The Wake Up Call (part 1.17)
Chapter 1.17: Shelter
Chaos ensued both inside and beyond the heavy slab walls of the disgusting cafe. The bikers fought like blood thirsty demons expelling hails of bullets and foul language in equal measure from near the entrance while Hetch and the stewardess searched for some means of escape. The poorly lit and squalid recesses of the cafe's rear offered little in the way of hope or fresh air. The fire exit had long since been reinforced with toughened bolts to prevent any unwanted customers from making it a 'self service' store. The stench of blocked drains, rotting garbage and cheap disinfectant hung heavy in the air like thunder clouds waiting to spill at the seams. Black painted windows and tatty boards concealed a small opening behind a rusty radiator which clearly had not been used to heat the cafe for decades. Its pipes were brittle and looked ready to surrender to the heavy dented fins of the radiator itself above them. Hetch kicked his boots around on the sticky carpet and watched as waves of fleas, wood-lice and other insects scuttled off for cover. "If only we could do the same", he thought, "find some small, dark hole and hide in it".
The stewardess checked herself. She pulled the torn uniform back up over her bruised shoulders and looked at Hetch. She had survived what would have been a brutal attack and had emerged almost unscathed except for a hand full of red marks on her body and a hyper-active heart rate.
"You okay?"
She nodded with an expression of reluctant thanks. "There would be a price to pay for this, later" she thought.
The adrenaline induced battle raged on in the relative distance as the bikers fought their way outside and towards the oncoming troops. Burst of gunfire, the sounds of dented transport panels and synth-glass rained down like the tears of a junkie going through cold turkey. Metal against metal scratched out the deflected footprints of a thousand spent shells as they ricochet from gun to vehicle and from vehicle to unfortunate soft, human target.
So there they were; stuck right in the epicentre of a full blown gun battle of their making, hiding in the dark like a pair of lost children.
Nature itself interrupted the tempest below to inject its own acid rain into the maelstrom. The smog filled city would often choke on its own polluted vomit and bring up an unexpected shower of hailstones or a smoker's lung full of hot, stale air. Any citizen who ventured out onto the streets without a personal respirator on certain days was immediately marked for severe health problems later the very same day. That's why most rich citizens lived their entire lives inside huge, monolithic tower blocks with microscopically filtered air and purified water systems supplying then with a long, clean, comfortable, germ-free and sadly excitement-free lives.
The Eldora Tower was nothing special, but it was a thousand times more comfortable than their present surroundings. Even after running through that gauntlet of fire Hetch now looked back and remembered that apartment with a weird form of fondness, at least there he only had himself to rely on, no wolf-in-sheep's clothing companion to slow him down.
"Is there a plan in that sick, twisted mind of yours Mewco?"
"Always!" he replied holding up the leader's key-card wallet and a wicked grin.
She sighed, but this time there was a hint of hope in her voice. The quick thinking and sheer nerve of him gave her some hope.
"If you're going to lie down with dogs, then expect to catch fleas."
There was another surprise. He reached under his shirt and pulled out a collection of high-protein snacks in mass-produced, foil envelopes.
"The secret trick is, to always take a shower in flea powder afterwards."
He handed her the junk food packets and pushed her hands around this modest bundle of snacks. Her dark brown eyes blinked and flickered like the poorly maintained light box above them, but he didn't know whether this was in way of thanks for the food, or due to the dust-rich atmosphere of their present surroundings.
"What about me?"
"You're a big girl. You can look after yourself."
As he started to move away she went to catch his coat and bring him to a halt but her hands were overflowing in slippery, foil bags.
"Damn you Mewco!" she whispered.
He crept along the side of the corridor keeping his back against the rough, crack covered wall. Every few steps would produce another mini-avalanche of crumbling plaster and paint chips from the walls. Beyond the scope of his senses laid the blasted remains of the round menu columns, now showing static or the inky blackness of burn-out and damage, much like a hand full of corpses which queued up on the sidewalks outside.
She juggled with the packets, attempting to find a 'protein-fix' in a flavour she liked before dropping most of them at her feet. There in-between the flimsy foil containers slept a sharp pocket knife still in its protective cover, a weapon or means of opening the food bag, depending on how she felt at that moment in time. "Did this mean he now trusted her?" she thought. "What other reason could there be for giving her a weapon? or was this a 'thank you and good-bye' present, a way of getting rid of her?" She unfastened the pocket knife and discarded the corner of a foil packet with an effortless flick, something she had done countless times before when preparing twenty meals for impatient passengers on a long shuttle flight. The soft, rich flavoured contents of the bag soon vanished and its left-overs were dabbed from her lips and onto her fingertips. This was a small luxury in her present situation. She had almost forgotten the last time she had eaten or drunk any water and her body now reminded her of this fact.
She moved into the ladies' restroom quietly and rested her legs by sitting on the long, low trash can. Its once shiny chrome skin now baked in decades of use and abuse. The cold metal cube was hard and unpadded like an empty swimming pool with pipes and half buried structures all occupying its hidden interior workings. She noticed her reflection in the bowed chrome casing. The backs of her legs were dirty and sore like the grated cheese on yesterday's pizza. If she had had the energy to cry then this would have surely been the right time to do so. For a passing moment she envied that spaced-out narco that her 'countdown twin' had found in the far cubical, screwed up and discarded like a food wrapper.
Time passed.
The sound from the battle outside continued like the drips from the leaky taps. The voices and sirens flew overhead and around like a haunted house during a failed exorcism with sounds of horror crying out for willing ear to possess. There could have been a carnival or a massacre going outside, she wouldn't have known which for sure and had no wish to find out. Her heart like her energy was running close to empty. This was going to be the break she needed, the chance to pay out her debts and to flee from the likes of Mewco. But any hope of this had evaporated like diesel on a hot summer's day, much like her ex-boss himself. Damn him. He was a curse, a haunting figure whose reputation hung in the air like stale after-shave crossed with cheap alcoholic and gun oil. Those previous thoughts of escape from his grasp were forgotten to be replaced with an acceptance of her fate once the time of the two armbands hit null.
The chrome cube popped back into shape with a metallic ping as she stood up and faced the nearest mirror. Her hair was scraggly and feathered. Her uniform covered in vomit and oil stains and her face bore the history of an ordeal. She wondered how many more transient passengers in life's misfortune train had looked into the same mirror with despair in their eyes at their own reflections? She cupped her hands together, caught a pool of cold water in them and washed the dried tears from her eyes. The sleeves on the uniform served as make-shift towels. Her eyes refocused on the armband in the reflection, its small LEDs came sharp into view once again. An unwanted reminder that life was fragile. One slip, one mis-timed turn and it could be taken away in an instant, never to return.
This was a sobering thought, a wake-up call to longevity. The clock hands on the face of father-time is marked with a finite scale, a life-span for each individual and whose chimes of midnight were there to be feared.
She looked at her own hands. Those once pampered nails were broken or scratched, the fingers and palms marked with recent cuts. She was back once again where she had been earlier in her life. This unpleasant Deja-vu was an echo of the past, a phantom visitor from yesterday making an unwelcome return.
The door gapped open and a fist grabbed one hand and pulled it violently towards the corridor like a hungry lizard ambushing its prey. She let out a shriek of surprise, fearing it to be one of the scoot-jockey gang or a troop. Out of the darkness emerged the silhouette of Mewco.
"Still powdering your nose?"
"That's not funny."
"Come on, we're got to get out before those jack-ass troops finally realise no one is left alive in here, except us two."
Hetch walked back along the gloomy corridor and towards the kitchen.
"So who won?"
"I can tell you who lost." he replied as he pulled a filing cabinet into the centre of the chef's small back office. A pile of old magazines, pens, paperwork and fallen ceiling panel fragments cascaded from the top of the cabinet.
"Plan on doing your tax return forms?"
"No, plan on applying for some new life insurance. I need it with you around."
She looked through the kitchen hatch and peered at the lifeless body of the gang's leader. His twisted corpse laid on the floor tiles like an old bear rug, the sort of sick trophy of rich interior designers with more money than common sense or moral conscience would use to decorate with.
"Who, er, how did he die?"
"It wasn't me."
"But I thought..."
"You thought wrong! Now move it on top of this cabinet and through that hole."
"You thought I might have killed him, for you? Just because he tried to...... back there?"
She did as he said with a brief interrupting pause in mid-climb.
"Abuse me?"
He pushed her foot up off the top of the filing cabinet to help her up.
"Yes."
"What's the matter? is your past catching up with your conscience?" she said, her voice reverberating around the hollow ceiling crawl-space.
"No. Is yours?"
Hetch followed her up into the ceiling, kicked the filing cabinet over behind him and pulled the thin, metal trapdoor back in place.
To be continued...