ‘bullet train momentum’ was only able to cause the man to stumble away from me. It wasn’t rocket science – simple physics, actually. He had army gear; he was well fed and trained; he was not going to be pushed over by the likes of me. Instead, his elbow immediately swung back and clocked me in the jaw. I was thrown backwards to the ground. I scrambled to a kneeling position as the flashlight mounted on the soldier’s gun swung around and pointed right at my nose. He had a rifle. I had fists. He regained his footing and hollered, “Son of a bitch!”
A single shot rang out in the building.
The soldier slumped forward, flashlight beam and rifle falling from my face to the ground. His arm made a flailing attempt to catch the shelf of discounted beach towels and ended up with a brightly colored bunch of blankets toppling on top of him. He twitched beneath the vibrant cloth and made a gurgling noise deep in the bottom his throat. The light from his gun scattered across the floor like spilled fluid.
My eyes, blinking in shock from the rapid fluctuation of light, focused on the girl still on the floor. She couldn’t be older than 18. Or maybe it was the way she lay curled into a little ball and making slow, quiet half-moans, half-sobs that made her seem so small.
Leon ran up behind me, breathing a lot harder than me. I could guess shock and adrenaline was still in effect, stunting my immediate reaction.
“What the – why the hell did you do that?!” he exhaled.
In his hand, he held the pistol that had saved me and taken the soldier’s life. Well, would eventually take the soldier’s life (he probably had about minute more of terrible spasming and gurgling before the last drop of soul left his body). Thank god Leon actually had a bullet left in that thing.
“You were going to leave her here? You were going to let that happen?” I retorted, my heart struggling to catch up with the present. Leon was not having such an easy time controlling himself.
“I was going to let - holy crap, you are an IDIOT. You really think I want you to get killed for a stranger? That guy was a second away from blowing your head off your shoulders!”
“Yeah, I didn’t think it through... I’m sorry. I thought if I was able to catch him off guard-“
“Oh god, now you think you can catch armed troops off guard – Damnit, Ryker. We need to get out of here before the rest of his squad shows up to get revenge,” he said, turning to the soldier whose weapon lay a couple feet away from his rapidly flexing and unflexing fingers. Without a second thought, Leon stooped over and grabbed the rifle off the floor.
“We aren’t leaving her behind. She’s definitely been hit in the head,” I said looking back at the almost catatonic girl. She still hadn’t given any sign of thankfulness towards her saviors. “And what makes you so sure there are more of them?”
Right as I opened my mouth, multiple lights and voices burst to life from the back of the super market. A sizable group coming from the back storage room, rattling off orders and spreading out among the aisles like buzzing insects in a disturbed nest.
“Hey, you all right there, Jake?” a loud voice called out above the din of soldiers. Leon switched the light on the end of the rifle off. We didn’t move or scarcely breathe, scared that flinching would trigger another mine. “JAKE! Hey, quit dickin’ around. We heard a shot.”
“Let’s move, now,” Leon hissed, turning to go.
The dying soldier by my feet couldn’t make so much as a peep with his failing vocal chords. The girl was rocking back and forth, holding her head in her hands in a perpetual, nodding grovel.
Leon glanced back at me hastily. I wasn’t going to leave someone to die after I’d just risked my life for them.
Why do I have to be such a compassionate moron? I thought as I crouched to gather up the flimsy, thin girl in my arms. I followed Leon as best as I could after that.
As the soldiers searched for their fallen buddy, Leon, the girl I was toting along, and I were quick in going back the way we had come – the closest and safest way out. We weren’t seen, or at least, none of the soldiers said anything. We had an easy, quiet exit.
The night air, lathered in smoke and early autumnal chill, hit us in the face as we ran in-between the first row of ghostly cars. We hiked up through the middle of the two by two column of permanently parked vehicles, low to the ground, partially hidden. Hopefully, if the soldiers looked outside the shopping center to see if we had escaped, we wouldn’t be noticeable right off the bat. Or better yet, we’d be in the next block. We would be in the clear in another block, maybe two. Then just a little further back to Uncle Jay’s house. Despite our meager haul, we were ready to call it a night.
The girl, still silent with eyes closed off to the world, rested in my barely manageable hold. Her head bobbed lightly up and down as I tried to be as quick and quiet as I could while carrying her shrimpy weight. She was in a deep sleep. The soldier must’ve conked her head pretty hard.
We did so in quiet, the rest of the night undisturbed except for the occasional echoing explosion popping off in another place the Crimson Crown or the Black Banner saw fit.
We passed a series of tree stubs that had once stood tall along the sidewalk but eventually became fuel and makeshift, rinkey dink weapons for desperate civilians. Back alleys always required our attention. But tonight, nothing jumped out, yelled boo, or shot at us. Past the familiar street corner crater at the cross between Pine Avenue and Harvard Street.
Shooting away into the north, Pine Avenue offered a spectacular view of Herrings Villa, burning away anything that wasn’t already ash. But it was quiet and devoid of life, and that meant no one was chasing us.
“Look, Leon, I think we’re good,” I broke the silence nervously, sensing the strong disapproval he’d been holding in since my heroic stunt.
“No, we don’t have those canned peaches or dried green beans or canned anything we needed. Thank God we were able to get the simple antibiotics for Uncle Jay. But damnit, we would’ve had time to search for meds behind the counter if we hadn’t gotten involved,” he replied without looking back at me. He looked both ways down the streets, then motioned for me to follow behind. “And keep quiet a little longer, won’t you? You know that’s the rule about going out the front door.”
Right. Rule #8 – keep your pie hole shut while outside.
Then, breaking his own rule once more, he whispered, “You still got that girl?”
He hadn’t even looked over his shoulder to see if I had left her.
“Yeah. Where else would she be,” I said with a touch of bitterness, hoisting her up one more time as she was slipping from my arms. It seemed she was getting heavier in my tired arms every second - like a limp bag of sand that kept adding a pound a minute.
“Ryker,” Leon spoke again, and stopped for a brief second as if he was debating whether or not to officially kick the girl to the curb. But he resumed walking and I followed. “You know we can’t sustain four people. We just don’t have enough to-“
“-So why don’t we forget that other people exist in this damned city. According to you, we’re the only people worth keeping alive-“
“Enough. We’ll talk once we get back. Not another word now,” he said, officially closing any discussion and continuing home on the double. I followed on the double, allowing a four-letter word to slip under my breath.
We were able to get all the way back to the house with no immediate problems. The first signs of early morning were showing up in the clouded up sky as we came into view of Uncle Jay’s house. We had made it another day. With less food than before, but at least with badly needed medicine. Medicine that would hopefully drive out the sickness eating away Jay that had been cured long before this war. Thanks to the war, a variety of diseases had risen from unsanitary conditions and everyone’s third world living style.
He really was going to make it, wasn’t he? Uncle Jay, the only other family member I had besides Leon. Jay had been the one to take us in after mom and dad were crushed by our house’s collapsing roof on the first day of bombing. Tough luck. Jay gave us shelter in his house, which was situated on the edge of the city where the last complex buildings and apartments gave way to the mazes of suburbs outside official city limits. And so it had remained as our kind of safe and secure abode for the months following our parents’ deaths and the commencement of the siege.
Part of the roof was fallen in. Half a wall had been taken with it. The almost endless shakes of the city had weakened the aged estate’s foundation. Electricity had quit since last Christmas. And we had a series of ditches in the backyard to serve as toilets. But it held up surprisingly well for being so old, offering better accommodations than the streets.
The brown, dried up lawn welcomed us as we walked around the perimeter of the picket fenced estate and to the gate that led to the front door.
I could hear the slightest stirring from the girl, as if she was trying to talk in her sleep but couldn’t make a sound. I adjusted my hold on her and followed Leon through the gate as he unlocked it with a brass key.
We strode up the creaky porch steps to confront the lion knocker on the front door. Leon reached out to knock it once, pause, and then knock it twice more (to let Jay know it was us and only us). Leon then unlocked the door with the same key.
We had made it and so would Uncle Jay. No more raging fever for him. And we had someone to take care of for a day, maybe two, before she could go back to wherever she came from. Everyone was going to be okay. We entered the large, safe house foyer and Leon closed the door behind us with a relieved click of the lock.
Maybe this girl even has a mom or dad, worried to death right now. When she doesn’t return from the store, will her parents panic? Or does she even have parents anymore? Anyway, we’ll take care of her for as long as it takes before she’s well enough to go back to… wherever she came from…
My thoughts died off, not just from a familiar wave of inexplicable sadness welling up in my throat, but from a feeling – yet another feeling of foreboding. It was just as I was about to ask Leon where to put the unconscious girl down that I saw him stop in his tracks. He stood in the doorframe of the empty dining room.
Just standing there. And then, the smell hit me like a ton of bricks. The stench of slowly filled the room. The reality set in.
Jay.
“…Jay? Un…Uncle Jay?” I said, my voice just barely wavering above a whisper.
Leon slowly walked into the kitchen, and took a left to the door of the room Jay had been resting in when we left for the store. He paused at the door, raising a hand to his mouth and nose, and stepping inside. I just stood there; I didn’t want to move from the spot. I only heard the creaking of floorboards in the other room and the sound of Leon gasping out, “Oh God.”
I slid to the ground, dropping the girl to the floor in front of me, almost as limp as her. The sense of relief had been violently overcome by a fresh batch of devastation.
We blew it. We waited too long. We had no way of knowing the time limit, and now it had expired overnight.
Leon reentered the foyer a few minutes later and sat down next to me on the cold, lifeless floor. He wordlessly brought me into a tight embrace, and it was all I could muster not to scream. He wasn’t able to cry and I wasn’t able to either.
Pavle
Kids always want to grow up and be something cool and fun and whimsical. Some want to be an airplane pilot or the ever popular choice, an astronaut. Their little dumbasses can’t understand that things almost never work that way.
As for me, when I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be a super hero. Of course, in the back of my mind I knew that being a crime fighter with supernatural powers was impossible. I think kids know better than to believe in Santa Claus and mythical fairytale stuff by early elementary, but most continue to believe in it until the faith reluctantly fades away with innocence. Like me. I knew better, but I chose to indulge that dream job until I was beaten up for it in 2nd grade. Then it became less fun to believe, so I didn’t. Good times, good times.
A punch flew into the side of my face and sent my sight into a sparking mess. I allowed my head to rest back on the comfortable cloth seat for just a moment. Mmm, if I weren’t being pounded every twenty seconds, I would’ve slept right there in the car.
It was late. Early morning light sifted through the sooty transport car windows and illuminated the commander’s grinning teeth as he saw me slump back against the seat. He took it as a sign of pleading resignation. My back and tied up hands pressed into the soft fabric of the seat, away from sight.
These shitheads are easy to fool.
“A shame your journey on the lamb had to end like this,” the commander’s voice guffawed beside me.
Flanked by two guards in the back seat left little room for error. One slip, and my ticket out of bondage would be discovered and taken away. As my ringing head cleared up a bit, the secret shiv in my hand continued to work its way up and down against the restraints on my wrist, tightly concealed behind my back.
Although I swore I could hear that tiny rope being cut over the roaring engine, my captors didn’t seem to notice. Instead, they just heaped on the insults. Which only fueled me.
“Betrayed by his new employer and offered to us as a peace offering. Damn. Sucks to be the back stabber that gets back stabbed, eh, Pavle?” the commander lolled on. My body burned. Not from the scrapes and bruises and cuts inflicted by my captors in this transport, but from the pure, searing anger building up inside me.
Not rage. No, rage is something different, something much wilder and thoughtless. Careless.
No, I was not careless. I had an aim and a means to reach that aim. Get out of these restraints. I was about halfway done with that task, no problems there; no reason to concentrate so much on that one. Instead, I was calculating exactly how it would feel to sink my soon-to-be-revealed blade into the neck of the driver and allow a dead man to drive this carousel. Yes, I would have to be quick. Very fast and precise.
Otherwise, my two backseat buddies might recover from their initial surprise and get the upper hand. If I missed and struck the driver’s seat or he was able to duck in some freakishly fast reflex, I was as good as dead. I had to move quickly, and it was exactly the fear of so many potential failures that sped my shiv deeper and deeper into the bindings.
I lifted my eyes to the silent driver, gauged the distance yet again. He was little over an arm’s length away from my current position. I could close that distance.
“No comment. I got you,” the commander sighed. “Well, I wouldn’t have much to say if I was in your position either. After all, it seems like you already did enough talking to last a lifetime… and the lifetimes of your entire squad.”
“Good one, chief,” the guy on my left commented. I didn’t know suck ups still existed this far into the war.
Then came another blow from the commander, this one to my rib cage. I made an urf noise. My back stiffened and almost let slip my life line. Thankfully my fist was as good as glued to the shiv. If I dropped my shiv, my hand would drop away too. Almost there. Less than a minute more, and I was ready. I had the kinks of my plan worked out for the most part.
“Then again, what I just said was a little insensitive, yeah? They were the lives of our own faction, after all. Looters, deserters, street rabble, even the fuckin enemy don’t compare to you,” the commander hissed in my ear. He had a fresh dose of inspiration now. “You’re below the lowest of them all. If you believe in hell, you’re bound for the ninth level, for sure. For sure.”
“And what is it exactly that you know about hell?” I couldn’t help but murmur.
A predictable punch to the gut.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Pavle? I know that you’re paving the way for me, and that’s all I need to know,” he glared into the side of my head. I refused to raise my head to him. It was all I could do to stifle the growing laugh. I was practically crying from restraining the yuks as I shifted my shiv hand a centimeter to the left and found my bonds no longer clutching my wrist.
I’m no super hero. But I like to think my quips have a superhuman quality to them.
“Trouble is… I never liked trail blazing,” I said.
Nice.
I lunged forward, within an arm’s length from my target. Arm swing tight, not perfect, but quick. It met its mark well and stayed there as I brought the back of my skull into the nose of my buddy to the left. A shout and a bellow from each backseat companion. The commander, clumsily hoisting up his assault rifle from his side as if to fire a gun in the car (It’s not safe to use a firearm in the vehicle. It could distract the driver.), almost managed to take aim. As my right hand shot forward and connected with the barrel, shots rang out and sent my sight and hearing into chaos. The world began to go tipsy, twisting first to the left and sending all the passengers swaying to the right, then vice versa, like we were all part of some swingin’ dance. Gravity went wild. Blood was the last thing I saw. Blood spurting out of the still silent, twitching driver and onto the passenger seat.
Then an unseen impact flung me forward into the black.
Yeah, I don’t have superpowers… but I feel like I’m flying…