Not So Simple ~Part 3
Not So Simple
Not So Simple
Part 3: Flashbacks and drawings
I really didn't wanna sleep. Not after dealing with those creatures. So, I did everything I could to not have to sleep. I stripped my rifle and cleaned it carefully and reassembled it, and discovered the scope's calibrations were off. That just annoyed the hell out of me. Scopes here annoying enough to calibrate once, getting everything zeroed in and set up all nice and neat, and then some random event goes and throws the whole thing off. Can mean the difference between life and death, and I really didn't plan on dying because my rifle wanted to get an attitude with me. I briefly toyed with the notion of seeing if there were any DMRs, but squished it. This rifle has seen the world with me. I'd be betraying it if I got a different gun.
After doing that, I opened my window, set the rifle up and just scanned the streets. Nothing was ever there, but it was a good way to pass the time. I had the Itch though. At one point or another, each of us has experienced something that was so nagging and kept getting worse until we did it. Came to be known as The Itch. Because that's what it was, an itch you just couldn't scratch. And it wasn't a onetime occurrence. For me, I had to do something creative. Writing or drawing or something like that. And frankly, I didn't like doing that stuff. But it was the only thing that got rid of The Itch, and a few other anthros liked what I did. Kerros had a picture of a tank I did and last I knew carried it with him everywhere.
I gave up on trying to ignore it, nothing good ever came out of having a twitchy and distracted sniper, and pulled out a drawing pad and pencil. Gotta love living around ruins, I guess. Always find something useful. I set the pencil to the pad, still sitting at the window, and let my mind go blank. The pencil started moving on its own.
Really, I hadn't even wanted the war. Not to say I don't support my own kind, I do. And not to say that I supported how the humans treated us, which I didn't. I just don't see why it was decided that everyone needs to keep the fact we have sentience a secret. Granted I didn't do anything differently, I wasn't going to be the one blamed for getting us all slaughtered. I never spoke for the simple reason I had nothing to say. I rarely spoke to the anthros as it was. I was the only dracofox at the facility, so I tended to isolate myself. Because I never spoke, they gave me a name. Which I hated. First thing I said to anyone was "you call me that again, and I am going to rip your balls out through your eye sockets. My name is Zyrin. Use it, or don't refer to me." That had created a stunned silence for a few minutes as they realized HOLY SHIT I CAN TALK! And then it sunk in that my first words to them were threatening to maim then in a very fucked up manner. No one wanted to test it though. I'm willing to bet the whole mythology of dragons had something to do with that, but I wasn't sure.
When the war had started, I didn't initially participate. I was just gonna go hide in the mountains and live my life. Let everyone else do the dying for ideals. Plans change. I was attacked several times by humans who only saw me as another freak. So I finally got fed up with it, and caught back up with the guys who had armed us. While everyone else was fighting for a cause, fighting for rights, fighting for revenge, I was just fighting to survive. After the war, everyone else realized I had the right idea all along. I just had a nice head start. Guess being a cynical bastard helps.
I was about halfway across the country when the nukes fell. Yea, I'd been taking my merry sweet time getting there. Hell, I didn't even know where "there" was. I'd just been going, following random roads, fighting in everything from small skirmishes to massive battles, and never hanging around one place for very long. I like to think that during that time I went insane. Or sane, and the rest of the world was insane. However way you spun it, I spent a lot of time thinking.
The war wasn't the best idea to solving our problems. And while some humans did deserve it, not just for what they'd done to us but for being so self-centered and destructive, there were those that didn't deserve this. Hell, there'd even been one human who'd helped me. It had been a rather unique experience. He'd been about 20, if I had to guess. Happened just after I left the unit. I'd been moving through a suburb area, looking for anything I could use. Well, two humans were lying in wait with assault rifles. And they knew how to use them. Pinned me behind a car that was rapidly filling with holes. I watched the kid come out from one of the houses calmly and walked up to the other two. Figured he was gonna help them kill the freak behind the car. Instead he pulled out a handgun and shot them both in the head.
"It's alright, you can come out. If you want, anyway."
I'd thought about it for a moment, and then decided what the hell. Either I was gonna die in a human trap, which didn't seem like one, or I'd get to walk on my merry way. I slide out from behind cover, rifle raised and aiming. He just stood there. The gun was holstered and the snap over it. I slowly lowered the rifle and walked over to him. He was shorter than me by about a foot and a half, but didn't seem afraid. In fact, he seemed quite bored watching me. Like this was an everyday occurrence.
"You're not gonna find anything around here, it's already been looted. These two were just trying to find a morsel among the bones. Wait here a moment, though," he said.
The boy turned and ran back into the house he'd come out of. I hid. Several minutes later, he came back out with a bundle in his arms. He stopped when he saw I wasn't there. I came up behind him.
"What, you think I was just going to stand in the middle of the street?" I said. "I'm not that trusting, kid."
That freaked him out. He spun and damn near lost his balance. I kept him from falling with an outstretched arm. He simply nodded his thanks.
"I'd heard rumours that you could talk, but I don't believe rumours," he said.
"That's smart. What's in the bundle?"
"Stuff you're gonna need more than me."
He set it on the ground and began to spread it out. A trench coat with a rip from the right pocket to the bottom edge, a large bowie knife, a large pack that looked full, the gun belt and handgun he'd used with a few extra clips and a large canteen. He stood up and looked at me.
"You have a tough fight ahead of you. That rifle and your uniform aren't gonna be enough for long."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"And what about you?"
He shrugged and replied simply "I'm good at surviving."
I opened the pack first and rummaged around a bit. Two more canteens and food. A few batteries in the bottom that probably went to a flashlight somewhere. I emptied my pockets into it and organized it as best I could. The knife was used to slit the back of the coat open for my wings. I looked up, and the kid was gone. I refused to believe in ghosts or angels or whatnot. A look around, though, showed he was walking down the road, a small bag in one hand and one of the fallen assault rifles in the other. I wondered for a moment why he'd waited here, and how he'd survived. This area had all the signs of battle and plenty of human corpses, so it'd already been swept. I just wondered how he'd managed to survive that. And how he was planning on surviving now.
It's a curious thing. I think in the end he's the only one I was ever curious about after meeting them. Sitting there eating in the middle of nowhere and my thoughts jump back to if he even survived the week, much less to now. Small things have big impacts, I guess. The handgun was my Colt, the knife I still carried. The coat had been shredded and replaced several times, but every time I had found a new one I always slit down the right side, pocket to bottom. Never found a use for the batteries, though. I was pretty sure they were still somewhere in my room. By now I figured he was dead. It wasn't likely he would have survived the war, much less the aftermath. All things considered, he was probably better off. I might have done him a favour and just shot him then. But I suppose the way things worked out was good enough. He showed me not every human was against us, and I guess I showed him not all of us anthros are the same. Or maybe we're the exception to a very strict rule. I didn't know. I didn't really want to know.
I set the pencil down and stretched. The sky outside was beginning to get lighter. I looked down at the pad to see what I'd scribbled. Staring back up at me was the creature. Far too detailed then it should be. Looked almost like a picture of it. A chill ran down my spine that got worse the longer I looked.
"Get out of my head!" I screamed, throwing the pad across the room.
Great. Not only was sleeping going to suck, but they were going to haunt my waking moments as well. How long before I started hallucinating them around every corner? A quick paranoid check down the hall followed that thought. Apparently, not long. It was about that time I realized I was exhausted. We'd been tracking the humans for three days before we caught up with them and found Keildpar. In that time I had maybe three hours of sleep. My body craved sleep, but my mind really wasn't too keen on the idea. I couldn't blame it. Zoning in memories and drawing those creatures again? I didn't want to imagine what would happen when I fell asleep. Still, eventually I was just going to pass out if I didn't get any sleep now. But there was one last thing I had to do. I picked up the drawing pad and ripped the creature out, rolling it up on the way to the door. The paper seemed to squirm in my hand, as if the creature were moving around on it. I really didn't want to look to see if it was or not. I jumped down the steps, using my wings to soften the landing, and walked over to Kerros' room. By now, he'd be curled up in the little corner of his room he slept in. Bastard could sleep no matter what happened. I envied him a bit. I placed the page in the middle of the floor and walked back out. He'd know what to do with it. Besides, he was the one who could talk. Despite the whole "lone wolf" shit because he had lost his squad, he was quite friendly and social. Intimidating as hell, not many people liked the thought of pissing off a 6 foot black wolf.
Back upstairs, I noticed Kippy pacing in his room. Probably just restlessness. We all got it. You don't easily adjust to wandering overnight. Took me three weeks before I could relax enough to actually sleep through the night. Despite that, it was still rather hard to sleep after getting back from scouting. You just fell naturally back into the habit of not sleeping and living on a razor edge. Having a relative safety was spoiling us. And we all knew it. Which is why we kept going on scouting missions, even though we'd probably already seen and mapped everything within about a mile from here. After that? It got less and less precise the further you went out. One of these days I was gonna pack up as much as I could and head out there; just to see what's there. That'd probably be then I took another gun with me. Just in case.
I unplugged the ropelights, my eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. Despite the things lurking behind my eyes, the dark was welcome. I slid the window panel up and secured it and flopped onto the mattress. I don't think it'd ever felt so good in all the years I'd been here. It felt normal, it felt safe. I grabbed the little fox stuffed animal I had and curled into a ball around it. What can I say, it's the little things in life that keep me going.