30 years later

Chapter 2

We walked for quite a long time when suddenly Sophie stopped. She stood in silence waiting for something, then suddenly fell to the ground with her. "What the?" She just pointed to the woods, to what seemed as a distant campfire. Sophie pushed her finger to her lips and carefully started crawling closer to the source of light. I didn't want to be left alone so I had no other option than following her. As we moved to the source of light, I started to hear some unclear chatter.

When we were about five meters away from the campfire I could clearly see a group of five people, armed to their teeth. One of them sat alone nearby, covered in black cloak with a scoped rifle. 'Heeey, Sash, get here.' one of the guys around the campfire yelled in a drunk manner, addressing it to the person with the rifle. 'I'm here because of the payment; and also get your filthy hands off me,' said young feminine voice from under the cloak. 'I'm wondering what else will you do for some ammo...' the man had a smile filled with lust on his face. It was the rifle stock that hit him in the nose at first, then she started pushing on his nose with her leg, man's noise started making all sorts of sounds mixed with screaming. 'Don't mistaken me with your girlfriend, unlike her I'm not a whore,' Sash (at least that's what they called her) spit on the ground. The air became tense as comrades of the man were starring at her, one of them got up and took out his pistol pointing at the girl's head. 'Slaughter wasn't part of the deal' the man put his finger on the trigger, 'so now you gotta apologise to him.'

'Well you can go and suck huge balls,' the girl took out a sawn off shotgun from the holster on her belt. In a matter of seconds the second man was on the ground with blood spilling all over his jacket. At that moment Sophie yelled to the girl, ' there's two more, on your back!' My first thought was, "we're fucked." But before I could even move the girl smashed men faces with the grip of a sawn- off.

I walked out with a knife in my hand, just in case, but the cost seemed clear. The girl looked at us, mumbled something which sounded like thanks and walked to a black container. Sophie was looking at unconscious men paralysed, shocked and probably wondering what she has done.

'Hey, are you ok?' I asked her; patting her shoulder and resting my hand on it. 'Yeah... I'm fine,' mumbled Sophie and looked away. I walked over to the girl who was intensely throwing foam out of the black box. She looked inside and sighed in disappointment, I looked inside, there were carefully aligned rifle barrels, springs and some mechanical parts. 'Nothing new,' the girl seemed disappointed, she looked at me, 'thanks to your companion I'm still alive, name is Sasha,' she smiled widely and offered her hand. I shook it, 'my name is Maria and that's Sophie.' Sophie smiled at her, she seemed to recover from her shock, which were good news. 'Anyway, I was supposed to deliver all this, but I guess that offer is off after killing their best men,' she examined us with her eyes, 'aren't you from the outside?'

I told her our story, she listened carefully, when I finished she looked at two of us and exclaimed, 'you two are definitely not prepared for the outside, one gun for two people is not enough,' she seemed really pissed about something. 'Well we'll manage,' Sophie said while hanging the shotgun on her shoulder, 'thank you for being concerned though.' Sophie grabbed my arm and started pulling it, signalling me to follow her. Sasha smiled, 'don't worry, I don't bite,' she smirked at Sophie, 'And I'm telling you, you're fine for now. But soon you'll need something you don't have; experience.' Sophie pulled my hand and whispered to me, 'should we listen to her?'

I wasn't sure myself, she was right, we didn't have the experience. However trusting a complete stranger, who we met a few moments ago, was a very irrational decision. She seemed honest, but we saw what she was capable of. She would get rid of us with ease, if she would want to. This was a hard decision and i was the one to make it. I looked at Sophie, she was waiting for an answer. 'Alright, you're part of the team i guess,' I mumbled. 'Let's go then, we don't have that much time, we have to get to the St. Louis.' Sasha smiled, 'though there's nothing saint left the,' she whispered under her breath. 'Wait, why there?,' Sophie asked. 'From there we can get to metropolis, after some break. After all it's around two weeks of walking from here, and metropolis is another week,' Sasha's face darkened,' there's a shorter way, but it lies through the city of dead, a huge wasteland.'

'We'll obviously avoid that,' said Sasha, 'unless you want to see your guts getting eaten alive.'

And so we went, went into unknown, led by a stranger. Whom we for some odd reason trusted, but I believed that it all will turn out fine; I hoped it will. I wasn't sure about staying in St.Louis though, Sasha's reaction and red marking on the map were bothering me. But I won't know until I see for myself I guess. Also i would rather stay in a shady town, than see my guts getting eaten.

The sun slowly rose from behind the trees, burning like thousands of campfires, it lit trees on fire with its light. We kept on walking until we reached a small shack nearby a river. The shack's planks were rotten and so unstable that if you will touch one they will collapse or turn into a pile of useless shit. But the inside surprised me. It had a neat bunk bed with clean sheets on and another wooden bed, which unlike the shack wasn't rotten. 'This is my hideout,' Sasha said, 'I sleep here from time to time, nobody ever tries to raid it, since it looks like shit.'

She said something else about disguise. But i didn't hear her. I laid on the bed and immediately fell asleep...

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Well, I finished this earlier than I thought i will.

But don't expect this happening this very often, next week I most likely won't be able to publish due to a crap ton of stuff I have to do.