Windfall

    Komae struggled as their captors pulled his sister away from him.  He snarled and got another crack to the head for his trouble.  Blinking back the pain he just hoped he could get his hands untied sometime soon.  The metal of the wires they had wrapped around his wrists was cutting off circulation and his hands were going numb.  He wasn’t sure how many times they had looped the stuff around his wrists; he had stopped counting at about twenty.  They hadn’t tied Kate like that, there were so many of them that she didn’t stand a chance of breaking their hold anyway.  That just wasn’t what her specialties were, that was supposed to be what his were.

     The two of them had been dragged into what had been a bar at one point.  The place had been cleared of most of its tables though.  The electric neon lights that couldn’t shine anymore from a near universal lack of electricity, were also missing, or smashed and pushed into corners.  The bare walls showed lighter patches where the signs had once been, the floor was filthy in part by some of the broken signs that had been ground into the corners.  He could tell the floor was made out of wood, but the black that filled in the cracks and lines between boards made the whole thing look like one solid sheet of filth.  Trash littered it, wedged anywhere a direct path hadn’t been plowed through. This place was more a den than anything else, better suited to animals than to men.  The only light came from a few kerosene lanterns they had sitting in corners and the gaps in the slats that they had boarded the windows over with.  The light from outside would fade shortly as winter was not prone to long days.  The place smelled of the liquor that it once housed and old cigarette smoke that had been banned years prior to when the Wind had hit.  Well the stuff had been banned in Komae’s time, who knew when these men were from.

     They hauled Komae across the floor and towards another door that looked like it hadn’t always been in the bar.  It was built much sturdier then the rest of the place, made out of metal and not just old wood.  The solidity of the door made it imposing in a very threatening and final way and so he dug his heels in and fought harder the closer they got to it. 

     Komae hooked a foot around the ankle of one of the men holding him.  The man tripped and hit the floor with a painful crack to his knees that caused him to cry out.  Komae snapped a booted foot out and struck the man in the face while he was still down.  The man dropped face first onto the floor.  Komae spun around as the two others reached out to grab his arms again, to steer him.  He head butted one that got too close and was about to break the last in the trios leg when he heard the safety of a gun click off.

     One of the men holding Kate had it pressed against the meat of her upper thigh.  They wanted her alive, but apparently didn’t need her in one piece.  Komae grimaced and Kate just met his gaze apologetically.  Stalemate. 

     “Don’t get yourself killed for me Komae.”  She sent him on their private link, something that they had shared since the start of their mutual career, the career that had been so drastically modified since the Wind had hit.    Now they did some scavenging for people that paid in either food or a safe place to stay for a while.  The pay wasn’t as good as the pilfering of info and software had been in their time, but in this time that just wasn’t an option to be found and she liked helping people that were hard on their luck.  They often reminded her of herself at a much younger age; broke, hungry and looking for someplace safe.  Now she was passing that on to other people..  Well she had been a couple of hours before this.

     The man that Komae had kicked did not get back up and the black floor looked even darker with the new red coating it was getting from the body he had left behind.  The boot to the head had apparently done the damage that Komae had been hoping for.  Komae had to grin to himself; it really had been a nice solid kick.  The other two grabbed him and forcibly walked him away from the body and through the door he had been trying to avoid.  He didn’t struggle this time so the pushing they did just sped him along.  The one he had head butted now had a bloody nose to show for it.  Komae grinned over at him as they turned and walked out of the room he had just been put in.  The man glared murder back at him.  Komae wasn’t sure how many were in the building, but at least he knew they were now down by one. 

     He turned around and began looking for a way out before they had even slammed the heavy door closed.  It clanged shut with a resounding finality that let Komae know that the door would not be the way to get out, so he needed to find an alternative way.  The ceiling in this room reached up into the second story of the bar, vaulted ceiling style.  There was no sign of why they had a ceiling like that in what looked to him like a large closet.  There were windows near the top, nothing more than 27 cm tall, but nearly 62 cm wide.  That was a possibility.  He would need his hands untied first.

     He started to contort himself enough that he could slip both legs through his arms.  Once his arms were in front of him it would be possible to use his teeth to unravel the wire.  One leg at a time sliding over and through his arms until he was finally standing there looking at the wire around his now nearly purple hands.  He gripped the end of the wire with his teeth and began unraveling.  Five loops gone and he could feel the blood starting to trickle back into his hands.  It tingled and hurt like a bitch, but it was better than losing part of a limb.  There was no chance of a decent replacement these days, whenever exactly these days were.

     He heard Kate yelp and he found himself suddenly staring at the door in horror. 

     “Oh, please no.”  He whispered to himself, knowing what they were planning on doing to her and not ever wanting his sister to go through that again and from in here he had no way to stop it.