The World of Hope

by Parker Fentress

  “Yes, that is them. The left behinds are the Outsiders, and Unity is just killing them all, like a mass murder,” I started to freak out, and I was shaking so much, that I lost contact with the floor, and fell down.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen, everyone should’ve made it, I don’t get why they are doing this,” I started repeating that over and over, finally making contact with the floor again.

  Sam slowly stood up and looked out the tiny window. She quickly shot back down.

  “They are outside right now, in a group of three. I don’t know what is going on but they are standing there,” she got up again quietly and went to go close the door.

  We sat still on the floor for a few minutes longer, banging could be heard from down the hallway and the stairs, vibrating the glass door of The Diner.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Tommy shouted.

  “Shit, why are they here?” he said outlaid rhetorically and panicking.

  “It’ll be fine, they won't get in. They won’t!” Sam whispered in fear.

  I was shaking uncontrollably from the Bang! Bang! Bang! Sound on the door could be heard within our dark thin-walled room.

  Then there was silence, and moments, moments, moments, passed by.

  The moment I was most scared was from the sound of the glass finally shattering into little bitty size pieces, the sound of thumping, crawling up the walls and through our hearts, I stopped breathing, Tommy stopped breathing, Sam stopped breathing, we were dead for that moment.

  The door remained shut, and the lights stayed off, like the train, it was apparent they had flash lights.

  They kicked a door open, the one that Sam’s Dad was in.

  “Oh, no. We have to do something Luis, we have to get up and stop them!” she said loudly.

  “Sam, they have machine guns! What do you want us to do, walk in there so they will blanket clouds of bullets right through us? There has to be a clear misunderstanding, just wait, just wait!” I said to her trying to reassure her, yet I was doubtful that the end would be good.

  Tommy laid his head down on the floor and cried, and I sat rocking back and forth as my heart raced through my shirt.

  Bang, bang bang!

  A soft whimpering sound came from Sam.

  “Samantha, it is all going to be okay. It is going to be fine,” I tried to reassure her.

  All of a sudden, our door was smashed in. Everything happened so quickly, in a matter of seconds, I was being hit by the butt of a machine gun. One, two, three blows to the head, and I was out, black and unconscious.

  We laid there, in that tiny room, selfless and defenseless. Laying there, not breathing, not making any sound.

  12

  We woke up right where we had left our own minds, in the darkness, we laid about, Sam still with her eyes closed and Tommy with his eyes open but not getting up. He wasn’t dead and neither was Sam, which was the most important thing to me.

  I got up, and quietly tapped on Tommy’s shoulder. Finally, I started to shake him, and he blinked, and I took a breath of relief.

  I whispered to him, “Tommy, I need you to get up. I need you to help me move her Dad’s body out of sight so that she won’t see it. We need her to think they took him, so she doesn’t get scared.”

  He replied, “don’t you think that is kind of fucked up Luis, I mean really. God, my fucking head, it just hurts. Fuck!”

  I said quickly and quietly, “Tommy, shh. You need to be quiet. You don’t understand, I barely know her, she barely knows you, when she wakes up, if she sees his body, she will think it was us that brought this down on her, that it was us that got him killed by whatever those militants are.”

  “We need to make her think they took him, and we need her to feel that we are her only way out of this. Not the opposite otherwise we won’t get help,” I said nervously.

  Tommy nodded his head, rubbing his purple forehead back and forth.

  We opened the door, and the hall was dark. The blackout was still in effect. I went first and crept into the dark passageway, I tried to think that it was all over, there was nothing to be afraid of.

  Tommy was right behind me, his hands on my shoulders as I blindly led us through the hall, straight ahead towards the blue light coming from the room, which Sam’s Dad was hiding in.

  Slowly, we freakily tapped open the door to the room at the end of the hall. The strange light came from behind the door, and it filled that of the hallway. We stepped in.

  Sam’s Dad’s blood splattered along the edges of the wood floor boards, his chin was cut open like a river flowing up his cheek. His eyes were gouged, one dangling from his socket, and one nowhere to be found, leaving an abyss of mesmerizing pools of ooze.

  Tommy put his hand up to his nose.

  I agreed, “man, this does smell like shit!”

  “We need to get him to the incinerator downstairs. You think we can lift him down?” I asked.

  “Yes, I think we will be fine, but man,” he walked towards the thin window.

  “Look at this,” Tommy said, as I peered out the window.

  The bright blue lights came from tall white poles, with the Unity emblem on them. Men stood in lines, shackled with their heads down. The men we had seen in the suits with guns, were shooting the men who were chained. Like caged animals, all shot at once, falling into the pits that were towed away by trucks.

  “Holy shit!” I yelled.

  We just stood there, looking out. There is nothing that could be done. They would shoot, and tow, shoot and tow, and then finally, as if the owner had whistled the dogs back into their homes, they all disappeared, along with the light.

  I looked over at Tommy, “we need to get moving. I will get his head if you got his feet, and you or I can go down first.”

  Awkwardly, Tommy went in for his legs, and I instantly grabbed his bashed head, uncaring for the blood staining my clothes.

  “He is so heavy!” I said vigorously, lifting him up to my shoulders.

  Tommy replied, “just hold him up, so we can get him down.”

  One stair, then another. We groped the lifeless body down the stairs. At first, down that first few steps. Tommy slid, causing my heart to beat faster while hoping Sam wouldn’t wake up. “The incinerator is behind the podium in the kitchen. We get the body there, he’ll be ash in an instant,” I said.

  Tommy just shook his head, shaking with shock from all the bodies that we had seen outside.

  I had seen death, but I had not seen mass murder by firing squad.

  When we had finally reached the bottom of the stairs, Tommy dropped him on the floor, leaving a small pool of sticky cold blood trailing behind us. I wiped it with my shoe, as Tommy picked the slug off the ground.

  I said, “just through that first door there will be another glass door covering flames, just open it up and slide his feet in and come over to me so you can help push him in.”

  Tommy nodded awkwardly again. He kicked the door open behind him into the creepy dark kitchen, and he slid up the glass door covering the hot flames and carefully slid his legs into the furnace of flames.

  I grunted from relief, and Tommy slid past me and grabbed the other end of his shoulders and we pushed the dead body into the incinerator which a harsh smell of burned flesh stung our nostrils.

  The glass door shut.

  I quickly ran over to the sink as fast as I could, removed my shirt, and washed my hands, scratching away the gross, now darkened brown blood from my pale skin.

  Tommy just stood back, shaking his head, shaking his body, still in shock from what he had seen.

  Tommy was disturbed beyond belief, I was not. I was finally clean, and I walked back to him and grabbed him for a quick hug, which I had hoped maybe would calm him down.

  “Luis, I didn’t think something like this would happen. I didn’t think that Unity would do this to us. We are all in trouble here,” Tommy said.

  “Tommy, they killed your parents and tol
d you they were re-stationed. They are out to do anything to make sure that they get rid of everyone trying to expose the truth, and those who got stuck here from when KS was a real functioning alien planet,” I shot back.

  He didn’t respond, we just stood there, arm in arm, and he finally stood back.

  I said, “I need to get a shirt, I can’t have her see me without a shirt. After that, let’s go wake her up. I am sure I can figure something out."

  We walked back upstairs, and halfway up the crooked stairs, the lights came back on, and an announcement with it.

  “Attention Citizens. Unity has lifted the blackout and would like to assure you that, the world is safer today than it was yesterday. You may resume normal activities and all other tasks including powering up your homes. No need to be alarmed, Unity is by your side. Taking pride in the safety of our community comes first. Unity, the first Global Government Republic, good day.”

  Tommy and I stopped on the stairs, looked around, and then back up as we began walking again.

  We entered the room where we were attacked, and still on the floor was Sam, with a trickle of dry blood near her eye.

  I squatted down beside her, and I patted her hair softly, “Sam? Are you awake? It is all over, it's all okay.”

  For a moment, there was silence, but then she started to twitch.

  She made small noises, and finally stretched out her arms yawning and opened her eyes.

  “Is it over? Is everyone okay?” she asked quietly rubbing her eyes.

  My head pounded from the headache of being hit, this was probably my third concussion in a year.

  I replied, “it is alright. We are fine. Just sit up, and we can get you downstairs. We need to get ahold of Anthony.”

  She just kind of sat there, and as if she had remembered it all and asked, “have you checked on my Dad?”

  Tommy said, “no, we haven’t. We just stayed in here, waiting for you to wake up. It is terrible what Unity is doing. After they came in here, they knocked us all out.”

  She quickly stood up, and then caught herself before falling down.

  “I need to see if he is okay, they went in there, I know they did,” Sam said frantically.

  Tommy and I sat there looking at each other, “what had we done” was what I thought in my head, but it had to happen. We couldn’t let her see what they had done to her Dad.

  Sam tried to get up again and fell back down, but this time Tommy caught her. She slowly walked over to the door and slid her fingers along the knob. I noticed she had bruises like that of someone who had grabbed her wrists violently after the knockdown.

  She stuttered a moment, seeing that her dress was ripped, torn and threaded, she dazed past the thought of what she might have suffered unconsciously. She walked through the yellow lit halls, illuminating all the photographs of her father, mother and herself, young, old and current. Sam got to her Dad’s door, and knocked ever so quietly saying, “Dad?”

  I asked, “is he in there?” I received no reply.

  “Samantha?” I asked again.

  She stood there like she had nothing weighing her down, she turned around and said violently, “he is not there! He is not there, and there is nothing. Nothing there no evidence, the fucking crooks. They either took him, or he ran off with them by force, because I see nothing in here that shows he was hurt!”

  She threw herself down onto the top stair and cried into her cracked and bruised hands.

  “We will find him, Sam. Anthony is going to help us, we will fix this. Tommy and I will be with you to fight every step of the way,” I wasn’t sure what to say next.

  Tommy and I waited, and gave Sam some space. I walked downstairs, and I sat back at the corner table. I saw that Sam got up and went back to her room only to shut her door.

  Tommy grabbed himself and I a cup of coffee, in these old white and red striped coffee mugs.

  “Do you think we did the right thing?” Tommy asked.

  I replied, “I think we did what we had to do, let's leave it alone and try to forget about it.”

  He said, “for all we know, if she finds out, we are fucked, there is no coming back from that. Even if she thinks that we know something, if we know that he is dead and that we are chasing some imaginary man that she thinks is her Dad, she will doubt us and our plan. We need trust, so the moment she comes out of her room, she is going to expect us to have a plan. So, what is our plan, Luis?”

  I thought carefully about the words I would say next, “we will tell her we need to go to the hotel room and wait. I should be receiving some sort of communication any time now, as to what Anthony is doing right now.”

  He said, “okay, so we will say that. She will be fine with that. I hope she is a keeper Luis, otherwise she’ll be is a ticking time bomb.”

  In my mind, I expected everything to go so smoothly, but somehow they knew where we’d be, or maybe they didn’t. Maybe Samantha and her Dad have been a target for a while now, maybe her Dad, like most, wasn’t who he said he was or doing what everyone thought he did.

  His crime to Unity was trying to bring back something from the past, the ability that has been guided by the idea of nostalgia, that no one could forget. I thought in a variety of ways, people knew what was going on, they knew what Unity was doing. If they would do it out in the open, shooting people one by one. They knew we would be watching, so they shot and killed over fifty people in front of our eyes, just long enough we would catch a glimpse of what Unity really was. A chaotic destroying machine. As machinic as The Councilor, President Crysler was in a corner, left to destroy what might throw our people into mass chaos, something he has prevented through blind news and random shortages of power for protection.

  13

  Tommy and I still sat at the table when Sam came down from upstairs. She had changed into jeans and a dark shirt, her face fine despite the obvious pain caused by the blackout.

  I asked with concern, “are you okay?”

  Sam replied, “I’m fine. So, what is the plan? We can’t just stay here now, I really don’t feel safe.”

  I tried reassuring her and said, “we need to head back to the hotel, it is safer there. We can go to our room and await Anthony’s message, it is supposed to come this afternoon, we have to be there soon.”

  Sam nodded and Tommy said, “okay, so let’s grab whatever we need, maybe some snacks whatever, you know.”

  She said, “yeah, I have my bags packed, one with clothes one with food and any tools I could find. My Dad always said, “A man without tools is a man not prepared to work, a man unprepared to work will be stuck in a hole waiting for some other man to come,” or something like that, so I figured we could bring them anyways.”

  I smiled, and I figured that she knew what she was doing more than I did.

  I headed out to Tommy’s nice blue car, and as usual it looked dirt free. It is strange, how someone with such a messed-up life, was still able to have something so perfect and beautiful. I was envious of his car. Like a great tragedy, with everything not so perfect on the outside, we still have things that are good on the inside.

  I threw in the three bags that Sam had and looked up at the sky then back down past the towering buildings. The small cafe sat there, Toodles. That was all it was, not some classic diner, but an image of what used to be there, and what used to be there on Earth. It is empty and not worth a dime now, empty it’ll always be.

  We hopped in the car, like nothing had happened after all, the street out from the cafe was perfectly clean. No blood, or trails of smoky ash. There were no shadows of what happened a few hours before when we saw what the men in uniforms were doing to the people.

  “It’ll take about five minutes to get to the hotel, it’s right around the corner,” Tommy said.

  Sam replied in a very unemotional tone, “okay, just get us there.”

  In my head, I couldn’t imagine anyone bitchier. It flashed in my mind of the woman who had me interrogated just prior
to my arrival back where I thought was home.

  I examined Sam’s complexion, which I had never done before. I noticed the soft creases of her eyelids, high cheekbone, dimples, and the lightly speckled freckles across her face. She wasn’t rumbled by any storm, but then again, she was the storm.

  My phone started to ring, and I quickly glanced away from Sam’s face, “Hello?” I answered.

  It was Anthony, “Luis, Luis, it is Anthony, I don’t know where Dr. Kolash is. There is something wrong here. I was outside during the blackout, and something went wrong. Kolash wouldn’t come with me, he just wouldn’t. You need to be at the hotel in the next few minutes. I will be waiting in the room.”

  Anthony hung up before I could say anything. Just as I had a strange feeling, I realized that Dr. Kolash had been entrapped into the seductive scent of Dunshop.

  Tommy looked over and asked, “was that him?”

  “It was. It’s not good, we need to meet him in the room. Let’s leave all our stuff in here, I think we will need to relocate fast. It is a good idea anyway considering they have probably gotten a trace on us,” I said,

  Sam replied, “I know a place we can stay if it is here. I don’t know just how far and how much of New York was taken from Earth.”

  I looked at her glossy eyes and wondered what went on in her mind.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “My grandma. She’s a bit senile, it’s sad in a way, but she isn’t any harm so I don’t know why Unity would go after her, it would be the last place they’d look too. She is really low and quiet and really stuck in the past. Her house is quite out of style, but it works for now. I am sure it would be nice to get out of the city for a while anyway, it seems like all the darkness is here even in the light,” Sam said.

  Tommy nodded his head up and down, “I like her idea. We need to talk to Anthony about this.”

  I replied, “there is something he is going to want us to do, and I am afraid that if we go there, we might get stuck there. Not because we will be held against our will, but because the place is filled with divine addiction. All the people there, are deemed holy of planet KS. Like they are regarded as the first and the purest of KS. If we go there, we need to be careful, and we need to watch out, but we will see what Anthony tells us. He said something bad happened, and that he was out during the blackout. I can't even imagine what he has to say.”