Vices

by Amy Solus

  Chapter 17

  “Am I going to die?” Ossy says through a wall of pain that is covering him as thick as a sheet of steel.

  “No, you’re not; he missed your vital organs completely. He hit you in the leg and the arm,” Mara says reassuringly. “I’m guessing you’re numb from shock, or else you’d be able to figure that out for yourself.” She picks herself up and looks down at him with a big smile, and he smiles back as well as he can.

  Devlin struggles to sit up, and I go over and sit next to him, attempting to help him regain his equilibrium.

  He was obviously unconscious for the whole shooting/stabbing, and he looks over to the rat-guard who’s staring off into some land that no one living can see. Devlin rubs his temples and I wrap my arm around him, attempting to allow him to regain his balance and strength.

  “Thank ye, Aidan. I’m guessin’ you’re the one who knifed the poor fool, eh? I bet he never saw it coming,” he says.

  “Yeah, I knew he wouldn’t count on me being the one to bring the final blow,” I admit as I put the knife back into my belt.

  “Where’d ye hide your knife anyways?”

  “In the sole of my shoe,” I say with a grin.

  “Well done, love. If it weren’t for you, that guard would o’ surely beat my head in with that nightstick of his,” Devlin says. “Is that guard of ours alright?”

  “Yeah, the guard shot him, but nowhere lethal,” I say. “We may need you to be our heavy lifter though, if you catch my drift.”

  Devlin shakes his head with a smile and says, “A’right, I suppose I could be of assistance. I can’t exactly picture you ‘n Mara carrying that bloke around.”

  We both let out half-hearted laughs and move over to Ossy and Mara. Mara is tending to his wounds, wrapping them with some fabric she must’ve found lying around. His face is a bit bunched up due to him grimacing in pain, yet strangely thankful at the same time. No pain, no gain, huh?

  As Devlin and I watch Mara tend to his wounds, I see Devlin scratch his head and lower his brow in thought. I think of what may be troubling him and remember the wonderful fact that this whole place is on fire, and perhaps we should make Mara become a portable doctor.

  “Love, I think we should get movin’ now. I think we’ve all had a lapse in memory; we’ve got to keep in mind that this place is on fire,” Devlin says.

  Mara looks up from her bandaging and scowls at him, obviously not all too happy about what Devlin has said.

  “Well, I hope you don’t mind carrying him; because Aidan and I aren’t gorillas and we will not be carrying him,” she snaps. Devlin shoots her a look of frustration and moves closer to Ossy, being cautious not to cause the poor man any more pain than he’s already been forced to endure.

  Fortunately (and not meaning to be offensive), Devlin’s gorilla-esque physique is more than capable of carrying another grown man, so as he slings him carefully over his shoulder, Mara and I pull ourselves back up as well.

  The smoke from a nearby fire is starting to intrude into the lounge, and the smell is nothing short of disgusting. I doubt anyone, no matter how sick or how disturbed they are, would enjoy the smell of burning metal and most likely, burning flesh. Mara hands us each a strip of fabric to wrap around our heads in hopes of keeping the smoke and smell at bay.

  “Go through the door in front of you, sir, it should lead us down the hall and to the door that’ll get us out of here,” proclaims Ossy in a strained and muffled voice. I suppose it is a bit tougher trying to speak when you have two gunshot wounds and your face is being pushed up against another person’s back.

  Devlin makes his way over to the door, turns the knob, and reveals a very dark hallway. It is one of those hallways-- that if in a movie-- would cause someone to scream just from the sight of it. I do hear Mara give out a shrill little yelp, but she attempts to play it off as her shoe squeaking.

  Devlin looks back at Mara and makes eye contact, but then turns away, apparently deciding it’s not a good time to ridicule her for being a bit frightened.

  As Devlin leads us down the hall with Ossy slung over his back, we hear the sounds of the roof collapsing. It’s hard to tell if the roof over our own heads is collapsing, but one thing is for sure-- we don’t need to be standing under a roof to find out.

  The sound of cracking and breaking reaches us and we all burst into a dead-sprint (so to speak). Mara stumbles over something on the floor, but fortunately I’m coordinated enough to grab her and keep her running so I don’t just plow into her.

  Our sprinting seems to be lasting an eternity, it’s like we’re running down a hallway that never ends.

  And then-- SPLAT!

  We meet the wall. Within two seconds we’re all smashed up against the wall, all of us nearly knocked unconscious. Devlin’s sitting on top of Mara and somehow I ended up in a position where it looks like Mara has got me in a head-lock. Ossy is still slung to Devlin’s shoulder, but his face seems to point to an increased amount of pain.

  “Everyone okay?” I ask.

  “Um, no, I’m being sat on by a grizzly bear!” Mara snaps.

  Hmm, so much for being madly in love with her little Devvy-poo.

  Devlin chuckles that deep, friendly chuckle of his and pulls himself back onto his feet. Mara gets untangled from me and brings herself to her feet as well. I, suffering from a slow recovery, fall over a couple of times before finally finding my feet.

  Devlin turns the knob on the door and pushes it open, revealing a completely abandoned storage room. We all stumble through in a hurry and slam the door shut. This room’s roof seems to be structurally sound for the moment.

  “Eh so, Ossy, how are we gettin’ out o’ here?” Devlin inquires.

  “Um, could you turn around? I’m a bit turned around directionally,” says Ossy in that strained voice.

  After turning around for Ossy, Devlin repositions Ossy into a more comfortable position. Ossy gives out a sigh of relief.

  “Sorry mate- didn’t realize my shoulder was intruding in upon your lungs there,” says Devlin.

  “It’s okay, I’ve learned how to stop breathing since you slung me onto your shoulder, back at the very beginning,” Ossy jokes. Devlin chuckles and walks in the direction Ossy has pointed him in.

  The building seems to be shifting as we walk through a maze of boxes and assorted crap. It’s the sort of noise your house makes when it’s settling, but this sound is much more menacing. Mara and I exchange the same look of uneasiness and Devlin seems to pick up his pace.

  The drains in the tiled floor and the off-white walls give the room the sterile, hospital sort of look-- making the room look slick and systematic, which makes me feel uneasy. I’ve heard stories from other inmates that back at the very beginning of the end, the government would trick people into coming to “vaccination centers,” when in the end they would just mass-murder the poor souls. I wonder if maybe this had been one of those places.

  As my vision trails from the walls to the floor, I can’t help but wonder what’s hidden inside these boxes. I’m guessing either ammunitions and other war-related materials or personal possessions from the inmates.

  We journey through another tall pile of boxes and finally we see the door, but something catches my eye first.

  The gas mask that I so desperately clung to before being taken prisoner! Once we make our way over to the box that it’s laying on top of, I take it in my hands, gazing upon the single item that led to my incarceration.

  “Was that yours?” asks Mara.

  I nod in reverence and say, “Yeah. If you can blame my imprisonment on one single thing, I’d blame it on this.”

  I also find my backpack, which was in a box next to the gas mask, with all of its things still inside; what a streak of luck this is! Whoever brought it didn’t even take anything; the items inside are disheveled, but I see nothing missing. Somebody must have not done their job right. I swing the backpack onto my back and my gaze turns back to the gas mas
k and all of the memories that go along with it.

  Devlin shoots me a look that says “come on, we’ve got to leave” and I hook the mask onto one of my belt loops. The weight of the mask swinging on my belt as we walk towards the door is an eerie reminder of the immense power the government has over us now. I shudder at the thought.

  Our footsteps echo through the gigantic room and as we finally reach the door and all I feel is alone. As these ghostly sounds reverberate off the walls and vibrate through the boxes of items that have been taken from the other prisoners, I can’t help but wonder how many inmates will never be given the chance at life again.

  I doubt many will ever be free like we will be. I doubt they’ll even remember what freedom is when they lay down on their deathbeds and allow death to whisk them away to wherever it may be they’re going. And that is what makes us four different from these people. We will know freedom and we will fight to keep it.

  We will have to fight hard. And most importantly, we mustn’t ever allow one sliver of doubt to form in our hearts, because if we do, we will be allowing the government another victory. And we mustn’t allow them anymore victories, only losses.

  We must become hard, and sometimes we will have to become cold-hearted. We will have to leave some people behind and forget so many that had once graced us with their civility and kindness. We must forget the past; we must only look towards the future with bright shining eyes-- eyes that see nothing but hope and that will look away from the darkness that had once shrouded our vision.

  Our bodies must be strong, our brains quick and clever, but most importantly, our hearts must hold in them the entire weight of the world. They must allow us to do what we must and kill as if the world depended on it. But really, it does. When we kill one advocate of the government, we will be bringing the beast down one hair at a time.

  The rat-guard, the beast of this prison, is but a single split-end hair on the body of the beast. This beast has taken our families from us, it has destroyed our homes, our friends, our customs, and everything that we have ever known in this short amount of time we’ve been alive. Now, we know nothing. We know nothing of right and wrong, only of what we hope to achieve.

  As our feet step onto the dusty ground of the outside world, I see that there is no fence, no guard tower, and no watchmen. They truly believe they have absolute control over all of us. Their arrogance and thoughts of supreme power will be their downfall. This gift of easy freedom is certainly one of life’s little mercies.

  Across the road is a tree; a tree whose leaves are gone and that looks ready for winter, ready to endure the year’s hardest time. We humans truly are quite similar to trees-- we transform ourselves when the time comes and we are tough; our layer of bark is not only our skin, but our substantial tendency to persevere when the entire world is beating up against us. We are so incredibly strong when we have to be.

  The sky is a light grayish-blue and I smile at its beauty. It seemed as though when I was in the prison, it was never as bright. Perhaps the dust from the ground was obstructing my vision, but I doubt that. When you’re living the kind of life you don’t want to be living, things are not seen as they truly are.

  You make yourself blind.