Found this one on my comp not too long ago, after some editing turns out I have a decent prologue for a 20k novella. 
Yeye, I know PROLOGUES etc etc but hey.
Let me know what you think!
[CENTER]Lumina Black
[/CENTER]
Prologue. A Payment for Evil, No Life for the Good
Round 1. Welcome to Lumina Black
Round 2. Into the Wilderness
Intermission. The Love of a Bullet
Round 3. Quad Damage
Round 4. Endgame
Epilogue. A Life for the Evil, No Payment for Good
Prologue
A Payment for Evil, No Life for the Good
Two guards shared a cigarette by the entrance to the shopping mall's parking lot, casting long shadows across the cracked asphalt. Half a dozen burning tires kept the night around them at bay. Jeremy could smell the melting rubber from the adjacent alley where he and Lars stayed out of sight, pumped up and ready for action. Desperation does that to people, he thought. Hungry men know little fear. Jeremy adjusted his baseball cap and took another peek behind the corner. From what he made out, the guards looked just as ragged as they did. That didn't bother him, of course. The year 2052 was about survival of the fittest, and if Jeremy and Lars were to survive, they had no choice but be the fittest, smartest, meanest of them all.
"Are they armed?" Lars whispered. He was a head taller than Jeremy, but his advantages ended there. Of course they're armed, fool, they're guards. He said nothing. Over the years they spent making ends meet, Jeremy saved Lars's ass so many times he'd lost count. Yet, as useless as Lars was when the **** hit the fan, Jeremy knew that his friend was always there to watch his back. They used to go to the same high school before the Collapse, what seemed like an eternity ago, and then Lars simply stuck around. When everyone started turning up dead, killed in the bombing raids, the gang wars, and the famines that followed, they stuck together, joking that they were too stubborn to die. These days they didn't joke much. Neither did they think much about how they had real lives once, parents, school, or a future other than becoming enforcers in some Warlord's private army.
Like the world around them, they were way beyond the point of no return.
"Okay, so it's like we've practiced. The moment you hear the flash go bang, you dash for the entrance. I'll be right behind you." Jeremy took out the flash grenade. It fit neatly into his palm. It was hard to imagine that they had to trade a week's supply of food to a junk collector for the thing. Jeremy hoped it was worth it. If everything went according to plan, they'd have provisions for a month, not to mention medical supplies, most likely even actual firearms, weapons that they could trade for more supplies when the going got hard.
"One, two," Jeremy started counting, leaving his cover. He stopped. One of the guards lay face-down on the ground, the half-smoked cigarette still burning in his mortified fingers. A man in a balaclava held the other guard in a headlock. Flames reflected in a stripe of steel, a quick movement. Blood exploded from the guard's throat, squirting in a fountain of red. The masked man let the body drop and dived into the entrance. Jeremy jumped back to cover and stood there, not daring to move. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a man killed, but death always found new ways to surprise him, the surprises never pleasant. He put the grenade back into his backpack’s pouch.
"What?" Lars asked, "What's going on?"
"We've got competition, that's what. Never mind, there should be plenty of stuff there for everyone." What else could he say? It was too late to turn back. Fight or starve, that's how the world worked. "Let's go."
They ran out of the alley, stopping only to check the corpses for weapons. Nothing. The competition worked fast. Inside the parking lot, tar barrels burnt next to support columns, providing just enough light for them to find their way through. The lot was empty. The original plan had been to blind the guards, take their weapons, bust in, take whatever they could and get out. But life hated plans and the men who made them.
They got into the room connecting the lot to the mall proper. Jeremy ignored the elevator doors and motioned Lars to follow him up the stairs.
When they reached the first flight, a gunshot cut through the silence. Then another one. And another one, followed by screams, curses, more shooting. A full-blown firefight erupted inside the mall, at least four or five weapons firing at once.
Jeremy hadn't expected the place to be so packed with trigger happy men. The locals told them that the mall was used by a Warlord named Zeke to store surplus food and ammunition. They said the Warlord thought that people knew better than to mess with him, so the mall was supposed to be guarded by a skeleton crew, two or three men tops. Jeremy should've known better than to trust a stranger.
They stepped onto the mall's ground floor. Tar barrels lined the walls here as well, the flames bringing shadow webs on the floor to life. Luckily, the firefight was on the highest level, bright flashes gunshot after gunshot. It looked like their mysterious buddy decided to start from the top and work his way down. Half-crouched, Jeremy and Lars moved shadow to shadow, heading towards the floor's center. More shots rang out on the top level.
Between the screams and the firefight, Jeremy decided against sneaking. He stood up full height and rushed deeper into the mall. Shouts shouts like, "Ah, ****, I've been shot!" and "Give me a mag, I'm out!" and "Where the **** is he?" followed the deafening gun fire. Their competitor knew what he was doing.
The moment they got to the middle of the ground floor, Jeremy knew they hit the jackpot. A pair of elevator tubes stood in the center, illuminated by the shaking flames. Nearby, two sets of escalator stairs lead to the second floor. At one point there must have been a pool next to the elevators, but the water had long since dried out. The pool had been repurposed for storage. Bags stacked onto each other covered most of its surface, weapons squeezed in between, their black barrels staring at the mall’s ceiling. Medical kits, canned food, bottles of beer, water, and whole blocks of cigarettes lay in piles on top of the bags. The mall was a treasure cave of the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century and its treasures were a sight to behold.
Jeremy took the backpack off, motioning Lars to do the same. Another gunshot rang out upstairs, then a shout, “Flood lights, where are my flood lights?!”
A generator engine coughed in the background. Before Jeremy realized what was about to happen, lights hit them from all directions at once. He shielded his eyes, blind and disorientated. A gunshot.
“I got him!”
“There’s two more of them!” Another voice, this time much closer.
Somebody was running down the escalator. Jeremy grabbed Lars by the sleeve. His eyes burnt with pain, adjusting to the unexpected light. He dashed back to the stairs through which they’ve entered the floor, pulling his friend with him. The least they could do was get out alive. A burst of bullets hit directly in front of his feet, raising up a cloud of ceramic dust.
“Stop! I have you in my cross hair, move again and I’ll shoot you dead.”
A man leaned from the second floor’s railing, looking down at them through the scope of his rifle. To cross the fresh bullet holes scar that ran across the shattered floor tiles meant certain death. To surrender meant death almost as certain, likely a much more painful one.
Jeremy always thought that luck favored those who gave it a chance. He stopped, raising his hands in the air. A moment later, he heard a punch connecting to his friend behind him, Lars' grunt, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor. The man from the escalator must have caught up to them. Jeremy turned around just in time to meet a rifle butt to the side of his head. The world turned to black.
#
First came the pain, pulsating steadily in his temples. Jeremy lay on the cold floor, hands tied behind his back, the crude rope cutting into his wrists. The smell of gunpowder and human sweat filled his nostrils. He was still in the mall, at least that much was clear. He kept his eyes closed. No point attracting attention before he knew what was what.
“So, you thought you’d just bust in here and shoot everyone up like some sort of hero, is that what you thought, huh?”
The man speaking was close, very close.
“Yeah, and I was saving you for last.”
“Well, you thought wrong, ************, you thought wrong.”
Jeremy opened his eyes. The flood lights gone, the tar barrels were once again the only source of light around. He was by the pool, lying next to unconscious Lars and the unmasked intruder, both of them tied up as well. A fresh diagonal cut ran from their unknown ally’s eye, dissecting his lips in two. Blood dripped down his chin. It wasn’t pretty.
A man in riot gear and a beret on his head towered above the injured prisoner, a large revolver in one hand and a machete in the other. Not good, not good at all. Two more men stood behind him, armed with scoped assault rifles pointing idly at the floor.
“Doesn’t matter what you do to me, Zeke,” the prisoner said, “One day somebody’s going to put you down like the rabid dog that you are…”
The man in the beret – Jeremy reckoned he was the Warlord Zeke himself – smirked, and pointed his revolver at Lars. Think fast, Jeremy, think fast.
“You brought your girlfriends along with you, I see.”
“Never met them in my life!”
“Let’s see who saves who for last, you little *****,” Zeke said and pulled the trigger. The revolver’s barrel jumped from the recoil as the bullet struck Lars in the forehead. Jeremy’s friend’s head exploded into pulp, splattering everything around him with bits of bone, blood, and brain mass.
Jeremy stood on his feet in a herculean effort, only to be struck in the temple by the flat side of Zeke’s machete, the impact sending him back to the floor.
“This one’s a feisty little one, isn’t he?”
Zeke holstered the smoking revolver and advanced, machete in hand. Jeremy was about to die.
His frantic eyes caught a glimpse of something familiar: his backpack, where he dropped it when he and Lars tried to make their escape. He still had a chance. He pushed away with his feet, crawling backwards, away from Zeke as fast as he could. Not fast enough. The Warlord reached him in one leap, the heavy duty boot landing on Jeremy’s chest, pinning him to the ground.
All capacity for coherent thought lost, Jeremy knew only fear, pain, anger, and his unwillingness to die. He lifted up his head and yanked both arms from under him, bringing them all the way over his head in one desperate movement. His right shoulder snapped out of its socket. Pain, unbearable pain shot through his entire body. He pushed the Warlord’s foot off his chest and scurried for his backpack. His fingers closed on the rough fabric of the backpack’s pouch. The flash grenade was where he had left it.
Pull the pin, throw, take cover. It wasn’t rocket science. His hands tied, he yanked the metal ring out with his thumb and tossed the grenade under Zeke’s feet. Jeremy shut his eyes, pressed one ear against the floor, covering his other ear with his hands. The blast of light and sound that followed deafened him anyway.
Everything turned silent, all sounds replaced by a high pitched ring. He got up. The disorientated Warlord swung his machete in deadly arcs around himself. His two subordinates circled in place, not daring to fire blind. Jeremy reached the nearest tar barrel in three steps and pressed the rope binding his hands against the ragged edge. If the junk collector hadn’t lied, he had about five seconds before Zeke and his men regained their senses. He started to rub, rub, rub. Four seconds. He rubbed. Three seconds. Each movement shot pain through dislocated shoulder. Two seconds. The rope snapped. One second. Zeke was coming at him with the machete, spit flying from his lips, a deranged fury frozen in his eyes. Jeremy put his right hand on the barrel’s edge, burning and cutting his palm, pushed it off balance, crouched, and placed his left hand under its bottom. With all his remaining strength, he flung the barrel’s contents into Zeke.
The Warlord screamed as the burning tar set him on fire. The machete dropped to the ground. Jeremy fell to his knees, both hands flailing uselessly by his sides. The prisoner with the cut face used the moment to jump towards Zeke and pull out the Warlord’s revolver out of its holster.
Weapon in hand, he landed on his back between Zeke and the two thugs behind him. One shot, two shots, and the men fell down without firing a single round.
The third bullet tore off Zeke’s leg at the knee. The Warlord fell down onto the bloodied stump, screaming. The prisoner stood over him. The third bullet blew away the man’s palm. The fourth tore off his remaining leg. Zeke’s screams turned to whimpers.
“That’s for my sister, you piece of ****,” the man said and fired the last bullet into Zeke’s groin. The Warlord convulsed, then stopped moving, flames continuing to lick his disfigured body.
Jeremy found the strength to get back up on his feet. He walked up to Lars. It was a closed casket case, if anybody bothered to make caskets anymore. The absence of gunshots, screams, shouts and explosions told him that they were alone in the mall: just Jeremy, the man with the scarred face, and a building full of corpses.
The only person he had trusted had been killed, just like that. He and Lars would never again make small talk by the fire in abandoned apartment complexes, would never sneak into some gang’s turf to “liberate” a part of their supplies, never see each other find a woman to love. Jeremy looked at his friend’s faceless body. Lars deserved better, but then, so did everyone else.
He tried to lift Lars’s feet off the ground – the hyenas and the ferrets could find themselves something else to eat – but he had no more strength left in his damaged body.
“You… You’re going to help me with the body,” he said to Zeke’s killer, who watched the scene in silence.
“What makes you think that?”
Jeremy walked up to one of Zeke's fallen thugs and took the assault rifle from the dead man's hand.
“You owe me… And you're fresh out of ammo.”
#
Sun rays cut through the orange sky as Jeremy and his new comrade in arms watched pillars of thick smoke rise into the air, Lars’s body burning away. They had carried him four blocks until finally finding an old basketball court by one of the crumbled buildings. It was as dignified a burial as they could afford to make. Jeremy shifted his weight, sitting on his tightly packed backpack, removed his baseball cap with his left hand and threw it in the fire.
The man next to him checked his assault rifle. Jeremy had helped him bandage his face earlier, leaving only a stripe for the eyes uncovered by fabric. With Jeremy’s right hand suspended from a stripe of torn clothing, field medicine wasn't as easy as he thought it’d be.
The man’s name was Robert, or so he claimed. A local ex-military, he lived with his young sister until Warlord Zeke decided that he wanted the girl as his plaything. Robert didn’t go into the details. He didn’t have to.
“So, what now?” Robert asked. A crust of blood formed on his bandages. His wound reopened every time he moved his lips, so they kept conversation to a minimum.
They took as much as they could carry from Zeke’s stash, enough to last both of them for more than a month, not counting the weapons they recovered. They were practically rich.
“Well,” Jeremy said, “We probably should lie low. We’re both wounded, we can’t run for **** with these backpacks, so it’s a matter of time before someone tries to relieve us of them… They’ll relieve us of our lives while they’re at it, too.”
“With the Warlord dead, this place will soon turn into a war zone.”
Jeremy looked around. The city ruins towered above them. It was nothing worth fighting for, but he knew that some people thought otherwise. They had to get out of here, find a quiet place and stay there, until… He wasn’t sure until when, same as he had no idea about what would happen afterwards. Probably he’d continue his struggle for survival until some lowlife stuck a knife in his back, or blew his face away, or until he simply got ill and died in a hole in another nameless city, joining the ranks of those who came before him. He wasn’t sure he cared.
“Ever heard of Lumina Black?” Robert asked.
Jeremy hadn’t.
“Well,” he continued, “They’re a merc group. Got all sorts of the top of the line gear. Nanoarmor, cyber implants, hardsuits, that sort of thing. Always looking to hire. Thing is, you’ve got to pay to play. There’s an entrance fee of sorts. Give them enough stuff for them to know you’re not joking, and you get their standard gear, as well as food and drink for a lifetime.”
“If they take people in from the streets, then it must be a pretty short lifetime, Rob…”
“It’s not like they don’t train you. And I heard the pay is swell: the more money you make, the better gear you can get your hands on. Sure, it’s dangerous and all, but, really… Do you have a better idea?”
Jeremy opened his mouth to say something, but reconsidered. Without much left to live for, this could be his chance to at least die with a purpose. Not that he wanted to die, but… He thought of Lars. He couldn’t save him, but maybe, just maybe, Jeremy had enough skills to take care of himself. And warm food and bed every night seemed like a good enough reason to fight one day to the next. He tapped his backpack with his good hand.
“You think this will be enough for them to let us in?”
“It better be. Come on. I heard they’ve got a helibird grounded half a day’s walk from here. They’ve got a bunch of those all around, waiting for fellas like you and me to come ask join them. I’m sure they’ll welcome us with open arms, hehe!” Robert’s bandages colored with the red of fresh blood.
All that remained in Jeremy’s life was the stranger, a heavy backpack, a dislocated shoulder, an assault rifle and a long trip ahead. But he lived. He still lived. He smiled an unhappy smile. His prospects looked brighter than ever.
Yeye, I know PROLOGUES etc etc but hey.
Let me know what you think!
[CENTER]Lumina Black
Prologue. A Payment for Evil, No Life for the Good
Round 1. Welcome to Lumina Black
Round 2. Into the Wilderness
Intermission. The Love of a Bullet
Round 3. Quad Damage
Round 4. Endgame
Epilogue. A Life for the Evil, No Payment for Good
Prologue
A Payment for Evil, No Life for the Good
Two guards shared a cigarette by the entrance to the shopping mall's parking lot, casting long shadows across the cracked asphalt. Half a dozen burning tires kept the night around them at bay. Jeremy could smell the melting rubber from the adjacent alley where he and Lars stayed out of sight, pumped up and ready for action. Desperation does that to people, he thought. Hungry men know little fear. Jeremy adjusted his baseball cap and took another peek behind the corner. From what he made out, the guards looked just as ragged as they did. That didn't bother him, of course. The year 2052 was about survival of the fittest, and if Jeremy and Lars were to survive, they had no choice but be the fittest, smartest, meanest of them all.
"Are they armed?" Lars whispered. He was a head taller than Jeremy, but his advantages ended there. Of course they're armed, fool, they're guards. He said nothing. Over the years they spent making ends meet, Jeremy saved Lars's ass so many times he'd lost count. Yet, as useless as Lars was when the **** hit the fan, Jeremy knew that his friend was always there to watch his back. They used to go to the same high school before the Collapse, what seemed like an eternity ago, and then Lars simply stuck around. When everyone started turning up dead, killed in the bombing raids, the gang wars, and the famines that followed, they stuck together, joking that they were too stubborn to die. These days they didn't joke much. Neither did they think much about how they had real lives once, parents, school, or a future other than becoming enforcers in some Warlord's private army.
Like the world around them, they were way beyond the point of no return.
"Okay, so it's like we've practiced. The moment you hear the flash go bang, you dash for the entrance. I'll be right behind you." Jeremy took out the flash grenade. It fit neatly into his palm. It was hard to imagine that they had to trade a week's supply of food to a junk collector for the thing. Jeremy hoped it was worth it. If everything went according to plan, they'd have provisions for a month, not to mention medical supplies, most likely even actual firearms, weapons that they could trade for more supplies when the going got hard.
"One, two," Jeremy started counting, leaving his cover. He stopped. One of the guards lay face-down on the ground, the half-smoked cigarette still burning in his mortified fingers. A man in a balaclava held the other guard in a headlock. Flames reflected in a stripe of steel, a quick movement. Blood exploded from the guard's throat, squirting in a fountain of red. The masked man let the body drop and dived into the entrance. Jeremy jumped back to cover and stood there, not daring to move. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a man killed, but death always found new ways to surprise him, the surprises never pleasant. He put the grenade back into his backpack’s pouch.
"What?" Lars asked, "What's going on?"
"We've got competition, that's what. Never mind, there should be plenty of stuff there for everyone." What else could he say? It was too late to turn back. Fight or starve, that's how the world worked. "Let's go."
They ran out of the alley, stopping only to check the corpses for weapons. Nothing. The competition worked fast. Inside the parking lot, tar barrels burnt next to support columns, providing just enough light for them to find their way through. The lot was empty. The original plan had been to blind the guards, take their weapons, bust in, take whatever they could and get out. But life hated plans and the men who made them.
They got into the room connecting the lot to the mall proper. Jeremy ignored the elevator doors and motioned Lars to follow him up the stairs.
When they reached the first flight, a gunshot cut through the silence. Then another one. And another one, followed by screams, curses, more shooting. A full-blown firefight erupted inside the mall, at least four or five weapons firing at once.
Jeremy hadn't expected the place to be so packed with trigger happy men. The locals told them that the mall was used by a Warlord named Zeke to store surplus food and ammunition. They said the Warlord thought that people knew better than to mess with him, so the mall was supposed to be guarded by a skeleton crew, two or three men tops. Jeremy should've known better than to trust a stranger.
They stepped onto the mall's ground floor. Tar barrels lined the walls here as well, the flames bringing shadow webs on the floor to life. Luckily, the firefight was on the highest level, bright flashes gunshot after gunshot. It looked like their mysterious buddy decided to start from the top and work his way down. Half-crouched, Jeremy and Lars moved shadow to shadow, heading towards the floor's center. More shots rang out on the top level.
Between the screams and the firefight, Jeremy decided against sneaking. He stood up full height and rushed deeper into the mall. Shouts shouts like, "Ah, ****, I've been shot!" and "Give me a mag, I'm out!" and "Where the **** is he?" followed the deafening gun fire. Their competitor knew what he was doing.
The moment they got to the middle of the ground floor, Jeremy knew they hit the jackpot. A pair of elevator tubes stood in the center, illuminated by the shaking flames. Nearby, two sets of escalator stairs lead to the second floor. At one point there must have been a pool next to the elevators, but the water had long since dried out. The pool had been repurposed for storage. Bags stacked onto each other covered most of its surface, weapons squeezed in between, their black barrels staring at the mall’s ceiling. Medical kits, canned food, bottles of beer, water, and whole blocks of cigarettes lay in piles on top of the bags. The mall was a treasure cave of the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century and its treasures were a sight to behold.
Jeremy took the backpack off, motioning Lars to do the same. Another gunshot rang out upstairs, then a shout, “Flood lights, where are my flood lights?!”
A generator engine coughed in the background. Before Jeremy realized what was about to happen, lights hit them from all directions at once. He shielded his eyes, blind and disorientated. A gunshot.
“I got him!”
“There’s two more of them!” Another voice, this time much closer.
Somebody was running down the escalator. Jeremy grabbed Lars by the sleeve. His eyes burnt with pain, adjusting to the unexpected light. He dashed back to the stairs through which they’ve entered the floor, pulling his friend with him. The least they could do was get out alive. A burst of bullets hit directly in front of his feet, raising up a cloud of ceramic dust.
“Stop! I have you in my cross hair, move again and I’ll shoot you dead.”
A man leaned from the second floor’s railing, looking down at them through the scope of his rifle. To cross the fresh bullet holes scar that ran across the shattered floor tiles meant certain death. To surrender meant death almost as certain, likely a much more painful one.
Jeremy always thought that luck favored those who gave it a chance. He stopped, raising his hands in the air. A moment later, he heard a punch connecting to his friend behind him, Lars' grunt, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor. The man from the escalator must have caught up to them. Jeremy turned around just in time to meet a rifle butt to the side of his head. The world turned to black.
#
First came the pain, pulsating steadily in his temples. Jeremy lay on the cold floor, hands tied behind his back, the crude rope cutting into his wrists. The smell of gunpowder and human sweat filled his nostrils. He was still in the mall, at least that much was clear. He kept his eyes closed. No point attracting attention before he knew what was what.
“So, you thought you’d just bust in here and shoot everyone up like some sort of hero, is that what you thought, huh?”
The man speaking was close, very close.
“Yeah, and I was saving you for last.”
“Well, you thought wrong, ************, you thought wrong.”
Jeremy opened his eyes. The flood lights gone, the tar barrels were once again the only source of light around. He was by the pool, lying next to unconscious Lars and the unmasked intruder, both of them tied up as well. A fresh diagonal cut ran from their unknown ally’s eye, dissecting his lips in two. Blood dripped down his chin. It wasn’t pretty.
A man in riot gear and a beret on his head towered above the injured prisoner, a large revolver in one hand and a machete in the other. Not good, not good at all. Two more men stood behind him, armed with scoped assault rifles pointing idly at the floor.
“Doesn’t matter what you do to me, Zeke,” the prisoner said, “One day somebody’s going to put you down like the rabid dog that you are…”
The man in the beret – Jeremy reckoned he was the Warlord Zeke himself – smirked, and pointed his revolver at Lars. Think fast, Jeremy, think fast.
“You brought your girlfriends along with you, I see.”
“Never met them in my life!”
“Let’s see who saves who for last, you little *****,” Zeke said and pulled the trigger. The revolver’s barrel jumped from the recoil as the bullet struck Lars in the forehead. Jeremy’s friend’s head exploded into pulp, splattering everything around him with bits of bone, blood, and brain mass.
Jeremy stood on his feet in a herculean effort, only to be struck in the temple by the flat side of Zeke’s machete, the impact sending him back to the floor.
“This one’s a feisty little one, isn’t he?”
Zeke holstered the smoking revolver and advanced, machete in hand. Jeremy was about to die.
His frantic eyes caught a glimpse of something familiar: his backpack, where he dropped it when he and Lars tried to make their escape. He still had a chance. He pushed away with his feet, crawling backwards, away from Zeke as fast as he could. Not fast enough. The Warlord reached him in one leap, the heavy duty boot landing on Jeremy’s chest, pinning him to the ground.
All capacity for coherent thought lost, Jeremy knew only fear, pain, anger, and his unwillingness to die. He lifted up his head and yanked both arms from under him, bringing them all the way over his head in one desperate movement. His right shoulder snapped out of its socket. Pain, unbearable pain shot through his entire body. He pushed the Warlord’s foot off his chest and scurried for his backpack. His fingers closed on the rough fabric of the backpack’s pouch. The flash grenade was where he had left it.
Pull the pin, throw, take cover. It wasn’t rocket science. His hands tied, he yanked the metal ring out with his thumb and tossed the grenade under Zeke’s feet. Jeremy shut his eyes, pressed one ear against the floor, covering his other ear with his hands. The blast of light and sound that followed deafened him anyway.
Everything turned silent, all sounds replaced by a high pitched ring. He got up. The disorientated Warlord swung his machete in deadly arcs around himself. His two subordinates circled in place, not daring to fire blind. Jeremy reached the nearest tar barrel in three steps and pressed the rope binding his hands against the ragged edge. If the junk collector hadn’t lied, he had about five seconds before Zeke and his men regained their senses. He started to rub, rub, rub. Four seconds. He rubbed. Three seconds. Each movement shot pain through dislocated shoulder. Two seconds. The rope snapped. One second. Zeke was coming at him with the machete, spit flying from his lips, a deranged fury frozen in his eyes. Jeremy put his right hand on the barrel’s edge, burning and cutting his palm, pushed it off balance, crouched, and placed his left hand under its bottom. With all his remaining strength, he flung the barrel’s contents into Zeke.
The Warlord screamed as the burning tar set him on fire. The machete dropped to the ground. Jeremy fell to his knees, both hands flailing uselessly by his sides. The prisoner with the cut face used the moment to jump towards Zeke and pull out the Warlord’s revolver out of its holster.
Weapon in hand, he landed on his back between Zeke and the two thugs behind him. One shot, two shots, and the men fell down without firing a single round.
The third bullet tore off Zeke’s leg at the knee. The Warlord fell down onto the bloodied stump, screaming. The prisoner stood over him. The third bullet blew away the man’s palm. The fourth tore off his remaining leg. Zeke’s screams turned to whimpers.
“That’s for my sister, you piece of ****,” the man said and fired the last bullet into Zeke’s groin. The Warlord convulsed, then stopped moving, flames continuing to lick his disfigured body.
Jeremy found the strength to get back up on his feet. He walked up to Lars. It was a closed casket case, if anybody bothered to make caskets anymore. The absence of gunshots, screams, shouts and explosions told him that they were alone in the mall: just Jeremy, the man with the scarred face, and a building full of corpses.
The only person he had trusted had been killed, just like that. He and Lars would never again make small talk by the fire in abandoned apartment complexes, would never sneak into some gang’s turf to “liberate” a part of their supplies, never see each other find a woman to love. Jeremy looked at his friend’s faceless body. Lars deserved better, but then, so did everyone else.
He tried to lift Lars’s feet off the ground – the hyenas and the ferrets could find themselves something else to eat – but he had no more strength left in his damaged body.
“You… You’re going to help me with the body,” he said to Zeke’s killer, who watched the scene in silence.
“What makes you think that?”
Jeremy walked up to one of Zeke's fallen thugs and took the assault rifle from the dead man's hand.
“You owe me… And you're fresh out of ammo.”
#
Sun rays cut through the orange sky as Jeremy and his new comrade in arms watched pillars of thick smoke rise into the air, Lars’s body burning away. They had carried him four blocks until finally finding an old basketball court by one of the crumbled buildings. It was as dignified a burial as they could afford to make. Jeremy shifted his weight, sitting on his tightly packed backpack, removed his baseball cap with his left hand and threw it in the fire.
The man next to him checked his assault rifle. Jeremy had helped him bandage his face earlier, leaving only a stripe for the eyes uncovered by fabric. With Jeremy’s right hand suspended from a stripe of torn clothing, field medicine wasn't as easy as he thought it’d be.
The man’s name was Robert, or so he claimed. A local ex-military, he lived with his young sister until Warlord Zeke decided that he wanted the girl as his plaything. Robert didn’t go into the details. He didn’t have to.
“So, what now?” Robert asked. A crust of blood formed on his bandages. His wound reopened every time he moved his lips, so they kept conversation to a minimum.
They took as much as they could carry from Zeke’s stash, enough to last both of them for more than a month, not counting the weapons they recovered. They were practically rich.
“Well,” Jeremy said, “We probably should lie low. We’re both wounded, we can’t run for **** with these backpacks, so it’s a matter of time before someone tries to relieve us of them… They’ll relieve us of our lives while they’re at it, too.”
“With the Warlord dead, this place will soon turn into a war zone.”
Jeremy looked around. The city ruins towered above them. It was nothing worth fighting for, but he knew that some people thought otherwise. They had to get out of here, find a quiet place and stay there, until… He wasn’t sure until when, same as he had no idea about what would happen afterwards. Probably he’d continue his struggle for survival until some lowlife stuck a knife in his back, or blew his face away, or until he simply got ill and died in a hole in another nameless city, joining the ranks of those who came before him. He wasn’t sure he cared.
“Ever heard of Lumina Black?” Robert asked.
Jeremy hadn’t.
“Well,” he continued, “They’re a merc group. Got all sorts of the top of the line gear. Nanoarmor, cyber implants, hardsuits, that sort of thing. Always looking to hire. Thing is, you’ve got to pay to play. There’s an entrance fee of sorts. Give them enough stuff for them to know you’re not joking, and you get their standard gear, as well as food and drink for a lifetime.”
“If they take people in from the streets, then it must be a pretty short lifetime, Rob…”
“It’s not like they don’t train you. And I heard the pay is swell: the more money you make, the better gear you can get your hands on. Sure, it’s dangerous and all, but, really… Do you have a better idea?”
Jeremy opened his mouth to say something, but reconsidered. Without much left to live for, this could be his chance to at least die with a purpose. Not that he wanted to die, but… He thought of Lars. He couldn’t save him, but maybe, just maybe, Jeremy had enough skills to take care of himself. And warm food and bed every night seemed like a good enough reason to fight one day to the next. He tapped his backpack with his good hand.
“You think this will be enough for them to let us in?”
“It better be. Come on. I heard they’ve got a helibird grounded half a day’s walk from here. They’ve got a bunch of those all around, waiting for fellas like you and me to come ask join them. I’m sure they’ll welcome us with open arms, hehe!” Robert’s bandages colored with the red of fresh blood.
All that remained in Jeremy’s life was the stranger, a heavy backpack, a dislocated shoulder, an assault rifle and a long trip ahead. But he lived. He still lived. He smiled an unhappy smile. His prospects looked brighter than ever.
幻術