On a sparrow's wings

Chapter 8 - New sights on the horizon

  Anastasia slept another dreamless night when she woke the sun was shining brightly in the sky and she felt well rested for once. She stood, she had slept on the ground but it wasn’t as bad as she thought it would have. She had slept in harder beds along the way, the ground wasn’t that bad in comparison.

  She looked around and saw the fire smoldering and Michael gone. Again? Really? She quickly stood and gathered her things when Michael appeared from behind a tree carrying a rabbit by the feet in his left hand and a bloody knife in the right. She let out a sigh of relief and laid back in her sleeping bag.

  Michael fed the fire some branches and leaves. He swiftly and nimbly skinned it, put it on a stick and placed it on top of the fire. After a while the rabbit turned brown and steam. Michael pulled it off the fire, cleaned his knife in the rabbit’s fur and picked pieces of the rabbit with it.

  Anastasia reached her hand over to tear out a piece of the brown rabbit. A slap came to her hand and I pulled it off quickly.

“Ouh! What was that for?”, Anastasia said as she shaked her hurt hand.

“I save your brother, that’s our deal. You get your own food.”, Michael nimbled on one of the rabbit’s legs.

“Yeah, whatever.”, Anastasia sighed as she collected her stuff and went of to find herself something to eat. She had three cans left in her backpack, but Ethan had thought her to always have a few cans on her if she was in a situation where she couldn’t find food and she didn’t want to waste that supply right now.

  She wandered down the road for a while. She finally came across a dinner on the side of the road. She was some distance from the campfire and she could barely see the small line that was it’s smoke. But she figured it wouldn’t be a problem. It was a bright day and the streets were lonely and quiet.

  The dinner was once painted a bright red, which was now barely visible owing to the scratches all over the dinner that showed the metal underneath. The windows were still whole for a change, when Anastasia looked them over more and with a knock she found out they were bulletproof. She had chanced upon bandit glass a few times before and after Ethan explained it to her She could be able to notice it. Ethan told her that some places had them to protect them from robbers and she assumed that’s why this dinner had them.

  The inside of the dinner looked like a usual american dinner, although a bit more filthy. But not by a lot. Anastasia had been in a dinner once before with her dad, when they were on a road trip but it didn’t go well. Some guy vomited over another and they got into a fight which eventually turned into them hugging each other and crying. The waitress had rotten teeth and she go her order wrong three times.

  The stools were toppled over and lying dead on the cluttered with trash and filth floor. The couches were torn in a lot of places and mold was growing on some of the seats and on the plates that were left dormant and were once filled with food. Anastasia picked up one of the stools and sat on the counter, resting her elbows on it. She felt lonely sitting there. The spiders that were building cobwebs in the corners and on the Ilves weren’t enough company for her.

  I miss people. That was what she missed the most from the world that was. People, life. She missed seeing full streets of people, running late for their jobs, having arguments over the phone or laughing at their friend’s joke. Now everything was so empty and where there were people was different. Whenever she looked upon their faces she didn’t see the mixture of complicated emotions and thoughts people used to have. Now it was mostly sadness and survival that was on their mind. How to survive today, tomorrow, next week, next month? No one seemed to be living anymore. Everyone was so concerned with staying alive that they didn’t appreciate being alive. her stomach grumbled. Enough deep thoughts for today. Let’s find something to eat.

  She got up from the stool and went behind the counter. She searched behind it but had no luck. She moved over to the kitchen. The pans were all rust barely hanging on to their handles. Once it had been a kitchen full of people cooking and the air had been filled with the smell of bacon and eggs. Now it was a quiet place that smelled of nothing and looked like an old rusted nail that stuck from a board that was barely hanging on to a wall. She found a few cans of peas and corn there but decided to check the rest of the dinner too.

  She went to what would have been the manager’s office. It was a small room, with a desk and a shelf where pictures and different awards were placed. Pictures of families, friends, pets, achievements that once mattered something. One of them had a man with a big fish in his hands. Anastasia’s mouth watered a little as she looked at it. She felt her stomach grumbled once again and decided to head back to the campfire and Michael.

  When she came out three armed people were waiting for her in front of the dinner. One of the man was shorter and thinner, his hands shaking and his forehead wet with sweat. The other was staring at Anastasia with his small eyes, unblinking. He had a jaw like an anvil and broad shoulders. The woman was exchanging glances between him and Anastasia, clutching her gun a bit too hard.

  “Hand over your stuff and no one gets hurt.”, the man with the broad shoulders said.

Anastasia lifted her hands as to not seem threatening to them and tried to reason with them, “I will starve, if you do this. We can think of something else.”, the smaller man seemed to flinch when he heard that.

“Sorry but if we don’t we die.”, the broad shouldered man lifted his gun and pointed it at her, “Now hand it over.”.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”, the short man said, “Look at her Derik, she is a little girl. We will find food somewhere else.”, he placed a hand on the Derik’s shoulder.

“We have a quota, you know this. If we don’t do this we’ll die Matt.”

“And if we do she dies.”, the woman said, while looking at the ground.

  Derik threw a glance at her and back at Anastasia. A bang was heard and he dropped to the ground, blood spurting on to the ground from his head. Anastasia ducks and looks around seeing Michael coming out behind a house holding one of the smgs he took from the Red Fist camp.

“What are you doing?”, Anastasia yelled out to him but it was no use. Soon the other man fell to the ground dead.

  The woman scrambled to throw her weapon to the side and go to her knees, “Please don’t shoot me! I surrender!  surrender!”, the woman cried and scream. With every look she gave her friends she shrieked ever louder. Michael slowly walked to her and pressed the barrel of his gun on her forehead.

“She is not a threat! You don’t have to kill her!”, Anastasia pleaded adding to the crying and shrieking of the woman. I waved her shaking hands in the air trying her best to say out words but nothing managed to come out. She shook with fear as she looked down the barrel of Michael’s gun.

  “Michael please! Don’t do this!”, Anastasia went for his hand slowly but it was of no use. Michael pulled the trigger and splattered the woman’s brains on the pavement. She fell over and landed dead next to her friends. Anastasia shuttered back, holding her hands up to her face. She looked at the dead woman, her eyes were still open but the color was fading from them as her life did.

  Michael crouched and searched them, like they were some old drawers in an abandoned house.

“What is wrong with you?”, Anastasia took a step towards him. Mostly sad but the anger was building in her.

Michael ignored her as he turned the woman’s corpse and opened her backpack. Now Anastasia was angry. She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back, “Hey I am-”

“Are you a f*****g i***t girl!”, Michael was standing over her and his face was red with anger, “Do you want to die is that it? Well you can be her guest but after I get paid.”

“They weren’t a threat! You didn’t have to shoot them!”, she waved her hand in front of Michael’s face and he grabbed it. He squeezed not hard enough to hurt her but hard enough so she wouldn’t escape.

“How have you survived this long when you are this stupid? If I let her go she would have warned her bandit buddies and she would have cut our throats while we slept.”, he let go of her hand.

  “They weren’t bandits.”, Anastasia wasn’t sure of that.

Michael grabbed the woman by the hand and pulled up her sleeve and showed her wrist to Anastasia. An insignia had been burnt into the flesh, it was in the form of a lion roaring.

“Do you know this brand, girl?”, Michael was grinding his teeth.

“No.”

“This is the brand of the Pride.”, Michael threw the woman back to the ground, “The Pride’s slaves have to bring in an amount of food or they die and they sure as s**t are a threat. You only saw hungry people.”

Anastasia hadn’t heard of the Pride before, they must have been new.

Michael looked around again, “We have to go. The others won’t be far.”, and he headed off.

  Anastasia followed him her head lowered to the ground. Where they really bandits? I should have seen it! I felt awful. Michael had saved her life and she yelled at him.

“Watch where you are going, girl.”, Michael rumbled.

Anastasia lifted her head and caught up to Michael, “Look I am sorry. I didn’t see the brand. I want to say… thank you… for saving me.”

Michael slightly flinched at that, “Just try to be more careful.”

  The continue walking silently through the highway towards Chicago. The highway itself was covered in cars. Some were broken down and others looked as if they had been untouched since it all began. There once was a lot people trying to evacuate from the city but it looked a lot them never managed to make it past the traffic jam. Two of the lanes were somewhat cleared as if they were being used still.

  The city appeared in front of them. A giant in front of Anastasia’s eyes. The skyscrapers seemed to punch through the clouds. She wondered if she could touch the stars from up  there. It looked like tall grass, dense and so huge. She thought should would get lost in it the moment I entered it.

“When we enter the city do exactly what she say. This is the most dangerous place you have ever been.”, said Michael.