On the Run

Only remnants.

Only sad, pale remnants were left of the once advanced, conquering nation of America.

Sure it was already broken and ridiculous. Adults ran it all after all.

But it had still been theirs.

A kid could play ball, play a few pranks, and nick a candy bar or two.

The real stuff worth anything in this world. Not bread or gross fish with marble staring eyes, not gems and women’s jewelry glittering and posh, or freaking water. Plastic too. What had happened to all the plastic?

As it stood three battered, battle worn orphans limped across broken pavement that was melting to more and more soil. Tree cover from towering conifers and deciduous jutting from the remains of what used to be cement, metal, and other materials he couldn’t and did not care to think about.

Others.

Others had converted to shacks and lean-to of leather and skin.

Bones as window panes and bars.

Parchment of sale prices and auction in the same tone as even Talia’s skin making them all shiver.

Not a word had been said. Not after a night spent on the precarious hill housing a family of warthogs and hedgehogs. Not when they’d pilfered food off a cart by jumping on and off as it went about its trail.

Not when grotesque vultures and flying taut skinned corpses of fish, lizards, snakes, and humans tried to sweep down for a bite.

Gregory was in the lead. Scouring and crouching, beneath branch work, up pistons of drooping blossoms at least eleven feet tall and double-wide working as this fancy seasonal restaurant.

Come to think… it was, it was spring right now.

Last he’d remembered any grassy terrain, any modern windows or stained glass, the fields of the Keep, had all been buried in furious red and orange leaves.

He pointed toward a completely green pavilion with holey trees. Each indentation of a door made of dewy leaves or curtain moss likely a store.

“Greg I–”

“No,” he said sharply to the new pair.

“Come on–”

“Not. Now.”

He didn’t need to be reminded what a moron he’d been. What a dumb sacrificial lamb he’d let himself turn into. Even if– even if there could have still been time. If Talia–

If Mario had–

If Greg had fought her off. Showed her who was actually in charge and who needed who.

Because right now it was almost like the only people he had left; his ally and this turncoat wanted to baby him.

Well tough because he was the only one they had either.

Upon the pavilion was tranquil, lazy energy. No one at alert. Everyone dumbly happy and trading gossip and rumors.

Talk of the next shipment of grains.

The new press gems.

The fire stones or pearls. Soldiers going en masse to Salem. The witch town and holding state for zealots and dissenters.

All invaluable information.

Sunstones equaled some new staffs ripe to steal or sell on some underground markets. Enough for a militia. That would be entertaining. Hopefully, some up his ass teenager had some balls.

If they could maybe get jobs checking or packing the grain.

They took anyone.

Girls were always in demand to cook the bread.

It looked like vines tied to crude baskets was how anyone got into the upper rungs of shops.

“Hey!” he called to a random passerby. A man with a bald spot and wearing a combination of jopula, modern LGBT buttons, and bleach jeans with an unnatural pink that was not on the market as a natural dye.

Jopula. Ugh, just the word made him gag.

“Ye– yes, what can I–”

He gave them the once over.

“Yes we look a fright,” Talia said. “Positively wretched and demented.” A dark inflection came to her tone.

“No, no,” Mario cut in, turning on the ten-year-old puppy eyes. “Umm I’m sorry but, where’s a clothing shop?”

“Ah ha– hah,” the man laughed nervously. “Right, right on the second story. Can’t miss it. I uh, I recommend Wilhelm Date. When you,” he lowered to a whisper, “don’t need to look like yourself.”

Greg’s eyes widened. All the same, he retained his contemptuous glare. “We can manage. I’d be more worried if I were as jaunty and so obviously suspect my good man.” A stretched, ingenuine smile soured his next words. “Just, food for thought from a rough gem.”

His eyes instantly settled upon the bulging pocket of gold or some other tradeable item.

The man began to sweat.

He looked to Talia whose stare was blank and piercing.

Fanning his face he decided they weren’t worth another thought. A sardonic smile remained on his face.

The basket was an awful experience. And both his friends had insisted upon looking down, even as Mario grew sick from the height, needing to sit at the very end to regain his bearing.

“So small, so small,” he groaned dazedly, dark eyes practically floating and swimming out of focus.

Greg simply picked at the worn fabric of his mandated shirt and pants. The strangling belt on his waist had been taken. As if they didn’t want him to make a noose out of it while in solitary.

“Hey now,” Talia lifted a finger, “I just realized,” a few lookovers as if they needed to be more suspicious, “we have no way to pay for anything.”

Mario and Greg looked at each other. Even he was starting to pity Talia just a little.

Smiling, the boys assured her, “leave that part to us. We have our ways.”

She frowned, clearly not liking the looks of them but letting it settle anyway.

“I am going to die with these two,” mumbled her very grateful self, black hair piling around her face. “May not be too bad. I wonder–”

Cree–py.

Fairies hung about, flying languidly around the customers shopping. Feeders were strung on the ceiling, shimmering with geodes and full of fat golden nectar or sap. Some with leaf shavings giving the shop an air of allergy.

Greg directed them to split off. Don’t give too much hint that they were together. With a nod, Talia complied.

“Keep an eye anyway and be ready to spring that alarm over there,” Greg said pointing out some kind of bell near the counter.

“Got it,” he confirmed. “And besides the usual fare, what should we stock up on?”

“Whatever you can get,” he said. He was seeing a lot of unguarded wallets and seed rations. Not to mention the hanging jewelry.

Not only did Wilhelm Date offer clothing of all sizes and medieval styles but also bubble bottles of potions to string on belts like garland, sword sheaths, daggers, bayonets, masks, charms, and spell texts.

Greg looked about from all the vests, cloaks, and capes. Nothing he would be caught dead wearing except at a Ren fair or a fantasy film premiere. Callously letting each piece drop to the floor he continued on.

Spider silk and caterpillar material the tags read. Some, still in fresh ink and coming off his hands.

“Ahh excuse me,” said the meek voice of a spindly Asian-looking girl. Greg aimed a powerful glare making him yelp like a poodle. “Ahhh! Um, the mess–”

“And? What of it? I didn’t do it.”

There were so many crowds and no cameras to prove he did anything. He’d checked.

“No, no of course not but uhh you seem to be struggling to find something, and well,” he gave him the usual once over, taking in his shredded, stained Keep-wear. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“I came here for a new set of clothes.”

“Yes but, some if not all are more in the Middle range,” she explained. “Hunters and soldiers. People with gold and jewels.”

“Okay, then what else?”

“Excuse me?”

“What else do you have? You have a bargain or clearance bin don’t you?” Greg griped. “Rags and stuff you can’t wait to get rid of.”

“O–over there,” she said pointing to lo and behold a beaten down cart with a load of mixed up, overflowing shirts, pants, and undergarments.

“Now was that so hard?” he asked sweetly.

She moved along with bitter eyes glowering at him, keeping a suspicious glance. Surely she was rearing to call security.

Greg quickly found a black short sleeve top tied at the collar with drawstring but made of linen. Human fabric.

He picked out pants that had to have been recycled from potato sacks and abnormally long stockings.

Making for the back dressing rooms he carved out a path from the thinning shoppers. If he stayed to the walls, leaped from the table of scarves and a display of spinning jewels. Not bad.

Talia was closer to the front door.

And with that cacophony broke loose when the chaotic jangle of the clock bell out of place rang.

The crystals now pulsed a darkly threatening purple.

Crap. Why purple.

For a frightening, petrifying moment his heart had seized remembering his orb. The orb in the solitary room. A companion and burrowing worm of insanity.

Greg growled, pushing down the urge to fling a rock at the offending crystal.

The initial path he had planned was forfeit.

“Go! Go! GO!” Mario bellowed to Talia but still trapped in the panic of fleeing customers, the bell clanging eternally.

Until a wave of a hand and the grunt of a man too wide and tall to be allowed silenced the noise.

If Greg had to describe Wilhelm Date it would be… golem.

Thickly muscled limbs stuffed into a skirt, brambles of blond hair in tasteful braids beaded with small cartilage dipped in liquid amber. A sharply defined face with hints of mossy stubble.

“Do calm yourselves, a false alarm is all,” said his faint, girlish tone whispered to Greg’s side.

Mr. Date or whatever, Greg had no idea as he was completely uninterested in asking, laughing boisterously with each heave that he separated customers off of each other.

“Midnight blue and pale as the moon, Willie approves M’Lady,” he said to Talia whose eyes were frozen.

“Though and correct me if I’m wrong,” he hummed a finger to his chin.

“Powders!” Greg yelled, acting fast with some of the healing grounds. Date shrieked to the powder digging into his eyeballs, sizzling mist coming from his cheeks.

His leg rose to deliver a practiced and deadly spear kick only for the flesh to become clay, encasing his foot in between his stomach, and oh Lord he felt everything! Ugh, there was gooey stuff.

Women screamed, some retched.

Date’s bloodshot eyes peered into Greg with malice.

“Now, now sir there’s no reason to be so dissatisfied.”

He struggled against the entrapment, nearly unbalancing himself while the golem man-woman kept upright.

Then a whoosh of air grazed his ear, making his hair blow.

A searing flash of white burst in his eyelids when Talia swept her new scepter, the quartz a milky white now as a drill spun and drove itself into the sidewall.

She tried again in a wider arc creating a whip of white magic.

And people disintegrated into rainbows of sand.

She gaped. Greg had gone chalk white.

Only her eyes still hardened, resolve turned to complete, unyielding and apathetic steel, biting her lip as she branded the scepter to its side in one hand.

Making use of the glass, after slicing his own hand, Greg slashed at Date’s stomach, embedding the jagged shard in his thigh through the skirt.

The storekeeper grimaced in pain even as his flesh churned and morphed around the uneven shape.

An entire mob had broken out to apprehend them.

Only it wasn’t so easy.

Gregory had absolutely no care for almost anyone, barely did for Talia Perlick and Mario Huarez had known what he’d signed up for when they’d been thirteen and fourteen.

The strikes of magic and weaponry gave Mario plenty of broken wood and metal to work with to do what he absolutely had to. Shunting the throngs aside or giving warning swats to heads and rib cages.

The regular civilian was much easier to overpower with twists of his spine and squirrely street fighting. Easier still with the set of tipped arrows he had picked up that sent them reeling or eyes roiling over their heads.

There was no hope for the door anymore.

Not only had local militia and hunters become aware of the commotion but the bell had been rung again and the now purple store would probably be overrun with royal authorities.

Talia solved that problem courtesy of a liquid fire brew blasting a hole into the floor and another crater into one of the tree walls.

Without hesitation, she grazed her fingers to make a path of crouched backs to act as their stepping stones.

Eyes utterly cold and her silence deeper the two followed her.

Gregory tried to engage her. That was not only some quick, savage thinking but way ballsy and much more ruthless than he’d ever expected out of inexperienced, naive Perlick.

“You could have told me the plan,” she said and she didn’t sound angry.

Instead, Gregory realized she was trembling. Whipping around he could see she was teary-eyed. “I– I had to do something terrible today and– and I don’t know if it can be undone!”

Gregory scratched the back of his neck. “They’re hardly the first. Tens of thousands died just eight years ago and these freaks weren’t even trying. Now at least a third of ’em are galavanting about,” he smiled somewhat cruelly, “I say at least half in there got some of what they deserved.”

“And that’s supposed to make it better that I–”

She stared into her hands.

“So much red. All that red sand, was it their blood? I mean I like a good dissection or torture fest of human blood but that– that was something else. Something demonic.”

“Hey look,” said Mario’s tender voice trying to touch her shoulder and bring Talia out of her weird dark trance. Only for her to flinch as if he were some swamp thing.

“We should get some more distance between us and the crime scene,” she said. “I bet they boil Keep escapees and feed them to the undead to keep them in the underground bowels while trying to gas them deader.”

Okay then.

One could say whatever they wanted but even Gregory couldn’t deny it was moments like that that made him still his hand on betraying her, even if she was likely to do it first.

Seriously… girls that pretty could almost only be snobs.

“Where should we stay for the night now?” Mario asked, turning to Gregory.

Somehow he’d ended up on their flank and something in their sharp, cautious strides made him suspect they very much considered themselves his bodyguards somehow.

Yeah right.

As if Mario’s body were still prepubescent or Talia hadn’t just had a mini mental break about— well okay he supposed she’d had the right.

He’d never killed anyone and sometimes he’d marinated in self-loathing so strong it ripped him apart at the seams in such a brutal yet slow way. No way did someone so terrible, so disturbed deserve a quick end.

“The crags where the San Francisco bridge used to be. It’s an entire grotto of displaced, mostly adults but they’re pretty cool.”

It’s actually where Gregory would have actually liked to go in what was left of California. He’d heard vague whispers of the grotto, but only that it was a decline of craggy rock with new caves, plenty of predators, but some floating strongholds Earth forces had abandoned and plenty of scrap metal from military tech that had been being developed on the human end of things.

“Great, then Golden Bridge Grotto it is,” Mario chirped. Until his stomach gave a mighty rumble. “Except could we–?”

Greg sighed. “Yeah, we could all use a bite.”

He glanced at Talia again. She’d remained mute, looking away without even seeing if she was being stared at.

“Thanks,” Gregory said.

“Huh?” she asked, blinking like a cat. Why did girls do that cute stuff? He seriously didn’t get it. Even the fun boyish ones.

“You saved me,” he said. “I know it’s only because you need me, which is so obvious now.” He scoffed but still softened, “I’ll make sure you don’t have to do that again, but don’t go thinking you’re some hero snapping, you aren’t. You’re just as human and screwed as the rest of us.”

“I suppose I am,” she murmured. “Sorry. I know that kind of stuff is ridiculous, don’t worry.” Talia sighed. “This isn’t some Eragon or Inkheart novel.”