Hellfire chapter 4

“Scavengers”

        We drive through the broken part of the city, the lifeless buildings towering over us like stone giants. As we go through, we swerve past rubble and long forgotten vehicles. I see all the different kinds of vehicles and ask Lionheart what kind they are. Some were just cars that people owned, some took mail to people, and so many others. I mainly ask to break the silence. Lionheart doesn’t talk much, at all. I look at him behind the wheel of the van, and I can tell there’s something locked in his head he doesn’t want to let out. It just makes me want to know more.

        “Lionheart, I know you got annoyed at me the first time I asked, but… what are you?” I say finally working up the courage to ask. He takes a long breath.

        “I was…an experiment…by the Dictatorship. I was supposed to be the new and improved Guard. I was going to be the one keeping you and everyone else in the Sectors in. I guess that’s irony for you.” he says with a slight chuckle. “We’ll…apparently, the experiment I was part of took a lot of money to stay afloat. Money the Dictatorship didn’t want to pay, so they tried to kill me. I fought back. They told me I was a solder being trained to keeping traitors in prison camps, I found out the truth after killing everyone in the base I was kept in. That’s when I decided to fight for the Sectors.”

        My eyes widened. I didn’t think he would be a creation of the Dictatorship itself. The thought of him being a Guard, with his abilities, it would have been a nightmare. “I’m sorry they turned on you. Some of them must have been close to you, weren’t they?” I ask. They couldn’t just raise him without any love or compassion, could they?

“No. None of them were close to me, not even those I saw on a daily basis. They wanted me to know no compassion what so ever.” My heart dropped at those words. How horrible to grow without anyone to actually care about you. But then, how is it that he has compassion then? He showed nothing but to me when he was comforting me after we left Chris to the river.

“Well…I’m glad you're not one of them.” I say with pride, keeping my thoughts to myself.  He was no Guard. There is no way. He’s just too heroic to be a monster like them.

        “So, tell me about yourself.” he says taking one hand off the wheel and resting it against the door.

        “Not much too tell. My parents had me a little young. My father was only a year away from having to go to the farms to work, but he went straight to them when he found out. He worked day and night till he had enough to buy a place for us. It wasn’t much but it worked. Four years later Chris was born. Dad died when I was ten, Mom two years later. I took care of Chris from then on.” I say with my head hung down. I don’t want to think of my brother. I loved him so much, but the thought of him is too painful.

        Lionheart doesn’t say anything after I finish. I look up at him and his face is enough to tell he is sorry. I try to think of something to make the conversation go further. “So…you think you can show me how to use a gun?” I say hoping it would work. He smiles and shakes his head.

        “There’s no way I’m letting you get into a fight.” he says without looking at me. I start to glare at him.

        “Why? Just cause I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t fight.” I say pointing my nose in the air. When I was younger, I would always play with other kids in the Village, most of them boys. They usually got into fights and when I tried to get in on it, they said no because I was a girl. He laughs at my comment.

        “It’s not that. It’s the fact that you don’t know how to use one and even if I did teach you, these guys know how to use them a lot better then you. This isn’t a game. You either kill or you die.” he says losing his smile to a more serious face.

        “Alright,” I say disappointed. I look out the window and watch more buildings go by. We pass through the streets like ghosts. The city is mostly dead anyway, but I never thought it would make me feel so…dreadful.

        After an hour, Lionheart brings the van to a stop. He gets out and walks around to my door. He opens it and I slide out. “What are we doing here?” I ask looking around us. We’re in front of a building with a rotting wooden sign that says “Bakery” hanging from a piece of wire. Lionheart goes to the back and takes a bow and a quiver of arrows from the boxes. He slings the quiver over his left shoulder and walks back to me.

        “I’m going to see if there is anything in there. You stay out here and if you see anything, scream. Ok?” he says drawing an arrow. I nod my head in agreement. He walks to the building and opens the door with his elbow. It makes a high pitch squeak from the rust. He walks in with the arrow ready to fly.

        After he disappears into the building, I go to the van and lean up against it. I keep looking up and down the street incase anything his coming. I know he took the Wolves and Hawks down easily but that doesn’t mean they can’t get the jump on him.

        Suddenly, I hear a screech inside the bakery. I run to the door, to be met with a white figure that slams into me and knocks me on my back. The figure runs past me and slams into the side of the van. I look up to see it has a human-ish shape. Its eyes are a pale grey color, its skin is completely white, all traces of hair is gone, and it has long, razor sharp claws growing from its fingers.

        The creature stumbles back from the impact then shakes it head and runs down the street. What was that thing? I think to myself. After a second, Lionheart appears with a large bite on his shoulder and several bloody scars on his chest and arms. He falls to his knees and back against the building. I get up as soon as I see him and run to him.

        “What happened?” I say looking him over. He seems hurt, bad. But this is Lionheart. He killed three Wolves with barely a scratch. What is wrong?

        “I call them Scavengers.” He says with clenched teeth. I run to the van and grab the bag of medicine and run back to him, pulling out some disinfectant fluid. I poured some onto the bite on his shoulder. He jerks in pain for a moment but then calms down. I then wrap it in bandages and then I go to the other injuries.

        “What happened? I saw you take down a whole squad of Hawks without a scratch. Now one weird creature attacks you and you’re falling apart.” I say in disappointment. I was hoping it would make him more eager to fight, but it didn’t seem to work.

        “I’m not invincible. All I have is strength and speed. I still get hurt like everyone else. I heal a lot faster than normal people but that’s about it.” I look at him and then back to his body. To my astonishment, most of the cuts were healed over already. He wasn’t kidding that he healed fast. I go back to the bite to see if the bandages are too loose, they’re not.

        After I get him patched up, he goes back in the bakery with a pistol. When he comes back out unharmed, I assume it is safe now.

        “You go inside and start making up the beds and stuff. I’ll pack in the weapons and I’ll see what I can do to keep those things out. They hunt at night.” He says walking out to the van. I look around the place. It is just a simple two-story building. Down stairs is the store with the kitchen in the back. I go back to see if I can find some pots and stuff we can use. I find a few pots in locked drawers and some other things we can use. I then go upstairs to the living section. The place is dirty beyond belief. The floor has an old layer of dust, cobwebs hang from the walls and ceiling, but other than that it’s fine for a night’s rest. I find some old sheets in a bedroom and pull the mattress off for us to sleep on. I figure the sheets might keep us warm for the night. Afterwards I go down to see how Lionheart is doing.

He comes in to the bakery with two of the boxes under his arms. He carries them up to the living room, where I have the mattresses laid out. He places them beside an old couch and then goes back for more.

After he has the other two in, he grabs the bow he had earlier. “I’m going to see if I can find anything to use for blocking up the doors and windows. Hopefully I’ll see something to eat too.” He says slinging the quiver onto his back. He walks down the stairs and disappears. After he leaves, I pull my picture out of my pocket. I go to the now open window, and look it. I feel my eyes start to tear up, so I put the picture in my clothes-bag, which I sat on the opposite side of the couch. I can’t stand looking at it anymore. I can’t be focusing on that right now. I have to focus on helping Lionheart. 

After I make another bed from another mattress I find, Lionheart appears with several birds his left hand. They are brown with small wings and they look like they might stand a foot tall. He slides the bow off his shoulder and down on the couch. “Do you know how to clean?” he says as he slides the quiver down on the couch.

“Of course I do. I had to teach Chris how to dust and wash dishes.” I say with a little pride. I lived alone with a twelve year old, how would I not know how to clean? He shakes his head.

“I meant clean game.” He says pointing to the birds with his other hand. My cheeks go red. I can clean fish but I’ve never done anything else. And here I thought he was talking about cleaning house…

“No. Fish, but nothing else.” I say hanging my head in embarrassment. He waves his hand for me to follow him. We go down to the kitchen and he goes over to a stone oven in the wall on the far side. He opens it up and says,

“Get a fire going, ok?” I nod my head. He goes over to a counter and wipes the dust off with his free arm. He lays one of the birds down and pulls a knife from his belt. I turn back to my fire while he pulls the feathers out and guts the creature. I throw in some old wood that was stacked neatly next to the oven, take some matches Lionheart handed to me, and get it going.

After I have a good flame, Lionheart has the birds cleaned and plucked. He comes over and takes some clamps from a rack of tools I didn’t see before. He reaches in with the clamps and pulls out a log. He quickly lays the log down in the sink, tide some string he found around one of the birds’ feet and neck and hangs it over the fire. After the bird is fried well, he repeats the process with the rest of them.

“Here, take these up stairs. I didn’t find much to make some barricades with so I’ll have to just block the downstairs door and the upstairs.” He says walking out side. I take the birds and carry them upstairs. After I go back down and put out the fire and take the log in the sink out, I walk out of the kitchen to see him carrying some metal bars in and laying them down on the floor. He still has no shirt on. His muscles still show clearly even in the dim light of the building. I quickly turn and run back upstairs. You don’t need to be thinking about that, I scold myself in thought. But that boy is something else. He’s handsome, strong, brave… the thought of him gives me goose bumps. I shake myself back to reality. There’s no way he’d be interested in me even if I was thinking about it. I’m not that good looking, I don’t have many curves, and he’s probably too old for me anyways.

After Lionheart got the downstairs door and the upstairs door blocked, it is almost nightfall. The sun is only halfway peering over the horizon. Lionheart grabbed some canteens from the Guard station before we left so we have water, and the birds he killed taste very good. The meat is soft and juicy, and the mattresses I found are very comfortable. After it starts getting darker, Lionheart takes some lanterns out of the boxes and lights them. “These stay lit about nine hours each so we should be good for a while.” He says lighting one.

“Are those boxes magic or did the guards just have a full stock on everything?” I ask joking.

“They had everything. I even grabbed some freeze-dried foods in case we need them.” He says setting the lantern on the floor between the mattresses. He flops down on the mattress I made for him and stretches out, his feet handing off the end.

“So, Lionheart, may I ask how old are you?” I ask just out of curiosity…mostly. He looks over to me and says,

“I’m seven-teen. You?” he asks back.

“I’m six-teen.” I answer back. I feel a little reassurance inside. He’s only a year older than I am. I might have a chance after all. I snap back out of it. You don’t need to be thinking about that right now, I scold myself again. I don’t want to think like this, but it’s so hard not to.

After the sun goes down completely, I hear a noise from outside, a high pitch squeal, like what that Scavenger, as Lionheart called them. Lionheart jumps from the mattress and grabs the bow and arrows. He goes to the window, which he boarded up earlier, and looks out through the cracks in the boards. “What do you see?” I ask in a whisper.

“Sh.” He says quickly. He keeps his eyes outside, then goes to the lantern and dims it down. “There’s a whole pack of those things outside. They usually come out by this time. You go to sleep. I’ll keep watch.” He says setting down on the couch, bow in hand with an arrow ready. I look at the window hesitantly and lie down.

“Lionheart… are we going to survive this? This war I mean?” I ask in a whisper. After seeing him hurt today, I realize it’s just me and him for now. Can two people really take down an entire government?

“I don’t know. But if we don’t, I’m not going down without making the Dictatorship squirm. They’ve been in control for a long time, it’s time they realized not everyone will lay down to them.”  He says, tightening his grip on the bow. I smile at him and close my eyes. He has so much fire and spirit…it gives me hope. He defiantly is a hero.