I didn't know how much time had passed when I finally woke up again. I slowly opened my eyes and blinked a few times before my surrounding came into view. My head had started to hurt again and for just a moment, I didn't know where I was. And then I remembered. I remembered ducking into a building to avoid raiders. I remembered the ugly, scar-faced man and the blinding flash of pain before everything had gone dark.
My eyes flew open and my heart jumped in my chest. Where was I? I tired to stand up but I couldn't. I was sitting on an old wooden chair with my hands and feet tied with rope. The familiar weight of my katana was gone from my shoulders, as was my pack and the knife I kept at my belt.
"Shit," I thought. I struggled against the rope that bound my wrists together but the rope didn't even budge. I didn't know why I was tied up but if I had learned anything from watching Raiders over the years, whatever they had planned for me wasn't going to be good. I needed to escape and I needed to do it fast.
I struggled harder against the ropes around my wrists, twisting my hands and straining against them as hard as I could. My hope was that I could find a bit of slack in the rope that I could work at and loosen a bit but the ropes were too tight. The rough fiber of the rope quickly began to scratch and rub my skin raw but I didn't care about the pain. Any injury I got from the ropes would be tiny compared to what the Raiders were probably planning to do with me.
After a while, I gave up. I would end up rubbing all the skin off of my wrists sooner than I would get the ropes to loose, even a bit. I turned my attention to the area around me, my wrists stinging painfully.
The room I was in looked like it had once been some kind of storage space. The floor was made of concrete and was stained with patches of grease. The walls were metal and wooden beams of the wall's structure were uncovered. There were no windows in the room and only one door on the far side. The only light in the room came from a single, naked, light bulb that hung down from the ceiling. At a first glance, it didn't look like there was anything in the room I could use to cut through the ropes that bound me.
Suddenly, I heard the sound of metal loudly scraping against metal. My eyes instantly found the source of the noise and I watched closely as the doorknob of the door slowly started to turn, my heart beginning to pound. I wouldn't be able to defend myself from whoever came through that door and I really didn't like it. I hated felling so...powerless.
The door was pulled open roughly and in walked the ugly, scar-faced man. Just seeing him made my blood boil. I glared at him, putting as much fury into my eyes as I could but inside my heart was pounding. I wasn't about to show him any sign that I was scared, scared of him and what he might do to me. I strained against the ropes again rubbing my wrists raw. The pain of it helped clear my mind and stay in control of myself and my emotions.
By the time I looked him straight in the eye, I felt nothing but anger at the fact that this bastard had captured me and taken me prisoner. He looked up and held my gaze without flinching. Instead, a smile spread across his face which made him look even uglier. His lips curled back to reveal red and inflamed gums surrounding black and brown spotted teeth of which a few were missing from a full set.
"Ah, so the little bird has finally decided to wake up," he said in a falsely cheery voice. A wave of disgust washed over me at his use of the word 'little bird'.
He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him before turning to face me. He clapped his hands together. "Let's get started then shall we?" He crossed over to me, walking with his chin held high as he looked down upon me with amusement.
It seemed as though he enjoyed the entire situation, the power, and control he had over myself who was defenseless against him. As he approached the foul odor coming off of his body wafted over me like a wave and I had to fight to keep from gagging.
Once he reached he leaned forward and put his hands on the arms of he chair, leaning in close to my face. I tried to lean back as far as the chair would let me. He truly was hideous with long stringy blond hair and a face completely scared. When he opened his mouth to speak a breath so foul it seemed like something had crawled into his mouth and died, washed over me and revealed a mouth full of rotten teeth.
"I'm going to make this simple for you," he said. "I'm gonna to ask you a few questions. Answer them and you walk out of here alive. Lie, and well..." he smiled. "I think you know what happens then."
I didn't say anything, partly because, if I opened my mouth I might end up vomiting from the smell of him, and partially because I didn't want to say anything to a Raider. I glared at him and his scarred, filthy face. He must have taken my silence as agreement. He smiled wider and drew back, standing up straight and crossing his arms.
"First question then. Where you headed? My boys have searched through that whole town and we never saw you before. You don't look like the type of person who sticks around long which means you were passing through on your way to somewhere else. So, where you goin'?"
I set my mouth in a firm line. I wasn't going to answer any of the questions the bastard asked me. Even if I did tell him the truth, there was no way he was going to let me go.
When he saw that I wasn't going to answer he smiled slightly "You seem to be a bit hard'a hearing so I'll ask it again, where you going?"
Instead of answering him, I rolled my eyes and blatantly looked away, looking at the grease stain on the concrete floor of the room.
I heard him sigh, "Let's try this a different way. Where's New Eden?"
My head snapped back up in surprise. If a Raider was asking about it, then it really did exist. Andy hadn't just made it up.
"Wait," I thought. "Where was Andy? Did they killed him already?" For some reason, the thought of these Raider killing Andy made me furious probably because it would mean that I would alway be in debt to him for saving my life. I clenched my hands into fists and strained against the ropes again but the knots didn't budge.
I must have given more away than I wanted to though my body language because the scar-faced man suddenly smiled wider. "Gotcha. Heading to New Eden then?" His smile vanished as quickly as it had come. "Where is it?"
I kept my mouth shut refusing to answer him. What would a low-life Raider want with New Eden anyways? But as soon as I thought it I knew the answer. Food, supplies, women, anything they would want they would take by force.
"I'm losing my patience with you, girl. I'll give you to the count of three to start talking." He held one of his grimy hands with three fingers raised
"One." He put one finger down.
"Two." He put a second finger down so that only one finger remained raised from his pudgy fist.
I didn't look away. Instead, I made myself stare directly into his eyes putting as much hatred and furry behind them as I could.
"Three." He put his final finger down, forming his hand into a fist and throwing it at my face. I didn't have time to react to the oncoming punch before it connected hard with my nose. I felt the cartilage breaking under the force. The pain was intense and blood from my broken nose started running down my face and my eyes began to water.
Through my blurry eyes, I faintly registered that he had pulled his fist back for another swing before I felt it slam into my stomach. My body instinctively wanted to double over but the ropes keeping my hands behind the chair kept me from going down more than a few inches. I wheezed, trying to catch my breath and fighting the urge to throw up.
He shoved my shoulder back against the chair, forcing me to sit upright. His face was mere inches from mine. "Now, let's try again, hmm? Where's New Eden?"
"Go to hell," I snarled at him. I worked up a mouthful of a mixture of blood and saliva and spat it in his face.
He recoiled from me wiping his face.
"You bitch!" he shouted.
He raised his hand and slapped me across the face. This time, I was ready for it and I turned my head with the blow to lessen some of the force.
He stormed over to the door. "We're not finished here," he said before walking out and slamming the door behind him.
I didn't immediately move when I heard the door shut, I just stared at the concrete watching the blood drip slowly onto the floor, seething. In my head, I was visualizing all the ways I could kill that scar-faced bastard, but only for a moment or two. I had to get out quickly before he came back.
I quickly sat up, ignoring the pain I felt in my body, pushing everything to the back of my mind, my emotions, worry, anger, and let calm logic dictate my mind.
I looked around the room again, paying close attention to the walls, looking for anything even remotely sharp that I might be able to use to cut through the ropes around my wrists. And then I spotted something. One of the wall-beams about four feet behind me, I could see a single nail sticking about half an inch from the wood that was bent sharply at an angle.
Even though I saw the nail, I didn't make any sort of move to try and get to it. Instead, I sat still for a solid minuet, listening, trying to hear what might be on the other side of the door but it was completely silent. Only when I was sure that no one was about to walk in I lifted my body and pushed it back in the chair so that the chair moved backward only about an inch. The wooden legs screeched loudly as they scraped against the concrete. I waited, listening for any sign that someone on the other side of the door had heard the noise. When no one came bursting in through the door, I scooted the chair backward again, causing another loud screech, before pausing to listen again.
I repeated the process of moving and waiting, moving and waiting until my hands brushed up against the wooden beam of the wall. I felt around the beam until I found the nail. Then, I immediately began to move the knot of rope that bound my wrists over the nail, keeping my eyes trained on the door the whole time. I had no idea when the scar-faced guy would be coming back and I really didn't want to be caught off guard.
It took almost 10 minuets before I felt the ropes fall away. As soon as my hands were free I reached down, untied the rope from around my ankles and sprinted over to the door.
Surprisingly, the door was unlocked. The Raiders must not have thought there was any way I could have escaped from the ropes. I opened the door only slightly and looked out. There wasn't anyone right outside the door that I could see so I slowly began to open the door all the way.
Outside was large and just as barren and empty as the room I had been tied up in. It looked like I was in some sort of empty warehouse or storage building. There wasn't a single person to be seen in the building. I didn't think about it too much. The lack of guards would make it easier for me to escape.
Straight ahead of me was a small door. I headed for it moving quickly and quietly and I almost smiled. Getting out was going to be easy. When I reached the door, I stopped just before opening it.
"What about Andy?" A voice in the back of my mind said. "Are you just going to leave him here?"
For just a moment, I considered it. I could escape easily on my own. Trying to get Andy out too would put myself in danger.
"Are you just going to let him die then?" The voice said again. "Just like all those other people?"
"Fuck!" I said. I couldn't leave him behind, too many people had died because of me, I wasn't going to let it happen again.
I quickly twisted the knob on the door and pulled it open.
Outside, the an overgrown and cracked road was was surrounded by metal-walled warehouses on both sided, all of which looked the same as the one I had been in. Down the street to the right of me, I could see a couple of houses. Two armed men stood with their backs to me. As soon as I saw them, I crouched down low and ducked behind a bush that grew right next to the building.
"Man," I heard one of the men said. "Why do we have to stay behind while everyone else gets to go raiding?"
"Because Joseph told us to guard the girl," the other man said.
"Why, though? It's not like she's going anywhere."
"Like I said, Joseph told us to. If you want to go against him be my guest. Just don't be surprised if I'm the one who ends up putting the bullet in your head."
I saw one of the two men take a step away from the other.
The first man spoke again. "I just don't see why he's bothering tying her up. Why doesn't he just put her with all the others. I'd love to be the first one to try her out." He chuckled at that and I had to resist the urge to run over and punch him.
"He said he wanted to get as much info out of her as he could first. And you know as well as I do that Joseph always gets first dibs on the girls anyways."
I heard the first guy grumbles something to himself but I couldn't make out what he said. "Didn't he get everything out of the other kid over in the basement?"
I didn't bother listening to the rest of the conversation. The other kid must have been Andy. I pulled my attention away from the two men in front of me and scanned the area. The place looked completely deserted other than the two men in front of me, and another person standing in front of the closest house down the street. If there was a guard outside, then it meant that there was something worth guarding inside.
I slowly started making my way over to it, keeping low and using anything I could for cover along the way. Every once and a while I would stop and look around, trying to see if anyone had shown up but no one did. The fact that there was a guard outside did't mean that that Andy would be in the house but it was the only thing I had to go on.
When I was closer to the house I ducked behind the trunk of a tree and carefully peered around it. The guard in front of the house held an automatic. He looked bored out of his mind and he paced back and forth in front of the house. He was a little on the smaller side and I didn't think I would have any trouble taking him out.
I crouched down, making sure I was still hidden behind the tree. When the guard started his procession away from me again, I made my move. I shot out from behind the tree and came up behind him. Then, I quickly reached around and put one hand on the top of his head, the other around the bottom of his jaw and twisted sharply. There was a loud snap and I let him fall to the ground dead, his neck broken.
As soon as he was down I grabbed his ankles and began to drag his body out of sight. There was a small shed in the backyard. I dragged him over to it and tossed him inside. I hesitated before shutting the shed doors. The guy looked like he hadn't been much older than me. There was a time when I might have felt bad for killing him, but now, as I looked down at his body, I felt nothing. He was, or had been, a Raider, and I felt no sympathy for him. I noticed that he had a knife in his belt which I took. I didn't take the gun, but I did pick it up and empty it of ammunition. That way, if someone managed to find him, they couldn't immediately pick it up and start shooting. I tossed the, now empty, gun on the dead Raider's chest and shut the doors of the shed.
Then I turned to look at the house the Raider had been guarding. From the back of the house, it looked to be a simple one-story brick building with boards hastily nailed over the windows and over the back door. I quickly made my way around the front of the house, stopping only to make sure that there weren't any Raiders nearby before quickly slipping into the house by the front door.
Once I was inside I slowed down, placing each step very carefully and straining my ears. I had no clue if I would find any Raiders inside the house but I wanted to be ready if I did. Whenever I approached I doorway I would quickly stop so that my back was against the wall right next to it. Then, I would slowly look around the doorway into the room but every single room I came across was void of any sort of life.
There were five rooms in total in the small house. The first room was a small, grimy looking bedroom with a single, very dirty, mattress on the floor and stained white walls.
The second room was in worse shape than the first. The walls had peeling floral wallpaper that was spotted with mold. The carpet had been ripped away some time ago revealing a rotten, wooden floor underneath. The only other thing in the room was an old wooden table that had a large part of one of the corners broken off. On the table laid two, very familiar packs, a gun, a bow, and a katana. They must have deposited the things they took from us in this room, most likely to go though later and divvy up the rewards. I quickly hurried forward and gabbed my katana and pack and slung them both on my back. The familiar feel of my katana nestled between my shoulder blades and the weight of my pack on my shoulders comforted me. I left my katana in its sheath, choosing instead to use the knife. It was smaller and would be easier to use in a tight space. I didn't touch any of Andy's things, they would just slow me down and I wasn't sure if I was actually going to find him.
The next two rooms I passed were completely empty and in such disrepair, that I doubted anyone would ever use them again. The last door of the house was closed and opened to a set of stairs descending down into darkness.
I adjusted my grip on the knife that I held and took a deep breath before I began to descended the stairs placing each of my feet down carefully so that the wooden steps wouldn't creak. The temperature around me seemed to drop a little bit with each step I took. It was pitch dark in the room at the bottom of the stairs. The only thing I could see was a tiny window on a wall across from me about a foot above eye level, although the window was so dirty that it barely let in any light at all.
Still clutching the knife in my right hand, I reached around in the darkness until I felt a cool expanse of wall. I ran my hand along it until my fingers found the familiar feel of a light switch. There had been electricity running in the room I had been locked up in, maybe there was electricity running throughout the whole camp. I quickly flipped the switch.
Immediately, light flooded the room to illuminate a small square place with concrete walls and floors. The room itself was empty save one thing. In the center of the room, tied to a metal folding chair, was Andy. He was slumped forward in the chair and, upon first glance he looked dead, except the small rise and fall of his chest proved that he was still breathing. He was in a bad shape. Bruises covered his face and arms and his lower lip was split and swollen. There were a few places on his sleeves where the fabric had been slashed through and blood glued the part of the sleeve to his skin. There was also a line of dried blood that ran down his face from a large gash just above his left eye.
"What the hell did they you to you Andy?" I muttered to myself and I couldn't help but think that I would have ended up the same way if I hadn't managed to cut my way free.
I walked over to him and started to cut the rope from his wrists. Once the ropes were gone I noticed that the skin that had been underneath the ropes were rubbed raw to the point that it was bleeding. Andy must have tried to break free from the ropes with sheer strength and ended up hurting himself more in the process.
I shook my head. "Bastards," I muttered.
Once his wrists were free, I walked around to cut through the rope that tied his ankles to the chair. Just as I started to cut through the first fibers of the rope Andy began to stir. "Lauren?" He mumbled, his voice slightly slurred. "What...?"
"Shut up," I whispered quickly as I continued to cut through the ropes. "I'll explain everything later but now, we have to get out of here." As I cut through the final fibers the ropes fell away and I stood up. "Can you walk?"
He slowly brought his arms back in front of him and rubbed his wrists. Then he looked up at me with eyes that were full of pain but he nodded and slowly got to his feet, his face twisting in pain as he did so. It was painful to watch but we didn't have time to move slowly. It wouldn't be long before the raiders found out that I had escaped and we needed to be long gone by the time that happened.
I nodded to him, impressed at his determination. "Good, let's move."
I led the way up the stairs. Andy couldn't move very fast at all and had a bad limp. On the way out of the house, I grabbed Andy's stuff from the room with a table and helped him put on his pack, pretending not to notice how his face twisted in pain as the weight of his pack settled on his shoulders.
We exited the house and started to leave the area as fast as we could with Andy painful movement, staying out of sight as much as possible. Somehow, beyond probability, we managed to get out of the town without being seen, by taking as many back roads as we could and crossing through overgrown backyards as much as possible. Every few minuets or so, I would look back to see how Andy was holding up. He managed to keep up a steady pace but his limp was more and more prominent as time when on. He also kept his left arm around his side clamped to a spot on his hip where blood seeped through the fabric. He never once complained or asked to stop to rest and we managed to put a good amount of distance between us and the town with the Raiders when the sound of a gunshot came from the direction of the town. I glanced back once in reflex and noticed that Andy's face had become rather pale.
Half an hour later we managed to leave the city and made it into the forest. By the time we found a well-sheltered clearing, the cut above Andy's eye had opened up again and a thin trail of blood crept down his face. As soon as I stopped Andy slumped to the ground, breathing heavily, his eyes shut. I walked over and knelt down beside him.
I looked over him carefully. With all of the injuries I could see on his skin, I was surprised that he had made it as far as he did before he collapsed. I sighed. His cuts would need to be cleaned otherwise they would end up infected and I didn't see him being able to do it himself in the condition he was in. I didn't mind, I knew a thing or two about first aid. Besides, if I patched him up, it would make us even in terms on one of us saving the other. But, in order to do that, I would need him to take off his shirt so I could get to the wounds on his arms and shoulders. I gently shook one of his shoulders, being careful to avoid any of the visible cuts there.
"Andy," I said. "Andy, wake up."
His eyes fluttered slightly before they opened, looking through me rather than at me.
"I need you to take your shirt off so I can clean out your cuts," I told him.
At first, It seemed like he hadn't heard me but after a few moments, he blinked slowly a few times and sat up. He shrugged his pack off of his shoulders and slowly pulled his shirt off over his head. He winced as he did it and his shirt stuck to his skin in certain places where he had been cut.
My eyes widened when I saw his arms and chest. His skin was almost completely covered in reddish-purple bruises. I counted, at least, five different cuts to his shoulders and arms and one on his hip although, luckily, none of them looked too deep.
"God, what did they do to you, Andy?" I said, but he didn't answer. I looked up at his face and noticed that his gaze was foggy and unfocused.
I took my pack off of my shoulders and sat it down in front of me. From inside I grabbed a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, the towel I always kept in there and the old, beat up, metal water bottle I carried. I did have a bit of gauze in my pack but I wanted to save it for something more serious and I didn't think Andy was going to bleed out.
I started by using the towel and a bit of water from my water bottle to clean all of the dried blood from his skin and face. I worked slowly trying to avoid the worst of the bruises on his skin. Andy never said a word, when I started to clean the blood from his face, his eyes seemed to brighten ever so slightly like he was aware that I was there before he fell back into whatever stupor he was in. I knew the look on his face well. It was the face of someone who had retreated into their own mind, to escape and protect themselves from the world. It was the same place I often escaped to on a daily basis and it was what had kept me sane all these years.
Once all of the blood had been cleaned from his skin, the injuries didn't seem quite as bad they had earlier. Next, I soaked a different corner of the towel with the rubbing alcohol and began to clean the cuts themselves Every time the alcohol on the cloth touched one of the cuts, the muscles of his arm would clench but he never once made a sound. When I started to clean the cuts on his right arm I stopped when I saw the bite on his wrist again. I shook my head and continued on, blatantly ignoring it. When I was done, I folded up the towel and put it and the everything else I had taken out back into my pack.
"I'm done," I said to Andy. He nodded slightly and slowly pulled his shirt back on before lying back down again and closing his eyes.
I watched him for a minuet or two. Then I turned my attention to my own injury. My nose had been throbbing painfully ever since it had been broken by that Raider. I gently reached up and began to feel it, trying to see where it was broken and how I would have to go about setting it straight. It was slightly swollen and hot to the touch. I could feel that the bridge of my nose was definitely broken and shifted slightly to the left. I reached up and put my hands on either side of my nose. I took a few deep breaths and jerked my nose to the right. The pain was extreme and I felt a fresh trickle of blood run down from my nose. I wiped the blood away with the sleeve of my shirt and felt around the bridge of my nose again. Everything felt like it was in the general correct position but I knew it was going to hurt like hell for a week or two.
Afterward, I found the most comfortable looking tree and leaned against it. I was exhausted but I knew that there was no way I would be able to sleep tonight.
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