Followers of the Light

Chapter 7 - Nineteen Hours past the End (12 PM)

It was a sunny afternoon. Three of us, I, Grote, and our newly companion, Jorne, were walking under the shade of office complex on the way to another Procter's political ally offices. Jorne was walking quietly in between me and Grote who was always ahead of us. For whatever reason he got, Jorne kept looking at me behind him, and that was getting annoying. He finally took a quick step and caught up with Grote and murmured about something. I think he was questioning about me because both of them looked backwards for a second.

Then they stopped walking all sudden.

"Hey, you better show us the fucking way, nerd!" shouted Grote while pointing his finger at him, making Jorne froze still. I caught up with them, I told him to keep walking because he was starting to get on my nerves with the look-backs. Just when Jorne was about to do so, Grote pushed his chest back where he was.

"Hey, you see what she did to your friend?" asked Grote.

Jorne nodded with his eyes open-wide and mouth hanging half open.

"If you want that to happen to you, you can choose between her or me."

"I-I... don't want that..."

"Good, because I prefer using my knife, not a chair." said Grote flashing it near his face.

"I... don't want the... knife too..." said Jorne starting to get himself sweaty.

"So don't fuck around with us!" Grote slapped his shoulder. "Go!"

But then Jorne turned his head, looking sinisterly at me.

"Stop looking at me!" I raised my voice. "What do you want?!"

I don't know if it's the weather or still boiling over the beat-up, but Jorne was the type of person that pisses you off only by looking at him.

Several minutes later, we found ourselves at another small branch of The Republi. Another cool breeze welcomed us again like Christmas in summer. Weird enough, the first floor and second floor were empty again. When we took the staircase up to the third floor, something pierced our nose with the smell coming from up there. It turned out the door was slightly stuck open. We pushed the door in and, god, that was a fridge of carcass. Bodies were bathed in their own blood, lying around the floor with most of their eyes opened. Holy shit! That was some horror stuff. I was glad we went there during the day.

"Alright, let's check it out." said Grote as he walking into the room.

"N-no, no!" Jorne looked badly disgusted that he even closed his eyes. "I can't take it. I'll stay here!"

"You better really stay there and not fucking around, nerd!"

"Yes, yes, yes! Just be quick, please!"

Then I and Grote went in to inspect the bodies. We only used our left hand to cover our nose to block the smell and our foot to turn the bodies over to see. We saw nothing but a trace of them being hacked to death with deep cut wounds on the chest or back. We tried looking around the room. With some plastic carriers we found around the room, we searched their pockets for some clues - paper, notepads, wallet, and phones. Bloody phones! Grote told me to collect it and throw them in the plastic bag he found. He said it will come handy. I heard Jorne running downstairs while we were there, so we rushed out of that room thinking he was going to cause any trouble, but luckily he was not going anywhere other than to the rubbish bin at the second floor. Seeing him throwing up, we decided to just quit the building after he was done. It was pointless, though it left us a question: who killed them?

"Seems like it's the Tumbleweads who killed them." said Grote. "Who else knew they were there other than Procter's allies?"

"What about the Greens?" I said.