There Isn't Home Anymore (Closed to BassPlayerRob)

[CarnivalBarker]

Riley Kane thought she heard a sound. She pulled her pistol before edging around the corner. It was silent. There had been nothing. For years now, she could never be too sure. When she was ten, the lights went out in the city one night and never came back on. She had watched as raiders abducted men, women, and boys in the streets, from her perch on the 11th floor condo where she had been raised by her single mom and her older brother.

"Stay here," her mother said one night, after the raiding parties had seemed to have left. Water and food had been scarce, lasting only a couple of weeks, and her mother had decided something had to be found. It was the last time the children saw her. Days passed and then weeks, and her brother, four years older, determined to raise her as best he could, until he could get her out of the building, then out of the city to a safe place near the shore. He knew the value of a teen girl. And he knew the danger her very existence was to her and to him. And each day, after the rebuilding had begun, he went to the streets, volunteered for the occupying forces, earned a daily ration for a single boy, and returned home each night, often giving the ration to her while he hunted a rat, or perhaps a dog, to get himself by. At night, he taught her what he could, while also making sure her warrior and survival skills were passable. Again, there was only so much he could achieve.

When she was sixteen, Riley began to bleed. The blood was so bad, and from a place so unexplored, that her brother feared for her security. He had never raised a girl and didn't know what to do. He found a doctor employed by the new government, and plead with his sensibilities to help her without revealing her existence to authorities. Of course, fearing reprisal, after counseling them both and explaining what she was experiencing was normal, the doctor reported them both. Her brother learned of the call before anything could be done, and it was then that he whisked her out, in the dark of night, along the alleys and corridors, leading to the darkest edge of the burned out metropolis, to hide yet again. For two years, he served her and awaited her 18th birthday - the time she could be emancipated and no longer subject to become a ward of the state. And every night, from then until now, he and she together had fought off and hid from various raiders and city dwellers that would occasionally stumble onto their lair. It had never come that they had to fight the authorities, but she knew that, even at 18, she had value to powerful people in high places, and her survival, at least as she knew it, was not ever certain. Now, Riley walked quietly down the corridor, the burned out building crumbling as she searched for any sort of animal or rodent that she could bring home as their meal. The plan was to wait a few more nights, until the storms came, and the clouds darkened the city even more, and then they would leave....seeking a different life, a free life, near the coastal towns in California. But the plan exploded in an eruption of rifle fire and a single explosion that silenced everything and shook the ground beneath her feet. She braced against the wall as she soon heard footsteps clapping through the hallway. She pointed her gun a second before her eyes grew wide and she pulled it away from her target.

"Run," her brother said, racing in her direction.

"Where are we going?" She asked, turning as he tried to run past her. "You're bleeding!" She cried.

"Just run," he said again. "We have to go."

"Now?" She asked. "Are you okay?" Her brother collapsed to the ground, the wound in his hip finally stopping him.

"NOW!" He declared. He had been surprised on their city foraging mission by a patrol unit policing the streets. After returning fire and realizing he would be overwhelmed, he flung a pipe bomb in their direction, killing the four men and, no doubt, setting off alarms at state police headquarters. Three state troopers survived and returned fire immediately, striking her brother several times as he fled. The two of them would have perhaps an hour to flee and, once outside the city, would face a test of survival they had never seen. "Go," her brother said.

"I'm not leaving..." her words were interrupted by a nearby blast as shots came in their direction. She put her brother's arm over her shoulder and ran as best she could, supporting him back to their building, careful to avoid the tiny, temporary lamps that the state now set up to provide minimal light in the blackness that had swept the East Coast through the Missouri River Valley. Once there, they both grabbed a few things, enough perhaps to last them a week, and not so much that they would travel heavy. She pulled a jacket on over her gear, then grabbed a small backpack along with her two .45s, one holstered on each hip, and covered by the jacket, as well as a simple 9mm handgun in a holster lower, on her right thigh. She set about taping up her brother's wounds, his grunts and wails forced down deep within so as to not make a sound. Once he was patched, the bleeding was blocked, but he wasn't okay.

"Ready?" He asked, clearly in pain. She shook her head no. She was anxious. Maybe even scared. For both him and herself. The city had been hell for nearly a decade, but it had been home. She couldn't imagine living without him. But there wasn't a home anymore. And it was time to go.

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Together, they made their way through the building's destroyed innards, careful to not alert anyone to their presence. Her brother's wounds made it difficult to move quickly. As they arrived on the bottom floor of the warehouse-sized shell of a building, they heard shuffling nearby.

"I can't run," her brother whispered to her. "You have to go." Riley shook her head.

"Not without you," she said. They observed a shadow on the wall at the end of hall where their route would turn toward the back of the building and outside. Whoever was in their way would have to be friendly or....destroyed. Riley gave a look to her brother and helped him slide silently into a sitting position on the ground. His eyes told her to be careful. Without saying a word, she crept silently along the walls toward where the shadow seemed to be growing. Whoever was there seemed to be getting closer. Peering around the corner, she saw a figure, and she was unable to make out if it was friend, foe, or other. Before the person before her could see she was there, she backed around the corner to wait, lifted one of her 45's to air around the corner to await the figure's approach, not sure yet whether to shoot or to first see who it was.

 

[BassPlayerRob]

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Captain Jackson "Razor" Taylor had just gone through the worst day of his life. Worse than when the bombs fell, since he had only been a child then. Worse than the time he had to kill a man for the first time using only a rusty straight razor. Today could very well be the end of Razor's Raiders.

Captain Razor had grown up among various refugee and bandit camps , learning the skills necessary to survive. Other children would have never survived the lessons he had to learn at an early age: how to kill, how to steal, how to hide a body so it can never be found. And through it all, the boy's only underlying weakness seemed to be his fondness for books, which were a pretty rare commodity after the bombs fell. The boy once raided a burning library just so he could get a few tomes off the shelves before the building caved in. Theses qualities at an early age made him an easy target for bullying within the camps. But it had also made him smarter, more informed, and deadlier than any other child that had been born in the camps.

After years being put to manual labor in one bandit camp, the young man had the nerve to speak up and assert that the bandits could be put to a higher purpose. He asserted that the government had no real power now that the bombs had fallen, and with a united front those last government fortresses could be toppled, and give way to a new regime of the people. That was the day the Razor's Raiders had begun and the war on the government outposts sprung up.

It seems foolish now that he thinks about it, as he takes one of his men into the bombed out shell of a building. It seemed so foolish to think that they could win against heavily armored infantry units. For a while they had gotten lucky. The remaining troops were disorganized, with most of the competent officers already being wiped out, and their sense of purpose and direction had hit a hard road south. The raiders had captured and won the resources from government outpost after government outpost. And then they hit Atlanta. Atlanta was a bloodbath. The Captain had no idea there would be so many troops holed up there, almost waiting for the incoming invasion. The Raiders had narrowly escaped being wiped out, and now here he was, the noble Captain Razor helping one of his best friends limp along into a bombed out building in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. He heard a sound around the corner and pulled his pistol aiming around the corner with one arm as his friend was slowly bleeding out.

Shit Shit Shit. They couldn't have found us already.

He laid his friend down on the ground and slowly turned the corner with his gun drawn as he came face to face with a woman who had her own pistol drawn right at his chest. He stood there breathing heavily as he looked her over. Definitely not a government soldier, he thought as he looked at her apparel. His hand shook a little, as he was basically running on pure adrenaline at this point. "Put your weapon down, darling. I really don't want to shoot you."

 

[CarnivalBarker]

Riley found herself in a standoff with a man she had never seen before and who she did not know. She gazed down the barrel of his gun as he did hers. Her eyes narrowed so as to observe the most possible field in the darkness of the building. She heard the rat-a-tat of gunfire nearby outside.

"Put your weapon down, darling," the man said. "I really don't want to shoot you." She observed his chest rise and fall, and she noticed the faintest wobble in his nerve as his hand shook. She didn't dare do as he said. Not yet.

"Seems like you don't want to get shot more than you're worried about shooting me," she said, ever confident, bordering on cocky. "Who are you?" She demanded. He was not in the uniform of any official force or militia. He was not with the state's army or police. The gunshots outside became louder. She cocked an eyebrow at the sound that both of them heard. Before the man could respond, she grew impatient. "Who ever is firing those shots are on their way," she continued. "And my men are behind me, coming this way," she lied. "Now you can either tell me who you are, and maybe we both leave this building," she paused to see if he was buying any of her tough girl act, which had saved her on occasion before. "Or I drop you right now and get out of the city." She waited out an explosion in the distance and another brief spat of gunfire outside. "Now," she finished. "What's it going to be? I'll ask you one more time. Who are you?"

 

[BassPlayerRob]

The sound of the gunfire outside was constantly getting louder. This was not good for him. He had let most of his unit run ahead to the next neighboring town a few miles a way, while only a few straggles from his unit were still following him. He always had been a sucker for the noble hero that goes down with the ship imagery, but he was not about to become a martyr this day because of some girl who was far more confident than she oughtta be.

He glared at her as she demanded who he was and boasted of men on their way. Bullshit, he thought. "Who am I?! I'm Captain Razor of Razor's Raiders, feared across the Eastern Seaboard, heralded as a hero to those who dare stand up to those government pigs across the South. That's who I am! WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" The pitch in his voice rose as he glared at this nobody who very well could be his death here and now, his hand shaking once again as his anger became very apparent on his face. "You don't wear a uniform like any of the government troops that I've been fighting the past goddamn week, and you're certainly not one of my men, so who the hell are you?"

He looked her up and down noting her curves and fit figure. She was pretty, he gave her that, and she looked like she was athletic enough to outrun most of the damn guards in the city, but nothing about her said to him that she had seen combat. She had no scars, no physical infirmities, no body armor or assault weapons. She was most definitely not fighting in this war. But she did have the eyes of a cornered animal, same as him, and same as some of the men he had killed before. "Look, darling. I really doubt you're leading any men anywhere. You don't have the look of a raider about you, and I damn well know you ain't with the government. So whoever is firing outside probably won't do you any good, and it won't do me any either. So why don't you get that pistol the fuck out my face, and actually do something to help the both of us."

 

[CarnivalBarker]

Riley wasn't impressed at the words. She had never heard of Razor's Raiders, but then again, news services had ceased to operate and by any account she and her brother had little involvement with the outside world for fear of being captured or killed. But she found the man's anger, or passion, or desperation....whatever it was...to be persuasive. She remained calm, though uncertain to be sure.

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" the man asked, turning the tables before proving too observant for her bluff. "You don't wear a uniform like any of the government troops that I've been fighting the past goddamn week, and you're certainly not one of my men, so who the hell are you?"

"My name is Riley," she said, keeping her gun leveled square at Razor's face, leaving what little of her act was in place by not speaking too much or giving away more than he had already figured out.

"Look, darling," the raider continued. "I really doubt you're leading any men anywhere. You don't have the look of a raider about you, and I damn well know you ain't with the government. So whoever is firing outside probably won't do you any good, and it won't do me any either. So why don't you get that pistol the fuck out my face, and actually do something to help the both of us?" Riley paused a half beat, bit her lower lip as she considered he was right, then gave a brief nod before putting her weapon down, though keeping it at the ready just in case. She nodded her head behind her and to the right as she spoke once more.

"My brother's down the hall," she said. "We've lived on this side of the city alone since the collapse. We aren't the government and we don't raid. But the police shot him and we have to leave," she paused. "Now." She wondered what had brought the raider to their part of the city, to their building. She wondered how many raiders were with him, and whether they were all men or if there were women in their ranks as well. She wondered if he meant them harm. She would not leave her brother. She wondered if getting help for him meant putting herself at a disadvantage. She considered a truce, owing to the fact that Razor seemed to be fleeing the same forces that she and her brother were. "We could use an escort out of the city," she mentioned, stopping short of any offer, proposal, or quid pro quo. "If you're leaving too, we can go along." She had an uneasy feeling as the words came out. Surely, however, they would be safe long enough just to get past the city limits and across the western river valley that marked the beginning of the darklands that led first to New Orleans, then Dallas, then west toward California. In her mind, it made her proposal seem reasonable. "Once we get out of the city, we'll be fine traveling alone, and we'll stay out of your hair." She awaited the man's response, hoping she made the right move.