(26) That Time I Was Awesome [Oh wait...that's everyday]

As Elaine was utterly depressed without me on the lowest level of the capital building, I was unconscious three floors up. I wasn't out for long though.

Hey there, I'm John, the stud you've been reading about. ;)  I've been reading Elaine's blog and decided that this was a good point to tell some of the story from my perspective. Seeing as how a lot of crazy stuff went down when she wasn't around. So, back to the dark hallway.

When I woke up, the lights were all out except for a small pulsating orange light that was shining right in my flippin' eyes. I was chained to a large long chair that reminded me of the dentist. I really hate the dentist, with all his tools and stuff. It freaks me out. I would much rather be on the front lines of a war than see the dentist. Anyway, strapped to this chair I looked around the room and saw that I was surrounded by Beasts.

Noticing I was awake, one of them stepped forward and pulled out a small box covered in buttons and whirring knobs. After fiddling with it, the box spoke in a raspy and metallic voice that sounded like the ancient earth singer Steven Tyler. Man that guy was odd, but his daughter sure turned out pretty, I mean, alright. Elaine is the most beautiful girl in all of space and time. I love you baby. Yeah....the voice said,

"Tell us, John, where are your forces? Where is your military base located?"

"I'm not talking you idiot sons of dirt." I said defiantly. More button pressing,

"Then we will torture it out of you." I looked straight into the eyes of the Beast and asked to see the box. The Beast handed it to me and when he was close enough I knocked my head against his. Stars popped before my eyes and I said,

"Bring it on you piece of dirt!"

I won't gross you out with all the gory details of my gruesome torture. Let's just say I've got a few more battle scars and an irrational fear of turnips. Eventually they threw my body into a room with no windows and told me they'd "be back". Honestly, did they think they were the Terminator or something? I crawled to the wall of the cell and pulled myself up. I moved slowly over to the door and listened intently. Now, they had stripped me of my weapons and my favorite blue coat, but they hadn't searched me carefully enough. I had a secret hiding place (and no, I'm not telling you where it is) for a small but powerful 4000xp blaster gun, limited edition with my name engraved on the handle and a diamond on the top of the barrel. I pulled it out and shot a very small, but very potent close-range blast at the lock on the door. A large hole burst into existence on the door and it swung forward to let me out.

I crept down the hallway and soon came to a door that was open and emitting an orange light. Beasts. I peeked around the corner and saw them sniffing over my coat, trying to get a fix on where I had been so they could work out the location of the base. I charged my 4000xp blaster and suddenly lept in front of the doorway. Four quick shots took out the Beasts. I snatched my coat from their grimy claws, grabbed my bag with all my supplies from the table, and sprinted to the doorway. When I came to the elevator I shot the doors apart. Shooting my grappling gun 360-s against the wall of the elevator shaft I jumped into the darkness. I slid down my rope as fast as possible until I reached the bottom of the shaft. As I stuffed the grappling gun into my bag I blasted open the door to the bottom floor and walked through it slowly for dramatic effect...which was wasted because no one was there.

I walked down the hallway and came to another door. I almost blasted it before I realized I should check the lock. It was locked. I knocked on the door and a voice called out,

"Who goes there?"

What was this? The room for paranoids anonymous?

"I'm John, leader of the army and son of the governors."

Several locks clicked and the door was opened by a receptionist who had seen better days. She smiled at me. I grinned and searched the room till I found them. My parents. They came running over and engulfed me in hugs. I hadn't seen them in forever. I was so glad they were still alive. When we broke apart, they stepped aside as Elaine launched herself at me. I spun her around the room till I got dizzy. She was just as happy to see me as I was to see her. I loved her so much, and yet, I love her even more today.

But you don't want to hear about all this gooey love stuff, you want to hear about the fighting!! Well dear reader, you shall not be disappointed. Next time I shall tell of how I bested the entire Beast force in the capital with a piece of string, two weather balloons, a bar of chocolate, one 4000xp blaster, 25000kg of explosives, and one smokin' hot babe.

(25) Elevator Music

As we slowly made our way down the long rope toward the ground, I nearly fainted. All around us, hanging by their necks from the ceiling, were hundreds of corpses. It looked as though half the city had been strung up in here. Suddenly I knew why the building still stood. The Beasts were killing the remaining people one by one. And, they probably were planning on a rescue mission. I buried my face into John's chest. I couldn't watch as the dead bodies swung slowly, ominously, from side to side.

"Shhhh, Elaine, everything is going to be alright. I'm right here. I'm not going to let you go." John whispered in my ear. In that moment, I realized how much better things seemed when John was here, when I could hear his voice. Even surrounded by death, sunlight was present, in him. He made everything better, that's how I knew I was in love. The whole world looked brighter when he was with me, more magical. I knew even more firmly that I never wanted to be parted from him.

Finally we reached the floor. John gingerly stepped to the ground then asked, "Can you stand? It's okay Elaine, we're past them, we're far past them." His soft voice in my ears gave me reassurance. I nodded and stood on my own two, albeit shaky feet. John took my hand and pulled me through the large room toward the elevator that would take us to the most likely place for the refugees to hide: The War Room.

As we reached the elevator, John jerked his head suddenly and looked to the shadows. Raising his ray gun it charged and discharged rapidly as he killed six Beasts in quick succession. Then we hurtled around the reception desk and into the elevator where he punched the button for the lowest level. Breathing quickly we stood there looking tense as the awkward elevator music piped in from invisible speakers. Suddenly, the elevator jolted to a halt three floors above our destination. A flickering overhead proceeded the failure of the lights. We were plunged into inky blackness. All at once the door opened and a dart flew in quick as a flash, hitting John in the neck. A long, hairy arm reached out of the darkness and grabbed John. I tried to keep him in the elevator, but the Beast ripped him from my grasp. The elevator door slammed shut and it continued it's decent as though nothing had happened. The lights even flicked back on. When the elevator stopped I tried to get it to go back up, but it refused to budge. Then, as soon as I stepped off, it closed its doors and began to move upward again. I was trapped here, and John was a prisoner of the Beasts.

The absence of John stabbed at me like a knife. My world had plunged into darkness quickly as the lights in the elevator. That was the thing about the magic of love, once you've seen the world that way, all bright and beautiful, reality without your beloved seems empty and dim. I didn't believe John was gone for good, or dead, I knew he would come for me, but until I saw his face again, or heard his voice, or even received the smallest letter from him, my world was as dark as a night without the moons.

(24) Kiss

We sprinted through the city and finally came around a corner and found ourselves right next to the capital building. Why the Beasts hadn't already broken in I had no idea. They must have simply wanted the building to remain intact. If they could break through the wall they sure could break into the capital building, even with a ragtag resistance and a barricaded door. We crouched in the shadows as John analyzed the situation. The Beasts were surrounding the large dome-shaped building. The slick surface would make it impossible to climb over it, but every entrance was being patrolled by some  guard or other. After a moment of scaning our surroundings John began to study the dome itself. After a moment he took my hand and led me into a house next to our location where the door had been busted in. We crept through the darkness. The house was large and long and came right up against the dome. We made our way to the fourth story and found a window that opened up a couple of feet away from the dome itself.

The Beasts did not like human dwellings or they would have made a camp in here. But then that went back to the heart of our quarrel with the beasts. They didn't use buildings. They lived in the elements and disliked finding us building things on the planet. We were here first and this planet had been empty of sentient life before we moved onto it, however the Beasts think that they are a more superior race and that living outside has made them stronger than the rest of us.

John opened the window quietly and shot his suctioning grappling gun onto the dome. It latched on and John turned to look at me.

"Can you climb this?" He asked holding out the rope. I supposed I would find out.

"I think so," came my uncertain reply.

"Wait here for me then while I climb, I'll come back and get you when I'm done, okay?"

I didn't like the sound of that, but a quick test of upper body strength told me that I could not support my own weight on that rope. John looked deep into my eyes. Then he said abruptly,

"I want to kiss you right now. I know that I may not come out of that building and I know that you might not make it out of this city. I want to know what it feels like to kiss your lips, Elaine, but I won't do that. No matter how much I want to. I want your kisses to be special, and until I can pledge everything that I am to you, I'm not worthy to have them. Even if I was, I would not want to steal a kiss from you before I die. That's not fair to you, or the lucky son of a gun you marry. So, know that I am dying to kiss you, you bewitching fairy, but that I won't, for your sake." Then he kissed my hand, winked at me, and lept out of the window before I could say another word.

I watched him work his way up the slick, stone dome and thought about his words. I felt like the most special girl in the world. He wanted me. He wanted to kiss me. And yet, he valued me more than his own wants and desires. Part of me was disappointed he didn't kiss me, but the rest of me was just that much more impressed with him. As I watched his flapping blue coat grow smaller as he climbed higher and higher, I felt an overwhelming desire to be at his side again. I ached when I wasn't with him. As I leaned out the window watching John, I heard a sound below.

Then a creak on the stairs.

A Beast was going to come through that door in a matter of seconds and there was no where to hide. I didn't think, I just jumped after John. He had been using the two grappling guns to make his way farther up the dome so there wasn't even a rope to hang onto. Thankfully my ability to hoover, and my momentum kept me a few feet off the dome. I ran through the air and reached the top just as John was setting his charges. As he turned to get a good distance away from the blast he ran smack into me. Laughing he pulled me out of the air and flattened me onto the dome. His body shielding me from any shrapnel.

As we stood up he flashed a grin at me and said, "Couldn't keep away from the babe magnet could you?" I shoved him and laughed. How he could make jokes when we were just about to launch into a full-scale rescue mission to save his parents I had no idea. After affixing a grappling device onto the roof near the hole he hooked the gun on his belt and took me in his arms.

He dropped us into the large room, but we weren't the only bodies suspended from the ceiling.

(23) The Fall

The cool night air rushed past our ears. We landed on the first rooftop easily. The next several jumps went really well, then, we slipped. I felt our feet fly out from under us as we began to land. Our bodies fell backward, hurtling toward the ground.

 I reacted by flipping my body mid-air and launching John up onto the roof to safety.
He grabbed my hand,
holding my fingers tightly,
but the sweat on our hands cause his
grip
    to
      lessen.

                He
                    lost
                          my
                              hand...

As his fingers parted with mine he bit his lip and slid off the roof after me. The buildings were about 15 feet high. I could not keep us in the air now that we were falling. John wrapped his arms around my waist as something shot up at the roof.

Our bodies suddenly jerked upward and we were suspended about 6 feet off the ground. He had fired a grappling hook at the roof and it had suctioned on to the structure. How John had managed to fire the gun and hook it onto his belt before grabbing my falling body as we tumbled through the air? He saved our lives in a matter of seconds. The push of a button and we were lowered slowly to the ground. John's feet hit the ground first and he cradled me in his arms as the hook disengaged and dropped to the ground beside us.

"Let's stay on the ground for a while, okay Elaine?" He laughed between gasps for air. I nodded, too winded and stressed to speak. "You saved my life Elaine. I saw what you did there. I owe you a debt of gratitude...although I did just save your life so I think we're even, don't you?" a crooked grin flashed across his face in the moonlight.

Oh, but he hadn't saved me from falling. I fell even harder that night for my hero, John.

(22) The City

What had looked like a massive pile of bodies was actually a large force of animated corpses. They had been manipulated somewhere, programed to attack. I heard John's ray gun charge beside me so I readied mine too. John was here, I knew he would save me. I was not alone. He looked at me and kissed my forehead,

"I hadn't meant to charge in, guns blazing, but it looks like we have to. Can you shoot?" I nodded my head firmly, then to prove it, I shot the nearest body through the chest. It's guts splattered everywhere. I grimaced and prepared to shoot another one while I looked for a way out. When I spotted a dark side alley to my left I tugged at John's arm and pointed it out. He nodded and we fought our way through the horde. When we got into close range the ray guns took too long to charge to be of much use, so I started punching and kicking the corpses. John's strength enabled him to break off their limbs and necks. Eventually, covered in gore, we made it to the alley and ran inside. John fired at the walls as we passed through them and caused them to collapse, leaving us with no escape, but also ensuring we wouldn't be followed.

When we came to a fork in the alley, we checked the holographic schematic of the city. We were west of the capital building. So we took the right fork and continued on. It got darker, to keep us from getting separated, John held my hand and led me through the streets using a small pulsating green glow-light. As we neared a main street, John stowed his light safely, but didn't let go of my hand, instead he pulled his gun out and we pressed our backs to the wall at the edge of the building nearest the street. John looked down at me and nodded. Silently we ran across the street and ducked next to a large fountain that was now leaking and spraying water into the street. Large puddles rippled about the square. I knew this place. I had come here often to feed the amphibious birds that lived in and around this fountain. From the look of the red water, most of them were dead.

So much death surrounded this city. This city I loved. I had spent most of my childhood running through these streets. The library a few blocks from here had housed me nearly 29/8 one summer. I spent every available moment there pouring over books and reading all about adventures that people had on our planet of origin, earth.

Suddenly I was brought back to the present when John's gun charged. I saw the shadow move right in front of the street we needed to be on, it was no corpse, but a Beast. Ten feet tall with long deadly curved arms, it's large ears were pricked and alert for the slightest sound. It was a miracle we hadn't been spotted before. If John killed it, the others would surely hear about it. Hadn't our fight near the wall been noisy enough? Maybe it hadn't reached the rest of the city. Maybe the corpses were just acting on their own. There was a lot of debris in the square. John was looking at it too. He stowed his ray gun and motioned for me to follow him. We crawled across the smooth irridianite stone and found our way to a street north of our position. As we cautiously made our way down the street against the wall and in the shadows, I saw that the library was not destroyed. I motioned to John and we ducked inside the doorway, guns at the ready. I took John's hand and led him up the stairs and to a place where a part of the roof opened up to allow some sunlight in. We pulled ourselves up onto the slick, white surface of the roof. I saw the buildings line up all the way to the capital. We could jump our way across the city. The roofs were flat enough, as long as our feet didn't slip on the slick, cool surface. John wrapped his arms around me again, and we launched ourselves into the air.



{on a rather interesting side note, the corpses in the city were originally just going to be a pile of bodies, looking ominous. However, the comments on my last post were so funny and indicative of zombies that I couldn't resist. But, I dislike the "feed me brains" zombies that infect people, I just like the idea of animated and dangerous corpses used for war purposes. So, thank you for inspiring me to have John and Elaine enter the city with more of a bang! :) }

(21) Death at the Capital

The hours flew by faster than the insane speed of John's bike. Soon, three more days had passed us by as unremarkably as the foiliage, except it meant that the food supply at the capital was dwindling quickly. We never spoke of the mission or the plan of attack. When I had broached the subject, John had been unwilling to talk about it so I didn't push the issue. Mostly it felt as though he was savoring each moment with me. Unwilling to allow a moment to slip by without taking full advantage of it. We learned so much about each other in those few hours when our feet were on the ground between bike rides and much needed sleep.

Dawn of the fourth day, there was a change in John's expression. There was a hard line in place of his mouth and two ice chips where his eyes used to be. I felt his body stiffen as I held it in my arms on the bike. I knew--I could read him well at this point--that something was wrong, and I could infer that we must be nearing the capital. The high speed slowed and soon we reached a halt right behind a large tree. He parked it and dismounted before turning to face me. His eyes were hard and he looked at me with a calculating expression.

"I probably shouldn't have brought you along. This will be dangerous, and it was selfish of me to bring you out here so unprotected. But I need you, and more than that, more than needing help, I wanted to be with you. I can't stand it when we are apart."  

He needed me here. More that that, he wants to spend time with me. Little old nobody me. He made me feel special. I wanted to do my best to prove to him that i could be useful. He looked at me and pulled out a holographic map, with the touch of a button, a schematic of the capital popped up including the best intel on the Beasts' army.

"The bike can get us within 5 miles of the city, then it's foot work. We should reach the city by nightfall. Then, we just have to find a way through the army, over the 20' wall which the Beasts will be guarding, through the barricades and find our way through this maze of fallen debris to the capital and not die."

I blinked, "Sounds like a plan." I said, with a slight smile. John was a "think on your feet kind of guy"I respected his ability to do that, I was a planner, but he was the professional at this. I would defer to his plans or lack thereof.

We rode in just like he said, by nightfall, the outer camp of the Beasts was in sight. John backed up against a tree with his ray gun held up to his face at a vertical angle. He looked like a rouge hero. I liked that. We peaked around the tree and saw the eerie orange glow of the camp. I really hate orange. I looked up at the treetops and saw that they went right up to the wall. An idea took shape in my mind. I looked at John and relayed my thoughts. A devious smile broke his face and he said in a hushed tone,

"I knew I wouldn't regret bringing you along."
I scaled the tree and John followed me. When we reached the top John wrapped his arms around my waist and we leapt into the air, my ability to fly kept us in the air at that height long enough to get to the next tree. Silently we tree-hopped to the wall. As we floated down on the inside of the wall we kept our eyes open and sharp for any beast activity.

When our feet hit the ground our noses were overwhelmed with the rank smell of death and decomposing bodies.
A large mound of them rose up before us.
I buried my face in John's shoulder as memories of the tomb assaulted me.

(20) Breakfast at Dinnertime

The bike whooshed through the woods. John was skilled at avoiding every little tree and branch, even at such high velocities. As we were nearing a lake he punched a large button in the center of the handle bars and the wheels abruptly left the ground and we began to hoover over the ground just moments before it became water. Then John turned to the right and started going north, into the rising sun. I held onto John tightly. I never wanted to let him go. When mid-day hit, John slowed his bike and landed it on the soft turf. The sun was blazing so John found some shade under a large tree. I was so tired. I hadn't had a proper night's sleep in days and my body was protesting. I eased myself stiffly off the bike and lay down on the springy grass. I was asleep before John had dismounted his bike.
I didn't know how long I slept, but I awoke to a hand on my face, gently moving my hair aside and stroking my cheek. I opened my eyes and saw John's face looking down on me with an apologetic smile.
"Hey sweetheart", he said in a soft voice, "We have to get going; I'm so sorry to wake you."
I smiled at him and nodded as I slowly sat up. He helped me. His help was unnecessary, but I loved it when he touched me so I let him support me as I got to my feet. It was evening, just before twilight. My stomach grumbled loudly causing John to laugh. This sound was the most beautiful sound in the world, apart from his voice saying my name. He rifled through the rations and pulled the tab on a smallish one. Breakfast for two sprang into existence. We each grabbed a plate loaded with an omlet, bacon, sausage links, and pineberry fruit.
"So", I said slyly between bites. "All the ladies love the bike? How many ladies have you taken on this thing?"
John looked at me with a coy look on his face and started counting on his fingers and moving his lips as though he was counting outloud, though I couldn't distinguish his words. After a moment of this he looked at me and said, "Only one...you" Then his devastatingly handsome smile broke across his face and I blushed at the honor. When we had eaten our fill we wrapped it back up in the pouch it had sprung from. This shrunk it down to the size of a small orange.
Then John grabbed me and spun me around before placing me on top of his bike. He stepped back and looked at the picture that made with a grin on his face. Then he hopped onto the bike and we rode off into the fading light.