Young Writers Society

A brown and white streak darted past the foggy, dirty, window. I grabbed my oak bow made from a desk I had found in an old library; the wood was splintered and aged. I threw on an old leather jacket and pulled on my faux leather cowboy boots. I tightened my brown, faux fur gloves and hoisted my handmade quiver onto my back; it was made out of a leather pant leg with the leg hole sewn up. I put my hunting knife that I had stolen from a Keykeeper a month ago in its pouch and fastened it to my blue jeans. I ran to the rotting spruce door as I was wrapping a scarf over my face and swung it open. I shivered as I stepped into the harsh winter that had engulfed Boston just a week before The Regen.

It was rare that a wild animal came into Boston. I never could figure out how they got past the enormous fifty-foot tall fence that surrounds Boston. I half ran- half staggered for what seemed like hours in the direction the deer had run to. I stopped suddenly in a little square with three alleys leading out of it and planted my feet into the snow to help me stop. I was about to move on when I saw a blurred streak run past the opening of one of the alleys. I nocked an arrow with my bow and spun slowly in a circle as I watched for the deer. A large creature with a brown body and a white tail darted out from an alley. I pulled the arrow back with all my might and aimed for the eye. I muttered a prayer for the deer and as I was about to let the arrow fly, the ground exploded next to the deer’s hoof. The deer took off like a rocket and ran out of sight. I looked to where the shot had come from. There was a Keykeeper standing on the hood of his jeep pointing a rifle at where the deer had just been. He saw me before I knew he did. He laid his rifle on the hood of his truck and rose. He pulled out a revolver as he rose and he pointed it at me before I could shoot. He cocked his head to the right.

“Set it down,” he said firmly. He lifted his left hand off of his revolver and pointed at my bow. He glared at me. His actions were serious and fierce but his eyes were innocent little brown deer’s eyes; they were hardened for survival, but still caring and kind.

“Isn’t your job to kill people like me? You know, Survivors,” I yelled. My face had become a glowing, hot, inferno despite the unforgiving winds and cold.

“I’m only here because I can’t leave!” he yelled. “I’d leave if I could, and never come back.” His head dropped but I could see his eyes stalking my every movement.

“Keys can go anywhere!” I screamed. “I can never leave and you like that, you and your little friends in the offices all laugh at me and all the others!” I pulled back my lower lip with my front teeth and sank my teeth into it to combat my nerves. An overwhelming salty, metallic taste filled my mouth and my lip doubled in size.

“I’m not like them; I’ll never be like them,” he lied, “so lower your weapon!” His voice cracked as he yelled, he kicked his left heel with his right foot.

I crouched, put the bow low to the ground, and unstretched the string. I glanced up at the Key; he had turned around and put his revolver back in his pocket. He quickly picked up his rifle and then he turned back to me slowly. In his few moments of unawareness, I pulled the string of the bow back and let the arrow fly right into his heel. He opened his mouth and an explosion of sound came out of it like a machine gun being fired inside of a small, metal room. He rapidly pulled the trigger of his rifle. One bullet grazed my shoulder that felt like a nail file being dragged across my shoulder at the speed of light. Another bullet missed my body but whizzed past my ear leaving a constant roar in my ear that sounded like an MRI machine amplified by ten stereos. The Key’s gun was out of ammunition by now and he had begun digging around in his pockets for his car keys. He found them and held them in his left hand but I had already knocked an arrow and readied it to fire. I let the arrow fly and it hit his right upper arm in less than a second. He unlocked the car door, leaped in, and drove off.

As soon as the car was out of sight, I collapsed into the snow. As my face hit the snow, I felt the white roaring fire that people called snow devouring my skin; it was as if someone was sticking needles into my face over and over. The ringing grew louder and louder by the minute and my left ear had become a red stream. I screamed, “Stop!” My voice cracked and my jaw burned. The ambitious bird in my ear didn’t listen; it wanted to make me crack. I pressed my hands into the ground to help me stand and my shoulder exploded with pain. I kept going as the eerie silence became a hurricane of swearing. I staggered through the snow and out through the alleyways. I remained alert, looking for one of the mansions that Schröder’s minions lived in. They were always sealed tight but I was desperate and those mansions always had supplies in them. I thought while I walked, I thought about my family, I thought about The Regen, and I thought about the Überfell. I remembered my sister, how her brown hair went below her shoulders, and how her green eyes glimmered when she was happy and turned to acid when she was angry. I thought about my dad who had a glimmering personality and how he couldn’t last a minute without cracking a joke. He had short black hair and chocolate brown eyes. I remembered my mom who had long, red hair and light green eyes. I smiled, they had escaped on the last boat that England had sent before The Regen spread to our town. My thoughts shifted to The Regen; it was German for rain. I called the fallout the rain since our German dictator, Rune Schröder, rained down bombs on our country, das mächtige land, which is German for the mighty land, after he was bored of torturing us directly. The country was just a joke after the Germans invaded in 1965. They turned it from the mighty United States, where everyone was equal and could vote and work equally, to das mächtige land, where the poor had to work in the auto factories and cars were so expensive, ranging from thirty-thousand or more for just a Gremlin, the ugliest car I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Well, that was before 1980 at least, when the Überfell happened. Überfell was German for the robbery, but everyone in the country called it the Überfell. It was the time that Schröder took everyone’s weapons, cars, TVs, and pretty much all the other modern equipment except our modern clothes. He’d sell all of our equipment that he stole and would sell it to other countries and in Germany. I think this is why he kept Boston protected by that huge metal fence, with each link five inches wide and an inch long, to ensure nobody would climb the fence. It had two-foot long, barbed spikes on the top with barbed wire entangled in them just in case someone managed to climb it since it was next to impossible to break through. Boston was the capitol of the country now with all its harbors, so he had to keep people out of it. After Germany took over, working-class citizens became dirt poor because Schröder had to spend all the city funds and most of our paychecks to fund himself.

I stumbled around a corner and saw a huge, white, marble, mansion right at the end of the street. I jogged awkwardly to the front steps of the lifeless beast. Sure enough, there was a thick, metal plating covering the doors and windows. This was one of the governing mansions that every important, political person had in Boston. Boston was enormous now with similar structures miles away from each other. I looked around me and then back to the mansion. My eyes shifted to one of the windows and I could see that the hinges had rusted heavily from the heavy radiation from The Regen that had since dispersed. I slid my hunting knife out of my pocket and lept on to the window frame. I wedged my knife in the space between one of the rusted hinges and pushed down on it with all my might and the sound of the metal bending filled the air. The sound was like five metal nails being scraped across a chalkboard at the same time. The hinge flew off and my arm pushed in the same direction. I moved my other hand with a quick sweep backward just before the knife reached where it had just been. I repeated the process on the other two hinges and each time I made sure my arm was out of the way. I pulled my twisted, bent knife from the metal plate. The sound of the metal bending had only amplified my ear pain. I slid the knife back into my pocket and gave a hard tug on the handle of the plating. My arm stung as I pulled and the metal plating flew off and clattered to the ground. I then jumped off the window ledge and nocked an arrow. I fired it into the window and fractures spread all across the glass. I nocked another arrow and pulled the string back; the feeling of the arrow leaving my possession hit me with a huge force of the string coming back between the wood with great vibration. Suddenly, the window exploded with an array of different shaped glass shards and the sound of the shattering glass boomed through the streets. I walked to the window and picked up my two arrows. I gave a shout of triumph as I climbed through the window.

At the other end of the window was the front hall. It had five doors on each side of the hallway and a door at the end with two hallways next to it on either side. I walked to the end of the hallway and through the door. It opened to a large dining area, kitchen, and living room all connected as one with two staircases at the back wall. I walked to the back past the many TVs and other rare, expensive equipment. I put my hand on the mahogany rail on the stairs and slid it across the rail as I walked up. On the second floor there were two hallways at the beginning of the stairways passing by them and another hall reaching from the stairs to the back wall where a birch door hung open so I could see a huge shower in the room with a hallway parallel to the one that passed by the stairs in front of it. I stumbled to the end of the hallway and into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I swung open the medicine cabinet and pulled out some cotton balls and some gauze. I also grabbed some rubbing alcohol and applied it to my arm. I took some medical cloth out of the cabinet and secured it to my wound with the gauze. Next, I took some of the cotton balls and applied them to my ear, securing them with gauze. I closed the cabinet that had a mirror as the door. I forgot what I had looked like. I’m about five foot eight with matted, chocolate, brown hair. My crimson eyes seemingly stared through the mirror. My left eye had white and black spots on it and I was mostly blind in that eye. I had spilled air conditioner fluid into that eye while I was working in an auto factory in ‘79. My irises are crimson due to the chemicals of The Regen, although the radiation had dispersed in the first week of The Regen and I stayed deep in a wine cellar during that time; some chemicals stayed in the air that turned my irises red. I have scars on my face and I look two times my age which is only twenty-five. I looked away from the mirror and turned the showerhead on and stepped into the shower which was stupid because that meant I had to replace my bandaging.

After I had stepped out of the shower, I put my clothes back on and replaced my bandaging. I then began stuffing all the medical equipment I could into my game bag I had brought with me that had one strap like a satchel that fit around my neck. I walked back to the front door when five trucks came barreling down the street behind a black, van. They parked in the driveway and I swore. I knocked an arrow and tried to run down the hall but a Key was watching me through a sniper scope from the driveway through the broken window as the other Keys, who were armed, led The Head of the Keykeepers to his front door. He unlocked the metal plating and the door with separate keys and stepped aside as the Keys rushed through the doorway and raised their guns to my chin.

I swallowed hard. There were too many to fight off but none of them had noticed the loaded bow that I was holding low to my knees behind my leather jacket. Just then The Head of the Keys walked in. My nervousness hit me like a typhoon pulling me deep into the watery depths of despair with the pressure pushing and tugging at me. I stared at the Keys standing around me in the hallway. I knew that if I tried to run they’d want to hurt me, kick me, punch me, but not shoot me; they’d be angry to end me that quickly. It would be like helping me, to kill me; I hoped I was right.

“You want us to get rid of him?” a Key asked. He was staring out the door to The Head. I didn’t know any of the people’s names there not even The Head’s.

“He broke into my house!” he yelled. He paused for a moment and then his solemn frown turned into a wide, glowing grin, like a shark’s grin. If you’ve ever seen a shark’s mouth, like in a book or an old movie, you’d know that sharks’ mouths look like huge toothy grins; it seems like it’s only the carnivorous kinds though. “I want to teach him a lesson,” he said excitedly. It was at that moment I tested my plan. I kicked the Key that was behind me in the shin with a swift, backward kick. I darted to the window and put my hand on the window frame when I felt a searing pain hit my back like a train crashing into it at full speed. I dropped to the floor as fast as a five hundred pound rock falling from a plane thousands of feet in the air.

“Where ya think you goin’?” a Key said mockingly. He was holding his gun like a spear, he was the one who hit me. I tried to get up from the floor when he kicked me. The others joined in shortly after. Between the kicks and punches, which was only a few seconds, I could think. I grabbed my twisted knife out of my pocket and sliced it across a Key’s ankle. I countered an incoming punch my shoving the knife into the person’s hand. I quickly picked up the loaded bow, somehow the arrow hadn’t pierced my stomach when I fell. I pulled the string back and let it fly into a Key’s shoulder who was standing in front of the broken window. I threw myself through the window and ran. I ran past The Head of the Keys and past the sniper who was talking to him; none of them had a chance to react before I rounded the corner and out of sight.

I ran for an hour or so and stopped out of exhaustion and somehow ended up in front of Schröder’s mansion. It was just a block from my small brick house in town that had an old wine cellar in the basement; that’s where I hid during and after The Regen. That is where I live now, a block from the mansion where the ruler of the country lived. One of the front doors of the towering, three-story, stone brick that was painted a sandy red, was open. My curiosity was gnawing at me like a great famine, something I could hardly resist acknowledging, something I had to investigate. My eyes shifted to the black, sleek, trucks and jeeps in the driveway. The Keys are there I thought, the Keys are everywhere, always patrolling keeping everyone from leaving Boston. That was their job. Schöder’s gone, why did they keep following his orders? He had fled to Germany before he ordered The Regen to be launched. Unless, maybe, he was still giving orders. I decided to wait, to see what would happen, so I took out a book from my game bag and sat in an alleyway across the street.

I was waiting for what seemed like hours. I saw nothing all that time but the pages in my book. Suddenly a loud whirring noise rang out through the streets. A piece of the mansion’s wall was sliding open, it was a door, a garage door, and seven sleek, cars drove out of the opening. I couldn’t tell what kind they were. A Key spoke on a radio about a plane being flown out for pick up. I knew they were selling the cars.

“Okay, so these are all going back to Germany?” a Key asked another. This Key had brown hair and gray eyes, he couldn’t have been more than twenty. Schröder liked to recruit kids for the Keykeepers. He said everyone could fight no matter what age and they could protect or keep watch. He also ranted how he thought that younger people could learn more easily and quickly.

“Yep, back to the homeland!” the Key with the white hair and pink eyes answered. He laughed; his laugh was rigid and hoarse, it belonged to a smoker. “You stay here and close up shop then meet us back at the gate kid!”

The cars started filing out as more Keys came out the garage door, they all climbed into their cars and went somewhere, I don’t know where. Once the Keys were gone, I darted out from my hiding place and made my way towards the kid. He had a rifle slung over his neck. He saw me before I had reached him but he was bad with a gun, he fumbled to take the rifle off of his neck. He raised it shakily and pulled the trigger, nothing happened but a small clicking noise; it wasn’t loaded. I tackled him and pulled an arrow from my quiver and pressed it close to his neck.

“Did you plan on using that thing? You didn’t even aim at me, or load your rifle!” I screamed. I sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re just a kid.” I said with a softer voice. I pulled the arrow away. “Take me to the stuff!” I smiled.

The Key gulped. “Okay” He led me through the door and down a long ramp into the darkness of the basement.

“What’s your name kid?” I asked. I tried to keep a reassuring smile on my face. I hadn’t smiled a worry-less smile in eight months so it was hard. I tried to make my smile say I’m not going to hurt you, you’ll be okay. I could promise nothing, but it turns out I was worried about the wrong person.

“H-h-hodark,” He replied nervously. He still had the rifle around his neck, I was certain he wouldn’t use it and I’m better with a bow anyways.

“How old are you?” I asked. “Did Schröder pick your name for the draft last year?” I was curious and felt a bit of sympathy for him; he seemed innocent and innocent can get you killed.

“Seventeen…” He paused for a moment. “I’m seventeen.” He answered. “I was drafted when I was sixteen.” Tears rolled down his cheeks that were the color of gray as they picked up the dust and dirt on his face as they fell. His tears became more plentiful by the second. His face became a stormcloud and his tears became the rain. He stopped walking suddenly. “This is the garage,” he said sulkily, “beyond that door.”We were now at the bottom of the long, steel ramp that we had spent the last ten minutes walking down. “How will we get in?” I asked. “You’ve got a key, Key?” I said jokingly.

“Yeah-I got it right here,” he answered. He pulled out a long pole that was about a foot long with a metal crank on the end from his pocket. It looked like it was made out of silver. It also had three flat bars on the end that went into the keyhole. He put it in the huge keyhole that had three holes for bars in it and turned the crank. It turned and the door unlocked with a loud crack that echoed through the metal chasm-like garage. We pushed through the garage door and there were Keys everywhere, with guns slung over their shoulders and wrenches and other tools in their hands as they bent to work on the various car parts scattered out through the seemingly endless, metal room. All of the Keys that I could see turned to us, raised their weapons and filled the air with bullets.

A hurricane of bullets exploded around the room. I grabbed Hodark, slammed the huge steel door, and took off through the storm of silver. Pops, bangs, crashes, and ringing rang out all around us as we bolted up the ramp. We ran for about three minutes. We had made it out of the storm by now but I could still hear the explosions of metal booming through the garage. As we ran a gray fogginess appeared and we could see the entrance. As we stepped out into the cold of the never-ending winter I sighed in relief, I never thought I’d be happy to have the cold until now. I had stopped running but Hodark kept running, so I chased him through the snowy wasteland. I could see that he was in shock from the garage, he kept running and slammed right into the wall.

There was a loud boom and the buildings repeated the sound back again and again until it trailed off. I whipped around to see if another Key made it out. I saw nothing but the snowy streets and the abandoned buildings of Boston. I turned back to Hodark he was laying on the ground and I could vaguely see his coat sleeve turning red. I took off in a mad dash and I reached him within seconds. Before I knew it, I had my game bag open and I was unloading the medical supplies I had stolen from the Key’s mansion. I stared at his rifle that was still hanging around his neck; the weapon had clearly discharged on impact and a bullet had penetrated his left forearm. I couldn’t tell if it had hit an artery. I needed to access the wound but if I cut his sleeves now, I would have to worry about frostbite. The wind had started to pick up now, snow was falling slowly and lightly, and the gray, cloud-covered sun was slipping beneath the buildings. “Hey Hodark,” I asked in a gentle voice. “do you think you can walk a block?”

“I think so,” he answered, “Where are we going?”

“Home,” I said softly. “We’re going home.”

I reached out to help him up and I put my hand beneath Hodark’s armpits and lifted him onto his feet. I threw all the medical equipment back into the bag except for the sterile cloth. I tore ten pieces off and stacked them up. I handed them to Hodark. “Apply these directly to your arm and keep pressure to stop the bleeding,” I ordered him. I grabbed the bag, threw it on my back and we set off. It was almost completely dark when we got there, except for the dim light of the gray sky that pure darkness would soon be following. I rested my hand on the old, rusty, doorknob and opened the door; the swollen, rotting, door that had chips in the paint with a heavy tug. We walked into the cold house that was somehow warmer than the freezing, building filled, desert outside. I left to retrieve an old tarp from the linen closet and laid it on the couch. I went over to the front door where Hodark was still standing and helped him onto the couch. I took off his coat and took a pair of scissors from my bag and cut off his right sleeve.

“Why are you doing this?” Hodark asked with a look of disbelief. “I’m a Key! You hate Keys, everyone hates Keys.” He paused for a moment. “I hate Keys…” His voice trailed off. “Because you’re a kid and don’t know how to defend yourself,” I answered. “I have to make sure you don’t get killed. I can’t let a kid die, not aga-,” my voice broke. I pulled out a pair of tweezers from my bag and dug them into Hodark’s arm. His eyes sunk into his face and his face turned as white as the snow in Boston’s streets. His fingernails sunk into his palm and his teeth into his bottom lip. I pulled out another piece of cloth, rolled it up, and stuffed it between his teeth. I gripped the bullet with the tweezers and pulled it out of his arm gently. Luckily, the bullet was completely intact. I took some rubbing alcohol out of the bag and poured it into his wound. I then took the piece of cloth from his mouth and wrapped the bullet in it. I took some new cloth out of the bag and wrapped it to his arm with some gauze.

“Okay Hodark, you’re all done,” I told him. “I'll bring you a blanket and you can use the couch pillows for a pillow.”

“I’m staying here?” Hodark asked.

“Unless you wanna go back to the Keys,” I said with a fake upbeat tone.

“No,” Hodark answered, “No I don’t.” He was silent for the rest of the night

I left the small living room and left for my bedroom. I flopped onto the one person, flat mattress and closed my eyes. I tossed and turned for hours until falling snow appeared on the back of my eyelids. I pulled out a small calendar from my right front pocket and the calendar had a metal plate on the back of each page. There was a magnet on the spot that read November 14. It was November 14th, about three months after The Regen. I was walking back from scavenging old houses; it was about an hour from getting dark. The Keys looted most of the houses after the radiation cleared, so I found nothing. I walked past an alleyway where two Keys were beating up a small child and his parents were watching in horror. I should have helped but I ran away before the Keys saw me. When I arrived at my home I broke down and cried. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. I grabbed my bow and knocked an arrow. I pulled the door open and there were the parents standing there with knives in their hands.

My eyelids flew open it was just a dream, well at least the last part was. I climbed out of bed and stretched my back. I then wiped the sweat from my forehead and went to check on Hodark, he was sitting there listening to an old record on my record player. “I'm leaving to scavenge,” I told him. I picked up my bow and my quiver full of arrows. I swung the door open and stepped once again into the wintery abyss. As soon as I stepped out I saw a brown streak run across a street. I knocked an arrow and approached where I had seen it run. A man stepped out with a wooden broomstick that had the broom broken off. Another ran out from the side and grabbed my bow and quiver and stuck a pistol in my face. They both had brown trench coats, scarves around their mouths, beanies on their heads, and sunglasses on their faces. One of them had white hair poking through his hat and another had brown hair.

“We found it,” the one with the white hair said. “This one’s impure. He told us we needed an impure one, we’re pure. We will be free!” They picked me up, one of them by my shoulders and the other by my feet. They took me into an alleyway and down a flight of stairs. They opened a metal door and swung it open. They threw me on a table and started chanting at me. Another man came out of a hallway and started chanting as well. More people walked into the room and began chanting at me in, I think it was Latin. A man in a red leather jacket and black jeans walked out of another room. He put his hand on my arm.

“So, where’s your key to the gate, Key?” he asked me. “Keys are impure we need your key.” He took a bucket of snow from underneath the table and raised it over my face.

“I’m not a Key!” I screamed. He threw the snow onto my face and my scream tore through the room. Two men rolled out a bathtub full of snow into the room.

“What did you do to them?” I asked him. “Why do they think this is some sort of ritual when it’s just torture?”

“Stop your lies, Key!” he yelled with a deep voice. He scratched his head that was covered in black hair that went down to his eyebrows. His bluish eyes were as cold as the snow itself; they were more white then blue. He leaned in to my ear and whispered, “They need something to believe in to be motivated to help me escape and be my army, they will get to escape too. They are all condemned to suffer just like the rest of us. We’re just a brotherhood of a group of the condemned.” He glanced around the room to see if any of his minions had heard him. They were all still chanting and were smiling.

“What makes you think I’m a Key?” I asked loudly. I fought back against the rough grip of the cult members.

“Yesterday we saw you enter Schröder’s mansion with another Key,” he answered.

“Clearly you didn’t see me attack him and forced him to show me what was down there!” I screamed. I kicked and punched at him. Two of the men picked me up and held me near the tub. I kicked one in the face and he fell to the floor. I ran past the rest of the men and one shot at me. I swung open the door that hit a man in the face. I ran out of the door, up the stairs, and straight into the house. “Hodark, we’re leaving!” I yelled. “People are after me! They kidnapped me, I escaped but they will be here in a few minutes!”

“The Keys?” he asked while I helped him out of the door. I took his coat off the couch and threw it over him.

“No, some sort of brotherhood, it’s a cult, basically. They’ll are crazy. Let’s go.” We were staggering down the road to the mansion. He had the key in his pocket but folded up. We finally arrived at the mansion after about five minutes of staggering quickly down the road. We walked to the door and Hodark reextended the key. Hodark turned the key in the door and we took off running down the long metal ramp. He opened the next door after about six minutes of jogging. There were a few armed Keys in the room and mostly custodians cleaning the floors. We ran past them and shouted at them to give us a car key. I knocked an arrow and turned in a full circle, pointing it at everyone around us. A custodian left to retrieve a car key and we opened the door of a truck with the key, put it in the ignition and drove out of the garage, up the ramp and into the streets of Boston.

After about half an hour of driving aimlessly around the city, a deer jumped out in front of us. I slammed on the breaks. The deer took off so we followed it. We followed it through alleyways and behind buildings, finally, it stopped behind an old barbershop. It snuck up behind an old wagon that was propped up against the great fence of Boston and about ten seconds later it darted past the outside of the fence. Hodark and I immediately hopped out of the car and pushed the giant wagon out of the way. The opening in the fence must have been cut by a high-class resident of Boston that could get their hands on crazy equipment. The opening was just bigger than the truck. I floored the gas pedal and we flew out of Boston. I turned onto an old road and weaved past the gigantic plant life that had sprouted up through the pavement. As we drove along the road next to the harbor the sun was sinking beneath the sea, and for the first time in my hard life it wasn’t a sunset to me, it was a signal of hope and a promise of freedom.