The Right Path

by Debra L Martin

  “Indeed there was,” the old man said. “But the war had decimated it. These people were good people, but they also recognized their part in the destruction.”

  “What could they do besides follow orders,” Zia asked.

  The old man sighed.

  “They should have stopped fighting sooner. Knowing they couldn’t undo the past, they wanted to help out in the future. Each carried a memory weapon to help battle the evil they saw throughout the world. Their mission was simple: help wherever they could. Help people to not only survive, but also help them raise their consciousness, and become better people. The former soldiers left a message of hope wherever they went. There weren’t many of them and it was a grassroots effort, but they never stopped trying. When one of them became injured or too old to carry on, it was their duty to find one to carry on with their calling.”

  “That sounds hard,” I said.

  “Indeed it is, but that’s why I picked the two of you, with the hopes that one of you would pass the test and follow the right path.”

  “What test?” Zia asked suspiciously.

  “The simplest test of all. Helping someone when there’s nothing in it for you. The right path is simply a way of life in which you spread hope for a better world by continuing to help others. Like those original soldiers did. I’m happy to say you both passed the test with flying colors.”

  “Really, how?” I asked shifting uncomfortably on the floor.

  “Well, first you’re both here together. I can only assume that you helped each other out somehow.”

  “Yeah, we did. Ham and I are partners now,” Zia said.

  “That’s good. Everyone needs someone to watch their back. On top of that, you came here to help me despite knowing the dangers of the burnt zone. Not many people would help save a crazy old man from a man-eating giant, especially a crazy old man they didn’t know.”

  Zia grinned at the old man’s ribbing.

  I leaned back on my elbows and thought about everything he had told us. Tea had come and gone while he explained things. Now Marcus was serving us food. We were both surprised.

  “Food, you have food down here?” I asked.

  “Of course, we do. No one can live without food. Besides, Marcus was butler and bodyguard for someone rich and famous before the last assault on the burnt zone years ago so he knows how to cook. He’d been caught in the city when the fighting began and was seriously injured. Help yourselves. You both look hungry.”

  Both Zia and I grabbed a plate of food. It was a basic Rat portion, but Markus had added potatoes and seasonings to the mix. Whatever he had done, it was delicious. I couldn’t shovel it into my mouth fast enough and Zia was doing the same. I looked at Marcus with new eyes. He didn’t seem so scary any more and I felt a sort of kinship with him. We were both cripples.

  “I found Marcus many years ago and nursed him back to health,” the old man continued. “We formed our own partnership of sorts. He watches my back while I watch his.”

  I looked over at Zia who was trying to hide a smile at the implication.

  “But I saw Marcus dragging a body across the street,” Zia said.

  “Yes, that was me. I’m old and I had collapsed. That was the only way Marcus could get me back here. He does the best he can. Though he’s large, he can’t bend over or lift very heavy objects. The ravages of time have caught up with the two of us, I’m afraid. I got a few bumps and bruises, but with a little rest, I’ll be fine.”

  “But why us? Why did you choose us,” I asked, still not convinced by the old man’s story.

  “Well, the two of you weren’t my first choice.”

  “There was another?”

  “Yes, sadly my own greatest mistake. He didn’t pass the test.”

  “What happened to him,” I asked.

  The old man sat, silent for a moment, before letting out a sigh.

  “That’s a story for another time. Right now, let’s concentrate on the two of you. Are you both willing to accept the life I’m offering you? Will you follow the right path and continue my work for as long as you able?”

  I didn’t know what to say. My stomach was full and I felt safe for the first time in a long while. Sitting in front of me was the chance to make a difference, to live a good life and to help others while doing it. It seemed too good to be true.

  “What if we don’t want to help continue your work and decide to keep the weapons for ourselves,” Zia asked.

  “I’m afraid that will not be possible,” the old man said.

  “Why not?”

  “If you choose not to help me, then I will ask Markus to take your weapons away.”

  I should have known nothing was free, there’s always a price. But I wondered? Was the price the old man was asking worth it? I sat for a moment trying to sort out everything that had happened in the past two days. I had been attacked twice in the same day and nearly killed, but I survived and I found Zia. That was a lot for anyone, never mind a cripple.

  “What about food? Will you share your food with us?”

  The old man looked at Marcus and the big man nodded.

  “All right,” Zia squealed with delight. She reached over and punched my arm.

  “Well?” she asked. “What’s your answer? It’s not like we have anything better to do. Shall we give it a try, partner?”

  I smiled, realizing what giving back really meant. Zia was right. I didn’t have anything pressing on my to-do list and Marcus was a pretty good cook. I could get used to being kind if it meant having a full stomach.

  “OK, we accept.”

  The old man smiled. “Now for the rules.”

  “I knew it, nothing is ever free,” I said.

  The old man held up his hand. “Calm down, first tell me your names.”

  “Ham and Zia,” we both chimed in.

  “Good. Now Ham and Zia there are a few ground rules that you need to follow. Are you ready to accept them?” the old man asked.

  With nothing to lose, I nodded. “Sure, I guess so.”

  “Me too,” Zia chimed in.

  “It’s really simple. Help others when you can, don’t use the weapons often or you’ll find the weapon controlling you instead of the other way around.”

  “What do you mean,” I asked.

  The old man pointed at the cane. “That cane belonged to a great general during the war. Before he died, he had to do some bad things and kill people. Those memories are stored in the cane. The more you use the weapon, the more those memories will invade your mind. You must learn to control them and not let them lead you to become a killing machine.”

  I inhaled sharply. I’d never killed anyone in my life and I couldn’t see myself doing it in the future, but I took the old man’s warning to heart.

  “Next you need to come here every week for a lesson. Just because you have the weapons doesn’t mean you’re a weapons master. You need to train your body to move with the weapons. Can you both do this?”

  “Will we get food if we train here,” Zia asked.

  The old man laughed. “Yes Zia. Marcus will cook for us. Shall we say Tuesdays for lessons?”

  “We need to leave before it gets dark,” I said.

  “Goodbye Ham and Zia. I’ll expect you next Tuesday,” the old man said and waved goodbye.

  We walked out of the building and the sun was started to go down.

  “I think we should go to your place tonight.”

  “OK, I know a shortcut. Let’s go,” Zia said.

  We walked for hours, but made it to her safe room without incident. We were both exhausted and fell onto the mattress. It didn’t take long before we were both sleeping soundly.

  When I woke the next morning, Zia was already awake.

  “’Bout time you woke up,” she said. “I’m hungry again. We need to go and find food and maybe a new pair of pants for you.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, sitting up. “Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready to go.

 
“I’m going to go check the area. Be right back.”

  I watched her walk out the door unaware that she was walking straight into trouble with a capital T. It didn’t take long though for me to hear the voices below.

  “Hey assholes, lookin’ for me?” Zia yelled from the western perimeter of our building.

  I got off the mattress and cracked open the door. Our brief respite was over. The gang leader was climbing the stairs to the safe room. He stopped and looked back at Zia.

  “Back so soon?” he asked. “I thought I’d have time to take care of your boyfriend before you got back. But that’s OK, sweet cheeks, we’ll take care of you first.”

  He jumped off the stairs and started to walk casually towards Zia. She had worked her way back inside the burned husk of the first floor with the rest of the gang circling her. I saw her reach back and pull her knife out of her waistband.

  “What do you think you’re goin’ to do with that little pig sticker?” the gang leader snickered.

  I opened the door wider to look at the rest of the gang and realized they were all armed to the teeth this time. Pipes, chains and knives, every one of them was brandishing something and they all had a deadly look to them. I counted ten gang members. I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to pull it off, but I pushed the stub on my cane and hoped for the best. I thanked whatever God there was as I looked down and saw my left leg straighten out. I kept the scream inside and the memories flooded my brain. I kept an eye on Zia as she began to move. It was now or never. I stood in the doorway swinging the cane.

  Damn, this is going to be bad.

  “No foolin’ around this time, bitch,” the gang leader sneered. “We’re gonna kill you first and then take care of the cripple next.”

  I saw Zia push the stub on her knife. She twisted the blades and began to twirl both blades in their deadly dance, too fast for the normal eye to follow.

  “What’s this? I shouted. “You all havin’ a party and didn’t invite me?”

  The gang leader looked up and saw me in the doorway of the second floor safe room.

  “Hey, there you are crip. Com’on down. We’re just gettin’ started.”

  At the gang leader’s invitation, I jumped down the full flight of stairs, right over two punks who had positioned themselves below the staircase. Even Zia looked surprise at that maneuver. I would probably pay dearly for it later, but right now it didn’t matter, the situation was too dicey to play it safe.

  I sidled over to stand beside Zia. She smiled at me.

  “Bout time you got your lazy ass up.”

  “Thanks crip for making things easier,” the gang leader said. “Now we can take care both of you at once. I really didn’t want to walk up those stairs to get you.”

  I looked around doing a quick assessment. With Zia helping, I figured I could take them out without anyone getting killed. Unfortunately, I knew some of them would get hurt pretty badly. Couldn’t be helped though, there were just too many of them to be nice.

  “We don’t have to do this,” I said, trying to reason with the gang leader. “You can all walk outta here peacefully, like nothing ever happened.”

  “Oh, I like that way that sounds,” he replied sarcastically. “Why don’t you just hand over them pretty little memory weapons and we’ll call it all square.”

  I shook my head at that. So he wasn’t as dumb as I thought he was. He had figured it out too. I guess it wasn’t that hard to do. A cripple and a skinny little twerp suddenly having amazing fighting skills wasn’t something that happened every day. It was probably why he chased after us, he was trying to catch us off guard and take the weapons for himself.

  I held up the cane and twirled it around.

  “If you know what these are, then you know you can’t beat us.”

  “So you say,” he replied, raising his fingers to his mouth, “but I think different.”

  He let out a piercing whistle and everything stopped, frozen in time. For a brief moment, nothing happened, and then I heard the movement. Glancing around, I saw a dozen more gang members enter the building.

  “Shit,” Zia mumbled under her breath.

  “What’s that you said, love?” the gang leader asked mockingly.

  He smiled and raised his hands in salute to the newcomers.

  “You think I’m stupid, crip? I know what you got there and I know what they can do, but I also know there’s limitations. There’s too many of us. You’re a dead man, you just don’t know it yet.”

  He sealed his own fate with that. I couldn’t wait any longer and try to reason with him. He was probably going to toy with us until we ran out of strength, then kill us and take the weapons. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen with weapons like these in his hands. I twisted the cane and separated the sword from its scabbard. At the same time, I leapt forward and swung it at his head. He was waiting for my attack and got his pipe up in time to block the blow, but that wasn’t where the real attack was. Faster than he could follow, I pivoted my wrist and brought the sword down in a killing blow across his neck and chest. He looked at me in shock and dismay, the last emotions that would ever register on his face.

  “No one can move that fast,” he said before he crumpled at my feet.

  My attack had been so quick and deadly that he never stood a chance. I didn’t want to kill him, but as he said, there were just too many of them for the two of us to handle.

  His blood spilled, a red river spreading across the floor.

  “Anybody else want to try me?” I said scanning the rest of the gang members.

  They all stared at me with wide eyes. My fight with their leader had been too fast, too deadly, and just too damn scary. Cut the head off the snake and the body dies. It didn’t take long before the ones in the back began to slip away and then like a dam bursting, the rest of them took off running. Without their leader, they were nothing but a bunch of kids running away from the boogieman.

  I looked down at the bloodied sword and realized I was the boogieman now. The old man’s words echoed in my mind.

  You need to control the memories or you’ll become a killing machine.

  Zia touched my arm and I leapt backwards, spooked by her touch. What had I just done?

  “Let’s go back inside.”

  “Wait, before we go, let’s get rid of the body. I don’t want to see it every time we come and go.”

  I saw her pale at the thought of touching the still warm body, but she nodded and quickly clicked her knives back together and slid it in her waistband. I wiped the sword blade off on the gang leader’s jacket and slipped it back into the cane scabbard.

  “We can put him on the street. Someone from the system will come by and pick him up. They don’t leave bodies hanging round too long, cause of the smell and disease. Might take a day or two, but at least he won’t cause us any more problems.”

  We each grabbed an arm and dragged him to the street corner and returned to her room. Once inside, I turned off the weapon and flopped back down on the mattress. A searing pain from my hip to my knee made me groan. I felt drained, but nothing as bad as the first time I had used the cane and I learned a valuable lesson today. If I wanted to survive the memory weapon, I had to act quickly. The longer I had the cane activated, the more energy it drained from me.

  “Shit, that hurt,” I said looking over at Zia. She still looked a little dazed.

  “Hey, I’m sorry I had to do that, but if I didn’t kill him, he would’ve killed us and taken the weapons anyway.”

  “Yeah, I know that. It’s just I’ve never seen no one killed before.”

  “Really, how long you been on your own?”

  “Couple months.”

  “Wow, not that long, huh? I’ve been out here for about a year and a half, maybe two. I seen my first dead body lyin’ in the gutter not long after I was on the streets. She was old, maybe 25 or 30. She was kinda pretty, but it was her eyes that I remember. It was like she was lookin’ at me, beggin’ me to help h
er.”

  I stopped for a minute as the vivid memory shook me to the core.

  “People was passin’ her by like they didn’t see her. So, that’s what I did too, walked right on by. I was scared, but I kept on walkin’. Later, when I thought about it more, I cried a little cause I didn’t know what else to do, but I’ll never forget her.”

  “I hope I don’t remember that asshole forever,” Zia said.

  I smiled wanly at her remark. Everyone reacted to violence differently, but I thought she’d be okay. “Just remember, there’s a lot of assholes in this city and any one of ‘em will always be tryin’ to take what you have.”

  “Ham, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You gonna kill everyone that threatens you?”

  I stared at her Killing someone was more than I thought I could ever do. I wasn’t violent by nature, but the streets had a way of hardening you. “I sure hope not, but I ain’t gonna let anyone mess us up again, not as long as I got this weapon.”

  That brought a smile to Zia’s face.

  ###

  Dear Reader, we hope that you’ve enjoyed the story of how Ham and Zia first met. Look for more stories about the unlikely pair soon. The next story is ZIA’S PATH. If you want to find out how the memory weapons were made, check out

  PATH TO DESTRUCTION:

  http://www.amazon.com/Destruction-Apocalyptic-Novelette-Future-ebook/dp/B003FGWUG8

  Connect with us online:

  Author website: https://www.martinandsmall.com

  Blog: http://www.twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com/

  Email: dlmartin6@yahoo.com