chapter six
523 Words
I was starting to get worried I'd somehow been going around in circles when I found big puddles of blue fluid. But I quickly found this wasn't my blood. This was a result of a deadly sickness that many people had gotten.
One guy fell to the ground vomiting next to me. He didn't say a word, just puked until his body eventually stopped heaving. And then he laid there, lifeless and dead.
I watched in horror as a person in a sled came by and tossed him onto their ever growing pile of dead bodies on the sled behind them. The person wore a black rubber outfit and had a mask that covered his entire face, almost reminiscent of the plague doctors during the black plague thousands of years ago at this point.
I kept going, not sure where to go. And every chance I got I listened and hoped that someone would mention J17. If someone even just mentioned that name again, I'd know I was on the right track. But no one did. Was J17 really that unremarkable that no one knew her? If so, why would Evelyn want me to find her?
Just when I was about to give up hope I heard a comment that made me freeze. “There goes that nobody again. I don't know how J17 can do this all the time.”
I hid behind a trashcan and started listening. He called J17 a nobody? Did Evelyn make a mistake?
“She must be taking drugs,” his friend let off a puff from a pipe. The smoke came out a really light blue color so I'm assuming he was smoking a smokable form of my blood. There's no way anyone can live the way she does with a smile always on their face and a good attitude about it.”
“She isn't on drugs. I would know. She's always in my cafe at exactly 6:08 AM to buy her boring fricken regular ass coffee with one spoonful of milk and three sugar cubes. She's the only customer I got that I can just have the drink ready before she even gets there. And when I offer her the good stuff she always turns me down."
“You're telling me she's just naturally happy to go to work as a fricken factory worker every single day?” His eyes widened in disbelief.
“Trust me, if she didn't have her factory job she wouldn't know what to do with herself. And she barely spends any of her money. I bet she's probably a rich f**k by now and doesn't even know it.”
I gripped tightly onto an old can until it bent in my hands. This is not what I wanted to be hearing, J17 was a societal cog? Just happily minding her own business and working in the factory, no apparent dreams or ambitions? They must be talking about someone else. Or maybe Evelyn wanted me to find someone else. There's no way someone like that would help me, right?
I refused to believe I came all this way for nothing.
- Writer
