The Peacekeepers

Part Three; Chapter Fourty

One Man Army

I get attacked again. Three Fallen Kings try. I break one arm and knock out two more of them. The deeper I get the more frequent the attacks get, which was to be expected. Bones get snapped, blood flies, teeth shatter and opium burns in the distance. People run as I approach them. Good move.

I hear a baseball bat cut through the air and I duck out of the way just in time. I face my attacker and instantly recognize him. He hit me before. Before they got Alice, he got me. We circle each other and he's taunting me.

"You're a dead man! I'm gonna bash your fucking brains in! I'm gonna bring your body to The Kings then we're gonna burn The Peacekeepers!" Then he swings at me. I tense up my fist and punch the bat head on. The wood separates from itself. Splinters go everywhere and he just stares at the wooden handle in his hand. He drops it and starts backing up with his hands out toward me.

"Not so tough are you? Not so tough without your little friends and soft little bat?" I reach out and crush both his hands. He shouts at the top of his lungs. He drops to his knees but I pick him up by his neck and groin and toss him into a nearby shack. The plywood wall comes apart as his fall is broken by a pile of broken glass and rusty needles. He sees the filth he's in and screams again, this time in equal parts terror and pain. I look down at him.

"This is all your fault you know that? Accept your fate. I've got much bigger fish to fry today. I have no time for you."

How did I get here? A boy taken to his Uncle's farm half a country away to learn how to kick box turns into a hero to a group of people then turns into a rage fueled vigilante. I remember every single fight I've ever been in. My backyard all those years ago, a couple times getting jumped after school, once in school where I knocked out a few teeth and broke some ribs. When The Chaos began and I threw someone out the window after putting his head in the wall, killing the man who tried raping my sister and all my fights after that.

I have gotten so strong but even with my strength and experience I still couldn't save her. I couldn't save the only person in my world worth protecting. I may not have been strong enough to save her but I'll be damned if I'm not strong enough to avenge her death and kill the one responsible!

I had expected to encounter more resistance but all I saw was more victims of The Fallen King's oppression. All I could do was follow more spaces between shacks and burned out buildings. As Fallen Kings retreated I saw more examples of their brutality. Skin and bone women with babies on their breasts and... more children. All were little girls. I guessed that the boys further in their territory were taken from their mothers and beaten into being soldiers of The Fallen Kings. I didn't think too much into it. I didn't want to think of the kids I may have wound up crippling because they had no choice but to attack me.

I scan the horizon and see funnels of black smoke dotting the horizon. I smell opium and marijuana burning heavily in the air. I hear the cries of a battle between the slaves and their masters. The smell of burning flesh and sounds of immolation fill the air as well. I guess I'm a "hero" again. Funny, I don't feel like one.

I walk with my guard up and fists loosely clenched at my sides. I'm walking between a line of makeshift shacks and a brick building. I hear a scream as I'm attacked from the side with a straight punch from a running Fallen King. I move my head out of the way and his fist impacts the wall. The flat impact leaves him gasping from pain. I call him a dumbass, grab the back of his head, then smash his face into the wall. He slumps down and lays on his side, bleeding out of his face. Specks of brick dot his features. I don't even feel anything. I've become numb to the violence that surrounds me. I just want it to end, the sooner the better.

I hear loud clamoring and I follow it. I'm walking for a good ten minutes until I turn a corner and see them. All of them. There's so many in a concrete field cleared for the warehouse like a castle of old. It reminded me of farmland but with people rather than corn and wheat. Under the dim twilight there were The Fallen Kings that hadn't been beaten down by me or killed by the freed slaves. From where I was standing I saw him looking down at his men from the top floor of the warehouse in an office. Through the window he can feel me look at him. Out of all the men under his command, men willing to fight and die blindly for him, he can feel every ounce of hate in my gaze before he even looks up and makes eye contact with me.

He punches out the window and the crowd falls silent apart from the shards of glass hitting concrete. I hear each individual shard hit the ground. I hear the breathing of all the men there. They stare at their leader until they notice me one by one and turn around.

Their leader turns blood red in the face with anger. I look at him and his tipless, bandaged nose and he looks back at me. It's finally here. This final moment. The moment I craved. I imagined gazing into his eyes while I choke the life out of him.

"Kill that motherfucker!"