I'd Start A Riot //Dyle//

Chapter Twenty Two

With the protection of three whole walls and one half destroyed one around them in the form of a flat, the small group decide to spend another night before they actually plan anything at all- although Kyle protested greatly and loudly about this decision ("I need to find Dan! He is in the building less than fifty metres away from us, and I'm not allowed to go?!"), but Will had been the one to talk some sense into him.

"So what," he had demanded, helping Woody to start a fire from a small abundance of dry twigs, leaves, and Charlie's old pair of socks ("Hopefully they won't stink the place out,"). "We just go in, all guns blazing, and all of us end up getting killed? Where's the brains in that?" 

"W-We won't die," Kyle had stammered in response, shaking his head. "We'll get Dan." 

"No, Kyle. They have far more fire power than we do. Boom boom. Swiss cheese. Gone. Bye." He puts it probably the flattest he can, and Woody gives a little laugh. Kyle frowns.

"Look, as weird as that sounds, Will... Will has a point. We need more people to get to us before we manage to do anything at all, alright?" Woody tells the boy with a sigh and the shake of his head. "I'm sorry, Kyle. But there's no way they'd be able to save him on our own." 

"Oh- right, yeah, okay, I completely fucking see where we're coming from! We'll send own Kyle, when you're one single fucking person, and expect you to be able handle them all on your own, but when we come- nooooo! There's not e-fucking-nough of us!" Kyle shouts, making the walls shake. Charlie's face is a picture.

"Shhhh! Shut up, will you? We'll just grab all the fucking attention possible, huh?" Will snaps, grabbing his hand and pulling it down, as if, in a way, he could silence him, as it his hand was a volume knob. 

"Do you think I give a flying fuck?" He demands, ripping his hand away from Woody and throwing them both in the air as if he was being burnt. "The love of my fucking life is in that building over there, and I've travelled fucking miles to find him- and now what? Now I have to fucking wait!" Kyle falls slightly, too overwhelmed with emotion to function periodically. He pauses a minute, slightly hyperventilating, to calm down before he speaks again. "I... Do you know how hard this is? Do you know how fucking hard this is? None of you- none of you know..." 

"Shut the fuck up, Kyle. None of us know? Sorry, I think I just fucking might. You know, losing my wife, my fucking kid. I want to kill these people as much as you do, alright? I hate them, too. I hate them more than you could possibly imagine. Don't think you're alone in this battle." Charlie tells him, his face set like stone. He wants to punch Kyle- how dare he think he's the only one suffering like this. 

"Guys, look what I found!" Ralph enters the flat cheerfully, not noticing the tension. Everyone quickly lets it fall, and they look over to the man with the cowboy hat on. Woody smiles. He would have fit right in about one hundred years ago. 

In his hands, Ralph holds a radio. It's not a brilliant speaker by any means, but it is, very quietly, playing music. The others look at each other, confused- in all of this mess, who would be running a radio station? 

"A fucking radio? Holy shit, turn it up," Woody says, so Ralph does. He turns it up so it is quiet enough so nobody else can hear it, but loud enough so the group can.

There is a moment where all they can do is listen, and smile, and listen to the songs they loved so much before all of this happened. They share stories of the songs that play on the radio, filling them with nostalgia.

"There was this girl when I was, like, seventeen. She was fifteen, and didn't really have many friends. I mean, like, she didn't have any. I had friends, but not close friends. So we were in art one day, just the two of us, and she's looking really down, but we didn't speak much, and this song came on the radio. So I thought fuck it, it might make her feel better. When we finished, we laughed, and went back to art. Never spoke to her again, but it was decent." Will smiles as he thinks about the girl. "It wasn't in a weird way, it was just a... A dance." 

"And how many girls have your slow dancing charms pulled since then?" Charlie winks, but Will shakes his head.

"A big fat fucking zero." Will laughs, but there is something that nobody can quite identify underlining the laugh. 

Woody tells a story of how, a few months before all of this happened, he was playing football with his local team when he scored, as Woody said, as absolute banger of a goal, and one song- something by Kaiser Chiefs- cut through the air and verified the goal. Since then, he had grinned with success written all over his face, that song had been the goal song, and that goal had been the best the club had seen ("Clearly a shit club," Kyle had mumbled jokingly. Woody threw one of the nearby trinkets- possibly a music box- at him).

It wasn't long before they all drifted off to sleep- all but Kyle, who stays awake, looking longingly out the hole in the half broken wall, and at the building just down the road, where his lover is. He misses him like a left arm, and, right now, he feels like marching right on over and getting him without the help of these lot. As much as he doesn't want to admit it, though, he knows Will is right.

He would be useless alone.

It's roughly three hours later, just ten minutes before he has to wake Woody up so he can sleep, does Kyle hear the radio go completely silent. A few seconds later, the host speaks up again.

"Uh... We have a visitor here- uh..." 

"My name is Chrissy Wood," she says, immediately grabbing Kyle's attention. He looks to Woody, who doesn't even shift. So he crawls forward, shaking him. "My husband and his friends went out to look for the big WWComms place to find one of their partners. If anyone is possibly near there and could give them a hand, perhaps you could help them and..." 

Woody, awakening quickly after hearing his wife's voice, has a grin the size of a dinner plate on his face. Behind that, though, he looks like he may cry. 

"Chrissy," he whispers, holding the radio and putting his hand over one of the speaker as if he could in some way be with her.

"The WWComms place?" The host says after Chrissy is finished. The radio host then gives the location of the place, and advises everyone to come and help. Why they would listen to Chrissy- perhaps because of Sarah- or possibly through Chrissy's anger (don't hold her back. Woody learnt that) did they let her in, but he is thankful they did.

"They could help us, Wood," Kyle smiles, "They could finally fucking help us and we could finally... Dan..."