One of the soldiers nodded at me, indicating that I should stop talking, sighed as his pocket-radio murmured something unintelligible, and stood up to go. A couple of the others followed. That left me all alone with Beaky and Stone Eyes, and that didn't make me real comfortable. They were, after all, soldiers, and they were convinced that I had done something wrong, and if a person was to just look at them, it wasn't so hard to tell that they were up to no good. If they were the kind of men out there fighting, it was no wonder we were losin' the war so bad. But maybe it was just these two, cause Soldier John back home hadn't been so bad; in fact, he'd been one of my favorite guys to be around, but maybe that was just because he'd drink and smoke and swear in front of me, and my Papa would never do anything like that, so it gave me a sense of the freedom I'd never really felt that I had.
Beaky and Stone Eyes, though, were completely different. Sure, I could picture them swearing up a storm and smoking a box and a half of cigarettes a day, but they weren't good. No, there was something cold, something cruel, disturbing, about them. Maybe it was just Beaky's constant smirk, maybe it was just Stone Eyes's nervous hands, always twitching, but something seemed off with them.
Well, it didn't help that I was tied to a chair, that Ella, for all I knew, was dead, that I was miles away from home, would probably never see my Papa again, and two soldiers were eyeing me like I was on the menu for dinner that night. At that point, it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that for all I knew, I'd be sent off to the kitchens for cooking, and be returned with an apple (oh, how I wanted an apple) stuffed in my mouth and sautéed vegetables all around me. Truth be told, there weren't that many vegetables (or fruits, for that matter) around there, and food seemed pretty scarce as it was, which was exactly why I had been so worried about being served up for dinner in the first place.
Beaky turned to me, then, focusing in on me with his head cocked awkwardly to one side, and nudging Stone Eyes, started to laugh. "F-Funny, the way she looks at us"- he was practically cackling, like an old witch in one of those stories my Papa used to tell me when I was little (Ma wasn't around much, sick or running after some lover on the streets or intoxicated by alcohol or some new drug and then she was sick again, and then she was dead) - "like-like-like" Beaky had a bad stutter "she th-thinks we're gonna... gonna eat her alive." He was disturbingly close to the truth, embarrassingly so, but I wasn't going to let him think that, and met my eyes to challenge his. They immediately shifted away, but Beaky's eyes left me shuddering, and if weren't for how long his nose was, I thought I might have given him a new nickname.
Then he was jumping at me, cackling again. "Boo! Heh, m-made her jump, L-L-Lyle," Lyle must have been Stone Eyes's real name, "g-got her real good. Th-thinks we're gonna eat her, th-thinks we're gonna skin her alive." He jumped at me again, then again, screeching with laughter all the while. Sometime around then, I realized how much his breath smelled, like rotting fish and old synth-food, and guessed that mine probably smelled the same. But then, I'd changed a lot since my days back at Garden Row.
Stone Eyes—Lyle—waved Beaky off then, one nervous hand tapping at his leg all the while. "Shut it, Brill. You know the boss wants to talk to the girl, and he wouldn't like to see you jumping around her like some idiot baboon." Beaky Brill backed off. The two resumed their silent not-quite-staring-contest with me. Beaky never met my eyes, and Stone Eyes didn't seem quite able to do so, with one eye milky white and obviously unusable, the other a strangely intelligent grey, but just as shifty as Beaky's two fully functioning lookers. It struck me then that if he hadn't been so unpleasantly twitchy, Stone Eyes might just be attractive. I did my best imitation of Ella's flirty wink—it had, after all, gotten us out of trouble before, so I didn't see why it wouldn't work then—but Stone Eyes either ignored me or, just as likely, didn't see, so I went back to pretending that they weren't there, and looked straight past them, waiting for the other soldiers to get back. It didn't happen for a darn long time, so I closed my eyes and pretended to go to sleep, and no one bothered me, so I guess somewhere along the way, I actually did end up unconscious, if pleasantly so. It was, after all, the first time I'd slept in what must have been days.
YOU ARE READING
The Mechanical War
Adventure"Papa said that the war would end soon. Said that we'd get milk and butter and cream and crisp red apples right off the tree. That the skies would clear and planes would stop passing by so often. But Papa was wrong. The skies never cleared, and I ne...
