After the Plague

VII. What She Learned

Kira came to slowly, and in waves. She would get small, blurred images - a tree, the ground, a pair of feet - but nothing was coherent. It felt like days had passed, and hunger bit at her stomach.

Finally, she was able to grasp onto reality and her surroundings came into focus.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Goodwin said. His milky, perfectly toned voice could have been nails on a chalkboard to her ears. It filled her with hatred and woke her up quickly. She tried to form words, but couldn’t. 

“Come, come,” he continued. “You’ve been out for three days, so you’re going to want to take it slow.”

Kira struggled to open her eyes, then move her fingers and toes. Suddenly, her mind clicked into gear and she realized where she was. Goodwin poisoned me. He poisoned me. I need to escape, I need to kill him. She felt ready, she felt willing, she felt able. Her hands moved into position to strike him straight across the head, but snapped back after just a few inches. Her wrist burned, and she looked up to see a thick hemp rope tied tightly around both of her arms and feet. Even after seeing it, she struggled again, but it was too thick and well tied.

“Let me go!” she yelled. She knew it was useless, but the rage inside her had built up too much. She couldn’t stand to be tied down for a minute longer. I need to get out. Let me out. Let me out.

“Oh wow, look at you,” Goodwin said as he sauntered over, undoing his leather flay and letting it drag along the ground, where it’s spikes jostled like holiday bells. “Feisty, aren’t you?”

She struggled again, but the rope was knotted against the back of the wooden plank she was tied too. The board wasn’t too thick though, and she could feel some give on the knot against the hole.

“What exactly are you trying to accomplish?” Goodwin asked. “Do you see where you are?”

Kira paused for a moment and let her surroundings sink in. She had been so focused on Goodwin that she hadn’t noticed she was on a water skiff. It was sleek and modern, most likely from just before the Gateway. All her life she had seen them cruise down the river in Genesis, driven by only the city’s wealthiest. They would gleam on sunny days, beacons of the city’s enormous prosperity and promise. She had only ever seen them from a distance. It glided down a river on it’s three massive pontoon. The fuel cell motor hummed pleasantly.

The landscape on either side of the wide river was completely foreign to Kira. It was rugged and unforgiving, with raw, old rock formations jutting out between spindly pine trees. I’m not in Genesis anymore. 

Now that she had taken it all in, Kira’s brief appreciation for the land routed back into a plan to rip Goodwin apart. “You’ll regret what you did!” she yelled. Again, she knew her words meant little in her current predicament, but she couldn’t help it. She pulled against her rope bindings, just to show how angry she was. The knot pushed against the hole even more, cracking it ever so subtly. 

“What I did?” Goodwin said in his usual amused tone. “I’m afraid I can’t take credit for this particular incident, it just doesn’t resonate with my style. No, this sloppy work is much more in the vein of Blu, that wormy bastard.”

Blu? “Why would he attack me?”

“Attack you? That’s not the word I would use. See, there’s a special kind of people in the world that just have no regard for what they do or how they do it. Really a sorry kind of folk. If you were to ask me, I would say there’s not a lot of point in even letting a man like that breath the same air as I do, but no one ever really asks me.”

“No one would sink that low,” Kira retorted. 

“You really have been in Genesis haven’t you? I thought that was just some pretty girl story for you to tell us, but the way you say things is so… so… childish,” he said, genuinely surprised. He chuckled and continued. “Any who, it shouldn’t be too much a concern for you, and it would appear that timing is in your favor. The reason I entered that rat hole of a bar was actually because of Blu. Seems like he owed some money or something to the wrong people, so, well–“ He reached below a counter on the boat’s deck and pulled up Blu’s severed head. It had become blue and dried with several days of rot, but it was undeniably Blu. Its rancid smell wafted up and hit Kira’s nostrils like a wall.