Lawless

by Jai Williams

  “Sorry Dwayne, we can’t find the child,” said one of Dwayne’s men.

  Dwayne took a deep breath in and out. “Fuck it, if their child has run away like they said, then there’s no point keeping them alive, so let’s just shoot…no actually, let’s burn this house down with them inside and maybe the kid will come running back,” said Dwayne with confidence.

  Two of the men walked outside and grabbed a large can of petrol each from their car and walked back into the house. They started pouring the petrol everywhere in the house – on the floor, on the furniture.

  “What about them? Don’t you think they will try to escape?” said one of Dwayne’s men.

  “Pour some on the father,” replied Dwayne. So the guy poured the remaining petrol he had in the can on Brad. Brad spat the petrol that ran over his lips.

  “NOOOO!” cried Robin.

  “Go outside guys,” said Dwayne to his men, so all the men went outside and Dwayne stayed in the house.

  “Any last words, like what we should tell your son when we catch him?” said Dwayne as he was holding a lit-up lighter in his hands.

  “You will never find him,” replied Brad angrily.

  “Okay, those words won’t mean much when we find him. It would be like saying, ‘hey you can have the last cookie in the cookie jar but then you end up eating it yourself’ – see how retarded you sound?” replied Dwayne. As Dwayne walked outside the house he threw the lighter in. “Burn, bitch, burn,” he said with joy.

  Dwayne shut the door behind him and slammed his gun on the door handle to break it so Brad and Robin couldn’t escape. He and his men walked around the side of the house to see if they could find Ronnie, to see if he was hiding around the house, and at this moment Ronnie saw the house on fire and the men walking around the side of the house which is when Ronnie ran into the woods and ever since then, he kept running and hiding to avoid anyone, just like his parents told him to.

  Chapter Two: Survive

  From the woods, Ronnie ran to the closest abandoned place he could find. He needed to get as far away from those men as he could; he knew that they wouldn’t stop searching for him, which is why he knew he couldn’t go back to the house his parents were burning in, so Ronnie kept running. Ronnie escaped the woods and saw a broken-down petrol station that was in the middle of nowhere, so he thought he would take shelter there. The petrol station was old and damaged, all the windows were smashed, the roof over the pumps had collapsed and a bit of the roof had a hole in it, but apart from that it seemed like a good enough place for Ronnie to stay the night. Ronnie ran over to the petrol station, quietly stepped over the broken glass of the door and entered. He was shaking, he was scared, he had no idea if someone was inside, so he kept quiet and looked around the shop. There were shelves tipped over, the long fridge had broken glass and there was rubbish, old food and stains all over the floor from when drinks were split. Ronnie saw a door that was closed and it had writing on it: “Staff only.” He turned the doorknob slowly and quietly and opened the door. It was quite dark in the room apart from little holes in the wall that light shone through. Ronnie saw a piece of paper taped to the wall so he walked up to it and pulled it off the wall to read it.

  “To the person who is reading this, I left some food and water safely hidden away in the small fridge in this room. I also made sure this place was safe enough to stay in, which it is. I had been here for weeks until I decided it was time to move on and also I recommend that you don’t go west from here because far in the west there is a group of horrible people who are in a small town and they don’t take prisoners. So please avoid going that way. Good luck.”

  Ronnie dropped the piece of paper and searched the room for the fridge that the letter said had food and water in it. Ronnie finally found it. He pulled open the small fridge door and saw a large bottle of water and a stack of food, enough to last him at least two days. Ronnie ripped open a bar of something and started eating it. He washed it down with some water and continued eating the rest of it. As night time came, Ronnie tried to find something to sleep on. There had to be something to sleep on; after all, there was a person staying here before him. He saw a square plank of wood on the floor, so he pushed it across the floor to see what it was covering. It revealed a hole in the floor which led under the building. Ronnie pulled out the torch he had used earlier from when he was crawling through the muddy hole and shined it to see under the building. He carefully hopped down to look under the building and saw an old, small mattress that had an old, dirty blanket on it.

  “Yuck,” he said to himself. Ronnie walked over to it. “Okay, I’ll sleep down here tonight just to be safe,” he said to himself. So Ronnie pulled the piece of wood that was covering the hole in the floor over so that the hole was covered and he headed over to the mattress. He pulled the dirty blanket up from the mattress and sat down on it, pulling the blanket over him. He turned the torch off so it was completely dark and tried to go to sleep. Even though Ronnie didn’t see his parent’s burn, he started having a nightmare about it in which he saw his mother and father on the floor of the house, fully on fire, screaming and in pain, and in the nightmare, Ronnie was standing outside the front door just looking back at his parents.

  “RUN, RONNIE, JUST GO!” they screamed in his dream and the house came crumbling down. Ronnie looked back and saw a man standing there; the man was Dwayne. Ronnie looked back at the house but it was gone, and instead he saw more men; they were Dwayne’s men and they started running at him and that was when Ronnie woke up from the nightmare, panicking in the dark, just heavily breathing and feeling scared because he was alone.

  For days and nights he stayed at the petrol station just eating and drinking small amounts of the food and water he had, surviving just like he promised his parents he would. A week later, he finally ran out of food and drink so Ronnie knew he had to either find more or move on from this place and find somewhere new to stay until he moved on again and again, just like what he and his parents did. Ronnie headed east. It was early in the morning, when he decided to leave. He thought it would be easier because he would have more daylight to find more food, water and shelter. He walked miles and miles for hours, until he came across a sign that said painted across it, Al’s town. Places were no longer called by their original names, like New York is no longer to be called New York; instead the criminal who rules that city will come up with their own name for it, whether it’s got their name in it or not. It’s one of those things criminals just wanted to do, to get rid of an old name and replace it with something new and meaningful for them.

  Ronnie felt relieved that he was heading somewhere. Ronnie kept pushing forward, feeling exhausted, hungry and thirsty, but he got through all that and he finally saw in the distance a town, but before he took another step he could also see a bunch of men blocking the road to the entrance in the town. Ronnie decided to stay hidden in the bunch of trees he saw off the road until nightfall, so that the darkness could help him get close to a building for cover. A couple of hours later, it turned dark and Ronnie went on silently, as far away from the men as he could. He headed to a building for cover, using bushes as well as long patches of grass to get there because there were men on top of the roof armed with snipers so it wasn’t easy. The darkness just made it a bit easier for Ronnie to enter the town. As Ronnie reached the wall of a building he saw a broken-down door that led into a diner. He poked his head though the door to see if the coast was clear. It was so he entered quietly into the diner but through the windows Ronnie could see men walking in the streets, so he crouched down and slowly and quietly went through the diner. He could see tables, chairs and everything in the diner thrown around and broken all over the place. Ronnie stood up quietly and pulled up a stool and climbed up on it so he could hop over the counter and head into the kitchen of the diner. Ronnie got to the door behind the counter and pushed it open silently, walked through it and entered the kitchen. He looked around to try to find food and water. He opened all the
draws, cupboards and fridges to find something. In all that searching, he only found a can of baked beans, which doesn’t sound like much, but Ronnie was starving, so it was better than nothing.

  Ronnie found an exit from the kitchen to outside so he cautiously left the kitchen and stealthily went through the town by going from building to building. He made sure he wasn’t on the streets for too long because he didn’t want to get caught. He got to a clothing store and looked around to find clothes that would fit him because he had been in the same clothes for days. He picked up some jeans, a t-shirt, jumper, underwear, socks and shoes. Ronnie quietly and quickly changed out of the clothes he was wearing and put on the new ones he picked up. He made sure he took out everything he had in the pockets of his old clothes. He pretty much only had a torch and the can of baked beans. Ronnie kept looking around in the clothing store to find anything else useful. He picked up a small backpack and filled it with more clothes and he put his torch and the can of baked beans in it as well.

  Ronnie left the clothing store and went to a bedding store, which was next door. In the bedding store Ronnie grabbed a pillow and small blanket. He didn’t want to stay in this town because there were men everywhere and he didn’t want to risk it, so he eventually got through the town without being caught and headed into the woods, where he set up camp for the night.

  Ronnie grabbed a bunch of sticks and set up a fire, making sure that the flames were low so that no one could see the smoke coming from the trees. Ronnie opened the can of baked beans and made something over the fire that the can could sit on so the baked beans could cook. After eating, he placed the pillow he found down, put out the fire, put the blanket over himself and fell asleep. Ronnie had the same nightmare again, the same one he’d been having every night since he left his parents. He would see his parents on fire, the house would disappear, Dwayne showed up and Ronnie would wake up.

  When the sun came up the next day, Ronnie woke up and packed up all of his things and continued moving east. He went from town to town. He knew that there would be tough choices for him to make, like to not trust anyone even if they came face to face with death and he could do something to save them. He knew he had to face this terrible world solo because trust is a hard thing to come by since most people were scared to betray their leader because that path led to death. Since Ronnie left his parents, he decided what type of person he wanted to become; he wanted to become a survivor. Ronnie knew that if he was to survive this world he had to pick up certain skills like how to be stealthy, which he picked up quite easily in the first town he had come across after he left his parents. He continued using this skill to steal food, water and anything else he needed, and for shelter he searched out abandoned houses, buildings or wherever he could find to sleep at night.

  He was never in one place long; he moved from town to town and tried to avoid cities but if he had to, he would try to get though a city as fast as he could without being spotted; mainly at night-time, he travelled though towns and cities because the darkness was an advantage. The reason he tried to avoid cities was because they were larger, meaning they had lots of men patrolling the streets.

  It was a hard, lonely life for Ronnie but the hope of one day the world getting back to what it once was, kept Ronnie living. Days went by, weeks went by, months went by and years went by, and the older Ronnie got, the stronger he became because of how long he had been surviving in this world, and he also worked out in abandoned gyms and taught himself how to fight because he knew that he would have to fight one day.

  Ten years later.

  Ronnie is now twenty years old. He has brown medium-length hair and scars and scratches all over him from years of living in this cruel world. He’s not a tall man – he’s more medium sized – and he mostly wears jeans, flannel shirts and boots. Ronnie has travelled all around the United States by foot but that’s all he can do because any type of vehicle that he could get working would make it easy for someone to find him. The world has changed in ten years, like the child project, as the criminals call it, has become successful. The child project is where children are taken from their parents and being trained up to become criminals so that this world can stay like it is.

  Security had also gotten a lot tougher ever since the attack in New York by a group called the Uprise. The Uprise was a bunch of men and woman who had enough of being pushed around and they decided to take matters into their own hands by attacking the criminals running their city. Although people cannot think straight after losing loved ones, they thought they could do this but they were wrong and, as punishment, they were executed. Ever since that attack, no one has dared to rebel and ever since that, it has been harder for Ronnie to get through towns and cities but he managed.

  Ronnie was walking quietly through a town like he’d done for ten years but this town was different from the others because in this town, Ronnie was going to face something he had never done in his life and things were going to change for him. On this normal night, Ronnie was just getting through this town like he had always done, but this time he screwed up. He was quietly walking through an alleyway when he accidentally walked into a trashcan and made a loud noise. Suddenly, he heard from a distance, “Hey, what was that?” so he started walking backwards, but when he turned he could hear a car coming. He thought this was it; it was all over for him and all it took was one mistake, but all of a sudden, he heard a door squeak.

  “Psst, this way,” whispered a guy, so without any hesitation Ronnie went over towards the door where the voice was coming from and went inside, shutting the door softly behind him before the men patrolling the streets could see him. Ronnie had no idea what he was heading into but he knew that it had to be better than being caught by the men out there. At first, Ronnie couldn’t see shit but in the distance, he saw a light down a hallway so he headed towards it. As he was walking down the hallway he saw many doors with numbers on them so he assumed that he was in an abandoned apartment building. Before he opened the door where light was shining through, he grabbed his handgun and pushed open the door. Ronnie looked around the room and he could see three children on the floor scared out of their minds, a woman to the left of the room, an old man on the couch and a young man holding a gun on him.

  Ronnie was standing there with his gun shaking in his hand. “None of you move,” he said to them all.

  “Your hands are shaking; I don’t think you’re going to pull that trigger and if you do, then someone outside might hear it,” said the guy aiming a gun at Ronnie.

  “I told you that you shouldn’t have checked what that noise was,” said the woman with a scared look on her face.

  “If I hadn’t, then they would have killed him,” replied the guy holding the gun.

  “We have no idea who this guy is; he’s probably one of them,” replied the woman.

  “I’m not one of them,” said Ronnie.

  “How do we know that you’re not lying?” asked the woman.

  Ronnie lowered his gun. “You don’t. It’s just that my parents told me never to trust anyone, but for some reason I think I can trust you and I hope you can understand that. You’re in fact the first bunch of people I’ve encountered since my parents,” replied Ronnie.

  “Your parents sound like wise people. Are they with you or somewhere else?” asked the guy as he was lowering his gun.

  “They died protecting me,” replied Ronnie while he looked to the floor with sadness.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” replied the guy, who looked about eighteen. He was around the same height as Ronnie, with short light brown hair and a clean face. You could tell that he hadn’t been through what Ronnie had been through. He was wearing a long sleeve shirt, regular pants and regular shoes.

  The woman seemed about the same age as the guy. She had long blonde hair and a beautiful face. She was wearing a shirt with a cardigan over it, skinny jeans and slip-on shoes. The old man sitting on the couch looked about fifty to sixty years old, with a face that said, ‘Yeah I’ve been t
hough some shit but I didn’t give up.’ He was wearing a jumper, jeans and regular shoes. The three children seemed to be all different ages. One looked ten, another looked seven and the youngest looked five. They all had the same look on their faces, and they all looked like they were brothers and sisters. They were all wearing jumpers, pants and shoes.

  Before anyone else could say a word, all the way down the hall they could hear a bang, like someone was about to break the door down.

  “Oh shit, they’re breaking in,” said Ronnie in panic as he closed the door.

  “Quick, turn the lights off. Be quiet everyone, and hide,” Ronnie whispered, so they all hid behind the large couch. All they could hear from the darkness were bangs from doors getting knocked down.

  Seconds later, they could hear a voice. “No one in this apartment,” said some guy and again they could hear the same thing. It was like playing hide-and-seek, except in the end they were either going to die or have to kill their way through.

  “Get ready for what’s about to happen,” whispered Ronnie. All of a sudden, the door came down and one of the men switched the light on in the room.

  “NOW,” Ronnie yelled as he got up. A bullet flew from Ronnie’s gun and hit the first man in the head, followed by another bullet going into the second guy’s chest.

  “Give me your gun; I’ll get the rest,” said Ronnie to the young man who was behind the couch with him, so he gave Ronnie his gun and Ronnie stood up and started firing all of the bullets into the remaining two men standing in the hallway.

  “We’ve got to get out of here; those gunshots are going to attract a lot more men and we can’t be here when that happens,” said Ronnie as he walked over the dead bodies to grab their guns and ammunition.

  “We created a back exit in case anything like this ever happened,” said the young man.