Keep The Fire HotAct III

She turns back just in time to see WIN disappear into the neighborhood of tall trees, burned out houses, and who knows what else.

MARA exhales in a deep sigh through pursed lips and is suddenly aware of the slap of her worn soles on the pavement and the flap of her torn jeans on her bruised and grass stained knees.

She hadn’t once thought about the blood all over her chin and down her neck.

Fucking day.

A quick sniff of her shirt and a grimace from the aromatics.

From out of her fight-crushed backpack she produces her torn map page.

It’s decorated with notes and scribbles and doodles of UFOs and her favorite grey aliens with their pinky up sipping tea.

This pre-war map looks like it was torn from the same map WIN carried.

It includes this road and the area north, past more river a distance away on her right. She’ll avoid the big highway on the other side for the obvious attraction it holds for any road agents that will have set up traps for unsuspecting civilians.

It says so right on the map.

AVOID ROAD ASSHOLES.

Map folded away and now she knows she’ll have to find some food. The drawing of the taco on her map reminded her of past meals at a place likely burned out since the last time she was up this way.

She takes a quick look around her, no one in sight and WIN long ago left behind, she can inspect the pistol she pulled off GRIP back at the library.

Sorry to leave you unarmed, Grip.

Standard Sig Sauer P320 with 17 shiny rounds in the magazine.

This recently cleaned handgun must have been lifted from someone else.

How’d you get your grubby mitts on this?

She flips the safety on and slides the gun back into the front center of her pants with the handle hooked on her belt.

She shifts its position and practices having it ready for either hand to grab it.

She walks down the road, chin up, eyes forward.

MARA holds a silver snub nose revolver to the driver’s head.

The SUV careens side to side on a gravel road.

Outside the window, in the distance red-hot anti-aircraft ordnance streaks into the air.

Drones coming and going, chase and explode while others chase and explode.

Domes of fire pulse along the horizon lighting distant clouds.

The driver wears a drenching of sweat, and an army camo coat with burns and tears.

FASTER MOTHERFUCKER DRIVE

The closer we get to it with our headlights on the more likely we’ll get hit!

This is your MOTHERFUCKING fault you fucking loser and your fucking loser friends.

Mom.. it hurts

With her left hand MARA reaches into the backseat to remind her daughter she isn’t alone.

CASSIDY squirms from discomfort, blood leaks out over the bandages wrapped around the pattern of wounds and the protruding shrapnel.

We’re going to make it, baby, stay with me we’re going to get a doctor and a big clean room full of people to help and you’re going to be ok, everything is going to be ok.

MARA casts a glare of rage at the driver.

He eyes the distant fighting and the road with equal terror.

Cassidy?

Honey, can you hear me?

Behind her, through the windshield, the treeline speeds past.

MARA’s face is lit warm by distant fire and it slackens with slow, cold realization.

MARA sits in the middle back seat of the stopped SUV with CASSIDY in her lap, staring ahead, the tears pouring out of her face but her body is as still as her daughter’s heart.

Outside, in headlights, the driver backs away from the SUV, turns and runs into the nearby woods.

In the distance, battle rages and the light from their violence paints the horizon in frantic hues of cleansing fire.

This sky’s colours are serene as the sun falls behind the treeline.

On the street where weeds grow through any crack they can find and where MARA now walks, the shadows are stretched and spread so soft they are lost among themselves.

Her eyes on the wreck of a camper on its side up ahead.

She doesn’t notice the yellow-white glow of eyes following behind her.

Not the closest pair. Not the dozens of others.

When she turns, they extinguish.

MARA’s pace slows and she takes an estimate of her surroundings.

Deep woods on either side of this blocked road, all bird sounds stop.

Only the sway of the trees in the wind can be heard.

Gun now in hand, she walks into the ditch closest to her to get around the camper.

The woods are a heavy curtain of darkness and she makes her way to the other side of the camper to see its underbelly and midway down is a man, crouching, covered in mud staring directly at her.

Even in this dim light the mud is obvious, in his matted hair, in his long beard, caked and cracked and fresh and old and in massive clumps on his pants.

You again.

You remember me?

I remember every killer I’ve ever met.

Didn’t stop you from helping me.

And here you are again, hand outstretched.

I don’t need your help.

I can find the last of those cunts on my own.

You need what I know and you need it more than you know. It IS different this time. This whole place has gone sour. North to south. East to west.

The milk is bad and the only people left are full of it.

I’ve seen a lot of military gear in the hands of people who shouldn’t have it - is that what you mean? Military supplies found by the ner’do wells?

It’s not the mechanicals you need to be worried about - it’s the drones. You know what I mean? You’ll know them when you see them. They’ve been dipped in darkness and their genes have been twisted and the whispers in their heads they don’t ask where it comes from - the thinker of the thought is automation.

Do you understand?

Hang on, wait.

You’re telling me to avoid bad guys out here in this lawless, stateless territory? Are you mansplaining the apocalypse to me you soft headed fuck?

Jesus Murphy. Go on then get skinned, pussy cat. Your nine lives are up.

Pussy-cat!?

Well fuck you very much, you muddy bastard.

No fuck you!

No, fuck you!

MARA turns and walks away straight down the middle of the road, with a raised middle finger.

As she does the last of the light is gone and from WARNING’s point of view she is fully enveloped by the darkness.

WARNING pulls his legs under him and adjusts to sit in a buddha pose and meditate on this exchange.

Can’t tell that girl a damn thing.

I would hate to be her father.

Eyes closed and counting the duration of his exhalations and his inhalations WARNING doesn’t notice that moving all around him in the darkness is an even deeper darkness, an abyss of black in moving person form.

Each with leering eyes glowing yellow-white in the treeline, on the street walking past him, and in the ditches.

Until, finally, they too are lost in pure darkness, following MARA.

For a long moment, all he hears is his own breathing and the swaying of the trees, applauding at the returning cast of stars they can only intuit.

The stoked fire whips and whips again catching more wind than its caretaker would like.

His eyes are tattooed black where whites used to be and the color in his iris comes directly from his mother’s line, a deep dark brown.

The scrawled faded ink under his left eye reads "mamma’s boy" in what dirtbags think a fancy font looks like.

The rest of him is covered in equally garbage jailhouse style, wall-flash trash.

The campsite is tarps tied to trees made from torn military tents, skids, and barrels.

A hut once used for ice fishing is the only real structure and holds the main laundry line across which the skin of an unlucky traveler flaps in failing syncopation with the whipping of the fire.

BINBOY’s head tilts to the side drifting from the fire to the fire’s glow muted by the flapping skin. Tilting this way and that. He picks up his stick fire poker and moves the embers.

(in unison)

Keep the fire hot, they said.

BINBOY comes alive and stands adjusting his pants and sweater ready for an unofficial inspection by his superiors.

Keep the fire hot.

Keep the fire hot, Binboy.

Hanging over the shoulder of VENDETTA is MARA tied at the wrists and ankles.

VENDETTA walks from outside the circle to stand in front of the fire and BINBOY.

Staring into his eyes with his own pure black eyes.

These aren’t tattooed, they are as black as the deepest, starless void in space

His is blank of expression, a sudden cartoon smile from ear to ear, shocking and unnatural.

(muffled)

Fuck you!

You’ll thank me some day.

He throws MARA to the ground at the feet of BINBOY who doesn’t move.

He just sways like a drunk, trying to be alert and awaiting the next command.

(in unison)

Some day.

Hog tie. Chain to the Earth. We wait.

(singsong)

This one is special.

An old dog chain and handle corkscrewed into the ground is attached to MARA’s now-connected ankle and wrist bindings as she lays belly to the ground.

Hog tied and chained to the Earth.

Her eyes are wild, heat from the whipping bonfire warming her face.

She is tempted to struggle but she sees that the other guys are all standing at different spots just outside the light of the camp, slackfaced, abyss for eyes.

Not even in the camp. Just separated enough for it to be completely unnatural and just intimidating enough to stop MARA from fighting back.

Unnatural, like an elevator car cut from its cable, she too falls into a deep unconsciousness.

Wincing from new wounds sustained from travelling through the dark WIN finds himself on a flat road surface again.

The stars are magnificent and the black night is losing to blue at the edge of the eastern sky.

An old mailbox stand, its dented head beside it in the overgrowth.

As WIN passes it, he raises his nose the distinct scent of burning wood.

It stops him from walking and he looks around.

Catching this on the wind might mean it’s safe here because no one else has smelled it or it might mean only the wrong kind of people are around here comfortable enough to have a fire that can be detected by the road.

Or.

It could be MARA.

He takes a step forward to keep on heading north and stops again, nose in the air.

Could be.

Ok.

WIN hobbles, following his nose to find the source of the scent.

The light in here is still losing to darkness and so his pace is slow and steady.

He puts his hands on trees as he passes them by, a grounding of reality and stability to keep him steady. West and more west from the road now a mile in.

The warm glow of a fire can be seen.

Once close enough, WIN peers out from behind a tree to survey the scene of the camp.

Four slightly swaying bodies.

One human skin from a laundry line.

And one hog-tied MARA, unconscious by the fire that brought him here.

Luxurious safety behind this tree. WIN turns his back to the tree and the camp and MARA and stares out at the dark forest.

The road north is out there.

There is the mission he is on.

Yet, right here is the thing he needs to do.

(to himself)

You can do this. You can do anything.

You can save this girl. You can find your family.

A full deep breath and his blade open in his hand, WIN makes his way.

Tree to tree.

Until he is close enough to step out.

A left hand on the forehead of VENDETTA and his right for the blade to VENDETTA’s throat.

Before a command can come out of his throat he sees the eyes in the others, their slack faces, their swaying disconnected bodies.

He slowly releases VENDETTA and steps into the camp to wave his hand in front of an unresponsive face.

He steps toward MARA.

Mara. Get up.

Mara.

He shoves her with his foot. Eyes still darting from sentinel to sentinel.

Wake up!

He leans down and cuts her bound wrists and legs.

The sound of the chain hitting the ground is loud.

The vacant black eyed stares of the sentinels begin to change their faces and all become expressions of disgust.

They have the consistency of clay or the comedy and tragedy masks of the theatre.

WIN puts one knee to the earth, grabs MARA’s arm and pulls her body over his one good shoulder.

WIN walking backwards then forwards. None of them try to stop him or move at all.

When WIN and MARA are distant and their visibility blocked by trees, the sentinels’ tether of gravity is cut and they float a meter off the ground.

The fire is snuffed, its oxygen stolen, a plume of charcoal smoke forms a column straight up into the sky.

Around the edge of the camp yellow-white eyes look out from behind every tree, one by one, filling the empty space with their special blackness.