Young and Loaded

Chapter Nine

   I watched silently as Ghoul gently dabbed at Doctor D's arm with a wet cloth. It seemed so foreign to me, like an out of body experience, to watch the two move. Every now and then, he would shudder from the obvious pain that came with his wounds being handled a little more roughly than you would ever do to yourself. But he never complained or asked Ghoul to stop, and I guess that was somewhat respectable.

   It seemed that even an ancient dude like Doctor Death Defying had the sense to let his wound get cleaned.

   Kobra always re—

   I took in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to center myself. Trying to shut off my thinking. It seemed that stopping myself from thinking about them was the hardest part of this whole stupid mourning process that I was apparent going through. I also learned that mourning fucking sucks. And I hated every second I wasn't able to kneel over a grave and scream my dead brother and dead friend's names over and over until my throat collapsed in on itself. I wanted to be gasping in the arid desert air while I begged for water just to feel tears flow from my dehydrated eyes and get the full melodramatic aesthetic working for me. The circumstance, on the other hand, had other ideas.

   When Ghoul got around to stitches, I looked away. Needles terrified me more than blood pouring out of a person I care about. Not that I cared much for Doctor Death Defying in that moment, but he had always been a huge part of me. From taking me in and training me in missions so that I could stay at the back of the diner with my brother and two lone wanderers, he was practically the only father figure I'd ever had. So I had to avert my eyes because looking was painful. It hurt. Stitches reminded me of Ghoul's scar on his cheek and the blood reminded me of why scar-face hated my guts.

   It didn't take terribly long for Fun Ghoul to finish patching up Doctor Shiny Glasses, and for that I'm grateful. Staring at the ground in silence while someone else got wounds cleaned off and stitched it up was probably the most awkward thing in the world. Besides telling a waiter at the Diner to enjoy her meal too because you don't know how to say thank you. That, or you're just brain fried from the unhealthy amounts of radiation you receive to the head from a fucked sun on a daily basis and the too-little sleep you'd been getting thanks to stressful raid missions.

   But of course, while this whole thing happened in front of me and I refused to look, I couldn't help but be a little restless. They had Grace, for fucks sake. Better Living Industries had finally gotten their hands on our child of a super weapon and they were going to kill her. Either that, or absolutely destroy her mind so she had no way to even know who she was or what she was supposed to do. In other words, fuck up her destiny.

   Unless I changed her destiny and destroyed the city for her.

   Which, thanks to her being held captive, had given me all the more reason to raid and burn and destroy. Just like I'd planned and talked about, even if the alcohol still had my head pounding with a killer headache. Not to mention get her the fuck out of there while it crumbled to the ground. And I was going to do it in entirety, not run and hide and hope that a fucking kid knows how to destroy a city crawling with Draculoids and Scarecrow Units on her own, without help and protection that she so desperately needs. She's too young.

   Not even Ghoul's hope for a better future could save her now. We could no longer run off into the sunset and get our skin burned off in Zone Seven and die terribly slow deaths even if we happened to make it out of the Zones. We were stuck in here because Grace was trapped and hidden away in Battery City. And we needed to cooperate. I needed him to help. But I knew he was against it, probably day dreaming about what life would be like if the wars had never happened as he cleans Doctor Death's wounds.