Outrun Stories #43

The world’s gotta pay, the world’s gotta pay, the world’s gotta pay, just going around and around and around in my head. Look what it’s taken, everything from me, everything and everyone that I ever had or loved and left me this shell, with nothing more than a loaded gun and a grimace across my face.

Well, the world’s gotta pay, something or someone owes me, and right now I’m not sure I care where it comes from or who I have to squeeze it out of. There’s no innocents left in this city, everyone was driven out long ago and with that, in came the scum, the gangs, the dealers and all the rest of it.

I’m standing at the floor to ceiling window of my apartment and looking down on the city, the sky bleeding red, set to a permanent dark rouge that feeds the anger of this place.

After the incident, they didn’t know how to turn the sky back to blue, so the whole place, 700,000 square kilometres, an area the size of Old Texas has this red sky, and everyone that couldn’t get out or didn’t have the money or whatever, is driven to a crazy sort of hyper-anger.

Some of us adapted to it better than others, some of us even fed off it. Like me, using it, using what it brought out of me, but channelling it into trying to do some good, trying to get those who were left out of here and into something better, back underneath the blue, out of this red and out of this horror.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. After a while I was even able to gather a few others like me, people who had a strength that they could use for good rather than evil. No one else gave a fuck about this place, the government left us behind, the whole outside world left us behind and, so it took people like me to try and help do something for those that were left.

Fifteen years I’ve been fighting this fight, and for fifteen years I’ve struggled and fought and for what? A broken body, a ravaged mind full or horror and sorrow, not a single person left around me that could give a fuck about me. I didn’t do it for glory or thanks or praise or any of that shit, I did it because I knew it was right, that’s what I tell myself at least, I did it because you know when you have to do the right thing, and now? Well, now there’s nothing left, all the innocents have long gone, I got a few out, most died or were pulled in by the gangs, and they’ve spread and spread to the point that there’s nothing else now. They should nuke the place and be done with it, but until they get the balls to do it, now, there’s just me. Just me left behind and you know what? The world’s gotta pay.

Glock at my side, boots laced, gloves on, webbing strapped, body armour tightened, heads-up-display on tactical mode, helmet buckled, cigarette lit, whiskey shot, teeth gritted. Oh yeah, the world’s gotta pay, I’ll squeeze it out of some motherfucker.