A Savage Life

I felt very self-conscious as we stepped through the double doors of the diner. Anybody would if you looked like you had just said, “Screw hygiene, I’ll stink if I want.” And I felt even more self-conscious as people gawked at me. Some teenage kids snickered at me, old people looked at me as if I was walking around naked, the wait staff glared at me like I was an evil fiend, but mostly, what I received were looks of disgust and snide remarks. I shivered at their sight, and it was not only their judgmental gazes following me as I walked to a table, but fear plaguing my mind. The worst thing that could happen was that somebody was going to say or try something off-the-wall, or say something beyond rude, and Sabine was going to break bad and get us into another fight, and based on the trigger itched soldiers around here, that would be one fight that we wouldn’t walk away from.

We sat down in a booth, after ten years of searching, and I got a good look around the place before Sabine opened his mouth. If I could describe this place in one word, that would be, Sixties. I swear, it was a throwback to back then with it’s neon booths and neon signs, cartoonish posters, and the lone jukebox in the corner with a couple of employees and customers gathered around it. Waitresses wearing duckling yellow dresses up to their knees with poodles on them, their hair up in a tight bun, and high heeled red stilettos, as well as a cigarette or two in their mouth walked around taking people’s orders. The cashiers up ahead had greased back hair, leather jackets, white t-shirts, and super tight blue jeans with holes in the knees. But let’s not forget the laser pistols every employee had donned on in obvious places. The waitress’s had them in their aprons, and the cashiers in the hem of their pants. This made me have that nasty pit-in-the-stomach feeling that something didn’t look quite as it appeared, but like I said before, Sabine took me back to the present and away from my thoughts with his babbling as he said, “Nifty place, eh?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Yeah it does. I was there when this style was going on.”

“Ah really, what was it really like back then? Ya know, before all this mess happened?” Sabine asked. His tone of voice suggested I was immortal and had lived through the whole ordeal that happened years after my time, but I will tell him what it was like in the 60s for the sake of a darn good memory.

“The 60′s was a good time,” I started. “I was only in my 20s, a youngster, and this was the hippest era to live in. People said words like ‘Groovy’ or ‘Raise the Roof.’ Girls wore dresses, and we had lava lamps and little doorway beads that hung down on strings and you could walk through. We also had waterbeds and hip places that looked like this. It was a safe-”

“May I take your order?” A waitress interrupted as she puffed a volley of smoke our direction. Her hair was a bottled reddish-blonde, and her lips gave that dark, signature 60s look.

“I’ll have a double cheeseburger with a bottle of water and some curly fries.” I ordered.

Hey, don’t look at me, I seen that advertised on the sign coming in through the door as one of their specials and couldn’t resist. Our waitress gave me a look of contempt as she wrote down quickly on her writing pad. She looked up to me, knowing that she was going to reiterate my order back to me, but to my chagrin, said something else.

“A bar of soap for the Roach.” she insulted.

I was going to say something nasty to the woman (As she didn’t have much room to talk either), but that was before Sabine flipped the table on top of me in anguish, causing me to fall to the ground and be helplessly pinned to the floor with a cry of pain from the table’s massive, metallic weight. And then I got to watch in horror as he just slapped the woman across the face like a slave master would to his servant in Honest Abe’s time. The woman reeled back in pain, a huge blue and purple whelp forming on the side of her pale face. People stopped what they were doing and turned to us, and they stared us down like a pack of wolves. Time to go.

“Sabine!” I called.

He turned around to me and just gawked with the stupidest expression ever concocted.

“Don’t just stand there, help me.” I said with clenched teeth.

The woman and everyone may still be standing still like statues, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t turn on us as soon as we move. Sabine looked at me and chuckled, “Oh.”

I wish I wasn’t pinned down here, or else I would give him a reason to stop smiling. Sabine started to lift the table off of me, and that’s when I noticed that the woman turned around with literal red eyes. Not red pupils, not red irises, not red corneas, pure red eyes that took on more of a machine look. It made her human face look almost possessed as she chewed her cigarette and stared us down like an outlaw at High Noon.

I screamed so loud it echoed, and the people didn’t wait around to see what would happen either; they had all already had bolted out of the doors to God knows I would like to know where, and left us with this... this... this... I don’t know.

Sabine looked behind him, only to have a fist smacked into his jaw. He went flying into the window, almost shattering it with his body. He laid against it for a few seconds.

The waitress freed me from under the table, only for said table to be thrown with such force it smashed Sabine completely through the window. Then the waitress started to walk towards him, and that’s when I lunged and tossed my arms around her. She only pulled me off, threw her palm at me, and sent me sprawling into nearby tables and continued to walk towards Sabine. Sabine had already been running at full speed like a freight train towards the woman before she tripped him up, knocking him to the floor, giving me ample time to take a swing at her. She grabbed my fist and swung me into a wall, and then picked Sabine up by his leg and tossed him behind her as if his weight meant nothing. Then she looked at me menacingly and brought a laser pistol out of her apron and started to fire it at me.

I only had enough time to scramble a few inches away before it caught the soles of my shoes, exposing my feet to the chilled air. I looked back as I shot up to an upright stance, the cold metal feeling like sharpened glass to my feet, and ran to a nearby window, vaulting and jumping over furniture as I went. I love cardio. And I love how it means that I’ll live longer too.

I felt a couple of stings across my back. I would find out later that she skimmed my back with her ammunition. The stings caused me to fall, allowing the waitress ample time to pick me up, face first, and slam me into a nearby window, shattering it all over my back and sending me flying onto the metallic sidewalk, which doesn’t feel too nice, just to let ya know, and then continues to shoot lasers at me.

“Why me?” I ask myself as I scramble out of her line of fire. By the time I had done that, she had separated the other half of the metallic pavement from the diner, sending people scurrying and screaming like lunatics, as I sat behind a crate, catching my breath and reeling back in pain of glass cutting open my back. I can feel the blood pour out with each heartbeat, and then I remember Sabine. Alone in there. His fault that we got into the mess, but that wouldn’t be right to leave him to his fate either. But don’t expect me to be a hero or a villain, as I am neither.

I stand up, vault over the crate, even though my back splitted into nerve racking pain, I still got to the window. As I began to vault over it, BOOM!

“Ah!” I shout as I’m thrown almost off the edge of the metallic sidewalk from the explosion. I lay there for a second, coughing, before I get up minutes later, limping towards the window. Yeah, I’m not trying that again. I finally make it to the window to watch Sabine be tossed into the corner of the counter, ouch, and flip over the counter, ouch.

“Sabine!” I call.

The waitress turned her head towards me like she was possessed. Now realize this, I wanted to check on Sabine, and two, if she’s focused on me, Sabine will have enough time to recover and get out. He’s taken enough well-deserved punishment as it is.

The waitress, as she looked at me, jumped onto debris and came towards me, a broken table shard in hand, and land in front of me, crushing the window pane with enough force to, once again, send me sprawling almost over the edge of the sidewalk. I stand up, once again, only to have the waitress throw me back into the diner. I hit a table and lay down onto the ground, then I hear beeping and looked beside me. Phew, only a grenade.

WAIT! A GRENADE! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! I scramble away enough, only to be moved maybe a couple of feet by the bomb. Where is this lady hiding those things? I hear moaning beside me. Sabine. Then I hear, “Both priority targets within line of sight. Prepare for Biological Extermination.” The waitress said in a robotic voice.

Biological Extermination? I had no time as I watched the waitress put a foot on both our heads and then I heard some body parts exchange robotically, and roll my eyes up to see her now gun shaped hands charge up with purple aura. I never thought I’d go out like this. I put my head down, and then I said a silent prayer as I awaited the Grim Reaper’s Scythe. Nothing happened, and I looked up. The Waitress was still charging.

I took this time to shoot myself at the robot’s legs, knocking her to the floor, causing her to accidently release all of that stored energy. You know when you hear people say, “He blew the roof off of the building,” you think of a metaphor. Now imagine that in literal context. Yeah, that’s what happened to us. The whole blast had just destroyed the roof into nothing. That could’ve been Sabine and I.

I gritted my teeth and looking up, I saw the waitress sitting up, looking at me like I was the Devil.

“Priority target has eliminated my chance at Biological Extermination. I guess I’ll just have to Exterminate you myself.”

And then her eyes glowed, and she got ready to blast my face off with the laser, Sabine behind me screaming, “No!” I closed my eyes awaiting the inevitable

Then a miracle happened, sorta. I heard gun shots ring out and pierce the Waitress Demon in several places of her head. The Waitress stared at me, and then fell down. I and Sabine laid there with our mouths agape. We just stared and stared as we seen a woman, clad in a hooded cloak, wearing a dress of Dark Age proportions, wool moccasin boots with frills on them, a bandolier, and a belt concealing multitudes of weapons, and a Winchester rifle in her hands. She had a black mask over one half of her face, only revealing deep evergreen eyes locked in a harsh gaze, as well as wisps of brownish red hair coming out of her hood, alongside her soft, menacing lips that could’ve passed for Dracula’s Bride’s kissers if they had fangs in them. Her nose was sharp, almost like a bird’s, but very well rounded too, like Lana’s.

She said not a word, but walked up to the body of the Waitress and kicked it a few times to make sure it was dead, then she looked at me with a cold, hard stare. One so hard and cold I thought that she just removed the Waitress Thing so that way she can take care of me next. The woman then plopped a .22 caliber pistol in front of my awestruck eyes as well as some ammunition caches. Her only other reaction towards Sabine and I was only a nod. She walked around us, doing I don’t know what, maybe checking on us, and that’s when all three of us heard, “Self-Destruct Mode, engaging in 2 seconds.” Then the horrid countdown began as all three of us got up and ran as fast and as best as we could, but we weren’t The Flash, so we were caught up in the explosion, and all three of us shot towards the edge of the railing.

We screamed as we hit something solid, forcing us to remember that we would not die, and that there was a force field there to fracture our skulls. Yay us, but I guess a concussion beats a dislocated skeleton and no teeth, so maybe I shouldn’t feel too picky about where I crack my skull open.

I blacked out for moment, only to wake up to ringing in my ears, and the sounds of both Sabine and the Hooded Woman moaning. My vision was blurry, and I felt something hard in my hands. I felt it. The pistol. Oh thank you Lord that this thing made it. But I have bigger problems now.

I nudged Sabine with my hands, saying his name. Sabine looked at me, and groaned. By then, the hooded woman had gotten up, straightened her dress, picked up her rifle, and I guess she lost her shoe, as she walked in front of me and picked something like it up, and begun to leave.

“Wait!” I groggily called out to her. She only looked back at me and said not a word before she left. Drat!

Who was she? Why did she save us? And why did she leave us all of a sudden? Suddenly, I heard the clicking of a gun as Sabine softly grabbed my attention.

“Josh.” he said.

I looked at him with with a “What now?” look, and saw is hands high in the air, and looked for a reason why. Then I knew- we forty guns and twenty priests glaring at us.

I should’ve seen this coming from a mile away! I knew these guys were gonna become a problem for us, but still I doubt my instincts once again! Now do you see where doubting yourself gets you? It’s not fun, and leads you into trouble. My advice for all of you is to not doubt your gut, because when it tells you something, you listen, because it has this uncanny ability to sense that something isn’t right with a scenario. My gut has kept me alive because I followed it, and the one time I don’t, and THIS happens. Now how to act? And suddenly a roughly sketched thought etched itself into my mind and I acted on it.

“Now Sabine!” I shout, throwing everyone, including Sabine, off guard.

My whole plan: To pretend I had a plan and wing it from there. Hey, you should all know that I’m just making these things up as I go along, like I have always found myself doing for years now. And by now, you’ve probably figured out that I’m really good at some of this stuff. Wrong, just because I’m pushing fifty doesn’t make me a tactician of some sort. No, I have too much to learn to be that good.

Quickly I grabbed Sabine, threw him over my shoulders like a calf ready for slaughter, and slammed the force of our combined weight into a priest. Hey you! Don’t sneer at me, I had to, he was in my way, and besides, I don’t hit priests regularly (Seriously, do you think I’ve become a monster?), this time was special.

As I was saying, I kept Sabine in my hands as he asked me questions like, “What are we doing?” “Where are we going?” I didn’t answer him, because one, What does it look like I’m doing, baking bread? And two, I was counting down a timer in my head when the guards would shoot us down. I didn’t give them no more than five seconds before blastoff. Well, I was wrong. It was three seconds before they started shooting at us, and I needed to get behind something, and out of here at top speed. But how and where? Blast it Sabine! I can’t think with you screaming like a loon!

I tried my best to keep level headed as bullets whistled towards me and I had to do some heavy, forced, last-minute moving. Suddenly I felt a sting ring throughout my whole body, and I fell down, screaming. Sabine screamed as well, but that was only because I had dropped him. He was the least of my worries. I had to make sure I was ok, and I had to be quick about it. I heard more bullets slide past us as I began to inspect my leg.

I hastily roll my pant leg up, trying to ignore the pulsing, jarring pain of a possibly broken, or twisted ankle, as well as the bullet that grazed the back of my neck, I was not amused at the result. Guess what? Drum roll please; I’ve been shot in the ankle.

Of all things, shot! I couldn’t believe my luck. I just cannot believe this. I cannot be this unlucky can I? Is that even possible? Then suddenly, all the pain went away and flew into anger. Angry mainly at Sabine because I wouldn’t be in this predicament if not for him. I’m serious, all I felt was anger, not pain, not even when Sabine returned the favor, and threw me over his shoulders, grabbing me by my shot ankle, which caused me to cry out like a wounded animal. Well, in a sense I was. Not many men get shot in the ankle and get up. Some mainly because they couldn’t handle the pain. Animals, they bear through the pain because they have to. They have to live. To breath. To eat. To drink again. I am like them. Only I’m not doing it to be able to eat again, I’m doing it because somewhere, someplace, no sometime in Alaska, my family is dependent on me to get home. Even if I spend 100 years here, it won’t matter. The time has already passed, which means, if I am one foot into the grave when I get back to her, oh you can bet I will be the happiest, no greatfullest man alive. But that was a chapter I would not be a part of as I later find out.