World War 4: Sticks and Stones

Ben: Part Five

"Eliza?" I slashed through a gut. "Destiny?" Then a throat. I was running at full speed, trampling over lifeless bodies killed in the most unpleasant of ways. People I knew, was friends with, were just lying on the floor in heaps. In mounds. All that my mind was concerned with were the lives of my loves. Bill scampered behind me watching my back. We were both covered in blood and guts and spit and skin, but all that mattered was that somehow, someway we would survive. I ran for about an hour. I found Eliza and Destiny huddled together, exhausted, but alive. "We need to get to the child-bearers." Eliza said this in a gasp. I had completely forgotten about them. They wouldn't be able to protect themselves. I gathered myself and helped Eliza up. Eliza told me to go, that she could take care of herself. I told Bill in a stern voice that no one, under any circumstances could harm my child. He promised me that he would keep them both safe and I was off. As I walked, I realized that I been trampling through less and less bodies as I made my way to the very edge of our bunker. When I was just a couple of minutes from the rooms that they stayed in, there was almost not a single body to be found, except for the ones that were already there. There was a makeshift door keeping the public from being able to witness the births. I opened the door calmly. I knew that there had been nobody over this way. I was calm until I saw the scene. Every single woman's body was split open, the fetus removed, their blood, guts and underdeveloped placentas dripping onto the floor. When I looked around, the entire room was covered in deceased fetuses, pinned to the wall. When I looked directly forward, written in blood were the words, "better now than later." As soon as I read those words, the door behind me slammed. I looked back. The gunman. He was no longer holding his gun. Instead, he held a small katana. There were two intruders with him, but he ushered them to leave. They left the room and slammed the door again. Emotionlessly, he started talking. "You know, your father did this." "What do you know of my father, asshole?" "I know that he took everything from me." Without letting him continue, I came after him. I swung once with my bone, but the man's katana knocked it out of my hands. "LET ME SPEAK!" I knew that there was nothing that I could do, so I stopped. "Your father stopped me from killing you once before, he's not here to do it again." His words left me dumfounded. We both stood. I grabbed the bone and swung it at his face. I only cracked his goggles and lowered his bandana. I gasped in astonishment. I could not believe my eyes. Somehow, it was Peter. Somehow, Peter had even left the bunker in the first place. Before leaving, he added just one more thing. "I have more power over you than you could ever possibly imagine, so if you try something like, say, swinging that piece of garbage in your hand at me ever again, I will give you the blessing of leaving you alive to watch me cut the face off of your little wifey, feed it to her and then retrieve it through her bowels to feed it to your daughter." With that, he called for a retreat and left the bunker. I ran to find Eliza. She was still where she I had seen her last, but she was no longer only exhausted, but she was in pain. Bill was shaking, trying to use a washcloth to clean out the wound. "I-I-I tried to stop them, b-b-but they held me down. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Fuck man." I looked at him deep into his eyes. "Calm down. It's okay. Where is the wound?" Eliza took a deep breath and responded. There was a tear in her shirt right below her chest. The wound was all over her stomach. Written by the unmistakable blade of a katana were the words, "come find us. we DARE you." The way that our attackers wrote out sentences in disturbing ways was starting to bother me. Eliza was breathing heavily, dripping blood. She was holding back angry, disgusted tears. Then, she cut off the already ripped portion of her shirt and created a tube top. She took the excess shirt and used it to put her hair up.

"The gunner was Peter." Both Eliza and Bill seemed confused. They knew who Peter was, but they couldn't understand how on Earth he had gotten out of the bunker. We needed to put our investigation on hold to lock the bunker doors to avoid another invasion. I wanted to be the one to do so so that I could see what the outdoors looked like. It was the opposite of how I had imagined it. The sun was blocked by a dark orange-brown haze that surrounded everything as far as I could see. The ground was covered in loose soil. There were bits and pieces of concrete that may have resembled roads and buildings at one point, but now it was just rock. I saw no animals except for one little roach that scuttled by in just a passing glance. There was no beauty in this, but I wanted it anyways. For now, I had to close the bunker door and live as if nothing had changed. Everything had changed. About twenty thousand people were killed in the attack. Twenty thousand people were lying there, empty. I wished to bring them back somehow with a spell or a potion, but there was nothing that I could do. The battle was over, but the War had begun. Eliza, Bill and I were the only ones with weapons strong enough to defend ourselves. The thought came into the back of my mind that knew that not even all three of us combined would be strong enough to defeat Peter's gun, but we had to try. We had to try for those who had lost their lives in the invasion. We had to try for those who had now put their hope in our abilities.