The Touch of Heaven

Chapter 10

IX

The day went by horrifyingly slow. No word or reply had been given from Celia. The raiders didn't let us know if Haven had contacted them; of course, I sincerely doubted they even f*****g knew we'd been captured by raiders. Apparently, the raiders were always moving from place-to-place; the convenience store was convenient for them because of the freezer and storage. None of the food that had been left out and unattended to when they arrived was any good anymore as the people who owned the store had deserted it years ago. It was just an old 7-Eleven, anyways; some beat-up Slurpee machines lined the walls, non-functional at this point, though they still ever faintly reeked of the stuff. Made me crave that f*****g sugar. Unfortunately, the only things we were allowed was what the raiders gave us; they all came together (there was about sixteen of them, in whole), during lunch and supper, gave prayers to a God that they didn't know had nearly destroyed the world, and ate. We were basically left with a small portion of whatever the f**k they'd dragged in; a hunting party had brought back a deer and I'd seen them carry it in, an arrow still sticking out of its neck, its fur glistening with red blood where the arrow had implanted itself, and its black eyes glazed over and dead. It was a female, and she looked mature, not infected with the Phantom as far as I could tell. She was thick enough to eat, anyways; the hunters had brought it in at around 2:00 PM and they'd cooked the thing to eat at 8:00.

One of the raiders, the sentry who seemed to always have a bottle of cream soda in hand, gave me and Miles fairly plentiful sections of venison, cooked with surprisingly skill considering all the raiders had were a spit, a fire, and some grills. It was decent. Tough as balls, if anything. I figured the raiders were more used to wild meat. Miles had adamantly refused to eat the meat and just passed it back to the raider before flying back over to the washroom and using up the rest of the soap – to Jango's displeasure – to wash his hands. He made those kinds of trips all throughout the day, only actually using the toilet (itself in a state of disrepair, to everyone's displeasure) once and constantly washing his hands over touching anything that wasn't me. He'd briefly taken me into the boy's washroom to make me inspect the tap water out of some fear that it was "contaminated." That was the Miles I knew. I didn't really mark him as a clean freak, but worrying over the quality of the f*****g tap water, which looked perfectly fine in spite of everything, was what I'd been expecting him to do when he first woke up.

The raiders actually treated us quite decently. They respected Miles' wish not to be touched (although he'd flip out if they came more than two feet in front of him regardless) and a few of them had waved and talked to him. Jango had dragged out Miles for a talk at one point outside and he complied instantly as if Jango was a friend, leaving me outside as Jango and Miles had a conversation I couldn't hear but could see through the window. Miles seemed frankly agitated throughout the entire discussion, throwing up his arms in a fit at one point and Jango just eyeing him as he did so with a cold apathy to his displeasure. Jango's glowering eyes – the color of spoiled honey, amber enough to be yellow as a hornet – were his most striking feature. He still hadn't taken off the bandanna and I entertained myself throughout his and Miles' conversation about what could be under there. Maybe his face was half a skull. Maybe he hid horrific burns, scars, dead tissue or something under there. I was surprised he didn't just slap a metal mask on himself and call himself Dr. Doom. Regardless, Miles and Jango ended the conversation and Miles came back to me, noticeably flustered and brushing off my attempts to implore into what they were talking about with a "nothing." He warmed up a bit in my presence after too long; apparently, I had that effect on him. More than a few pages of the notebook were used up in conversation. Miles always completely held his tongue when I wrote my replies even if he thought of something else to say and seemed afraid of what would happen if he interrupted me while doing so. It was good that he was patient. I still wished I could've f*****g talked to him normally.

The rest of the raiders mostly just treated me with polite indifference. Jango was the most outspoken and his policies were simple but stringent; keep to ourselves, don't interrupt the affairs of the camp, notify him before we did anything, and never try to escape. I was scared of him, but I couldn't conjure up the same hate I had for Ash and Chayne and direct it to him. Maybe it was just because Ash and Chayne had affected me in a much more personal way; I was still jealous of Mint for getting to Ash before I did, but from what they told me, Ash suffered a fate that he deserved. Jango and his raiders, from what they said and how they behaved, apparently just wanted to survive. They took what they needed from others because nobody else would give them what they wanted; in the Association-controlled world, if you were infected, you were separated from the rest and shot if you defied them. They were disgusting policies enforced by an extremist organization, but it had been hammered in again and again it was for the "greater good." If the Phantom spread, they'd have a situation like the Australia crisis when the Phantom pandemic first broke out. Twenty million had died in Australia alone in the first few months and the death-rate total had expanded to over a billion globally. It was complete catastrophe or a few deaths on the way out of necessity. Jango and his raiders obviously didn't like that; they were people too, after all, and I couldn't bring myself to hate them for suffering under the Association's heel. Given what Red Clover had done to me, I could even vaguely sympathize with him.

Still didn't f*****g justify kidnapping me and Miles and holding us hostage for that b***h Celia to pick up. I highly doubted she'd ever come – and that was what worried me most, because I could easily see Jango killing us if our use wore out.

The day had gone by slowly, but it eventually went by. I couldn't get to sleep, which made me bitter; if anyone could give me comfort right now, it would be the Preceptor's weird cups of bile and his puppy-dog looking eyes. I still couldn't believe I was apparently the one to stop this weird cosmic war or whatever. I wondered if it would come to involve my friends. I hoped not. The raiders had all retreated into their tents went midnight passed, the fire snuffed out and the remaining deer placed in the freezer. The raiders had been generous enough to give us some sleeping bags. They were thin things but they would suffice. Thank God the store still had some semblance of air conditioning. I'd been up for a few hours, though; a howling wind had picked up outside, probably brewed by a pissy Windigo, and all the raiders were sound asleep in their shitty tents. Even Miles was passed out, his head lolled to the side and his chest rising and lowering quietly. He didn't snore, thank God. Apparently, I didn't either if Mint's word was anything to go by. I didn't know whether or not I could attribute that to being mute. I'd just been tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling for about three-and-a-half hours. Nothing was happening. I wanted something to happen.

Maybe Mylotheia altered reality too if I concentrated hard enough, because something happened.

There was a sudden rumble in the night. I sat up, completely alert, and Miles mumbled a bit beside me, disturbed but not awakened. The rumble seemed to be coming from out of the left side of the store. I couldn't make it out at first and I slowly stood myself out of the sleeping bag. I paced over to the wall and pressed my ear to it, the rumbling getting a little louder.

Then I realized it was the growl of a car. A car driving directly towards the store and speeding up.

I dove back with a silent scream and rolled away just as the sound of a furious horn honking throughout the night like some sort of raging, demonic beast ripped through my ears. One second later, the grill of a black BMW burst through the wall like the f*****g Kool-Aid Man, destroying the white wall and the Slurpee machines in the process, sending a spray of misty white debris and chunks of wall flying about everywhere. Miles was immediately to wake up when the horn honked and jumped a full foot into the air when the car drove through the wall, shrieking, stammering and cursing and still ensnared by the sleeping bag. My heart jumped out of my chest like an excited fish as another ear-piercingly loud honk blared through the car and exploded the silence of the night into minuscule pieces. A thousand things happened at once; Miles, still groggy but hyper-aware at the same time with the sudden presence of the behemoth car letting rip a series of screaming honks, desperately wriggled out of his sleeping bag and obliviously lunged into the side of the wall. The cream soda sentry, who'd been barely awake the entire time, snapped back to reality and fumbled for the semi-automatic he kept by him under the counter. The window of the car rolled down and a second later there was a resounding bang that, accorded with Miles' shocked cry, made me jump again. The sentry stood in place for a second as a bubbling torrent of blood gushed out of his neck for a second. The shot had been accurate enough to hit the middle of his neck, somehow, and the raider toppled behind the counter, convulsing. I looked over at the car and the already-intense scene went up a few notches.

It was Celia aiming the gun where the sentry had been, her eyes – one of them still glowing – now on me and Miles. There was another figure in the back I couldn't distinguish. My focus was obliterated for another second by another unnecessary blare of the car horn.

"Get in!" Celia shouted from the car. She seemed in an urgent mood, understandably. My mind was still frantically trying to piece together the scrambled pieces of the puzzle, but when the flashlights of the raiders beamed through the windows through the dark shroud of the outside, the puzzle lit itself on fire and exploded. I grabbed Miles by the hand and dove into the backseat of the car. Once again, it was cramped. Now, I felt safe. The moment we slammed the door, Miles panicking beside me, Celia slammed on the brakes, readjusted, and drove out the side of the forest she'd come through. I tried to regain my breath for a second before I suddenly felt a shape lunge from behind me and squeeze me as tight as I'd ever been squeezed, like some monster from a horror movie. I was just about to give them a firm elbow in the nose by instinct before a shrill voice squeaked out from behind me.

"Tango! Thank God you're okay!"

It was Mint. I'd never been so relieved to hear their voice.

Miles still caught in a panic attack, I turned around to look at them. They were in their nightclothes, their eyes a bit wet behind their specs, and they were smiling in a way I could only describe as relieved beyond all justice. I lunged and took them in a hug and we laughed together for a few seconds, completely oblivious to the fact s**t had gotten real.

"What the hell is happening?!" Miles suddenly cried out. "Celia? M-Mint!? Why are... D-Did-"

"Yeah, I got the letter," Celia said, driving at a hundred-and-twenty miles per hour at the moment and accelerating further until the world was a formless blur around us reminiscent of the hyper-speed travels in Star Trek. "Burned it with a lighter and picked you up myself. There's a gun in the backseat. If those clowns pursue us, shoot them!"

I didn't know how to feel about Celia at the moment. I was just thankful to have Mint back and I was thankful something was happening.

As we drove through the night, the hums and the whirs of the motorcycle engines started again behind us, revving up and snarling like a pack of wolves behind us. A flurry of headlights illuminated the night behind us and they were soon after followed by the sound of bullets, some whizzing by the car and vanishing into the night and others sharply hitting against the trunk of the BMW. Mint screamed and Miles flipped again, diving under the back window and below the seat, as one of the bullets impacted the window and cracked the motherfuck out of it.

Now I was ready to start shooting. It was life or death time.

Mint trembled beside me. I took them in a quick embrace, took the gun laying in the backseat, and flung myself over to the right-side window, quickly rolling it down and looking out the night. Another bullet soared by my head and I dove back into the interior of the car, nearly throwing up my own heart from the sudden rush of shock that gave me. Mint was looking at me with quivering eyes. They didn't say anything. Nobody did in the heat of the moment. I took a deep breath, dove my head back out, and clumsily pointed my arm back out. It was horrible aiming a gun with one hand, and even worse in the night. As the sounds of gunfire and Miles' high-pitched scream rained around me, I bit my lip and shot.

There was a flash in the night, a bang from outside, and the jolt of the shot nearly caused the gun to fly right out of my hand and under the BMW's tires. Of course I hadn't hit anyone. I hadn't expecting to. That's what happened when you gave a gun to a one-armed fifteen-year-old with zero experience in shooting anyone.

As another bullet clipped just by my head, I decided enough was enough and I threw myself back into the car. The raiders were still munching our ass and they were getting any closer. Celia's window was down, her own arm peeking out the door and blindly firing as she did her best to keep her eyes off the road.

"Can't shoot, mutie?" she yelled back to me, barely apparent over the noise of everything around us. I frantically shook my head. I could see Celia's teeth bear in a white, flashing grin in the rear-view mirror. "Alright. Hold onto your seats, fellas!"

Celia suddenly slammed onto the breaks. Mint, me, and Miles – screaming like a p***y – flew forth. I realized none of us had buckled ourselves in, but it didn't seem relevant. Half of the raiders didn't manage to comprehend what was happening and failed to break. Celia slammed her foot on the reverse and drove back; to my amusement, I could see her hit a good few of the raiders, scattering them like bowling pins while simultaneously leaving harsh dents in the BMW's trunk. Some managed to stop in time and one drove right up along the car. Celia stuck out the gun and started shooting as she backed up; her shots were much more precise this time, as two of the raiders behind us collapsed off their bikes and rolled off to be eaten up by the underbrush on the sides of the roads, their motorcycles skidding on the road, and the one drive up beside us falling off the bike as one of the shots got him in the chest and sprayed a bit of blood on the window. I quickly hugged Mint to me, stuck the gun out the window, and tried to do my part. I fired once at one of the remaining raiders, the kickback suddenly jolted the gun out of my grasp and onto the road, and the bullet completely missed the raider.

Fucking swell as balls. I massaged my numb hand as Celia kicked the car back into acceleration, speeding up and leaving the majority of the raiders in the night. I grinned as Mint quivered a bit in my grasp. I looked down at them. They were horrified, but they seemed to ease up ever so slightly when their eyes met mine.

"G-God, Tango, please don't do that again," they said. "You nearly got shot. Shot. If you'd died-!"

I put a hand in their mouth. They sounded like Miles. Still, they had a damn good point. I don't know why I wasn't f*****g panicking right now. Maybe the excitement of the moment just overwhelmed the fear.

Another engine suddenly split the night. A black shape suddenly jumped forth from the side of the forest like some sort of f*****g panther and suddenly came right up to the side of our car, matching its speed almost perfectly. It was Jango. Those stern amber eyes were now replaced with an exploding rage that was, somehow, still subtle. Tranquil and serene, even, as if he was more mildly irritated rather than angry enough to cut us into eight pieces each. Celia and Jango locked eyes for a moment and Jango suddenly held up a gun with his left arm, pointing it right at her while keeping the bike steady with his right arm.

"Wait!" Miles suddenly said, shrieking through the open back window and drawing Jango's attention. "God, I didn't see this coming, Jango! Let's... Let's just make a compromise!"

A compromise? A compromise? Was Miles high?

Jango briefly glared over at Miles. Then he scoffed from under the mask. "You wish," he growled. Right to the point. Just as I expected.

That brief little interjection from Miles, however, was enough to give Celia time to act. She swerved the car to the side and plowed Jango right off the road, causing him to lose control of his bike, fire one round off into the sky in alarm, and fall off his bike, rolling on the road like roadkill deer into the darkness behind us. Jango was out. I doubted he was dead, but for now, he was out.

Thank God.

I finally allowed myself to take a breath of relief. Celia punched her fist in the air, triumphantly, and compounded it with a little "woohoo!" as if she'd just beat a game of Duck Hunt instead of narrowly escaped with her life. Thankfully, nobody had sustained any wounds. I still looked like a scratched-up piece of s**t and I figured a proper trip to the doctor would do well for my injured leg. Miles was clutching the edge of the seat, as pale as a sheet, and Mint was very gradually allowing themselves to calm down. I felt an urge to just lunge and hug them, but a move than sudden probably wouldn't have eased their f****d-up nerves anymore. Didn't want to give the poor kid a heart attack. I compensated by putting a hand on their shoulder, causing them to jolt and look at me. They gave a sigh of relief.

"Oh, God, don't ever do something like that again, Tango..." Mint said, pulling me into a hug. I coughed awkwardly under them and they let go, forcing themselves to put on a smile. "You almost got shot out there."

I shrugged, as if it was no big deal. Mint laughed, although they obviously didn't find the situation very funny. It was probably out of an instinctual release of stress and relief.

"W-W-What the sweet hell are you doing, Celia?!" Miles finally said, flipping his lid for the eleventh time this night. "You could've gotten us killed! You're going to anger the raiders and they're going to come back and oh God where's a plastic bag when you need-"

"Hey," Celia said, looking back and cutting Miles off. Her glowing pupil was shining more radiantly than ever, as if she was proud of herself. "They got themselves into that mess. I'm just making sure you all are safe."

"Safe!?" Miles outburst, his voice high-pitched enough to be a whistling kettle. "Did you get the letter!? We were already safe!"

"Yeah. You were totally safe as hostages. Totally safe. No danger at all," Celia snarked. "They weren't going to let you go. Jango doesn't take any prisoners."

I sat back a bit. Sure seemed like he did.

Celia looked at me. "Hey, mutie," she said, calling me by that nickname I utterly despised. "Even I'm not dense enough to realize that I'm probably gonna be in some crap when we get back. But when all that's done, we can talk more normally. Sound fair?"

I blew some strands of hair away. Guess I couldn't dodge it.