).
Enjoy.
The enemy was before us, home behind. This might just be the sweetest victory any of us have tasted in many years, because it was assured and the enemy had no idea we were coming.
We stood atop the highest hill that the land could afford, looking down upon the destitute flatness of the plain below, and the enemy beyond it to the north. They stood solid, but it was all an illusion. We were invincible, but only we knew it.
I didn’t have to give a signal – no one did – and after a few minutes standing, observing our oblivious prey, we charged. About fifty of us, I think, against their population of about one million. We’d go back home to children and those who don’t fight afterwards, with the spoils of war to share around.
We charged, screaming with the rage of a thunderstorm voicing nature’s hatred for those we fought, running like gods of war about to exercise our dominance over the weak.
Had the enemy been out to meet us that day, they would have been afraid that their centuries of needless need and moral suicide were about to be avenged. No one was there. They haven’t left their city in years. Anyway, had they been on the plain, aware of our belligerent approach, it would have defeated the purpose of why we were there at all.
We were there for them and their city.
It stood in front of us like the offensive gesture of an architect aimed at the entire world and the natural order of things. It was horrendous. Skyscrapers reached ever upward, with the smoke-exhaling turrets at their peaks acting like hands, designed for the sole purpose of grabbing hold of the sky and ripping it down with the violence that only comes with slow and deliberate pollution. There wasn’t much light anymore from above, which was probably an act of spite against such an act.
The monolithic buildings of industry and the human ego gathered closely together for their discussion of how they could further their desecration of the land, making the transition from open space to closed-in mind compression sharp and sudden. You could take three steps and go from the wide-open nothingness of the badlands we call home to the communal claustrophobia of the city.
Yes, I have a habit of describing things as vividly and morbidly as possible. I like words and hate that infernal city.
We swept across the barren spatial shield that separated our home from theirs, still loosing our voices into the air. Orders, wishes, threats, war-cries, grievances, promises, apologies, all finding their way from our mouths to the landscape without a single coherent word being spoken. It was carnal, pure.
I looked at Nive, who ran next to me. We stopped our cries briefly, and with a momentary look that communicated everything our voices didn’t need to, we redoubled our assault. Our screams grew louder, our legs moved faster, and the city in front of us trembled with fear while its denizens continued pretending to live their lives.
We were nearly there.
The few anemic plants that scattered themselves over the land like gravestones mourning the death of nature seemed to support us, hoping that we would bring destruction their enemies. We wouldn’t, sadly; that vendetta was their own. There would not be any complete destruction, any liberation for the metropolitan prisoners. We were there to steal another few days of survival. We were to steal food, and in doing so win our own little victories against the ‘real world’ by staying alive. If we perished, they won.
My group of hunter-gatherers reached the armour plating that contained the city and supposedly protected it from anything that might try to get in; the endless barbed-wire fences that could sever the flesh of those trying to get in, just as well as it could infect the mind of those inside with paranoia. No one feels safe when barbed wire is necessary.
Getting past the defenses was simple. Someone had brought an instrument to cut a hole through the barriers big enough for us to get through one at a time. I went first, followed by Nive and the others. I don’t know why I went first, or even why I felt like I should. I have never accepted a position of leadership, but I still seem to hold one. We don’t need a leader.
By this time we had stopped screaming, opting instead for a silence that sounded too much like we were trying to avoid detection. We didn’t need stealth, or even precision to carry out this expedition. I’m convinced that we could have paraded about the walkways and streets of this place, announcing that we were here to steal their possessions, and not meet any real resistance. They were not afraid, just indifferent.
After most of us were through the perimeter, we found ourselves in the cavernous embrace of the city immediately. There were no less-densely populated areas toward the boundaries, where perhaps smaller buildings might be the found. No, the first buildings that you saw when entering were massive skyscrapers, no smaller than any of the others, smoke billowing from their peaks.
We stood at the base of one of these man-made mountains, on the dirty grey concrete of the roads that ran like veins around the cityscape; pumping the oxygen-devoid blood of transportation vehicles.
At the bottom of every skyscraper was the reason for the smoke that spewed from the top; the purification systems. They supposedly made the air breathable, but there was nothing pure about it. For four years of my life I had breathed actual pure air, and this wasn’t it. God, I miss that air.
The systems took in air near the ground and returned it to the atmosphere without any contaminants. Conversely, these contaminants were largely produced by the exhaust that the machines gave out, as it was expelled from the pinnacles of those buildings that housed them.
It wasn’t far from where we came in to where we were headed.
The few denizens that were in area looked at us momentarily as we walked up the street like we had created this ungodly place. If we had, I would have killed myself long ago. The only thing our arrival meant was that perhaps they should walk a bit faster in the circuitous journeys to nowhere. Most of them wore standard-issue clothing: grey cover-alls with bands of black on the left arm. The intent of these uniforms was to separate designated citizens from anyone that was not supposed to be there. We wore multi-coloured clothes of all descriptions, since we were lucky enough to have someone who knew how to dye clothes. We were, after all, human, and we deserved colours. We were not citizens.
It was late in the afternoon, about 1730 hours, and despite the level of darkness that painted this part of the world perpetually, it was beginning to get really dark. The lights would come on soon, and I like to be on the way back home when they do.
We had to move to the left, down the street that ran with the fences all the way around the city. There were, as I said, about fifty of us all walking down that street that none of us should ever have been on. We were a moving blur of colourful resistance that walked freely on the land of the enemy, and no one seemed to care.
Of course, once word reaches top-floor offices and administrative ears, someone will care. However, with such a lack of spirit like that which these people show, no one would bother reporting us for an hour, maybe two. We’d be long gone by then.
We marched on the road for a few minutes until we found the adjoining street that would take us the rest of the way to our destination. The turn soon took us out of sight of the city limits, and into the cold grip of ‘civilization’. Really, it isn’t very civilized. I would continue to describe what I saw as we walked, but there isn’t anything more to say. If you didn’t bother looking up, you were enclosed in an urban cage of grey brick walls that continued to look the same no matter how far you walked. I don’t know how the people here can tell one place from another.
Just saying. Writergirl 
