The New Horsemen

by Nikolai Swartz

  Nikolai Swartz

  INTRODUCTION

  Someone once told me that we choose our own destinies. I guess nobody will ever really know how true this is as your destiny could simply just have been what you chose. But that’s a vicious circle for another time.

  I want to tell you the untold story of four powerful misfit teenage warriors that saved mankind from the brink of extinction… but to tell you that story I would need to start at the beginning, before they were great.

  This is the untold legend. This is the story of the New Horsemen.

  CHAPTER 1 - A DREAMER

  Sprinting down the hallway with his trainers squeaking against the cold hard tiles, Warren clutched onto the strap of his backpack for dear life. He had not considered this mad dash when he only slung it over a single shoulder. The incredible weight of his backpack swung wildly, dragging him to the ground, forcing him into a desperate crawl to regain his footing. Being such a scrawny teenager made it difficult to run with a bag this size. His wild brown hair usually hung just above his eyebrows, but the sweat running down his face had stuck the strands together. He swiped away the perspiration with his forearm and flicked it off. His white school shirt was slightly stained from the perspiration that managed to escape the vest that he wore underneath and his lose fitting grey slacks were starting to chafe against the inside of his legs.

  Mr. Berns was not the friendliest of his teachers and not the smallest either. As mean as he was new to the school, Mr. Berns seems to have taken a liking to picking on him.

  There was nothing truly defining about Warren... He was not particularly tall or wide. He didn’t really have the typical adolescent pimples. In fact, many people remembered him by the fact that his backpack was in stark disproportion to the size of his body. Even his skin was paler than the average teenager… a testament to how much time he spent in front of the television with a video game controller in his hands. He had standard brown eyes and brownish-black hair.

  His greatest enemy was punctuality. The year was almost halfway through and yet he still hasn’t had a day that he was early to Mr. Berns classroom.

  He reached the final corner, bouncing around it on one foot, bursting through the classroom doors, he found himself the main focal point of all his peers and his lecturer. The silence in the room was immense, but was quickly replaced by the sound of whispers and murmurs from the students.

  Like an outer body experience, Warren watched himself avoiding the judgemental stares of his peers. He couldn’t bring himself to move. His fear of public speaking didn’t help the matter any. He finally looked around at the giggling faces across the room, before turning to his teacher that was watching him with folded arms and the corner of his silver moustache curled up on one side.

  Warren started mumbling, trying his best to catch his breath and explain, but he couldn’t construct a coherent sentence. The giggling became louder the harder he tried to explain himself.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Mr. Berns asked, “This is the latest so far. I was even starting to wonder if you’d even show up at all”

  Warren froze, just staring into the white pupils behind the thick glasses of his grey haired teacher.

  “One thing that I must say, at least you’re consistent?” Mr. Berns continued when he wasn’t getting a response from the petrified teen, “Obviously you have no regard for this subject or my class or your peers for that matter”

  “But…” Warren could only muster a single word before his teacher interrupted.

  “Your butt should be in your chair when that bell rings” Mr Bern’s watched him just stand there, avoiding eye contact, “So get in your chair and pay attention”

  Releasing an audible sigh, Warren walked to his seat near the centre of the students, and slumped into his chair, defeated and drained. He began flicking the collar of his white shirt in an attempt to cool off; his body still warm from the run.

  Warren was grateful that the rest of the lesson went by relatively smoothly. His lecturer said nothing further to him directly, and spent the rest of the lesson talking about some guy named Sun Tzu.

  The bell ringing was like a warning alarm to him. He knew that if he was last, he runs the risk of Berns asking him to stay behind. Grabbing his text book, he had difficulty getting it into his backpack as he squeezed through the people and quickly out of the front door. Passing by the window, he peeked through just in time to notice Mr. Berns staring at him intently.

  “What happened this morning?” Luis, Warrren’s best friend since primary school, asked. He was slightly taller than Warren with a chubbier build that made him seem almost cuddly. The pair walked through the school field, amongst the scattered groupings of teenagers that littered the grass.

  “Remember that dream that I told you about…” Warren asked somewhat hesitantly,

  “The one about you being killed by some guy with a sword…?” Luis responded

  “Exactly! I had it again last night, but it’s becoming more and more real. This time I could tell that we were in some street somewhere. He had me pinned to the ground, and… and I was reaching for something” Warren shivered as if the temperature just dropped a few notches.

  “Man… you have some freaky things going on in that head of yours. Maybe you should see a psychiatrist”

  Warren just laughed nervously. He didn’t know what to think of it. The realism still plagued his mind, it was so real that he swore he could still feel a bruise on his back from being slammed to the ground and he even remembered the smell of his attacker’s breath. No matter how real it had seemed, he knew that his friends would just play it off as an over active imagination. Not wanting to appear more psychotic than he already does, Warren chose to change the conversation… but the only other thing that came to mind was her… In fact, she was all he could think about most of the time. So he decided to ask anyway.

  “How’s Kimberley doing?”

  “Ha… “ Luis exclaimed somewhat more dramatically than what was needed, throwing his arms in the air, “Still on that matter, are we?”

  After a moment of silence, Luis sighed deeply, frustrated that they spoke about her on a daily basis. In fact, being Luis’s older sister, he found himself growing tired of the topic quickly. Just a few weeks ago, he discovered that his best friend has eyes for his sister.

  The topic came up during their ritual weekend sleepover, when she was getting ready to go out with her friends and Victor, her bulldozer sized boyfriend that plays on the school rugby team. She stepped into the room to get her usual commentary from Luis about her looks… which, though usually horrible and insulting, she found herself getting strength from the negativity that came from her younger brother. But, Luis, deciding to mix things up this particular night, took one look at her sleeveless dark red dress that ran down to her knees and responded with, ‘Ask Warren’ before turning his attention back to his videogame. Caught off guard by the remark, Warren found himself tripping over his words. All that initially came out of him was the repetition of ‘I’ and ‘my’. Tough as it was, Warren finally managed to muster the word ‘Okay’ in a very high key. After a playful spin, she skipped out of the room.

  Luis glanced at his friend just long enough to notice how red he had gone. He paused his videogame to take a better look at the flustered teen.

  Through some vigorous questioning, Luis finally managed to get the truth from Warren.

  Initially, for the first few weeks, he took joy in teasing Warren about it at every available opportunity. Like when she would ask him to bring something to her room, he would send Warren instead, despite the feeble attempts of protests that he got in return.

  “Dude, I try to talk you up around her, but she’s not interested in younger guys” Luis fin
ally spoke when he realised that Warren was actually expecting a response, “She’s with Victor… and the sooner you realize that Victor is the pretty-boy sporty type that always gets the girl, the better off you’ll be”

  “Thanks…” All enthusiasm was drained from Warren’s voice and replaced with the sarcasm of a defeated man, “What a nice friend you are”

  Luis suddenly stopped walking, prompting Warren to stop ahead of him, “I’m not trying to be mean, bud…” Luis had quickly realized what he had said, “I’m just being honest. An honest friend is much better than a comforting friend”

  “I just--I just want her to give me a chance… th--that’s all I ask for”

  Luis slung his arm across Warren’s shoulder’s in an attempt to comfort him, “A chance that you will only ever get if you travel to the depths of hell and back”

  “Yeah…” Warren didn’t feel like arguing further, removing the heavy arm from his scrawny shoulders.

  “Besides, he’s a really nice guy once you get to know him”

  “Not to me…” Warren said with great concern, “He basically wants to kill me”

  “That’s because you hitting on his girl… what do you expect? A hug…?”

  “Not getting beaten to a pulp is a good request” Warren’s concern grew more noticeable.

  “And if you stay away from my sister that will be a reasonable request as well”

  “Thanks…” Warren responded sarcastically with a pat on his friend’s shoulder, “Good talk…”

  CHAPTER 2 - THE WAR HAS BEGUN

  The bell rang and all the kids flocked towards the gate that led back into the school building. Warren found himself separated from Luis, but figured that they have the next class together and will meet up when he finally manages to make his way there through the crowd.

  He inched along with the tightly knit crowd, just trying to not lose his balance along the way. Step by step, he walked along with the crowd. It didn’t take much effort on his behalf as the crowd push him along the path.

  Throughout his entire schooling career, Warren had developed a few cardinal rules for survival… and one of them was to avoid eye contact en route to your destination. Keeping his head low made it easier to avoid getting into trouble with anyone.

  Suddenly he felt an intentional bump to his side. He was sure that it felt intentional. Warren looked up to find her walking beside him with a smile as bright as day. ‘It was really her’ he thought to himself. Though she did this on a daily basis, he couldn’t help but be pleasantly surprised each time. He did not know why, but every day she would popup next to him, seemingly from nowhere and would just start talking. These were the moments of each day that he waited for. Warren couldn’t explain just how much he hated being at school. But she made every day painless and exceptional. Often times it did not even matter what it is that she was talking about, just that she was there and that she was talking to him. He would watch her petite cherry red lips as she would continue on about some subject that annoyed her or teacher that she didn’t agree with. Knowing that she must have chosen the lip colour to best compliment her long and curly red hair.

  “Hey…” she said in the happy tone that has come to define her

  “Hi…” was all he managed to happily conjure up through the surprise.

  “How you doing?” she tried to modify her voice to mimic one of her favourite sitcom characters.

  Warren let out a nervous giggle, trying his best not to over sell it, “Can’t complain… just looking for Luis”

  “Yeah… the infamous Luis vanishing act”

  “We’re going to the same class, so I guess I’ll see him there”

  Despite the hundreds of kids that surrounded them, there was a deafening silence between them that seemed to drown out all the other chitters and chatters, the rumbling and chorus of footsteps… everything faded away, as it always did around her.

  “So, do you come here often?” she broke the silence, having become agitated by it.

  Warren couldn’t help but laugh at the question. “Nah… just dropping by… you know, visiting”

  They had finally made their way through the crowd and into the hallways and had stopped in front of her class.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting to your next class, mister?” she asked when she noticed him stopping with her.

  “Not really. Ms. Wilkinson isn’t here today, so we have a substitute”

  “So you’re taking advantage of the substitute?” She asked with her fake parenting voice.

  “No, ma’am…” He tried his best not to laugh through his poorly presented cowboy impression, “Just making sure you get to your destination safely”

  Another silence fell between them as they awkwardly avoided eye contact. Well, at least she tried. He gave in and watched her as she stared down the crowded hallway at nothing. Her skin looked to be as soft as silk. He wanted nothing more than to touch her, but had to fight back the urge.

  He watched as the light breeze pulled at her hair and her clothes, playing dangerously with the uniformed blue skirt that was compulsory.

  Warren was still watching beads of perspiration on her neck from the warm sunny day, when suddenly his head filled with millions of voices, all whispering, loud nothings in his ears. He looked around desperately, trying to find the source. The noise clouded his thoughts and got louder and louder and louder. He put his hands on either side of his head, in some poorly devised plan to squeeze the voices out, as if his head was an overgrown pimple.

  Kimberley giggled, noticing him looking back and forth, “What’s wrong?” She asked but he did not respond, “Are you losing it?”

  Though the voices didn’t seem to come from any particular direction, he could feel something coming at him through the crowd. That’s when Warren saw him. The tall jock was unmistakable, even through the thick layers of school children that filled the school hallways. His calm and confident walk was obvious. The voices stopped as if they were simply turned off by a switch.

  “You know…” Warren said to Kimberley in a panic, not removing his eyes from Victor, who was still pushing through the crowd “I gotta go… I just remembered that I have a… a… doctor’s appointment”

  Warren didn’t think about what he was saying when he said it, but it didn’t matter. He quickly turned around and began weaving through the crowd, leaving Kimberley standing on her own, baffled at the event. But before she could react or say anything further, Victor gave her a kiss on the cheek from behind before pushing around her to chase after Warren through the crowd.

  Victor was not your average teen. With incredibly broad shoulders, he was already as intimidating as can be. Through his school uniform you could notice the well-defined physique that made him the great sportsman that he is. Though his arms were not particularly large, they were long and ripped, with veins splitting into tributaries that led down the entire length of his arms. His incredibly well defined six pack, has started myths such as it being capable of deflecting bullets. With his gelled back blonde hair and rugged features, he invaded the fantasies of many of the girls at the school, and even some teachers. Some would say that his arrogant stare with those baby blue eyes could make any girl’s knees weak.

  Pushing through the endless sea of teenagers, Warren looked back but couldn’t see anything over the heads of the kids around him. This was no comfort and only made him panic more. Before he knew it, he had pushed through to the inner circle of a group of Goth kids. His heart stopped when he noticed that they were all staring him with their dead stares. Everyone in the school knew better than to mess with the Goth kids. The other students avoided them like they would get some kind of contact disease.

  He knew that sooner or later, Victor would catch up and knew that he had to keep moving, so he squeezed back out of the circle, inadvertently shoving Seth aside, into a group of ‘Barbie dolls’, who quickly started screeching when they realised who it was. They began waving the hands at him, trying to avoid touching him at a
ll.

  If the small band of Goth kids had a leader, the general consensus would be that it would be Seth. He watched Warren disappear back into the sea of teenagers; his deep black eyes locked with an intensity that could shake the souls of many men. His long black greasy hair hung down the side of his head and onto the collar of the long black trench coat that he wore over his school uniform, casting an ominous shadow over his face. He slowly and deliberately straightened his collar, while staring through the crowd with the pearl black eyes that has struck fear into so many of his peers.

  Trying his best to catch his breath, Warren leaned back against the large wooden doors at the end of the hallway. Panting heavily, he put his hands on his knees to support his weight. The thick layer of teenagers made it difficult to determine if he was still being pursued, but something kept him from moving away from that location. Though uncertain if it was fear or just an indication of how unfit he is, he still couldn’t get his feet to move.