by AJ Powers
Aaran moved away from the trailer and aligned himself directly in front of the window. The blinds were closed and it was dark inside—there was no way to know what he was up against. Still.
“Your friend’s taking a pretty long time.” The man’s booming voice reached Aaran’s ears.
Aaran could hear Hadas reply, but couldn’t make out her words. He hoped she was making up some cock-and-bull story to explain Aaran’s delayed return.
“Well, he better be back soon,” the man said, an implied or else in his tone.
Again, Hadas spoke something unintelligible to Aaran, but whatever she’d said did not sit well with her abductor.
“Shut your mouth, you stupid whore!” the man shouted, followed by a loud smacking sound.
“You will regret that,” Aaran growled through gritted teeth, his finger stroking the trigger of his carbine as he kept his red dot sight on the window.
Time was running out. If Aaran didn’t walk back through that front door soon, the impatient man would get wise. He needed to strike now, but he still had not come up with a good, viable option that guaranteed Hadas’s safety.
“Think, Aaran, think!” he muttered under his breath.
A plan began to formulate in his head, when suddenly, a pair of fingers poked between the blinds and pulled them apart. The man’s widened eyes glowed with a fiery rage when he looked out through the window. That rage quickly morphed into confusion. Then, once the man’s brain had finally processed what was on the other side of the glass, all that remained in his stare was grief.
Chapter 15
The carbine kicked into Aaran’s shoulder as the bullet rocketed out the end of his suppressor. The glass pane of the window did little to slow the 147-grain bullet, leaving a spider web of carnage in its destructive wake. The man’s head whipped back violently, an unhealthy amount of blood spraying out the exit wound. His fingers slipped off the blinds, and the view inside was once again obscured.
Aaran stormed off for the front of the trailer, juking between a rusty grill and a broken lawn chair just around the corner. He felt the stinging sensation of bile skulking up his throat, his mind racing over the different scenarios he might be walking into. Was Hadas hurt? Was she even alive? Was there more than one attacker? Did a Sentinel in the area hear the shot? Forcing the what-ifs out of his head, Aaran let his instincts call the shots for the moment, and he ran over to the door.
He tore open the screen door and ran inside, swinging his rifle toward the bedroom door. There was no use in being quiet now. If there was more than one person holding her hostage, they’d have gone on high alert the moment the back of their buddy’s skull had erupted. “Hadas!” he shouted. “Hadas! Answer me!”
No response.
Aaran’s boots furiously thundered down the hall. He twisted his body to lead with his shoulder and leapt forward, ramming the door with the full weight of his body. The door came off its hinges, causing Aaran to fall to the ground with the door. Before he had fully recovered from the crash, Aaran raised his gun and swept the room for additional hostiles.
Thankfully, there were none.
After relishing in relief for a split-second, Aaran called out for her again. “Hadas!”
Aaran got to his feet and made his way toward the blown-out window. He found Hadas sitting on the floor, her back up against the wall and the dead man’s body crumpled over her legs. Her lip was swollen and bloodied, her eye was puffy and turning several shades of purple. Aaran’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of her limp body.
Aaran was relieved when he heard a faint groan. Hadas slowly opened her eyes, one a little more than the other, and moaned when the punishing pain in her head made its presence known. She seemed confused, unaware of what had happened.
“Aaran?” she asked, her hoarse voice barely finding her lips.
“Yeah, I’m here. But we really need to get out of here in case he has friends.”
“In case who has friends?”
“Uhhhhh,” Aaran said, flicking his eyes down at the corpse pinning her legs.
Hadas looked down and gasped at the bloody sight near her feet. Her eyes then drifted upward where she noticed the blood spattered across the ceiling. She looked frightened, perhaps for the first time since Aaran had met her, but then the adrenaline finally kicked into overdrive. “Holy crap…” trickled out of her mouth as the last ten minutes of her life slowly pieced back together in her head, like a mirror shattering in reverse. She violently fought to free herself from the dead man across her legs, but he was too big.
Aaran leaned over and grabbed the man’s belt, dragging him off her legs. She scrambled to her feet and ran over to the dresser, retrieving the weapons that had been taken from her.
“Grab everything you can find that looks remotely useful, then we need to split,” Aaran said. Hadas moved purposefully around the room while Aaran knelt next to the body. The man’s hand was clutching a pistol. It was an HK USP, and Aaran happily helped himself to it. “I’m sure you could probably use this where you are now, but…” he trailed off as he uncurled the man’s fingers from around the grip. “Sucks for you.” Aaran caught himself off guard with the callous comment towards the departed man. But a quick glimpse at the damage he’d inflicted upon Hadas was enough to wash away the guilt.
Further search of the man’s body yielded two spare magazines, the pistol’s holster, and some zip ties—the latter sending a disturbing chill down Aaran’s spine. Sliding the gun into the holster, Aaran stuck the loot into his backpack and got to his feet. “Find anything over there?”
Hadas pointed to a backpack sitting on the bed. “Ammo, magazines, and some food.” She reached down to the floor and picked up her own backpack. “We can sort through it later, but we should go. Now,” she said, the look on her face showed the sense of urgency that Aaran was feeling.
Aaran picked up the pack from the bed and threw it over his shoulders. It was heavier than he’d expected, which was a mixed blessing. Heavy meant more ammo, but it also meant more struggle once the adrenaline wore off.
“Let’s go!” Hadas impatiently called from the living room.
Aaran jogged down the hall and grabbed his own pack off the floor with his left hand, forcing him to trade his Scorpion for his sidearm. Hadas had the screen door open, holding it for Aaran as he jumped down off the porch. She followed closely behind, and they moved at a quickened pace toward the trailer park’s exit.
They both agreed that traveling on the main drag would be a bad idea, so they cut through yards, parking lots, and back streets to minimize the risk of being spotted if there happened to be a Sentinel response to the event.
Fortunately, there had been no obvious response over the shooting, and with each additional mile they put between them and the cadaver back at the trailer, they grew more confident that there wouldn’t be one. Whether the Nebula was unaware the shooting had even occurred or was simply indifferent over a lowlife getting iced in a grungy double wide, it made no difference to Aaran. Instead of ducking and hiding from Humvees and helicopters, they walked uninhibitedly toward their next destination, wherever that was.
“So, what happened back there?” Aaran asked, finally feeling comfortable enough to break the self-imposed noise discipline since leaving the trailer park behind.
Hadas shrugged. “I went back into the bedroom and that schmuck jumped me,” she said as she rubbed the back of her head, a wince of pain racing across her face.
“What did he want?”
“Well, we didn’t really talk about it, Aaran,” she said, her words heavy with sarcasm, “but I kind of doubt it would have been a particularly fun night for either of us,” she added, her voice much grimmer than before.
“He realized that we weren’t just a couple of Sentinels, right?”
“Oh, he knew all right. Actually, he seemed particularly excited by that fact.” Hadas shuddered over a few of the man’s more colorful comments that she decided to keep to herself.
His mind continued to wander while he and Hadas walked quietly along the road illuminated by patchy moonlight. Soon, images of the dead man’s face—a hint of fear and surprise still evident in his otherwise lifeless expression—gnawed at Aaran’s thoughts. With the adrenaline wearing off, a pang of guilt took up residence in his gut while his conscience fully processed the events that had unfolded. Up until a few days ago, Aaran had only shot at creatures walking on four legs. Now? He had killed two men in less than a week’s time. If he were being honest with himself, he hadn’t lost much sleep since taking out the Sentinel. He struggled to see them as anything more than zombies without the blood and guttural growls. But the man back at the trailer…That’d been something different. That had been another free-thinking human being. Just another normal person like him and Hadas. Except, no, he hadn’t been just another normal person. In fact, he’d been far from it. And the more Aaran thought about it, the more he realized that he should have been more bothered by killing the Sentinel than the man in the trailer. At least the Sentinel had the excuse of being enslaved to a malevolent AI, only carrying out the orders that he was given—the puppet does not control the master. However, no such justification could be made for the man in the trailer. He had been taking orders from his own evil monologue.
The guilt he felt quickly transformed into a jittery angst when he thought about just how close they’d been to death. Again. Oh, how different their night—their lives—might have been had a butterfly flapped its wings just a little faster elsewhere in the world. The near-death experience was a grim reminder that the threats they faced were not just limited to those under the Nebula’s spell.
Chapter 16
Seconds ago, Aaran was tossing the pigskin with his younger brother, Henry, in the front yard while Samantha and Amelia cheered them on from the porch. Their mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner while their dad yelled at the TV as America’s team blew a twenty-point lead late in the fourth. It was a typical Thanksgiving afternoon for Aaran and his family.
Now, Aaran was staring up at flaky ceiling paint and a water stain that faintly resembled the Mona Lisa. He wondered which nightmare was worse; a world taken over by artificial intelligence or fond memories of a family that no longer existed?
It was a tie.
“Good morning,” Hadas said from across the room.
Aaran tried to shake off the disturbingly serene memories, but found it more difficult than usual this time. It was uncommon for him to go more than a few days without having some sort of dream involving his family, but ever since he’d told Hadas of their grisly murders, the peaceful images of his loved ones had become the very thing nightmares were made of, haunting him throughout the first conscious hours of his day.
After a few moments of silence, Aaran finally mustered up a response. “Morning,” he said gruffly as he kicked his legs over the edge of the couch. He vigorously rubbed his face to chase away the morning grog, but to little effect. Finding sleep had been nearly impossible since shooting Hadas’s captor a few nights ago, and when he did manage to get his eyes shut, the sleep had been anything but peaceful. He was ready for a nice, long vacation from this whole ‘end of the world’ thing.
He stood up from the couch and walked over to a window in the living room, pulling back the tattered curtain.
“What’s it look like?” Hadas asked.
Aaran looked back at Hadas, who was sitting on a dining room chair, her feet propped up on an old-fashioned boombox. “Still pissin’ down out there,” he replied before turning to look back out the window.
The heavy, dark clouds hung low in the sky, giving Aaran little hope that they’d be departing today. He didn’t mind staying put nearly as much now that he had someone else with him, but their current residence had him eager to leave.
The apartment complex had been a rundown heroin mecca for years, and was far from Aaran’s ideal place to hole up for any length of time. What was supposed to have been a short layover in the squalid hellhole had turned into a weekend-long nightmare. At first, Aaran had thought that being dry and somewhat warm was worth the tradeoff, but he was just one cockroach scurrying up his arm away from taking his chances in the icy showers outside.
Hadas punctuated her frustration with a theatrical sigh. “Well,” she said as she got up and walked over to the window, “guess we should go hunt down some grub.”
Their backpacks had already been a bit light when they’d first arrived, and last night they had finished off their last can of stew. With nothing left except a bag of sunflower seeds that Aaran would munch on during longer hikes, they would need to explore some of the other apartment units for sustenance. Neither particularly wanted to.
“That’s fine, but I really need some water first. My throat feels like an old catcher’s mitt,” Aaran responded.
Hadas didn’t argue with the short detour, and the two suited up for the expedition.
They walked down the long, dark corridor to a staircase that led them to the exit on the next floor down. Standing next to a set of wall mailboxes heavily tagged with graffiti, Aaran waited for Hadas to catch up before opening the door. The air felt too cold for it to still be raining, which reminded Aaran why they had sought refuge in such a dump in the first place. Standing at the threshold, Aaran fought through the shivers while he scanned the area for movement.
Hadas pressed her finger against the earbud. “I’m not hearing anything here. I think you’re clear,” she said.
Aaran continued his hard, scrutinizing look of the area, making sure there weren’t other threats looming nearby—the kind that wouldn’t cause Hadas’s earphones to buzz with activity. He then leaned his Scorpion up against the wall next to the door frame and press checked his recently-acquired USP before sliding it back into the holster. He had officially put the Glock 19 on reserve in exchange for the hefty .45 ACP. It fit so nicely in his hand.
Looking over at Hadas, Aaran said, “Cover me,” before running out into the arctic monsoon. Little pellets of sleet and frigid rain bombarded his face, adding to his resolve to get back inside as quickly as possible.
He splashed up to a five-gallon bucket that had an upside-down umbrella sitting on top. Several holes were cut out of the umbrella’s fabric, allowing for more rainwater to channel into the bucket below—a handy, yet trivial design that Hadas had fashioned to improve the speed in which the bucket collected water. Aaran tossed the umbrella off to the side and lugged the bucket back up the cracked, uneven sidewalk and over to the door.
Aaran let out a “Brrrr” when he got out of the elements. Setting the bucket down on the stained, office-style carpet just inside the door, Aaran grunted and immediately shuffled through his pack sitting next to his carbine. He pulled out a Sawyer mini filter that his dad had given him on their first hunting/camping trip. The primitive weekend had been Aaran’s introductory lesson in survival. No electronics, no entertainment, very little food, and one canteen of water. Besides that, they’d been on their own. The trip had not been particularly enjoyable for the fourteen-year-old version of Aaran, but since the purge, he had relied on several of the techniques his father had taught him that weekend. And he was grateful to have those memo
ries with his father. It was a shame that the trip had been a one-time deal because Aaran’s father had picked up as much overtime as he could get.
Aaran had only pulled the straw-like filter out of his bag a few times since leaving home, but when his life was on the line, the filter never let him down. Even though they had scrubbed the bucket out with soap and rainwater several times before setting it up outside, the bucket was not food grade, and Aaran wanted to play it safe. Of course, he didn’t expect to live long enough for the chemically-induced cancer to rear its ugly head, nor did he know if the filter would actually filter out the carcinogens, but he still felt better running it through a filter first.
He handed the straw to Hadas who stuck the end into the half full bucket and took several satisfying drags. After a few seconds, she pulled the straw out of her mouth and sighed with delight before passing it back to Aaran. The water still had a funny taste to it, but he knew it would have been much worse drinking it straight out of the bucket.
Aaran wiped his mouth with his sleeve and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s take this thing back upstairs. We can filter it into our bottles later.”
Hadas grabbed Aaran’s pack and followed him upstairs, waiting just outside the apartment door. Aaran came back out and shouldered his backpack. “Which one first?” he asked, looking down the hall of numbered doors on the second floor.
“Let’s just go to the end and work our way back.”
“Sounds good.”
They walked down the hall, delving deeper into the grungy darkness as they got further away from the windows near the entrance. They powered on their flashlights and kept their eyes and ears open for threats. Aaran sidestepped a pile of trash next to one of the doors only to stumble over a heap of clothes lying on the opposite side of the hall.
