We’d been walking for a few hours. Judging from the position of the sun, it was about 11:30 in the morning, Battery City time. I’d gotten really good at guesstimating time from the sun ever since that fateful day back in the outskirts of the city, when the men I’d later come to know as Draculoids had broken into my house and killed my mother. Ghosted, I mean. Or dusted. We never said killed, or murdered, just because that was the propaganda BL/ind had always used against its enemies. We made our own slang quickly, wanting to distinguish ourselves from those pill-popping rats as much as possible.
“Hey look, over here!” Mighty Mouse moved towards a crumbling building with a broken sign hanging by a nail dangling over the pile of rubble that had once been the entrance. The rubble was piled high into a steep mound, but it looked as if no one was around, so we walked closer, observing.
“A grocery store. Talk about dumb luck.” G.I. shook his head in amazement.
“A what?” Mighty Mouse looked at him, confused.
“Oh my God, you’re too young to remember these, aren’t you?” G.I. shook his head in amazement. Mighty mouse was only about 12, so she barely remembered life before the company took over. “Well, back in the day, you’d go into one of these to buy anything and everything you’d ever need. Food, cleaners, pills, (before they controlled your mind, that is) anything. I bet you we could find you some new books and things here.”
“Really?” Mighty Mouse’s face lit up. G.I. had educated all of us to the best of his ability, teaching us how to read and write late at night when it was too late to be out scavenging.
“Let me go in first.” I sized up the rubble pile before deftly starting to climb up and over the rubble pile, sliding carefully down the other side. I drew one of my white rayguns to ward off potential attackers and surveyed the place. From what I could see, it was huge, with rows and rows of food extending about a hundred feet in front of me and 200 feet to my left. Part of the back of the building was collapsed, but the food section seemed unscathed. The place was dead silent. I patrolled a few rows carefully, looking up and down and seeing no one, listening carefully for the smallest noise. After checking out the place completely, I returned to the place I started, feeling relaxed. And then I breathed. The smell of rotting fruit and meat permeated the air, so bad it made me want to blow chunks. Whether it had been the adrenaline of scouting or some glitch in my brain, I hadn’t smelled the horrid smell of death and decay that filled the place until now.
“Guys!” I called outside, breathing through my mouth, “It’s clear, but it smells like the outhouse after Rage uses it.” I coughed, putting my hand over my mouth. I took the bandana I had tied around my thigh and retied it tightly over my nose and mouth, much preferring my own BO to the rotting smell any day.
“Hey, don’t go blaming that on me, chica, we eat the same things.” Rage teased over the pile. “Yours smells just as bad as mine.” One by one they climbed over the rubble pile, G.I. helping Babydoll.
“What IS that?” Disco held his nose, all of them making faces.
“Rotting meat and fruit. It’s been in here for 7 years, just festering.” G.I. observed. He seemed almost immune to the smell.
“Which is why we head to the canned foods aisle.” Lightning turned to head down the rows.
“Hey, hold on. Alabama, Disco, go scout the rest of the store. The rest of you, go get those carts,” G.I. pointed in the direction of the bright red vehicles on wheels, “and we’ll go get food. Ready, go.” We split up, heading in opposite directions with the knowledge that we’d landed on a gold mine. Things were about to get interesting.
“I can’t believe people once couldn’t survive without all this stuff.” Disco and I walked through the aisles, looking at all the things we could use. We’d stumbled upon mattresses and real sheets, along with fresh clothes and piles and piles of blankets. I touched the soft, furry, pink fabric blanket, feeling like I’d never felt something so soft before.
“This could help so much. Look at this place! It’s a gold mine for at least stuff to trade, not to mention food and other resources.” Disco and I wandered through the bedding section, seeing actual bedframes with actual mattresses on them. I flopped down on one, feeling like I was lying on a cloud.
“How in the name of BLI are we going to get it all back to the apartment, though?” I questioned.
“We could move in here.” He suggested, hopping up on the mattress next to me as I rolled over onto my stomach.
“It’s awfully hard to defend if we do. Think about it; some gang finds us, outnumbers us by hiding in the rows and we’re done for.” I shrugged. “We need a better-“
BOOM! A sound like the world was imploding on us cut me off, and we looked over to see a hole blown in the side of the building, spraying dust and debris everywhere. We instinctively dropped to the ground and pulled our rayguns. The guns were scattered all over the Zones from Drac attacks, so everyone had at least one, besides Babydoll. I was the best shot and could shoot with both hands, so I had two. I heard feet running towards us and looked over to see the rest of the gang approaching.
“What the hell happened over here?” G.I. said in a harsh whisper.
“What’d you do this time, A?” Rage snickered at me.
“Shut up doofus, this is serious. We were scouting when the wall blew up for no apparent reason.” I heard yelling and war cries from outside and suddenly, I realized just what was going on.
“Holy shit, it’s the Killjoys out there.” My eyes were wide. The Killjoys were an organization more than a gang, spanning the known world that wasn’t still burning from the nuking of 2012, who banded together right after BL/ind first emerged. They were led by four heads that were wanted in all six zones as well as Battery City. The flyers were plastered everywhere, offering astounding figures for them, dead or alive. The entire organization was based on more than staying alive, which set them lightyears away from the rest of us out in the Zones, besides the fact that they didn’t mind if they died. Taking down the company that was keeping the masses enslaved was their mission, and they were damn good at killing Dracs and slipping right through the fingertips of everybody else. We could hear the raygun exchanges right past the wall, and I heard a high=pitched scream, like that of a child. I could tell from the yelling that the Dracs were winning, and there was no way in hell that was happening on my watch. I stood and moved stealthily towards the end of the aisle.
“What the hell are you doing, A?” G.I. hissed at me.
“I can’t let the bad guys win again, G.I. I have to help them.”
“Alabama Napalm, get back here! You’ll get yourself ghosted!”
“Then at least I’ll have done something, instead of just sitting here like a pansy!” I turned and strode sneakily towards the hole in the wall, my eyes adjusting to the harsh sunlight of the outdoors. I looked back to see the rest of them grudgingly following, rayguns drawn.
“We’re not letting you get yourself dusted, A.” Lightning put one hand on my shoulder. I grinned confidently. G.I. and I always butted heads over stuff like this, but I knew they’d want to do the right thing in the end.
We took up positions around the hole. Turns out we were in perfect position, considering we were behind the Dracs and could see the Killjoys, who were outnumbered. It still amazed me the amount of color they had on them. One kid firing from behind the wall of some building had bright green hair, while the others all wore colorful, printed clothing, standing out against the sedated background like Batman at a Klu Klux Klan meeting.
G.I. gave the signal, all of us firing quickly, but not fast enough to catch all of them by surprise. Two of the five Dracs dropped to the ground, but the others whirled around to face us, letting off a ton of shots. We all clamored away from the hole, but G.I. wasn’t fast enough. I stared in shock as G.I. was hit twice in the chest, dropping to the ground with a thump so loud it seemed to echo and reverberate off the walls. The Killjoys finished off the Dracs as the fire ceased, cheers coming from across the urban battlefield. I screamed in horror, rushing to G.I.’s side and clutching his hand. His face was frozen in shock, his body lying limply on the dirty, dust-covered floor. I did this, I thought in horror, slapping G.I.’s face to wake him up, screaming at him to wake up. He was the closest thing to a father I could remember having, he couldn’t dust out on me now, although I could see in his dull, lifeless eyes that he already had. The tears didn’t come immediately. I kept it together for the time being, too in shock to register anything else. I sat back on my heels after my outburst, taking his pulse to confirm our greatest fear; our fearless leader was ghosted.
“Hey, are you the good guys, or do y’all want to kill us too?” I heard someone approach us and stood, shading my eyes to see who it was. “Because if you do, you better jump in while the gettin’s goo-“ The woman froze in place as she neared us enough to see our faces, stopping abruptly and staring from Disco to Mighty Mouse and back again, a mixture of elation and pure shook on her face. Disco made a strangled sound before rushing forward and scooping the 40-something woman up into a bear hug. Mighty Mouse wasn’t far behind her brother, clinging to this woman we didn’t know. And then I heard the word that made all the difference.
“Mom.”
