Tooth and Nail (Draft In Progress - Book One)

Chapter 25 - Witness

I'm unarmed. I'm friendless. I'm orphaned. I don't have a homebase, or a car, or any sort of supplies.

The only thing I am is smart.

All my life, teachers and family told me, "You're going to be a brilliant Strategist of War someday." I thought they were just being nice, until I was old enough to realize they were all saying the same thing, in a sneaky way. "You are heartless, and this will make you the perfect person to decide who lives, who dies, and how."

And now, at seventeen, I'm getting to live up to the nickname the boys I played TF2 with had given me, The Guardian Angel, or just Angel for short. I thought myself much like the angel from Constantine, Gabriel. An abomination gone rogue with the power to determine the destiny of everyone else. I had the brains, and I had the balls. So who gives a fuck about manners? I'm going to rule this world when the war is over, in all of its rotten decadence. All I had to do was keep doing what I'm already doing, but twice as fast.

And what I'm already doing isn't technically illegal, now that the Earth has been handed down from the Lord to his flock. God packed up, gave us one more magnificent sunset to admire in all of its glory, and headed for the hills to start over. I don't know. Maybe in a few generations, someone will find out that Pluto is suddenly habitable and in fact already supporting life. The Scientologists will lose their fucking hopeless minds.

I've been an outsider in this aftershock zone. The Edge of the Edge, you could say. I've been perched in trees, shrouded by bushes both thorny or otherwise, and I've been as close to the inside as sitting on the porch of Haven, enjoying the cool breeze after dusk while the morons inside walk around with flashlights like the power doesn't still work. They run the fucking Air Conditioning, but won't leave the hall light on? Let me tell you, as a street wanderer, the random beams of light visible through the front windows which have nothing more than blinds stapled down to the window sill are much more attractive than a constant yellow light that could be easily dimmed by a t-shirt or a weaker bulb. But no, these assholes were trying to live like it had been much more time than it had been, wastefully. Use your houselights while you can, idiots! Save the flashlights for when you leave!

And they did.

When they packed up, not one of them didn't have a flashlight strapped to them like museum security. It was early in the game, too. Sure, the house had been exposed to an outsider (one they promptly offed), but who gives a shit? Who would be dumb enough to leave a great house like Haven when it's become so legendary out here? One of the only places left in the Bubble without a single broken door or window. That's rare, to say the least. Every other house I've seen has had some level of flaw. A busted garage door, the door left standing open too long to be safe, dead bodies hanging out of windows... take your pick of problem, Haven didn't have it, save for the bloodstained carpet that even the next Borrowers couldn't get out in their short stay.

I've been watching it all from the trees across the street. This house used to belong to a mother and son, now its just a good lawn with a good branch to spy from. Or, shall I be so nice as to say guard from? I am the Guardian Angel, after all. No more do I need my Earthly name, I am above that world, now. A happy spirit of Zarth, and I will be treated as such. Besides, my old name was mundane. It never really fit me.

Parents name their kids when they're too young to name themselves. I am old enough to name myself. So I deserve to get to. And my name fits me.

I was watching the house when that Linebacker asshole took his stroll.

I was watching when the first Walker to catch his scent tried checking out the front door, and I was happy to decapitate 'em.

I was watching when Dumbass returned with a parade of Walkers behind him, and I was careful to slink over the fence into the next yard when the side window opened and the dark haired girl slipped out. I heard so many guns, so much yelling, so much screaming. I'm glad I didn't see what happened inside, but I saw what happened when the Asian and the Idiot of the Week tried to kill the old man. Asshat got himself bitten. If he cleans it immediately, he could have up to two weeks before he soils himself. That'd be the twenty-sixth. Hell yeah, I've been keeping count. I'm not going to lose track of the time. I'm not going to get lost out here. I am God, I am the one who must know everything if I'm going to survive this Hellstorm.