The Powers That Be

-Huskal

---

Chapter 04

‘The last thing I remember was that asshole hitting me on the head with his gun,’ Lucinda winced, her hand curled protectively around the tender flesh, ‘but how did I get here?’ She was sitting propped up on the wet grass. It was so cold, the air still hazy with fog. The girl heard angry yelling and looked bleakly skywards. Two soldiers stood over, both unrecognisable and impatient. Lucinda’s eyes darkened.

One said something untranslatable and thrust a photograph into Lucinda’s vision. It was a mug shot of Era in dark red overalls, her hair limp and dull and her eyes sallow and set deep in her long face. Lucinda shook her head. She should talk, say she doesn’t know who she is, and get angry, as if she doesn’t know what’s going on. “Who?” Lucinda demanded.

He said something again. “I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t know who that is!” Lucinda bit out.

“He think you do,” said a fat man behind the two. Lucinda craned her neck sideways to see. He was fat. Short… probably a general. Funny, the teen had never noticed their hierarchy when she was just another prisoner. The fat man made Lucinda nervous. Soldiers were expendable; they didn’t have to be smart. Generals knew things, didn’t they?

“I don’t,” Lucinda insisted. She opened her mouth to say something else, but shut it. ‘You’re only an escapee, you don’t know anything’

“You were seen with another fugitive, helping her escape. You will tell us where she went,” the fat man explained in his blocky English. He was pacing, Lucinda stole a glance at the SUV and the armed soldiers guarding it. They sent so many people out this way?

“But I don’t know where she is.”

“Then you will be execute.”

‘Shit.’ “What? Why!”

“You are fugitive. You tell us where she,” his lips drew back with anger as his chubby finger stabbed the picture of Era, “is, or we will execute you.” His eyes were flared, but Lucinda had trouble reading the rest of his face. He looked pissed, though.

“I don’t know where she is!” Lucinda yelled, “You can’t kill me because I don’t know anything!”

“You no interest,” the fat general explained, “You die.” He snatched the photo from the soldier’s arm and held it centimetres from Lucinda’s nose, “Where is the girl?” he demanded in a snap.

“I don’t know. I just want my family! I want to see them!” her voice wavered.

The fat general shouted an order at one of the soldiers and, like clockwork; he whipped out a pistol and pointed it against Lucinda’s head. Lucinda shrieked, jumping as the cold metal pressed down on her hair. Adrenalin swarmed her senses. The other soldier trained his rifle at her, pinning her between two weapons. The gun didn’t fire. Lucinda was shaking, her arms tensed in the air.

“One chance. Where is she?” the general roared.

“I don’t know!” Lucinda screamed; her arm shot out in the direction they had left in, “She ran that way! I don’t know where she went!”

The general’s moustache twitched. “Execute.”

“NO!” the sound was louder than Lucinda had thought, her scream.

“What is in that direction?” The general snarled over the noise and confusion of Lucinda’s outcry.

“The cemetery!” Lucinda yelled with her eyes screwed shut, “And the school, and the church… Then the public gardens,” she looked back up with shame-filled eyes, still tensed against the death-delivering end of the pistol.

He gave a sharp nod to the group of soldiers around the SUV. They assembled into the vehicle, fully decked in their combat gear, one of them was speaking into their walkie-talkie. Lucinda felt sick. And soaked from the rain. Her hair was muddy and clung at her pale head like bitter seaweed. Drops of rainwater dug slow trenches down Lucinda’s dirty face. Her chest was heaving, and everything felt so cold and in horribly sharp focus.

The general muttered something in their foreign language to the solder with his gun against Lucinda’s head. The man nodded, the gun remained. Hot salty water joined the rain down the girl’s face. Her vision tunnelled as the general marched back to the SUV, leaving the two soldiers with her. She huddled into a smaller ball, the bricks she was propped against biting at her back.

“Please don’t shoot me,” Lucinda whispered, looking imploringly up the arm holding the gun to her head to make eye contact with the unknown soldier. The pistol clicked to load.

“Sam!” Lucinda stuttered, “Sam.” If it was anyone that should be ratted out, it was that bastard. But the soldiers looked at each other too briefly. They didn’t get it. They had no idea who the soldier that had followed her through the forest was. ‘Of course’ a voice in Lucinda’s head echoed, ‘An English name. It was probably just a pseudonym… they wouldn’t even know any Sam.’ Out of the corner of her vision Lucinda noticed a white rat sprinting across the wet road. Only, it was too big to be a rodent.

Marcel gave a feral snarl and launched himself at the other guarding soldier. His two claws cut long red streaks in the flesh of the man’s face. The pressure of the black nozzle removed itself from Lucinda’s pounding head. The soldier aimed his weapon at his friend’s head, at the beast, but he hesitated in shooting. Lucinda grabbed a loose brick from behind her and slammed it into his leg. The gun’s aim translated again but Lucinda hurled the brick into the man’s face before he could bring it down upon her. It hit him in the jaw and jolted his head back, off-balance.

Lucinda darted out of the way of the falling brick and savagely kicked the stunned soldier in the same spot on his shin that the brick had struck. He convulsed in pain and hit the hard grass lawn on his back. The other had a rifle still in his hand, trying to beat Marcel off him. Lucinda grabbed the brick and struck him in the back of the head. His body stilled and he fell.

“Oh God,” the teen uttered, horrified. The brick dropped from her hand.

“Come on!” Marcel insisted, “We’ve got to go!”

“They’re going to the cemetery!”

“I heard,” the sloth’s beady eyes could pick her out in a hailstorm, “She’s underneath the Church, in the basements.”

Lucinda nodded, “They know about those, too. I’m sorry, Marcel…”

“Never mind, follow me,” the animal ordered, darting towards Era’s house, or rather, the house Era had been kept in. Lucinda ran after, opening the tall door for her small friend. Marcel darted on ahead of her, grabbing something from one room and running back across the hallway into another.

“What are we doing?” Lucinda hissed.

“Going to the garage,” the sloth dropped a pair of keys at her feet and dashed into the kitchen, “And getting food.”

A minute later, arm laden with the freshest food they could scavenge from the ex-family home, they were running to the garage door. Most of the food had rotten away in the fridge, save a few unopened items, precooked meat in the freezer, biscuits.

The garage door had to be lifted open by hand. Lucinda strained against the weight before it gave, rusty and unused. She saw the two soldiers in the mud, still unconscious. The smell of meat and rainwater mixed with her buzzing headache made her feel like gagging.

Her fumbling hands unlocked the back door of the sleek, obsidian car and threw the food in the back. Marcel was already wrapped around a smoked chicken, tearing through the plastic. The teen slipped into the spacious driver’s seat of the car. It was so clean and tidy; it smelled new. Expensive.

“You should know… I only have my learner’s,” Lucinda admitted, hands on her lap.

“Key in the key-slot. Turn it. Drive,” ordered the sloth.

Lucinda followed the normal procedure. It sounded bad already.

“And take the hand-break off!”

They were away with a dangerous jolt. The girl threw caution in the wind and the face of an invader government that already considered her a fugitive, and the empty streets. The car revved and swung about madly after she reversed clear across the road, and stalled. Lucinda breathed out a shaky sigh and started it up again. Someone may have heard that.

“Where are we going?” Lucinda suddenly questioned.

“Anywhere you like,” Marcel muttered around a mouthful of carcass.

Lucinda looked back behind her in the direction of the cemetery, “We’re just leaving Era behind?”

“She’s in good hands.”