CH1g
-----
JULY 10TH, 2011
"Okay, okay—you can be done now!"
"Fine, fine."
That was a bit more than Seline expected. He didn't have to touch her—that wasn't part of the deal! He had his clawed fingers all over her hips, and had been plastered against her for the whole duration of 'just a kiss'. She was mentally cussing him out for violating her space. Yuck.
A light turned on inside the Jameson house. Seline sent those unhappy thoughts to the back of her head. "They're up!" she whispered, "hurry!"
"Right!" Jed took his switchblade and tore through Seline's ropes.
She pulled her hands out in front of herself as soon as she was loose, excitedly grinning. Her canine tail started to swiftly wag with glee. "Sweet freedom!"
"We gotta get out of here—now," Jed said to her in a rushed, low tone. "C'mon."
Seline, so happy to finally escape, took one step forward and involuntarily let out a whimper.
"What's wrong?"
"Th-they beat me," she reluctantly had to respond. "It just hurts a little. I'll be fine."
"You sure?"
Seline stretched out her other leg—the one with the ankle monitor still attached. There was definitely something broken down there. She moaned as her own padded foot touched the ground. "No, I'm not sure."
"Here, I'll give you a lift." Jed crouched down, facing his back towards her. He took his gun off of its strap and stuck the barrel through one of the belt loops in his pants. "It's no biggie."
She found herself staring at him again. He had dark spots all down his crooked, partially deformed spine, and a fluffy tuft of black fur protruding out from between his shoulder blades. His blonde hair was fading to black where it hung down the back of his neck, becoming part of the 'mane' he was growing. Curiously, it seemed he had taken the time to try and tame the fur with a rubber band so it might look normal or natural. Even so, it was still sticking out in all directions. The virus had progressed so much further in him than it had in her.
She didn't know if she was worried or interested anymore. Something about it made her think fondly of her past, studying the creatures that had spread the virus.
She cautiously climbed onto his back and threw her arms around his neck. Everything went right back to awkward.
"Good." Without hesitation, Jed took off at a full-on sprint towards the gates, ignoring the dead bodies of the men he shot dead. He skidded to a halt as soon as he set foot from the lush grass onto the gritty dirt road outside of the garden gates. After spending a good two seconds looking both ways, and back at the Jameson house to make sure he wasn't being tracked, he sprinted to the right, following the wall.
"Do you know where you're going?" Seline asked.
"Yeah, I'm getting out the same way I got in."
"NOT SO FAST!"
Seline clung tightly to Jed—it was the voice of Purvis Jameson. Jed didn't stop running, but he looked over his shoulder as he continued to run. He saw the small, middle-aged black man standing there, holding a large gun of his own and locking onto his two targets. "'That the man of the house?" Jed asked Seline.
"More like a child, but you could say that," she quickly responded.
"Okay, listen to me: take my gun and-"
Seline yanked the rifle-esque gun out from Jed's belt loop and, hanging onto him with just one arm now, turned back and fired it at her 'master'. The force of the shot whipped her arm back and consequently threw off Jed's footing. They fell over. Dust clouds scattered everywhere.
Jed instantly looked back to see if Seline had even done any actual damage, and became face-to-face with just the woman. Her thick red hair was dangling over his shoulders and into his face. She looked confused and excited. "Did you get 'im?!" Jed asked after a few seconds of that awkward silence.
A metallic clank echoed off of the ivory walls, followed by the sound of another body keeling over and lifelessly hitting the pavement. The dust cleared and they both stared down the road at Seline's dead ex-master.
-----
"Where are we going?"
"Away."
Jed's gun was safely put back where it belonged, hanging from his belt loop. Seline may have hit Purvis right between the eyes her first ever time firing a gun, but Jed knew it was just beginner's luck.
She was still perched up on her rescuer's back, her legs around his waist, and her arms around his neck. Good thing there were no villages in the direction they were headed, or else they would have definitely been spotted. They were almost an eight-foot mess of fur.
"You said you were here to get fuel for your plane!" Seline continued, "You have a plane?!" She didn't think he seemed like much of a pilot. He had nothing to show except for maybe the dog tags he was wearing around his neck, or maybe his flight pants… Well, he sure didn't act like any part of the Air Force.
"Yeah, I do, and lucky for you, it holds two people. Lucky for me, there's an ejector seat."
"That's not even funny!" Seline barked at him.
"I'm dead serious!" Jed looked back over his shoulder at the girl he had just rescued. He was grinning. Of course he wasn't serious. Seline still glared at him. After years of torture, she wasn't at all up for being joked with. "C'mon! I'm kidding! I wouldn't do anything like that to you!"
"Hmph." Seline paused to think, "How am I supposed to know if I can trust you? Sure, you rescued me, but how do I know you won't make me do more...inappropriate things? I'm indebted to you, and you could use it against me."
Jed frowned at her distrust of him. "I'm totally trustworthy! I promise I won't make you do anything you don't want to do again, okay?"
"Yeah, sure."
Harsh! Jed stared across the desert at the rising sun at the edge of the horizon. All the murky blue hues of the earth were turning to reds and golds. "I'll have to prove it, then." He tightened his grip around Seline's legs and straightened out his shoulders.
"I'll believe it when I see it," Seline grumbled. "Where does an infected like you get fuel for your plane anyways? They don't sell things like that to people like us!"
"Exactly why I had to steal it."
"You're a thief?!"
"How else do you figure one of us would get by?!" Jed continued to trudge through the sand, further out into the unforgiving desert. The trail he had taken out of the village was becoming less and less noticeable, and it was going to get mercilessly hot soon. "I have to scavenge almost everything I have! It's the only way to survive when you have the inconvenience of being infected!"
The two came upon a large, dried out gorge. Seline looked up at the huge rocky passageway. The walls on each side were over one hundred feet tall, towering over herself and Jed and shadowing the entire trail between them. "You came through here?"
"Yeah, good thing it's wide enough to fit a diesel through."
"A diesel?"
"I hadda do away with another guy so I could take his truck. He was transporting jet fuel to those jackass Marine sergeants they had fixin' to execute you. I parked that baby out by my plane. I haven't refueled 'er yet, but you can be patient while I do that, right?"
"Are you saying you went back to save me…?" Seline asked, wondering why he'd have even hesitated to leave.
"Maybe."
"But...you don't even know me!" her voice echoed off of the rocky walls.
"Then I guess you could say it was noble of me to go out of my way to rescue some ungrateful chick I've never met."
Comments (0)
See all