Man, I really didn’t mean to kill that guy. I promised myself I’d never do it again. I already had 1 murder under my belt and I was only 15 (I think) for fuck sake. I swear I'm not some kind of psycho, it's just sometimes you just don’t have a choice. And, I mean, he was the 1 chasing me and if he caught me death would’ve been the least of my problems. And, I’m not going to lie, him dying was kind of a lucky accident. Well, not for him obviously, poor bastard, but definitely for me.
So why was I being chased down that dock in the middle of the night clutching my stolen dinner? Easy: my hunger made me do it, it was eating me alive. And because I’m an idiot. Rule number 1: NEVER go out at night. It’s the 1st thing you learn in Jtown. This shit hole of a city is bad enough during the day but when the sun goes down it’s a whole other kind of death trap. But a death trap you could hide in maybe (or that’s what I told myself that night). People were after me and I needed cover. And I was desperate. I hadn't eaten in a week, I had to risk it. If I didn't get some food down me soon I was going to die for sure this time.
Actually, I guess that’s more about why I was out at night. Why I was on the dock was because it was supposed to be a short cut back to the rat hole I’d been hiding in. But it was also super dangerous. This part of the docks was always crawling with scabby gang kids during the day, it was their turf. Because of them I usually avoided this place like the plague but I figured I could sneak through at night. I mean, they had to sleep sometime (told you I was an idiot). And, of course, now they were after me.
Nobody bothered keeping the lights on at night down here. This part of the harbor was so crammed with 1/2 broke tankers and other crap it was impossible to use it as a port anymore. Even the ship breakers were gone now. It was just a sunken junk yard like the rest of the world (what was left of it, anyways). Up here, out of the water, the whole place looked like a bomb site. What was left of the buildings were just piles of rubble. The road was all torn up too with huge holes open down to the water. The moon was full which made avoiding the holes and broken glass a lot easier (had to lose my flip flops so I could run) but it made my blond hair stand out like a neon sign. Typical, always lucky and unlucky at the same time.
You’d’ve thought with all the crap everywhere there would’ve been loads of good hiding spots but whenever I thought I’d found 1 the little shits came running right up like I had a tracker on me. And they were getting close again, shouting in some lingo combo I only ½ got and banging sticks on the ground trying to scare me. They were doing a good job. I thought the way out was close but I’d gotten all turned around, could’ve been behind me for all I knew, I was totally screwed. Then, as I came around a corner, I saw a mountain of garbage off to the left and ran for it. It was actually a couple of overflowing dumpsters ½ buried in trash, perfect! I jumped into 1 of them pulling the stinking garbage over me. I was just in time. About 5 or 6 kids came running past, they didn’t even slow down. Then something weird, a guy, a man, in a baseball cap came out of the shadows following them. He wasn’t running, just walking all serious, and 1 of the kids was walking with him. I figured he had to be 1 of the grown ass ganger bosses, maybe 1 of the pimps I’d pissed off. Had to be, right, but how’d they find me? That would’ve been just about the worst luck in the world. I was dead meat for sure. But when he walked past I could see he was wearing some kind of commando gear and he looked white. Gangers didn’t wear that shit and they were always locals. Maybe he was a missionary guard? That was a little better, at least they wouldn’t kill me. But those guys never go out at night and they never work with gangs. Very fucking weird. Then he started talking to somebody on a radio. The sweat froze on my skin and that dinner I still hadn’t eaten felt like it was puking itself up anyways: he was speaking English with an American accent.
Gangs and the Admiral’s soldiers working together? My 2 biggest nightmares rolled into 1 massive shit show of bad luck. There was no way I was getting out of this 1 dead or alive.
Here’s the thing, there were loads of people combing the city snatching up kids who looked like refugees. And when you were white like me it was a full time job dodging them. There was the government refugee police who wanted to stick you on 1 of the old cargo ship/floating refugee camps that nearly walled off the harbor. They were bad news but by this point their hearts weren’t in it anymore. You could bribe them easy, if you had the cash. Otherwise you could try bribing them with whatever you had, like yourself. The missionaries and their guards were worse. They were really just Ozzer (Australian) crazies with crosses and if you were unlucky enough to be white there was no bribing them with anything, ever. The worst were definitely the gangs (especially if you’d pissed them off like me) they were ruthless. They ate up ½ the kids in the city, didn’t matter if you were a refugee or not.
But now the Admiral’s guys were here and, for me anyways, they had them all beat by a mile.
I was still trying to figure out how fucked I was (and trying not to puke my guts out) when another pack of kids and commando guys (definitely Americans) ran past. How many of them were there for fuck sake? Was I going to have to stay hidden in this pile of shit all night? Realizing that was probably how it was going to go I tried getting comfortable. Not easy: it stank like rotting dog in there, I could feel rats and roaches creeping all around me and to top it off something sharp was poking me in the butt. Real easy, so I didn’t start an avalanche I reached around and touched some kind of wood spike. I wiggled it loose and I slid it out over my head. After I shook the bugs off I checked it out in the moonlight. It had be 3 feet long and it was sharp as fuck. A weapon! Finally some good luck. I mean, a gun would have been way better but I’d take it. I held on to it tight and waited.
It went on forever. Finally, when nobody’d come by in a while I decided I had to make a run for it. Being armed probably made me feel braver than I should’ve (idiot again). I always had my little knife around my neck but it wasn’t for real fighting. But with this spear on me at least I’d look a lot less like easy prey. Maybe I’d have ½ a chance at fighting my way out of this disaster. If luck wasn’t being a bastard again.
As quiet as I could I dug myself out and took off for some busted up buildings. I’d just run through what use to be a door when somebody jumped me and started screaming their head off. The kid must’ve been, like, 7 or something. He was really small. I got the little shit into a head lock easy. That shut him right up but it was too late. 1 of the guard guys stepped out of the shadows. There was nothing but a 4’ high wall of rubble between us. He smiled and put his radio up to his face.
“Got ‘em, over”
I dropped the gagging kid and jumped back. Right into a wall. Cornered like a rat.
I’d always been a better runner than a fighter. I could fight if I had to but I’d never gone up against a grown ass man and won. But what choice did I have? There was nowhere to run to. I was so fucked.
All lazy the guy got out his side arm and started around the pile, that fucking smile still on his ugly face. I dodged right, he dodged left, then back the other way, back and forth. He stopped and started laughing.
“Gotcha kid, just fuckin’ hold still. I ain’t gonna hurt ya” fucker even had a southern accent.
He chuckled to himself and just started climbing over the rubble. Now I really was all out of moves. So much for luck, the dick. I slid down the wall with my spear aimed at him. When he got to the top he looked down at me shaking his head.
“Told ya,” grinning all evil.
I tried to get out a ‘fuck you!’ but my mouth wouldn’t work. He took a side step down and kind of lurched. He stopped for a sec to get his balance then 1 leg sled ½ way down and he let out a grunt. I’d just decided that was my chance to make a run for it when the whole pile started to slide toward me. His arms were spinning around like in a cartoon and that grin turned to an O, “Fuuu-!”. The asshole started to fall right on top of me. I wedged my spear against the wall and curled myself into a ball, waiting to be crushed. Rubble crashed into my shins and the spear almost got ripped out of my hands. ½ a sec later something hot splashed on my face. I wiped my eyes and peeked up. The guy was just hanging right above me, my spear sticking out of his mouth like he was screaming it back at me, blood pouring down it. He was still staring down at me when his eyes died.
Told you I didn’t mean to do it.
The whole thing was so horrible but, fuck, finally some good luck again! Then the guys’s radio squawked.
“Cooper, come in, over”
I’d forgot all about the kid but all of a sudden he’s there grabbing the radio. I am trying to get free from under the guy when he takes off, screaming into it. If I didn’t get out of there fast I was going to end up as dead as the Poor Bastard Cooper but he had me pinned. I wiggled my legs free and using the spear as a lever I flipped the guy off me. The asshole landed right on my dinner, forgot all about it. Man, always the same shit, good luck, bad luck, good luck, bad luck.
The voices were closing fast. I maybe had a minute to disappear before the whole pack was back. It was pretty obvious my only real escape was into that greasy black water out there. I was covered in the guy's blood and stank like a slaughterhouse but I was pretty sure no sharks lived in that toxic soup anymore. I sure hoped not. I was thinking with all that crap out there there had to be something to hang on to for a while where they couldn’t see me. I ran to the edge. Looking down at the ‘water’ I could see swirling rainbows in the moonlight, chunks of junk floating everywhere. I was going to need to be real careful where I aimed myself. Picking my spot I dove as straight down as I could trying not to make any noise. The stink of diesel was like a punch in the face the second before I hit the water. It was even grosser feeling than it smelled, I felt like one of those oil slicked birds they used to show on TV all the time.
I’d just swum back under the dock and was hiding behind a piling when everybody showed up, flashlights blazing. I could see the beams sweeping around through the holes above me. At first it was quiet, like they were just taking in the scene, then someone started talking.
“Is that Cooper?” 1st voice in American.
“Is he … dead?” 2nd voice, American. Again.
“What the heck-? Sorry, padre” 3rd voice also American
“Lieutenant, looks like he’s got, like, a spear stickin’ outta his head or somethin’” Voice 1, all Americans, and military too. I knew it.
“Thank you Evans, as always, astutely put” Voice 3, Lieutenant.
“Thank you, sir?” Voice 1, Evans.
“So … he killed him? How?” Voice 2, Padre.
“Think he stabbed ‘im sir” Evans.
“What gave it away? Never guess he had it in him, looking at him. Blood thirsty little SOB- sorry” Lieutenant.
“Poor man” Padre.
“But, where’d he go?” Evans.
Somebody aimed a flashlight out at the harbor/junk yard. Suddenly everybody was doing it, 20 beams of light raking across all the junk out there. Great. Better get comfortable, this could take a while. I felt pretty safe down there, plenty of pilings to hide behind. Only thing was there was nothing to hold on to. The pilings were crusted with barnacles and those things’d slice you to shark food if you touched them (if there were any sharks left). And no way I could tread water forever.
“Sir, he could be anywhere out there” Evans again, maybe?
“So what would you like to do lieutenant?” Padre.
“I wanna find the little- We keep combing the area all the way back to the gate” there was some mumbling, then, “Yeah, yeah. Somebody get that thing out of him or will never get him in the truck”
They kept on talking but must’ve walked away from the edge, I couldn’t make out what they were saying anymore. It felt like forever before the beams of their flash lights turned away from the harbor. I paddled around in circles for a while longer, but I was getting cold and I knew I had to start moving for real soon, safe or not. After another couple minutes I decided I had to go for it. I aimed myself between 2 pilings and dove down and out. The plan was to get out as far as possible before coming up for air. It was usually a pretty easy trick for me. When I was out of breath I came up slowly, trying not to bump my head on anything. Turns out I hadn’t gotten nearly as far out as I thought I would (too many cheap clove cigarettes I guess) but it was far enough. They’d never see me camouflaged by all that other trash. Anyways, they were too busy with other shit to pay attention to the water anymore. On my back so I could keep an eye on the dock, I swam out looking for a hiding place.
I’d had lots of practice swimming since the End. Fuck, felt like I’d been swimming for my life 1 way or another ever since, thought I could handle anything. But swimming through this greasy minefield of crap was a real bitch. All the floating shit was slowing me down, every stroke my arm hit something. Plus it was totally gross, oily and sticky at the same time, rotting fish stinking everywhere. I’d gotten really cold treading water under the dock and the swimming was warming me up a bit but no way I could spend the whole night in the water. I had to find something big enough to float on or I’d freeze. As I got out to the first cut up tanker I realized my plan was already turning to shit. There’d been plenty of junk big enough to climb on back by the dock but out here everything (that wasn’t a giant ship) was way too small or way too greasy to climb up on. I tried a couple oil barrels and a dead tree but I just slipped off with a splash. There had to be an old buoy to hang onto, or an anchor chain I could climb, a shipping container would have been perfect (those things were always floating around everywhere) but I couldn’t see any. I kept swimming, there was no way I was turning around.
I tried keeping Poor Bastard Cooper out of my brain but he wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept floating up looking down at me, eyes dead, bloody spear sticking out of his mouth. I had to keep reminding myself he didn’t mean me nothing but harm, it was him or me. Now that I’d killed him whatever plan those assholes had for me just got a lot worse. It was good motivation to get as far away from them as possible or drown trying. I figured I probably had enough juice in me to get to the far side of the harbor if I paced myself. I started heading in that direction. Ahead of me were 2 massive ships sitting side by side on the oily water, their decks almost touching but with plenty of room between the hulls for me to get through. As I swam into the canyon between them I saw a small dark shape sitting on the water. It was just bobbing there about halfway down. Couldn’t tell if it was a boat or what but I just knew this was my life raft. My arms were getting tired but I sprinted at it anyway. It was stupid to burn up my energy, but I was getting cold again and had to get out of the water. As I got closer I could see it was a little boat. I knew it! Finally some good luck again. At this point I was so relieved I wasn't exactly thinking straight, like, what was a boat doing out here in the middle of the night anyways. Maybe it just floated here? I wasn’t even thinking someone might be aboard.
But it was too late. I was already at the stern of the boat. I hung onto the outboard panting, listening. My sprint swim’d made a lot of noise, all that splashing echoing off the hulls. If somebody’d been on board they’d have heard me a mile off. Except for my chattering teeth there was nothing, not a sound. I could feel my balls trying to climb inside me. I said fuck it and just went for it. I was ½ way up the outboard when a hand shot out of the dark and flipped me into the boat by my shorts. In a flash he had me pinned, his knife on my neck.
“Mau lo apa sih, mother fucker!” in Indo-lish.
I was too shocked to be scared. All I could get out was:
“Whaaa …? I … sorry!” in English even though I understood him just fine.