Light from Darkness

Chapter 8- Prisoners

Russell woke to the setting of the dusty house he had claimed all those years ago after the great switch off thinking naively that the events of yesterday had only been a nightmare. He was wrong of course. The undead horror of a man sat on a stool across from his bed shooting a look at Russell with those flaming eyes of his. Russell cursed his luck in his head before rising and going downstairs for a quick breakfast of a can of peaches in preparation for the long day of work ahead. 

“Hope I didn’t scare you this morning.” The skeleton said with misplaced cheerfulness. “Although it feels like that rest was simply stalling for time and hope that someone will rescue.” Russell wasn’t sure how but it skeleton had managed to make himself look like he had narrowed his eyes even though it was only bone. “You haven’t got a rescue party coming have you dear Russell?”

The black man creased his dark eyebrows and raised his head from his work on the Harley Davidson.

“Who do you think a lowly grease monkey like me has for friends? Never mind company that would actually save anyone’s ass at the risk of their own. No one exists like that in this world anymore.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, some still cling tightly to family and friendship.” The skeleton man said with something close to reminiscing. It made Russell suspect that he had ripped apart one of said groups of friends before, that or he was once part of such a community. Both thoughts made Russell shudder with fear that this skeleton might have had any human ties.

“I’m nearly finished you’ll be glad to hear, so within the next hour we can get moving to the destination you won’t tell me about although I doubt you won’t shoot me before mid-afternoon.”

“I wouldn’t kill you Russell.” He said before cocking his pistol atmospherically. “But it doesn’t hurt to make you remember your place.”

Dahlia was the first to arrive at the gate in camp ready as she decided to travel light in the desert knowing that heat did not take kindly to layers of baggage. Clearly the other soldiers did not know nearly as much about the desert as her since the first to walk into the sandy yard was Tony carrying two black pistols on his belt, a shotgun slung across his back on a separate bandolier and cradling a sub machine gun in his arms. When he saw Dahlia cross her arms he jumped to his own defence.

“This is all completely necessary! Except for these maybe...” He said as he picked a couple of frag grenades from a small bag on his behind.

Then came the rest of the soldiers brandishing a variety of guns and camo arrangements. Each one made comments on the other men’s choice of weapons and smiling stupidly at Dahlia as she stood scowling with her one M11 pistol at her waist.

“Who’s left?” James asked even though he already knew the answer.

“Darrius.” Everyone said.

It took the muscly blonde man over twenty minutes more to prepare and Dahlia had considered strolling out of the camp to let him catch many times. When he finally did get there the others didn’t need to wonder how he spent his time. He rolled a barricade made out of bits of trucks from around the corner of one of the barracks that left everyone gasping in amazement. In the middle of the improvised barrier he had mounted a huge machine gun with small U.S.A pennants stuck all around it.