A/N: I'm not sure if I went overboard with this chapter or not with the changing of viewpoints. Personally, I think that I changed too much, and that it broke up the action a lot throughout the chapter until the last part from Craig's pov. Again, I'm not sure, so someone please give me feedback on whether it was too much or not.
I always welcome and respond to critiques, so I would appreciate it if you would please leave on after reading.
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Chapter 13: Dumpster Logic
April:
Well, it was quite the dilemma, I must say. I’d never been in the back of a police car before, but there’s a first time for everything, I guess. We were parked on the curb outside of the copy shop, though on the other side of the building from the usual entrance. The policeman in the driver’s seat was probably in his forties, with a weird, pointy mustache and a surprisingly cliché-looking pair of mirror sunglasses. The other guy was scrawny in every sense of the word. A thin frame, a long face, and arms that would probably have snapped in half if he tried to lift a phone book. Speaking of which, they were going through my records in the front seat. When compiled together, they would have been thick enough to fill a small phone book.
I leaned towards the bulletproof glass that separated us and said, “So… Why am I here again?” Both of them remained silent, much to my vexation.
The whole situation reminded me of the last time Craig was arrested for under aged smoking. I think that he managed to beat the crap out of three policemen before one of them pulled a tazer on him. As they interrogated him, so I was told, that logic that he was know for didn’t have any effect on the police, so he was put in jail. Luckily for him, I managed to bust him out with some rope and a can of bacon grease. Yeah, I was that good.
The current situation seemed to call for him to help me, though, so I was in quite a pickle. Hopefully someone’ll figure out that I’m gone and come to get me. Craig should figure something out. I thought to myself without a hint of doubt.
Craig:
I hopped over the tattered “Do Not Enter” tape that covered the doors of another of the city’s run-down buildings, and proceeded to dodge through the obstacle course of debris that awaited me in the lobby. Once I reached the stairway, I shot up the steps like a bullet. The core of the building was completely hollow, and the stairs curled upwards along the inner walls, leading to every room in the building and up to the cracked dome of glass on the ceiling twelve storied up. I called Allen’s name up the huge spiral staircase that led all the way through the center of the building, but to no avail. I was probably noisy enough to wake the dead, but I simply ignored the other residents who shouted at me as I ascended the steps. At the sight of room 507, I skidded to a stop on the landing and snatched to doorknob to keep myself from falling over. The moment I ripped it open, I was met with a blindingly bright light bulb which hung from the ceiling and shined into my eyes.
“Craig?” A girl’s voice exclaimed as I regained my sight. Once I managed to crack my eyelids open once again, I caught sight of Sky, Allen’s older sister. She had on a dirty gray tank top, threadbare cargo pants that were big enough to belong to me with a belt to keep them from sliding off. Like her little brother, she had dreadlocks, but they were longer and tired back into a thick ponytail.
“Sky!” I yelled, grabbing her shoulders urgently.
“What the fu--”
“The police finally got to April! I need you guys to help me to--”
“Nuh-uh, Craig!” She pushed me away forcefully with two flat hands, “I remember the last time we helped you. We almost got our asses arrested!”
“Oh, come on! April’s helped you guys before, hasn’t she? You need to help her and--”
“It’s not my problem,” She said with her hands on her hips. “She got herself in trouble, then it’s her own damn fault.” After a short pause, I grudgingly shoved her out of the way and headed towards the first of the three rooms of the apartment, which happened to be the laundry room and kitchen. “Hey! Did I say you could come in?” She snatched my shoulder and stepped in front of me.
I looked her in the eye as if I were a dam about to burst. “Sky, you’re really asking for it right now. Get the hell out of my way!”
She stared back at me with an I-don’t-care-anymore expression and let go of me. I dashed through the dining room and towards door to Allen’s room. The dining room had a ragged mattress on the floor near the table, which had candles lit in the middle. His room was dark, and I was able to make out my friend rolling around in his futon. There was another futon on the other side of the room, which I assumed belonged to Sky.
“Craig…?” He said dimly.
I slipped the dim light bulb on and said loudly, “Get off your ass, Allen! We have to go help April get away from the cops!”
He covered his head and moaned, “Man, I’m fuckin’ tired!”
I ripped the poorly-made blanket off of him and yelled, “We need to rally some people to help us, now get the hell up!”
It took him a couple of minutes to fully wake up, after which I chucked his sweatshirt in his face so that he’d put it on. After I explained again, he snapped to it and got his butterfly knife from under his rotten wood dresser and stuck the weapon in his pocket.
“Allen,” Sky said from the doorframe of the room, “don’t you get mixed up with this kid again! Remember when you almost fuckin’ died the last time you did?”
I walked right past her, as did Allen, who followed right behind me. He said to his sister, “Yeah, I remember. But this kid’s the reason that I didn’t die.” I smiled inwardly at the show of gratitude, and that was when we began to haul ass out of the apartment and down the stairs. We often jumped down whole flights at a time. Once outside, we ran down the rainy streets as fast as our legs could carry us.
Luckily for me, I was in good enough shape to run around the city a few times and still run another mile fairly quickly. In my rush around the downtown area, I managed to gather around five or six people. Jose was one of them, and there were also a few regulars from Jay’s who I drafted while I was there. My lungs felt like they were stabbing into my throat every time I took a breath, but I didn’t care. I had to get April away from those cops, even if I died trying.
It wasn’t long before my group met up with Allen’s slightly smaller entourage near April’s place.
I nearly tripped over my own feet until I stopped myself by skidding to a stop and grabbing a street lamp for balance. “That’s everyone, Allen?” I asked, pained by the sight of less than ten people.
Allen seemed a little less tired than me, but still no less urgent. “Yeah, that’s all I could get.”
I waved my hand passively. “It’s okay, we’ll be okay with this many.” I looked over at the building containing the copy shop, and ran towards it, despite my tiredness. Everyone followed behind me as quickly and quietly as they could. Once I reached the closest outside wall, I told everyone to wait as I stealthily climbed the fire escape that resided right above us. Once I got to the flooded rooftop, I waded through the ankle-deep water and whatever other debris was in my way to get to the other side and peer over the edge.
I noted, with a certain amount of relief on my part, that there were only two police officers in the car. April’s hand could be seen resting on the door of the driver’s side in the back seat. I chuckled at how typical it was of her to be so calm.
I made my way back across the flat rooftop and down the fire escape. By the time I got down there, the group had hidden themselves in the shadows behind some dumpsters in the alleyway between April’s building and the next door building. It led right up to the street lamp that illuminated the police car.
“So?” Jose asked me anxiously.
I took a deep breath and said, “Two cops in the front seat, and April’s in the back seat. I’m sure that they’ll have guns and those black… police… bat… things that they use to beat people up, so be careful.”
Everyone just nodded their heads a little. Then there was silence. That was a bad sign.
“So…” Allen said awkwardly, “we got a plan?”
“Yeah! Plan! Let’s see…” I closed my eyes and made an attempt to brainstorm on what to do. I took into account everything that I’d seen in the past few minutes. The random pieces of rubble on the rooftop, the objects in the alleyway, and the position of the car. The perfect plan came to me in an instant.
April:
Okay, sitting in that car had started to get boring as hell. The guys in the front seat, who I’d dubbed Bob and Lemmy, didn’t say a single word after they told me that I had the right to remain silent. The only thing remotely entertaining was the sound of rain on the top of the car.
“So, Bob,” I said to the mustachioed driver, “how log will I be booked for?”
He sighed and put my records on his lap. “My name’s not Bob. But if you’re lucky, you’ll get about thirty years. We’ll also be tracking down everyone you’ve given one of those fake Ids to. All of you will be locked up good and tight.”
Lemmy turned towards me and said, “Yeah, we’ll lock you up and--”
“Throw away the key, right?” I interrupted. “Dear God, Lemmy, that’s such a loser expression for anyone to use these days.”
“My names not Lemmy! Now shut up.” As if I cared. I was still going to call him Lemmy.
“But really, why throw away the key? Some random homeless guy could come and pick it up out of the trash can, you know, so why not just put it in your pocket?”
“Shut up, already,” Bob said. I slouched back into the back seat and watched him as he flipped though some more of my records. After a few seconds, he apparently spied something of interest, since his eyes seemed to start to glow from the inside out. “So…” he said as he held up the profile paper that had an old photo of me paper clipped to it’s front. “You’re last name isn’t Showers, it’s--”
An immensely loud and chaotic crashing sound from the front of the car exploded into the inside. The vehicle shook and two policemen were showered with razor-sharp pieces of glass from the windshield. The shards bombarded against the barrier of bullet-proof glass inbetween the front and back seats, though I still flinched out of surprise. Once I took my hand-cuffed hands from my head, I saw that a slab of concrete about the size of my head had crashed through the front wind shield as if it were made of paper. The officers both scrambled to get out of the car, leaving my records and notes scattered around the interior with the rain practically pouring in on top of the documents.
“Hey! Let me out, too! Hey!” I yelled at them, but they were too freaked out to notice me.
Bob reached back into the car and snatched the radio speaker thingy from the crushed dashboard and said into it, “This is car number 325, requesting a tow truck. Our windshield has been shattered by an assailant, and we may need backup. Over.”
After a couple seconds, a deep, monotone voice crackled over the speaker. “Roger, 325. We’ll send a tow truck and backup your way. Please specify your location. Over.”
As Bob blabbed the locale to Mr. Monotone, Lemmy started looking around for anyone who may have been nearby. I knew from life experience, however, that it’s much harder to spot someone in the rain when you’re not used to it. These guys’re doomed, I though to myself with a rather evil smile.
Once Bob finished with the radio, he and Lemmy pulled out their guns and started down the alleyway next to my building. Guns… I thought with a bit of anxiety, Shit, I didn’t think about that…
Craig:
Just as I thought they would, those idiots went down the alley with their guns drawn. I had a clear view of them from the roof of April’s building. By then, some of us had moved back into the hiding place behind the dumpsters while the rest of us were in position to get the cops. Luckily, everything was going according to plan. The two of them slowly trudged down the alley until they came across two closed dumpsters, both of which were set up against either side of the alley. Behind those was where we were hiding.
One of the policemen nodded to the other, and both of them stepped over to the other side of a dumpster, and pointed their guns down at the hidden, shadowy hiding places behind them.
“Freeze!” They both shouted as they pointed their guns down at the two of my friends who hid themselves there. After that, there was a long string of shouts and yells that echoed throughout the alleyway as the cops pinned the two of them against the walls of the buildings.
I had to wait for the opportune moment, when they passed in front of the two closed dumpsters again. Right then, at the most opportune moment, I dropped a fair-sized stone down from the rooftop. As if part of the rain itself, it traveled down like a bullet before ramming into the hard steel lid of the dumpster.
“Perfect…” I said to myself with a smile as everyone else leapt out of the giant trash containers and pounced upon the defenseless policemen.
April:
“That wasn’t bad for you guys, you know?” I said in admiration as Allen picked the locks of my handcuffs. Once that contemptible device of the devil’s design was off, I tossed them over to where Bob and Lemmy sat on the asphalt. They were effectively beaten up and bound together with their own handcuffs. I always liked those little touches that Craig put on those kinds of things. To keep them from running, Craig held Allen’s knife at their throats for incentive.
I said to Craig, “Could you guys help me move my stuff out? They know where I live now, so continuing my business from here will be a bit hard. Shall we?” He did that tricky close-the-butterfly-knife-with-one-hand thing, and put it in his pocket.
“Yeah,” he said with an exhausted tone in his voice.
It was only when everyone began to walk up the fire escape towards my remembered it. “Aw, shit… guys! I think that they called for help after you bashed their window in!” They just stood there, as if they didn’t believe what I was saying. My head whirled around in the direction that I heard sirens screaming. They were still a ways off, but there was definitely a lot of them. “Move it!” We all practically climbed up the sides of the building like a bunch of bugs, and entered the copy shop in a frantic sprint down through the center of the boxes.
“Which ones do you need?” Craig called to me as he went for my main PC on my desk.
“All of ‘em!” I forcibly ripped at least ten cords out of a power strip before anyone else did anything.
“What?”
“Just unplug everything as-is and shove them in the boxes-- they’re all empty!” Everyone followed my orders and began to pile anything and everything electronic into the cardboard containers. The copy machines, computers, hard drives, fax machines, and whatever else I had were all packaged. “No, put this in first, and then that! If you drop that, I’ll kill you! Start going out through the fire escape that lets out into the alley! They’ll be less likely to see us! Come on! Haul ass!” I barked orders to everyone who came into view, including Craig and Allen, who followed what I said without question. I went along with everyone else in the packaging of the electronics, and did even more work than any of them. It relieved me that they at least recognized the importance of what I was trusting them with.
Once I saw that everything was going well, I ran over to my desk, dodging people and pushing them out of the way despite my small frame. I feverishly went through the papers and drawers, scattering them around in the air and tearing the filing drawers off of their foundations. There it is! I thought to myself as I snatched a small, completely blank envelope from between where two planks of wood inside the desk were placed. With it in my possession, I merely stared at it as if in awe, as if in disbelief that I really had to use it. As I looked back at the guys, who were still rushing to pass all of the boxes throughout the room, I had the feeling in my gut that we were going to make it.
There was a crash that came from the front door. It was as loud as a bomb in a silent opera house. Everyone’s head twisted towards the cracked door at the same time, and we all feel silent. My throat grew dry, and my heart sank down to my feet in horror. I wasn’t even able to count how many policemen came through that tiny door. They came in pitch black uniforms in wave after waving mass of bodies that encroached with insane speed on those of us still in the shop.
I forced myself to move, and pushed the nearest person towards the window. “Get out of here! Go! Get the hell out!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
Craig was the last to go through the window with a box under his arm. He latched his free hand on the windowsill with his back facing the building, and urged me to climb onto his back so that he could jump down into the alley with me.
I must have been mere moments from getting to the window when, as if in slow motion, at least five strong hands grabbed onto my clothes, arms, and hair. I let out a painful scream, and my progress was stopped short.
“April!” I heard Craig shout in the background. My sights were set on the faceless men who were my captors. Their fingers did their best to dig into my flesh and keep me away from that damned window. My curses fell upon deaf ears as their impossible strength began to pull me away. Craig called my name once again, and I looked straight ahead to see his hand stretched out to me. I gritted my teeth, leaned forward, and dug my shoes into the wooden floor. My arm managed to tear itself away from their hands at the cost of my sleeve, and I reached out for the only salvation in sight.
Amelia:
I laid down on the floor of Jacky’s chaotic-looking room, a blue sleeping bag wrapped securely around me for warmth. Despite Jacky’s uncleanness, I bared with it and tried to get comfortable in the blackness of the room. For once, it wasn’t pouring down rain outside, but I would have bet anything that it was still raining in the city. With the absence of that sound, however, I found it impossible to fall asleep. That hypnotic sound of raindrops all around me wasn’t there.
I was cold. Colder than I should have been. So cold that I shivered every so often, and even shuddered at the very thought of moving from the warm spot that I had created on the floor.
“Can’t sleep?”
I jumped slightly at the sound of my friend’s voice. “Heh. Not so much, no.”
“Me neither.” She paused, and in the darkness, I heard her blanket ruffle as she stretched her arms and legs with a yawn. “The rain was like a lullaby for me, so it feels weird whenever it’s not there.”
“I guess,” I said as I turned over in my sleeping bag in an attempt to get comfortable.
I always found it strange how alike some people could be, whether they knew it or not. When I thought about it, I wondered if Craig was the same as me in an way. I guess that I did inwardly cheer him on when he confronted the principal, but did that mean that we were alike?
I heard Jacky move around on her bed, followed by the sound of some random objects being sifted through on her bedside table. There was a faint green glow from her electric clock, and I was able to make out her fingers pressing a few buttons before she turned the light off. After a few seconds of thinking about what she had just done, I was able to hear the sound of rainfall emanate from the clock.
“Better?” She asked.
I palmed my face with a laugh and said, “It’s not quite the same, but whatever.”
Craig:
How the hell did it come to this? I shouted inwardly as I continued to run through the rain-drenched streets. All I was able to see were vague blurs of alleyways and objects that I needed to get past. For the first time in my whole life, the rain worked against me by spraying into my eyes every time I needed to see around a corner or down a street. The chills that I received only slowed me down, and the lack of vision made me frantic turn my head every which way in an attempt to check all around me all at once. Without a doubt, that huge group of police had started picking us off one by one throughout the grid of streets all around downtown.
I didn’t even know what happened to April after she got out of the shop with me.
“Craig!” Someone shouted from behind me. I reeled around to see Allen slide through a puddle around a corner with a spray of water, coming towards me. Hot on his heels were about half a dozen policemen, so I continued to run away at top speed. All hopes of fighting back had been dashed by the sheer number of the black-clad officers. All we were able to do was run. I huffed and snorted and strained my legs to their utmost limits of pain and exertion. I wasn’t even able to feel my feet touch the ground anymore.
Allen caught up to me and shouted, “In there!” He pointed at the front entrance to a worn-down boarding house. I knew exactly what he was thinking once I saw that the only things covering the entrance were a few soggy boards. We shot up the stoop and both did near-perfectly-synchronized jump kicks into the boards, sending them hurling into the front hallway. I had to do a clumsy and painful roll across the hardwood floor to come to a stop. It was surprisingly wet inside, which was evident by the massive amount of leaks that we only found out about after we entered the building. The policemen came into my sight when they tried to enter through the same entrance that we did. I picked up the largest piece of the broken board, and catapulted it with all my might towards the group of six. One of them let out a cry of pain as the edge of the wood hit him square between his eyes, which caused him to fall back and block passage of the others behind him.
“The back!” I shouted to Allen, but he was already halfway through the boarding house by the time I said it. Once again, we had to plow through a board that covered the back door, with the rain coming as a torrent of endless sheets onto our worn bodies. We put the wood up again in order to further block passage by the police, and added to the blockade with a rake propped against it, which I spied in the backyard’s weeds out of the corner of my eye. With the garden nothing but an area for dead weeds, we trudged across the enclosure and hopped the fence into another complex’s backyard.
Our runs had been reduced to a slow limp. It was all we could do to lean against the back door to open it, and close it once inside. My lungs felt as dry and clogged as sawdust, evident by my coarse breathing and violent coughs. I slumped against the nearest wall, and slid down to the floor, as did Allen, whose condition wasn’t dissimilar from mine.
“Hey, man, you aright?” My friend asked between breaths.
I laughed softly, “What about you?”
“Man, I asked you first.”
“I feel like shit. Happy?”
“Me, too. So shut the hell up.”
Both of us attempted to laugh it off, but to no avail. Our legs still seethed with pain, and our lungs and hearts were no doubt on the verge of bursting. The wall and floor were surprisingly comfortable, so it was very much a welcome change from all of the running.
A clatter followed by the shattering of glass sounded from the front side of the building.
I shot to my feet out of reflex and hid behind a corner from the hallway. “Shit.”
Allen stood up and looked around the area of the building we were in. It was the living room and kitchen, with a broken TV, a soggy couch, and a kitchen with nothing working in it. He snatched a small cutting board from the table and held it by the handle like a bat. I peered around the corner to see if I was able to get a glimpse of the other intruder, only to see a vague outline in the darkness run into a different corridor with light, stealthy footsteps. All around us, I was able to hear the low rumble of voices. They must have belonged to the policemen, so I knew for a fact that they had sent one of their men into the building to check if we were inside.
“You think that we’re the last ones?” I whispered to Allen, and started down the pitch-black hallway as quietly as possible.
“Hope not,” he said. It was all that he was able to say, and I had no intention of adding anything to the thought.
From beyond the hallway in which the policeman had gone, there were the thumps of heavy footsteps running in our direction. My heart pounded into my ears with each footstep, getting louder and faster as it approached me. The front of the person’s shadow dashed in front of me, and I swung my fist as hard as I could towards where I perceived his head to be. The silhouette let out a strangely high-pitched yell, and fell backwards before my hit could connect.
“Hey! Craig! It’s me! Stop!”
“What the-- April?” I shouted, and fumbled around the floor to help her up.
“God damn it, man!” Allen said both out of frustration and relief from the hall behind me.
I heard her sigh. “You guys scared the shit out of me!”
“Shut up, so did you!” I said, and leaned against the nearest wall. Before we were able to relax, a bright light shined through the front windows of the building, and streamed through the cracks in the walls until we were prectically blinded by it.
From outside, a loud-speaker voice boomed the words, “We have the building surrounded! Step out of the building quietly and with your hands on your heads!”
I made my way to a window next to the front double doors, and peeked through the wet, foggy glass. Dozens of the policemen dressed in black had encircled the building on the street and all the way around through the alleyways. Someone whose figure I couldn’t make out was standing behind a searchlight with the megaphone in hand.
“Move that shelf in front of the door,” April said to me.
I turned to meet her, and said, “Are you crazy? There’s, like, fifty fucking cops outside!”
She walked up to me and grabbed my collar. She was stronger than she looked. “Didn’t you want me to do a job for you involving that Amelia girl, or whatever her name is?”
“Wha--? We don’t have time to worry about that now!” I shouted into her face, though her expression didn’t change at all.
“Then why the fuck else are you going through all of this? Isn’t this all for her sake? If you give up now, then she’ll be so disappointed in you that she’ll just drop you back in the gutter where you came from! So what if there’s fifty, or even a hundred cops standing in your way? When have the damn police ever stopped us, huh? Never! And I don’t plan for them to start now!” She released my collar and started for the stairs. “We both have a job to do. Now let’s get our asses in gear and get out of here so that we can finish it!”
Reluctant, I followed her up the steps, with Allen following right after me.
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I, for one, like this chapter. I had this chapter written up in notebook pages for a few weeks fefore I posted chapter 12, so it took me awhile to type it. I added a new scene to this one, and changed a lot of little details, hopefully for the better. I'm not finished with chapter 14 yet, so it may take a few more weeks before I post it.
Anyway, if you have a critique for me, then be sure not to hold back. I love it when someone drills me into the ground, me being a masochist when it comes to criticism, so give me all you've got!
Oh, and thanks for reading this chapter!
hehe