Survivors

“Stop right there” warned Luke “Don’t do anything yet”.

He whistled quietly to Holly who took one last long careful look into the street. Once she was sure everything was okay, she gave them the thumbs up and then tiptoed back. By the time she got to them Joe was literally bouncing up and down, he was impatient, really impatient. He hadn’t eaten properly for a couple of days and was dying to just rush into the store to fill his face, but he knew what would happen if he did. He just knew that Luke would have an absolute fit and then spend hours giving him a huge lecture about how stupid he was and the top it off with the whole “I’m the older brother, so do what you’re told” routine. Deep down Joe knew he should be more cautious at times like these… a bit like Luke was, but it didn’t mean he had to admit it, especially not to Luke.

Luke stepped in front of Joe and pressed his ear to the door, trying his best to pretend he knew what he was doing. In all honesty he didn’t have a clue what to do next. Even though he had his best “I’m listening” face on, he really couldn’t hear a thing and even if he did hear a noise would he know what it was?... almost certainly not! While he was on his little “honesty trip”, Luke had to admit that the reason he was taking so long listening at a door he couldn’t hear anything through was because.... well it was because... he was trying to summon up enough courage to go through it! He really wished he could be a lot more confident at times like these… a bit like Joe was, but that didn’t mean he had to admit it, especially not to Joe.

The waiting went on.

“Are we going in or what?” asked Holly breaking the silence.

“We’ve been out here so long I reckon that anything that we could have eaten has probably gone off by now” teased Joe.

Holly began to giggle.

“Knock it off you two” snapped Luke “I’m trying to listen”.

“I’ll make the little buggers wait even longer now” he thought. The way he saw it, he was the oldest, so he was in charge, so they could just do what the hell they were told. I’ll count to fifteen elephants and then go for it. He started counting. He counted fifteen of the slowest pachyderms he’d ever counted in his life. “Okay” he said “Let’s go in... slowly”.

He cautiously edged open the heavy door… just crack to start with. No alarms went off, no lasers flashed out, everything seemed quiet, everything was quiet. He eased the door open a few more inches and poked his head in. Still nothing. He could feel Joe and Holly holding their breath behind him. The fact that they were waiting for him made him feel like he was in control and just a little bit powerful, he liked that... yes he really liked being in charge.

“Looks clear” he said, still trying to sound much more confident than he really felt “Let’s go”.

He slipped through the door, followed by Joe and then Holly. Once inside Holly carefully eased the door closed. Not fully closed, but closed enough so that it looked shut but not shut enough to allow the locks to click back into place. By the time she had finished doing that the boys were already rummaging in the various storage bins to find something good to eat. Seeing as this was supposed to be a food store for quite a large number of people they were finding this a lot harder than it should have been. There were some shrivelled apples, a few sad looking carrots and a few mouldy potatoes and that was it for the fresh stuff. Everything else was tinned, dried, salted or a hideous mixture of all three.

Holly Luke and Joe were experienced scavengers, they had been out with the rest of their group lots of times, but this was the first time on their own. On the trips with the others they had learnt what was worth taking and what wasn’t. For example they knew that dried foods were best because a relatively small bag of dried beans kept well and could feed you for a week. Whereas a tin of beans was only good for one meal and yet they weighed almost the same.

Joe always said that dried food made him fart more than tinned. If that was true, which most people doubted, it was a pretty close run thing. Just about everything made Joe fart, loudly, often and with a smell like a rabbit that had been dead, for a week, in the sun and … you get the idea!

Luke moved around the store quickly and efficiently, filling his rucksack with as much food as he could pack. All the while he chewed greedily on a big strip of salted pork he had grabbed from one of the storage bins. Then all of a sudden he stopped. His jaw went slack and saliva almost instantly starting dribbling from the corner of his mouth and onto his chin.

“Hey... hey.. guys” he said hoarsely “Guys, come and look at this”

The other two stopped what they were doing. Their attention had been grabbed not by what Luke had said but by the way he had said it. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t alarm, it was a kind of hoarse gurgle, as if he was trying to speak with half a mouthful of water... which in a way he was.

Holly was the first to reach him, and as she did she froze in the same way Luke had. Their heads turned slowly towards each other, their eyes met and then they grinned. Big ear to ear grins, the type that make your face ache if you do it for too long. Then they turned back and both dived headlong at the sack in front of them.

Even though it was only a couple of seconds later when Joe arrived, Holly and Luke were already elbow deep in the sack. This wasn’t just any old sack; this sack was heaven on earth. It held something they had only come across only once before in their whole lives. It was a food so gorgeous they would have gone “proper” hungry for a week just to taste it again. A treat to end all treats. Even a tiny spoonful of it would have been sheer ecstasy, and here was a whole sack. A whole beautiful, bursting, mouth-watering sack of sugar!

They reached in and grabbed handfuls of the fantastically sweet granules. It wasn’t the fine shiny white sugar that you are probably used to. It was dark and brown and coarse and almost gritty, but it was still the sweetest, loveliest thing they had ever tasted. They scooped up handfuls of it, swallowing great calorie filled glorious crunchy mouthfuls.

They laughed and giggled uncontrollably for the first time in ages just like any bunch of kids should do from time to time. As they laughed and ate… and ate and laughed they got sillier and sillier. When they talked about it later none of them could remember who the culprit was… who had actually thrown the first handful of sugar or who they had thrown it at. But thrown it was!

Within seconds there were great handfuls of sugar flying round the room. It was a sugar blizzard! It billowed and swelled around the room. Sugar was covering everything with a gritty grainy dusting, a bit like thin brown snow. Luke stood up laughing and rubbing his head trying to shake out some of the half a tonne of sugar granules that now clung to his dirty matted hair.

Then for the second time in a matter of minutes he froze and his jaw went slack, but this time instead of drooling his mouth went as dry as sand. Standing not five feet away was a Alien Drone. True, it was only a Drone (slightly more stupid and quite a bit less armed than a Scout) but at a range of five feet it was still an unbelievably dangerous proposition. They had no place to run, no weapons and had been taken completely by surprise.

Even the thickest Drone had to be respected, not for itself, not for its sparkling personality, not for its witty conversation or its good looks. No, what cried out for it to be taken seriously was the 3 inch, 30 pulses per minute, 360° swivel mounted; fry an egg (or more worryingly your brain) in under a second energy laser mounted to the top of its head. If you respected nothing else you respected the laser! A laser that at that precise moment was pointing straight at Luke’s chest.

It was Holly that gave them their chance to escape. She saw the Drone, its laser and Luke’s predicament and summed the whole thing up in a split second. Why the droid had hesitated and hadn’t fired at them before they’d even been aware of it they would never know. It could have been that the cloud of sugar had for some reason confused its motion sensors. It could have been that the laughing and giggling had shocked its auditory sensors, it certainly would never have come across either of those sounds before. It could have been that finding three unregistered human young in its food store mucking about having a food fight had scrambled its logic circuits. Or, and this is more likely, it could have been really massively stupid even for a Drone, but hesitate it did. This hesitation lasted just long enough for Holly to launch a bag of dried corn straight at the droid.

The Drone’s laser tube swivelled with frightening speed tracking the bag before blasting it with a pure white, red hot, energy pumped laser beam. The bag exploded with a loud bang followed by numerous pops, pings and crackles. The instant the heat from the laser incinerated the bag and superheated the corn kernels inside the droid had, completely unintentionally, created the first popcorn made on planet earth for over seven years. It now found itself totally confused by the noise and the multiple tiny targets it was picking up. The droid then did what all stupid violent things did when presented with something it didn’t understand, it simply lashed out (or in the droids case, blazed away with its’ laser) at the ever expanding mass of burning popping popcorn.

Joe, who had been unaware of what was going on till Holly had thrown the bag of corn now put his head down and ran. Luke broke from his freeze and followed Joe towards the door… fast! Quick as they were Holly was quicker! She was already in the alley as the boys dashed out. Joe spun round and grabbed the door to slam it shut. Unfortunately for them the droid had finally got its act together and was manoeuvring its laser tube towards the door ready to fire. It let rip, just as the door started to swing shut. Joe who was pushing the heavy door with his shoulder was knocked off his feet by the force of the blast and sent sprawling on his back in the alley. The lasers heat had been instantly conducted by the metal door so that it melted the synthetic padding of Joe’s jacket. He yelled with pain as the skin on his shoulder scorched and burnt.

Luke dropped to the floor next to his brother and kicked at the door with all his strength. He smelt the rubberised soles of his boots bubble and blister almost at once on the scorching metal, but the door finally swung shut. They heard the thud of the autobolts clicking into place which meant the door was locked.

Joe sprang up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, and made to grab for the plastic card still in the lock.

“No” shouted Luke “Just leave it, it will slow it down!”

Luke was right, if the card was still in the lock and the door was shut the droid wouldn’t be able to override the mechanism and open it from the inside. It would have to signal other Aliens for support and then go the long way round before it could start any pursuit. It didn’t buy them much time, possibly only a few seconds, but at least it gave them a chance of getting away.

All three of them shot down the alley as if the devil himself were after them. Which in a way it was, if your image of the devil is a five foot high shiny black dustbin shaped robot with a laser for a hat that was permanently in a bad mood.

After two hours of ducking, running, hiding, doubling back and generally doing their best not to get caught they slowed down for a rest. In the remains of an old fast food restaurant they sat for a while not speaking. They were each slowly and minutely reflecting on and reliving the moment they had all quite separately thought, “This is it, I’m going to die!” With faces ashen, the shock was creeping up on them as the adrenalin drained out of their tired bodies.

Then with a voice that seemed cracked and dry and far too loud for the quite around them Joe said “We are in so much crap! We didn’t get any food… we drew attention to the group and worst of all… we lost the card. Darius is going to kill us, roast our sorry arses… and hum a happy tune while he does it!”

A heavy silence descended on them again as they contemplated the awful truth of what Joe had said. Perhaps spending time with an angry droid wasn’t so bad after all!