Hope with a Capital H

ArcticAvenue

Randomly Pawing At Keys
Joined
Jul 16, 2013
Posts
1,650
((Closed for kristaswallows))

Gibbs gripped the wrench tightly as he pushed it to free the lugnut from bolt. There wasn’t any sign of anyone watching him, nor was there a suggestion he was doing anything scavenging from car no one owned, but its more rare these days that junkyards are left unattended than they were to be fully staffed with killers. He needed this tire though, needed it for any chance to continue on down the road. Risking your life over a tire was just standard for these times. Undoubtedly, it will be the way things are for now on.

In the years since the great wars, the world changed to redefine it’s priorities. Long ago, Gibbs was in that pack that wished to have that one more nice refrigerator or television, or just the cash needed to buy those things. Now a luxury looked more like a can of fruit. In those towns that were burned clean, even firewood was worth more than anything in the world. Gibbs had seen people killed over a bottle of alcohol. So many died during those wars, but so many died since then. The only meek that inherit this earth were those ones that could hunt for their own food.

Gibbs isn’t meak, that’s for sure. The recent years he grew stronger than the flab that grew with his old job, so now his six foot frame was well rounded. He kept his hair tied back, just to keep it out of his eyes for when he had to work like this, but that didn’t stop the beard running down his neck. All of it turning more light brown than the black hair he had back when the world had barbershops to go to. He wore mostly denim, since that seemed to last longer. Plus the more leather he’d wear would make him look more like a threat. Gibbs was smart enough to know that looking like a threat is a ticket to getting killed.

No better example of that was Cutie Pie. A pink hybrid car that has become his transport on this journey. For mauraders out on the roads, Cutie Pie had no real value. There wasn’t much room for anything to haul, she wasn’t powerful enough to break roadblocks, and … let’s just say that a pink car isn’t intimidating. Yet for Gibb’s needs, she’s perfect. Since leaving the mountains out east, the modified tank only was near empty when he had to trade gas for safe passage. He rigged up a mast and sometimes sails across the land like some pink windwagon. Plus with the safes and hidden spots, Gibbs has been able to keep what he needs safe.

All that changed when just a few miles away, she hit something and ripped a tire to pieces. That’s what puts him here, with only two hunting knives in his belt and multi-wrench to protect himself, he came here with the only chance he had to move on. Ready to defend himself if need be, but at this time he had no idea what was out there to defend himself against. Finally the lugnut let loose, the tire was free, yet this wasn’t the time to relax.
 
One creak of metal on metal and she was awake. She opened her eyes and squinted at the band of sunlight that she could see. That was bad. She listened and heard it again. One of the Syckoz scavenging parts for his bike again, probably. Thinking it was safe in the daylight. Assholes.

She slid across the dirt on her belly so she could look around her row. She didn't see anyone. The creaking sound was a few rows over, so she popped out from under the truck and rolled into the shadows of the abandoned cars. No sign that anyone was watching her. She reached back and grabbed her belt, and the long knife. She moved up and over the cars, staying low, knowing where she could put her weight without metal groaning or creaking.

The man didn't have a gun. He had a couple of knives and a funny tool that he was using to take a tire with. She watched, curious. He didn't look like the Syckoz, or the .45ers, or the Dogz of War, or any of the other gangs that rode around, looking for someone to murder and rape. She thought that she remembered men that weren't like that, but she found it hard to trust her memories of the time before. She had been young. She remembered it being light even at night, and never being hungry, and putting on different clothes every day. Other things that made about as much sense.

She knew the best thing was to drop down behind him and cut his throat before the rest of his gang caught up, but she didn't. There was something different about him. So she watched as he got the tire off. In the distance, she saw dust. The Syckoz coming back, maybe, or a new gang. Maybe this guy was one of them. She should kill him.

He looked around, and then he headed out. She went back to her nest and got her blanket. It was thick and waterproof, kept her warm at night, and gave her shade and camouflage when she had to move around in the day. She wore shorts and what was left of an oversized sweater she had taken from a dead man. She only wore boots in the winter, and her last pair was someplace else. She wouldn't remember where, because something terrible had happened there. Something to do with the Syckoz and the dead man whose sweater she wore.
 
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Gibbs told himself as Cutie Pie crept forward down the road towards the junkyard. “You stupid stupid son of a bitch.”

Getting the tire went easier than he expected. Getting it back to the car only was interrupted by a far off rumbled of motorcycles; likely from one of those gangs unafraid to intimidate with the sound of an engine. Yet in these plains, someone could be riding miles and miles away in the opposite direction and you could still hear them. So as things got quiet, Gibbs started to think - the other three tires on that broken down hybrid were in great shape, and Cutie Pie could use a new pair of shoes.

Yet from his experience, the most deadliest thing away from home isn’t the murderers or the rabid former pets or the leftovers from the war. The deadliest thing is pushing your luck. Welcome to the new world, where bad luck makes you a memory.

Against his better judgement, the pink car rolled to a stop just inside the junkyard. He backed it behind a row nearest to the his salvage, hidden well from view but the keys still in the ignition in case he needed to make a run for it. Plan was just to pull the tires off, throw them on the roof, and get someplace safe to make the change.

“Stupid, Stupid, Stupid,” he kept saying, starting to let it get up to a shout. The tool he used wasn’t the best, and it started to strip nuts. Probably if he searched, he could find a real crowbar. There were enough old cars that surely one had one stored in the trunk. But again, you push your luck, and what happens.

He gripped the tool, trying to move the last nut on the first tire, and the it spun out of his hand to the ground.

“Stupid”, Gibbs shouted.

“I’d say,” a voice came from behind him.

Gibbs whirled, and standing there was two men. Both looked far more nourished, and both looked well armed. Even their thick beards were trimmed. One had sandy brown hair that fell out from under a small helmet who if he was alone, Gibbs could take nine times out of ten. The other was big and bald seemingly from genetics, and made the odds tip more in their favor. They wore black leather jackets and riding pants. In the old days, Gibbs would have tagged them as members of a biker gang. Truth is, they probably were, and probably still are.

“Real stupid,” the bald one said. His voice making it clear the first voice was the other guy, because this one was much deeper and more abrupt.

“I assume that you plan to pay for that, my friend,” the sandy haired one said as a wicked looking smile grew on his face.

“Listen,” Gibbs replied. “I thought this was just free salvage. A man’s got to make do with what he’s got, you know. I can just head on down the road, and get what I need from the next junkyard.”

“We own that too,” the bald one returned.

Gibbs paused for a moment. “Okay, then I will head well down the ..”

The smaller one jumped in, “we own that too.”

“Well then, what do you suggest,” Gibbs asked. No good was going to come from this, but he had to be careful. Plan your escape, but don’t look like you are planning your escape.

“I think we need to make sure you don’t go stealing from any of our places,” the little guy said.

“Well, you have my word,” Gibbs replied. “Besides, none of us need to make trouble for each other these days, don’t we? That time has passed.”

“You make trouble for us,” the bald one growled. “So it is only fair.”

“Only fair,” the little guy parroted.

They both started stepping closer to him. Gibbs took stock, knew where his knives were in his belt, no knowing what they are packing yet. He could possibly outrun the big guy, but then if the little one caught him that would just delay the inevitable. Seems Gibb’s luck just run out. Regardless what he could do, trouble was going to happen.
 
She waited, watching the stranger head back out into the waste, rolling a tire in front of him. It was odd that he would risk so much just for one tire, but she had long since learned that people did the things that they did, and sometimes without much in the way of reason. She hadn't lived this long by worrying about what the reasons were. She lived by staying out of sight when she could, and by making sure nobody who saw her lived to tell about it.

"Stay hidden," the man whose sweater she wore had told her. "They won't hunt you if they don't know you're there." Easier said than done, of course. There were too many monsters out there and not enough food and water. She had learned that she couldn't just stay hidden and take what she needed. They missed what she took, and they came looking for her. That was how the man with the sweater died, and how she'd ended up in the cage.

When the man was a safe distance away, she marked the direction he was going in. She could probably track him at night. She wouldn't make any moves during the day, though. She climbed back into her nest under the old truck. The Syckoz knew she was there. They called her Ghost, and she was the reason they didn't come around as much anymore, but they were coming back now. She recognized the sound of their engines. They were still a way off, when she heard something else.

The man had come back, in a little pink car. He started working on the rest of the tires on the car he had hit up before. From her perch on top of the stacked cars, she could see the dust trails of the Syckoz approaching. The man didn't see them, and maybe because of the noise of his odd tool, or maybe because the stacks of cars blocked the sound, he didn't hear them.

They cut their engines a little way off, approaching on foot. She dropped back to the ground, slipped under a car to stay out of sight.

She heard the conversation. She heard the stranger trying to reason with them. He knew he was stupid, but he still did stupid things. She couldn't understand that. She understood that whatever he said, the Syckoz were going to beat him and cut him so he couldn't run and torture him until they got bored. If he was lucky, they'd kill him. Sometimes, they just left people crippled to starve to death. Like the sweater man.

"Only fair," they were saying, and she tasted salt. She was crying. It was two against one, not fair at all. She didn't know why it made her cry, or why she suddenly didn't want to see the man with the pink car crawling across the wasteland with these two men following him, watching him suffer.

"Stay hidden," had been the words she lived her life by since the sweater man had died. She had watched him, and she had taken the sweater from his corpse because she needed something to keep warm, and something to remember him by. But it wasn't fair.

She tucked her knife into her belt, and crawled out from under. She had a small stone in one hand and a fist full of dirt in the other. She moved like a ghost, as they focused their attention on the man with the pink car. She was only a few paces away when she threw the stone.

"Son of a bitch!" the little man said, as the stone bounced off his head. He turned, and she threw the dirt, right in his face. He screamed, both hands going to his face. She had her knife out. She cut him the way he had taught her, the way he had cut the sweater man. Straight across the back of the knee, so he couldn't stand. She dove back under the truck and heard a loud bang. A bullet cut through the metal side panel of the truck, letting a .45 caliber ray of sunlight shine in on her nest. She scrambled back, out the other side of the stack, pulling her blanket behind her.

"Bitch!" the little man called, but his voice was ragged with pain and fear.

"Only fair!," she called back.
 
Whatever it was, it was like a ghost. It flashed amongst them before he even noticed they weren’t alone. In an instant the little one reeled, screamed, twisted, then fell to the ground. So much happened, it was hard to comprehend, and just as quick the ghost was nearly out of sight again. If happened quick, quick enough to stun Gibbs where he stood. The little one, though, showed his quickness enough to begin drawing a weapon. That woke Gibbs up.

The bald one started to turn his attention to the ghost, and Gibbs was on him. Gibbs leaped at the bigger man, wrapping the stout torso with his own limbs. The giant began to stagger, his hands digging caught in a jacket where he was trying to free a gun. Gibbs jerked his body about on the big man until finally he stumbled and fell. Nothing there to break his fall, the bald one’s head slammed against the ground stunning him.

In that instant, Gibbs heard a gunshot loud and nearby, and he rolled away from his opponent. Finding his feet quickly, he saw it was the little guy with the, blood chasing him in a trail near his knee, laid prone and pointing a heavy gauge revolver where the ghost was last seen. Whatever that ghost was, right now that gun wasn’t pointed to him. Gibbs had to snap out of it again if he wanted to keep it that way.

He looked at the bald man, starting to return to his senses. Get the gun, he thought.

Gibbs leaped at the bald man, elbow first, planting bone onto his nose. That satisfying crush of cartilage came with a scream and start of blood. Now with the the big man’s hands rushing to hold is broken face, Gibbs made a move for the inside of his jacket. He gripped the handle on the inside and pulled out a sawed-off double barrel shotgun cut down as short as one can conceive it. The bald guy started swinging wildly through blood covered eyes at Gibbs, but Gibbs had the upper hand. He jumped to his feet, slammed his foot down on the big man’s right arm, then fired off a shell at the palm of his hand.

Gibbs spun back to the little man, and turned to face the barrel of the revolver pointed at him. “Drop it,” the little one screamed through spittled covered lips.

Gibbs raised his hands above his head but kept the shotgun in his hand. He shook his head slowly. Gibbs tried to reason with him. “I could have killed him. Whoever that was before, he could have killed you. Let’s just call this a draw.”

.”Fuckin’ bitch ain’t got the guts to kill me,” he replied pulling back the hammer of the revolver. “Don’t ask if I got the guts.”

The big guy fell to his side, his hand gripped to his chest. By the whiteness of his face, chances are he was going into shock.

Gibbs saw this and shook his head. “This ain’t about guts, man, this is about survival. You and your buddy are still alive, let’s just leave it like that.”

The little one snarled back, “you shot his clutch hand. He can’t ride no more. He might as well be dead.”

Gibbs let out a long sigh, he dropped his hands to his side, the shotgun still in his hand. He shook his head and turned away from the little man, as if a gun wasn’t pointed at him at all. “Jezzus, man. What the hell really. We survived the shit storm of the last few years, you say he’s dead just cause he can’t ride? Bullshit bullshit.”

“I said fucking Drop It!” the little man said still lying on the ground with a gun pointed at him.

Gibbs pointed at the little man with his free hand, the shotgun still at his side. “No, you drop it. Drop this death shit. We are barely alive here the way it is, man. We survived some bad ass shit to be alive today. We’ll have to survive much harsher shit than this today, won’t we?”

The little man wiped some of the spittle from his lips. “Not as bad as what you’ll see, fucker.”

“Nah,” Gibbs shrugged as he wandered closer to the little man defiantly. “I think you know bad shit is still to come. Otherwise you would have shot me by now. For some damn reason, I’m not worth the bullet.”

The little man narrowed his eyes. “Don’t make yourself worth it then, fucker. Drop the gun.”

“That’s where you and I are different,” Gibbs said moving close. “You don’t want to waste your bullet to kill me. Where I don’t want to kill you at all or waste my bullets.”

Gibbs pushed the revolver barrel to the side, the little man not fighting it in a confused pained state.

Gibbs sneered, “Then again, these aren’t my bullets to waste.” The shotgun barrel pressed into the wrist of the little man right next to the revolver handle, and the shell blasted right through the little man’s flesh.
 
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