The sound of an engine woke Nelly. She found herself tied up and in a very tight little room laying down. It was dark and every breath she took was full of exhaust fumes. She soon put two and two together and concluded that she must be in a boot of a car.
A large bump in the road made her pelvic hurt. After her eyes adjusted to her surroundings, she found that there were little holes in the side of the boot to the outside world. The landscape flew past at a faster enough rate to make her view blurred. She tried to free herself from the ropes without success. She stopped and started to feel sleepy.
-
After leaving Prata ten miles behind them, the landscape became a brownish color. Jack looked out across the dying meadows and shrubby. Abandoned farms littered the out country of England.
The car left a trailing dust cloud through the deserted landscape.
"Looks like as if we have already gone to battle." Jack said amazed at the sad sight.
"We have." Jones said smiling as he concentrated on the road.
Mr Jones was happy, everything that he had set out to do in Prata seemed to be all going as planned, except for the girl in his boot.
A tear trickled down Jacks cheek. Mr Lodovico had been so nice to him. Mother Earth curse the Rebellion, curse them all, he thought. Why Mr Lodovico?
The land flew by.
The clouds seemed to never let up, making the world below look bleak and doomed. The road started to slope upwards and over a hill that curved round as if they where going up the edge of a bowl.
The car slowed as they reached the top of the hill. Jack looked through the back window out over the land they had driven through. It was flat as if someone had come along and carved a bowl into the land.
"It is the Erebus creator left over from The Great War of AD. The ancestors of London were very smart and from the bones we have been recently digging up in the ruins of London suggest that their brains were too large for their own bodies. The Erebus bomb sadly put an end to the. With some of the skulls we have uncovered which have holes on the top or the back of the skull which indicating that there brains boiled in there sculls and the build up of presser made their sculls to burst." Jones explained.
Jack wasn't so keen on the idea of his head popping because of his brain boils. He faced the front again and was struck by the most awful sight he had ever seen. Below them stood what seemed to be a city. That is what Jack thought anyway, for there was no telling for sure from just looking at it if it was a city. The only thing that Jack could extinguish that it was a city and not just a burnt looking landscape, was how mounds of rubble where not natural looking. They seemed to be man made.
"And this is the city of London, or what is left of it. The impact of the Erebus Bomb that created that huge creator took out London." Jones said, slowing the car to a stop to study the old civilization that once ruled the world.
It must have been horrible to live in London in those dark days, thought Jack.
The car started to move again. Instead of going down into the ruins of London as Jack expected the road would lead, it went along the crest of the massive creator.
"Aren't we going to go through London?" Asked Jack.
Mr Jones shook his head. "At first many people went to London to try and steal her hidden treasures, but most of them never returned. People that go down into London without protective clothing catch a sickness from the ruins and die. We call it 'Mother Earth's Curse on Man'. But as our Ancestors would call it radiation sickness." Jones said sadly.
"London has claimed many adventures including my father." He said.
Jack knew how he felt. He himself couldn't forget his own mother's murder.
The car soon left the ruins of London far behind. After half an hour of driving along the creators edge, the road left it behind and headed east. For about forty minutes Jack and Mr Jones sat in silence. Jack whined down his dusty window to see if he could get a better look. An off smelling smell came in through his open window which was so bad that Mr Jones asked him if he could close the window. Soon green grass and shrubbery could be seen growing along the gravel road. They past a sign saying welcome to the old town Chelmsford. The sign gave the population as well, but it had been crossed out so that Jack could not see it.
"This town holds many mystery that even we scientists at the QC can still not understand." Mr Jones said as they passed abandoned houses and other buildings.
"This town stood when our ancestors fort between themselves . Since the Eugenics Age after the war people could not understand how this town survived the blast of the Erebus Bomb dropped by America."
The car drove through the town square and out beyond its borders.
"We believe that the ancestors that lived here had a shield of some sort, and had stolen it off London. But that is only a theory." He said as he guided the car onto the empty road.
The road had been tarmacked and sealed to be smooth for drivers.
"How come its abandoned?" Asked Jack. Mr Jones studied the road.
"Everyone left because of the disease. There was no jobs so they all headed for the big cities. Well not everyone, some have stayed and have become thieves."
The car rounded a bend in the road. To Jack and Mr Jones surprise, an old woman was kneeling over in the middle of the road next a dog that looked as if a horse had run over it.
Mr Jones slowed the car to a stop and motioned Jack to stay in the car.
"It could be a trap." Jones said to Jack as he closed the door. Jack watched as Mr Jones talked to the woman and then he knelt down and studied the dog, his back to the woman.
She was wearing an old bombers jacket and tights. Out of behind her back she pulled out a club and hit Mr Jones over the head.
He slumped over the dog.
Jack screamed Mr Jones name but it was too late.
She turned and looked at Jack. She grabbed her old wrinkly face and tired it off revealing a young and smooth face underneath her mask.
Jack screamed in terror. He had never seen a person who was able to wear faces and take them off. He opened the door to run, but as he stepped foot on the ground something from behind hit him hard across the back of his head. He crumpled to the ground.
A giant of a man stood where Jack had fallen.
"That was easy, I was expecting a fight." He said smiling.
The girl brushed some imaginary dirt off of her shoulder. "This guy must be important, judging by the car he drives." She said smiling.
"And who do you think this one is?" Asked the giant poking Jack.
The girl gave a shrug. "I wonder if there is anything valuable in the car?" She asked him.
He looked through the back window.
The girl started to drag Mr Jones's body across the road.
"Ric can't you give me a hand? This guys a monster." She said puffing.
He stopped glancing through the window and instead of assisting the girl, he picked up the body and put it on his shoulders.
"Unlike me." He said sarcastically.
She laughed. "Really?" She teased giving him a playful punch. She withdrew her hand as if it had hurt.
The giant laughed.
The girl dragged Jack along up the road with the giant to the so called abandoned town which was now coming to life with people. They cheered when they saw the catch. An old lady hobbled up to the girl who was dragging Jack.
The on conscious prisoners were tied up to posts in the pig yard of the high priest.
Back at the car, Ric opened the back doors and searched the back carefully. Annah searched the front of the car.
"Supposedly one of these levers is for the boot." She said as she groped around the pedals. "Ah!" She exclaimed pulling a lever and hearing the boot unlatch.
Ric lifted the lid of the boot before Annah got there. "There's a sleeping girl in here!" He said with surprise. He lifted her limp body out of the boot.
She had rope tied around her ankles and wrists. Annah studied her up and down in Ric's arms.
"She looks as if she's only about fifteen, I wonder what the guy had to do with her?" She placed a hand on the girl's neck. Annah's face seemed to look confused.
"Ric, I don't think she's breathing!" She said in alarm.
Ric placed the girl on the ground.
Annah laid her ear on the girls chest. "The heart is still pumping. We should bring her to the priest that can bring the non breathers back to life." She said as she tried to untie the ropes around the girl's hands with no prevail.
Rice picked the girl up and placed her on his shoulders and started to jog back up the road to the village.
Annah picked up the dead dog and and on last glance in the boot to see if they had left anything behind. In the back corner was a bottle of dark red liquid that had a label on it saying"Port". She picked it up and placed the bottle in the largest pocket she had in the bombers jacket and started back to Chelmsford.
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