The Peacekeepers

Part One; Chapter Nine

The Chaos

During the day I work, train and watch over my land with Alice. At night I sleep with one eye open and put earplugs in my sister's ears to shield her from the noises of the explosions of Molotov cocktails, car gas tanks exploding, the sound of pain wrenched screams, glass breaking and children crying.

Thankfully, nobody ever paid attention to us. I have plenty of water from our well that I can purify in my filter and boil it so it's safe for us to use with bathing and drinking. We're able to keep cleaner than most.

One day while I'm working in the garden I hear a small, quick scream that almost immediately gets muffled. I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Alice?" I called for her. No response. My eyes dart back and forth across the yard. Alice is nowhere to be seen. I start breathing harder and harder. I'm panicked now.

"Alice! ALICE!" I start frantically yelling for her at the top of my lungs. I push past the rows of corn when I hear a quickly muffled yell again. Immediately after that I hear someone shout.

"Shut the fuck up and hold still you little bitch!"

"Drake! Help me!" A little girl's voice cried out.

It was Alice! I ran as fast as I could to where the sound originated. Then I saw the bastard. He was in the middle of the road in front of my house. He had Alice pinned to the asphalt by her neck with her pants down around her ankles and a lecherous, devious smile curled across his face. That same smile disappeared from his face the second he saw me standing no less than a few yards away. The smile turned into a look a pure terror. I clenched my fist so hard my knuckles cracked all at once. All reason shut down. I felt a rage, a primal, animal like rage I had never felt before. 

"I'm gonna fucking kill you!" I shout with a voice as loud as a gunshot. These words shot through this man's heart, filling him with a fear he had probably never felt before. He did the only thing he could think to do.

He leaves Alice and runs. I chase him down. I'm faster than he is. I'm on his heels and I tackle him to the ground. We tumble and I'm on top of him and he's facing me. I can see the animal in his eyes. The pure evil in his soul. I grip his neck and start squeezing. Holding him down with my left hand by his neck. His face turns red and he scratches violently at my arm attempting to buy himself a few extra moments of life. I slowly raise my right hand into a fist. "I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!"

Then I slammed my fist into his nose. Blood sprayed across his face and onto mine. I raised it again and slammed it on him again even harder. More of his warm blood splashed on my face. I heard bone crack with each hit. My punches started getting faster and harder. My rage and the blood in my eyes rendered me blind for a short time. I don't know how long I was there bashing his skull in. I was going to kill this sick man. He was going to die today. I tossed the human in me aside and let the animal take over.

I stopped punching when I felt my knuckles impact the asphalt. I wiped the blood out of my eyes and looked at the faceless bastard before me. Chunks of broken skull were embedded in the flesh between my knuckles. Blood was dripping from my hand. Very little of it was my blood. I don't regret this. I dragged the corpse away from our house and tossed it in a dumpster down wind from us in an alley. A fitting place for trash like him.

I got Alice washed up after cleaning the blood from my hands. In all reality I was banged up worse than she was. All she needed was treatment for a scraped knee and a hand shaped bruise on her upper thigh. I had to stitch up my hand and clean the blood off my face and I had a bit of road rash from where I tackled that sicko. I'm lucky I didn't break my hand beating him.

About an hour later I puked my guts out. I heard stories from the veterans at the farm that the first time they killed someone they got sick and puked. I had to live with this the rest of my life. He had it coming though. He would have raped a nine year old little girl. He was dead now. He'll never hurt anyone ever again. I had to keep telling myself this.

The Chaos would last for two years. I didn't keep up with current events but I do know that most of the gangs are gone. A distant memory. But from their ashes rose one powerful gang. "The Fallen Kings". A combination of the kids who were in the Bloods, Crips, La Heme, Zoe Pound, and a few other gangs. They're united under one "flag", one leader and one name. They leave me alone so I don't give a damn about what they do on their land.

Then we have The Peacekeepers. I like what they're doing. They keep the weak and defenseless alive and safe. They provide food, shelter, water and even electricity. They have running water and electricity and even working water heaters! They're still just a bunch of kids though. Just like me and Alice and The Fallen Kings. The Fallen Kings however are violent and downright barbaric. All they use their land for is growing opium and weed. If you're not a soldier then you're a slave or a whore. Girls as young and even younger than Alice are put out for food and drugs. They are terrible and violent people.

The Peacekeepers on the other hand are great fighters and all around good folk, from what I hear by the average passerby. but I don't wanna associate myself with them. That would make Alice a target. But I have debated contacting them before.

I just wanted to keep Alice safe and I did. To the best of my ability, I did. Life was decent and simple but one day... everything would change forever...