In Search Of The Neon City

13 - Lo

(A/N- New cover and new title, same story though.. I haven't decided which one I should use yet, might change it again 😅)

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As the car crashed into the sand dunes I was thrown around on the dirty floor, on which I lay tied up and squeezed between two pairs of feet and various smelly scraps.

The voices around me were loud and the jargon was raw, someone in the front seat cheered with joy as the car jumped in the air, the sound made the blood freeze in my veins.
But the driver didn't sound as happy, a mixture of annoyed grunts and sighs were heard from him, but everything was incomprehensible to me. Their language was of a completely different dialect than my own, but perhaps that was a good thing, did I really want to know what they were talking about?

My hands were tied tightly behind my back and my shoulders ached from the strain, but I didn't dare to move, with the risk of getting another kick in the stomach.
My head spun and a aching pain began to spread through my body as the first adrenaline rush subsided.

In a way, I hoped that Carl was on his way, but on the other hand, I didn't want them to get into trouble because of me.

I was such a fucking idiot!

I had trudged out of the camp with blue-eyed, confident steps, with a fictitious grand goal and the confidence of a god.
As if I were some fucking hero.
But there was this feeling that gnawed at me, there was something about that Twelve guy, I really needed to meet him.

Without warning, the car drove over a hard bump and my head was raised in the air a few centimeters, and before I had time to react, the temple fell straight into the steel cap of a dirty, smelly boot.
I moaned in pain and my self-esteem fell straight through the car plate and was left somewhere in the wilderness.

A bumpy journey later, I am dragged out of the car with a firm grip on my collar.
All my things were placed in a sack and all I had left were the clothes on my body. A pair of stained trousers, my worn old T-shirt and my faithful beanie. I was not even allowed to keep the shoes.

I looked around carefully.
The camp was full of life, they must be forty or fifty men, I thought and felt how the lump in my stomach grew. No one could save me from this.

No one.

I was dragged into a tent-like building and my eyes had to struggle for a while before they got used to the darkness, after the sudden bright sunlight outside the car.
The air inside was musty but what really creeped me out was the moaning noises and quiet sobs from the cages.

The lump in my stomach grew larger. I needed to know who they were, what clan, but so far I had only seen feet or their armour from a distance. I needed to see more, faces with tattoos, clan marks or symbols.
I carefully turned my head to the side, but was immediately rewarded with something that sounded like a curse and a fist over my jaw.

A squeaking noice from metal against metal cut in to my ears and seconds later I had the ropes cut off my wrists and I was thrown into a metal cage so hard that I landed on all fours.
My knees screamed in pain and my palms burned from the hit, but I did not say a word. Instead, my eyes slid in horror over the dirty metal. The grille was rusty but it looked alarmingly stable despite all the old repairs.

I carefully hurried to the back of the cage, it was big enough for me to sit upright, but there was no chance that I could stand, or even lie down.
With a sigh I pulled my knees up under my chin and put my arms around my legs, I gently leaned my sore temple against the cool grid and looked around carefully.

The whole room was filled with similar cages stacked on top of each other. There was room for about twenty prisoners, but most of the cages were empty, yet a handful of trembling bodies appeared in the shadows.

My eyes slid over fabrics, jackets and flags but there were no signs of marks or symbols. Only dirt, pointed rivets, scrap metal and other things that made them look, to say the least, terrifying.
It was the goal of all the top clans, to salvage the rest of us humans.
And they where good at it.
They scanned the lands for us with their drones, chased us with their hunters and sold us at the market in the Outskirts.
We were the cattle of our time. We, the people who tried to live as normal a life as possible.

I cast a new eye on the men at the entrance, I was pretty sure they were not cannibals anyway, I saw no bone fragments around the necks, or in the hair. This clan were looking for labourers, or maybe they would just sell us as slaves.

A tidal wave of anxiety washed over me, because life was so fucking unfair.
How could life be like this? The people with the most power were the cruelest, and if Twelve were right, Vegas was the same. A city full of hatred for us out here and ruled by even worse leaders.
I didn't want to believe him, but I couldn't suppress the feeling that he knew what he was talking about.

But somewhere in the world there must be a better place, life couldn't be this hard and cold forever, I thought and closed my eyes.