Melanin Wars

by Taquila Thompson

  “Fine,” she muttered. “But just so you know, I don’t believe that crap you just said to me even more than you did. You’re scared Ty, and I’m not the only one who sees it. We can’t keep going on like this and you know that.” She then sped up and walked a little ahead of me so she didn’t have to look at my face.

  Chapter 2

  We made it to back path a little faster than usualwhich was a good thing. I knew tensions were still kind of high after what had happened earlier but we needed to push on. We had to make sure that we got water and supplies before sundown and found shelter before we were out here with things that we feared far more than whipipo. The beasts that made everyone go jump in the night. We have never came across one face to face yet but the stories and legends about them were enough to not make us try our luck. Besides, the sounds that they made from a distance was enough for us to stick the plan of survival. Not to mention, we’ve seen quite a few corpses that were torn apart by animals.

  “Look, I know that we all are still shaken up about what happened back there but Tysim had a point. We can’t go out there acting foolish and risking everyone’s safety. Once we get more people yeah, but to expect him to have gone out there is a little much. I would have done the same thing, so we just need to accept it. Stuff like that happens everyday and the only way we can make a change and beat it is to keep surviving and find people who are willing to fight back, like us,” said Breyrian as he placed his hand on my shoulder. “He’s the one who constantly has to figure but what’s in the best interest of all of us and all you’re doing is shooting him down everytime you feel he does something wrong. Truth of the matter is I don’t see any of you stepping up trying to lead so let the man do what he does.”

  I smiled. I was a little shocked to hear this, especially from him since he could be so negative sometimes but it was nice to know that somebody had my back in this situation. I thought they all were on the same side and that I was alone in my thinking. “Thanks man, that means a lot.”

  “No problem, I know that I’m not always the best person to deal with in these situations especially with my attitude, but when that happened, I realized that that can be any of us man. On any given day. We have to realize that it truly is a war out here and that there will be casualties. Whether we like it or not. So I feel it’s in all of our best interest to follow you because we tend to get emotional and irrational in our thinking. While you on the other hand, you always look at the bigger picture and that’s what’s been keeping us alive all of these years so who am I to question it,” said Breyrian.

  “I know that we have to think of what’s best for the group and believe me I get that. But that was just a little kid back there. He looked as if he was just five or six. I just wished that we could have done more to help him. Nobody deserves to die that young and to make things worse nobody was even found with him. That means he was surviving out here alone with no protection or no one to care about him. It’s just sad that’s all,” said Ahshay, her voice laced with hurt.

  “I wished I could have helped him but I had to think of all of us. I’m sorry I yelled at you but you have to realize that this world that we’re living in now isn’t the one that we once were accustomed to. Things are worse. Look at what we have to go through just to make it another day. We’ve been living like this for years and sometimes you all still can’t see that I’m doing the best that I can. That if I do half the things that you guys wanted me to do that we would be dead? Had we had found he little boy before the whipipo had gotten a hold of him you know that I would have no problem letting him join us but truth of the matter is we were outnumbered and we would have died,” I said.

  She nodded her head as she wiped some fallen tears from her eyes. We continued on the journey in silence each of us lost in our own thoughts and watching out for cracks in the Earth because one wrong step and it could very well be our last step. We lost two members of our crew to the center of the Earth and I didn’t need to lose anymore. As we continued to walk and the red son continued to beat heavily down on us I heard a rustling sound coming from somewhere. The reason we even took the back route was because there were abandoned stuff that we could hide behind if something or someone was to come. We never walked anywhere for long periods of time where we would be considered “naked.” And oftentimes when we walked to get water we would duck and hide multiple times just to make sure that no one spotted us. We stopped in our tracks to look around but saw nothing that was near us that was making that sound. Maybe I had just imagined it. Just when I was about to wave my hand to signal to keep moving, a skinny red, teenage girl stepped out onto the path. She was a whipipo but she looked like she was on the lower end of the spectrum judging from how she dressed. Her clothes were tattered and she looked as if all of her skin was about to fall off as much as it was peeling. Her eyes widened when she saw us and a slow smile crept across her face.

  “Melanins,” she said excitedly as she took a step towards rubbing her hands together.

  But before she got the chance to say anything else she dropped to the ground instantly with a hole in her head. Blood and brain matter seeped into the ground and I looked over at my side and saw Ahshay with her weapon out and a smile on her face. She looked up at me and shrugged her shoulders. “No chances right?”

  “Yeah, no chances,” I said with a smirk. “We do need to see if she was alone or travelling with someone. We can’t risk the chance of a group of whipipo coming back and hunting us down for what happened to this girl. You know that whipipo rarely travel alone so there has to be at least one other person with her. If we don’t see anybody though we won’t worry about it.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” said Ahshay.

  “Of course you wouldn’t but that’s what you have me for,” I said as I shook my head and laughed. “Everybody spread out a bit and look around and make sure you be on high alert. If you see anyone you know what to do but if it’s too many then fall back and do not engage. Ahshay you come with me, and Breyrian you go with Tyleah. Be careful out there.”

  They nodded their heads and we all set off to look around to see if that girl was a lone traveler. It wasn’t all that weird for anyone to travel the roads alone nowadays because there weren’t a whole lot of us left from what I could tell, but recently people have begun to group up to protect themselves and to survive. Especially the lower level whipipo. As experience over the years have shown, they don’t have issues helping one another out like the melanins.

  “Tysim, I’m sorry for jumping the gun and shooting her, but you know whipipo whether their on the low end of the scale or not all would like to turn us in because of the reward that they will get. I just wanted to make sure that she didn’t get the chance to. But I’ll admit, I should’ve waited to see what you were going to do,” she said as she looked over at me.

  I sighed and shook my head. “You have been becoming more and more reckless Ahshay and it’s starting to worry me a little bit. I mean you know what we have to deal with out here and what we have to do just to get to another day, why are you trying to risk all of that? Why are you willing to throw everything that we have been working so hard to have?” I honestly really wanted to know the answers to my questions because she was beginning to become a little too reckless and it was becoming a problem to me. She never used to be like this and I was wondering what made her change.

  She sighed as she looked at the ground. When she looked back up I saw the tears in her eyes. “Last week was mom and dad’s anniversary and I was just thinking about all the things that we used to do as a family before the sun started shooting flares at us and fucked all of our lives up forever. I just got so angry and in my head, I just, well I just didn’t want to deal with what’s going on right now. But, I promise you that from now on I will be better. I know that we have to stick this out together. I just miss the old life. All this running around and fighting to survive, I’m just over all of it. I don’t see an end in sight.”

  “That’s rig
ht. I know it’s hard, and I didn’t forget their anniversary but you know it is crazy to have to deal with this, especially at your age. But just know that it’s all going to get better,” I said as I tried to reassure her.

  “I honestly don’t even know if I believe that anymore,” she said as she looked away from me.

  I was about to open my mouth and respond to her but something in the distance caught my eye. It was the figures of two whipipo walking towards us with three melanins walking in front of them. I looked at Ahshay and her finger was twitching to pull the trigger on her gun but I knew that she was waiting on my call. I knew that these people probably belonged with the girl we just killed and since it was only two of them, then we could take them and free the three melanins that were with them. I looked down at my sister and as the whipipo got closer we saw the evil smirks spread across their faces as they noticed who we were. They figured that they had just lucked up and would get two more melanins to turn in, but they were wrong.

  “Now,” I said as Ahshay and I both fired our weapons and took the two whipipo out. We walked over towards them and their blood seeped into the ground, staining it. I noticed that there blood was extra thick and it was strange to me but I just shrugged it off The three melanins looked at us with wide eyes, almost with a look off fear as if we were going to kill them next. But the only melanins we’ve ever killed were the ones working with the whipipo to capture us and these ones seemed as if they were being captured themselves.

  “Are there anymore of them?” asked Ahshay as she continued to hold her gun and point it in several directions trying to keep her eyes peeled for any danger.

  The smaller melanin girl with long hair and red eyes spoke up. “Yes, there’s a girl. She went off ahead of them to do something though.”

  I looked at Ahshay and raised my brow letting her know that this is exactly what I meant. If there was one, there was always probably another one. “Don’t worry about her. We handled her earlier when she thought we would be easy prey.. What are your names?”

  “I’m Syreeah,” said the small little melanin girl with red eyes. She looked to be no more than ten but couldn’t be sure since people didn’t really age like that anymore. All of the melanins looked exactly the same in the face as they had since the ‘the end’ started. It was strange and no one new why but none of us cared to find out either.

  “I’m Dereem,” said the tall, slim, melanin boy. He had his hair in dreads and looked to be around my age, but his eyes looked tired as if he were barely hanging in there. I could see the fight in him waning and that would need be a good thing to the two that were around him. If he was their leader and their fight was waning then their lives were at risk. Nothing was worse than a leader who was ready to give up.

  “I’m Taqmaine,” said a beautiful melanin girl with a an even more beautiful smile. She had long, dark hair, white teeth, and her skin was as black as coal but still gorgeous. I almost got caught up in a spell of her beauty but I quickly caught myself.

  “So how did you end up with the whipio?” I asked curiously. The boy looked like he could have taken on at least one of them to try and make the situation easier to get out of. Besides, the battle would have been three on three so they weren’t outnumbered. It was just a little odd.

  “We were coming back from getting water and accidentally ran across their camp. They caught Syreeah off guard and had a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if we didn’t cooperate. She’s our little sister so I couldn’t let anything happen to her so we did. They were going to turn us in for the reward. The girl heard footsteps and came to check it out and when she didn’t come back right away that’s when we were on our way here,” said Dereem. The look in his face read defeat but I wasn’t the type of guy to put someone down. Although, if we were going to help them out and take them in, then he was going to need to grow more of a spine. The last thing you ever do in front of whipipo is show weakness. You never go down without at least some type of fight if you can help it.

  As I nodded my head at him to let him know it was okay, I heard footsteps and someone clear their throat behind us. I turned around, weapon raised, but lowered it when I saw that it was Breyrian and Tyleah. “Guys, these are Syreeah, Dereem, and Taqmaine. We just saved them from these whipipo and these two are Breyrian and Tyleah. They are the other two members of my team.”

  They all said hi to one another and then an awkward silence came over the group. I knew that my team members were waiting for them to speak but I had a feeling that they were still too shaken up to say much of anything.

  “You said the whipipo had a camp around here. Does it have water and food? Because I’m afraid that we won’t make it to the water before it gets dark and I don’t want my team to go the rest of the day without any water in their bellies. It gets dangerous,” I said as I looked at the group in front of us.

  “Yes, they have water, food, and little tents up to sleep in,” said Syreeah. “We thought that it was a good place to camp in before we were blindsided. But I guess now that they’re taken care of it’s still a good place to camp out.”

  I nodded my head. “Show us where the camp is and we will just stay there for tonight. Once we see what they have we can take inventory and see if we still need to make the trip or not to the water and get supplies tomorrow.”

  Everyone nodded their heads in agreement and we began to follow behind the three new melanins to the whipipo camp. I just hoped that by doing so I was making the right decision for my group but its not like I had much of a choice. It was either go to this camp and see what they had that we could use or have my crew and I die of thirst. A short while later we came upon a little camp that was set up between some abandoned cars. There were three tents there, a makeshift table, some pots, jugs of water and some fruit and nuts.

  “This might work,” said Bryrian as he surveyed the camp with a smile.

  “Maybe, just look around and see what they have useful that we will need to survive out here,” I said. “These tents are open so I don’t know if they will be all that protective against things that go bump in the night. We’re probably going to need other things just to protect us.”

  He nodded his head and we all split up to look around the camp. I found a total of about 100 water bottles filled with water, two first aid kits and some lighters. Once we met up in the middle of the camp to examine what we had found it was some old canned goods, nuts, fruits, water, first aid kits, some clothes, backpacks, old magazines, lighters, and three knives. They didn’t have any guns or things like that that would protect us so we would have to make due.

  “Okay so the first thing we need to discuss is this, are you three coming along with us or are you continuing on and doing your own thing?” I asked them. I hoped that they would decide to join us and that way our crew would be that much better.

  They all looked at each other and looked back at us.

  “We’ll come with you guys. We haven’t been doing all that good on our own,” said Dereem. “And after Syreeah almost got killed I don’t want that to repeat again. I need my sisters, they’re all I have left. I don’t know what I would do without them.”

  “Parents died to?” I asked curiously.

  He nodded his head. “Yes, but before all this craziness happened. Car accident, a drunk driver hit them.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said as I looked them over giving them my sympathy. I guess that’s the one thing we all had in common.

  “It’s okay, we’ve grown accustomed to it,” he said.

  I nodded my head. “Well, I guess that we can split everything between the six of us. That definitely would make it easy for all of us to carry,” I said as my voice trailed off as I looked closely at the little girl Syreeah. There was nothing weird about her having red eyes, with all the changes all of our eyes had changed colors, mine were almost orange, but there was something a little off about hers and it didn’t sit well with me. I stared at her a little longer and that’s when I
saw it, there was a little flash coming out of her eyes as if she were recording us. As I stared a little longer I realized that’s exactly what was happening I pulled out my gun and immediately fired my gun into the girl’s eye and as soon as I did my crew lifted their weapons and pointed. They knew that I wouldn’t fire at anyone for no reason, especially a melanin, so they knew that this had to be serious business.

  “Why the hell did you just kill my sister?” cried out Dereem as he looked at his sister laid out on the ground.

  I looked down at the girl and back at him. “Who are you and who are you working for? I saw the camera in your sister’s eyes, I don’t see it in either one of you but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have one on you anywhere else,” I said as I glared at them both with my gun still drawn. Any melanin that had a camera in them more than likely meant trouble for us, which was the last thing we needed.

  Dereem looked at Taqmaine and then back at us. “Our sister had got captured by the whipipo and the NWO at the beginning of the war. She’s young so of course she let them experiment on her instead of dying. They put the camera in her eyes so that when she got sent back out she could help them capture melanins by getting them to trust her and then turning them in. Then she ran into us like a day ago and almost didn’t recognize us because she had been gone for so long. We wanted to help her even if it meant that we ourselves got turned in to the whipipo. We just wanted to be a family again no matter the cost.”

  “Does the camera give out our location and where we can be found at?” I asked. Some of the cameras the whipipo put on people were only used to spy on activities and I hoped that this was one of those cameras but in my gut I knew that it wasn’t.

  He nodded his head slowly. “Yes, this camera gives our location.”