The Journey - Chapter 1
Imported from SF2 with no description.
The journey was always quiet.
The lion had never had a travel partner. He\'d honestly never needed one. It was kill or be killed out here in the wastelands, and that was so much easier to uphold when you didn\'t have someone trailing along all the time. He had all that he needed: his backpack full of food and medical supplies, the clothes on his back, tattered as they were, and the rifle slung over his shoulder. It was a dependable thing, that rifle, even though it dated to before the war.
The air on this day was rather heavy, weighed down by the impending storm. The sky was grey, letting little light through, as it had the day before, the week before...for God knows how long before. The travelling feline hadn\'t lived before the war, so he didn\'t know what the true sky looked like, only the scarred remnants that remained. He\'d heard stories from his grandfather, however, about the blue heights extending into eternity, showing the limitless potential of his kind.
So, of course, they had to blow it up.
The war hadn\'t lasted that long; he\'d heard it lasted less than 48 hours. Someone had made the wrong assumption, someone else had acted on that false assumption, sending the world into chaos. All those cold missiles suddenly went hot, burning the globe with their hatred. Those on the forefront of the attacks had no chance; cities crumbled, taking millions with them. Only those on the outskirts, the small towns and cities, could react, immediately going underground. Days and days passed as the small bomb shelters from the 1970s shook, dust flying everywhere. Some died in those bunkers, some of hunger, some of radiation, some of dust inhalation. The rest were not so lucky.
They\'d tried to rebuild, attempted to band together to salvage what little there was left in those months following the war. They\'d done fairly well, too, forming towns, societies, some even cities. Harmony, that elusive thing that had never existed in the pre-war world, had finally come to their land, to the world.
So, of course, they had to mess it up.
Factions grew wary of each other, cities clumped into groups and alliances on a whim. Civil disagreements grew into full-fledged arguments, those blooming into heated rivalries, ending, finally, in bloodshed. Small wars raged around the globe, but this time, there were nothing more than sticks and stones to fight with, so the savagery of man and beast were multiplied. With the Great War, the push of a button was all it took; here, the combatants had to get down and dirty, get blood on their paws and hands, see the life leave the eyes of those they murdered. And thus the world was thrown into darkness.
His grandfather had been able to avoid most of this bloodshed, most of this waring and fighting by hiding away with his family. He and his wife had lived underground, not setting foot outside unless absolutely imperative. Once the traveller\'s father had come around, however, everything changed: his grandfather and grandmother could no longer hide, but had to seek the help of the factions. They had levied a price for the safety of his family; it was hefty, and was the last of the wealth that the traveller\'s family had ever owned.
The lion\'s father had grown up in that faction, growing old, finding a wife and fathering the traveller and two siblings. His sister was Haley, two years older than the traveller. His younger brother by three years was Marcus, or Mark. And he, he was Kevin. Not a particularly exceptional name; rather plain, in fact. It was, however, his name. Not that he heard it much anymore.
The faction hadn\'t held up their end of the contract. Another faction, heavily armed and holding a decades-long grudge over something that even they forgot the significance of, raided the faction\'s village, taking everyone and everything. Men were slaughtered, scalped, or burned alive; women were raped and kidnapped; children were thrust into slavery. How, then, had Kevin managed to escape?
His godly sister, Haley, had given herself, her body, the only thing that could not be taken from her, to the bastards, in a trade. Her body, her being, for his life, his freedom. Even as Marcus drowned in his own blood beside her, coughing and sputtering, no chance left, she\'d given herself away, hoping that these barbarians had some semblance of mercy. They\'d agreed, and he was taken to the outskirts of town, pushed out into the desert and nothingness with nary but his clothes. He could still see the look on Haley\'s face as she was dragged away, kicking and screaming, and the blank stare of Mark, who forever would look upon the sky with distance and disconnection.
What was he to do, then? He walked. He walked for hours, weaker by the minute, water flowing from his system in the sweat that dripped down his face. His paws ached, his eyes fluttered, but still he kept on, not wanting to go back to that, not wanting to see his sister raped or his brother dead. He still wanted to back, to save them, to make everything okay, but he was only 15; he knew he couldn\'t do a damned thing, and that killed him inside.
It still killed him inside to this very day. Four years and his child-like innocence later, he still travelled, tracking down leads while trying to live. Sure, he hated partners, hated having someone slow him down, but if he could see her again, his only family, and come like a white knight to her rescue, his life would be worthwhile. Maybe white wasn\'t the correct color. He was tainted. He had seen so much, had done so much, that he was definitely tarnished, unpolished, greying to black. His heart was dying slowly, each day bringing with it a new kind of disappointment and helplessness, and he acted on those feelings with aggression and rage. The mutated things on the plains bore the brunt of his wrath, but those still conscious and sane sometimes felt his anger, as well. He hated what he had become, but his situation didn\'t lend to much love and healing.
Hazelton. That was its name. He\'d been through here once before on his way to Maverick to follow up on a lead. It was a quaint little town, gave him the food, water and shelter that he needed for the night before shipping off in the morning. The people and morphs there had been a little too friendly, but that he chalked up to a lack of passers-through, an overbearing need for new faces. One could only take the same people for so long before they needed some variety. It\'d be the same this time around, of course: just a little stop-in, an overnight kind of thing. He wouldn\'t be long.
His hefty and powerful paw landed on the bell, the cheap metal thing ringing with the vigor and resonance that it had carried on its first day out of the box. A few dings, yes, but nothing that stopped it from doing its job and doing it well. It was dirty, unpolished, dented, weathered and old, and yet it still performed with passion. The lion slid his finger slowly along the rough and battered curve of the old thing, sighing to himself.
As he was admiring the bell, the clerk came up. He remembered the old man from last time; short, stubby, with a smile as big as Asia. A human, common around these parts, but unlike some of the humans he had run across on his journey, open to any and all kinds, even his own. His demeanor never faltered, never fell through. He was constantly looking for the bright side in things, as Kevin remembered from the last time he had been through his hotel and the water had started to leak. Instead of swear and moan, the man (Johnny, Kevin remembered) had used it as an excuse to redo the watering system and renovate some of the rooms of the hotel. A truly admirable kind.
\"Well, stranger! How ya doin\'? It\'s been a while since I\'ve seen ya! Find what ya were lookin\' fer?\" Johnny\'s accent was thick and southern, almost to the point of being unintelligible. It still lent itself to some comfort; that sounthern drawl had always given him a little comfort, as his mother had had it, too. Not as pronounced, of course, but enough to influence him.
\"Nah...dead end...\" Kevin said sadly, shaking his head slowly back and forth. His tail flicked lightly at the thought of what had happened in Maverick.
\"Shame, that. Ah, well, maybe next time! Fixin\' t\' stay th\' night, \'er are ye jus\' passin\' through?\" Forever smiling, Johnny was.
\"Actually, do you have a single room available? If not, I don\'t want to trouble you...\" Kevin\'s voice sounded apologetic, his ears splaying a little.
\"Naw! \'Tain\'t a problem, Mister! Got a few rooms available; ain\'t got more than a few, \'cept those passin\' through like yerself. Got a gentlemen upstairs with a few ladies in another room. Some morphs like yerself, though. Think one was a dog, and \'nother was a...shoot, ya know, those really scary lookin\' birds?\"
\"Eagles? Hawks? Falcons?\" Kevin listed off a few of the birds he knew, but he wasn\'t an ornithologist, so his knowledge was a bit limited. He sat on the stool in front of the desk, smiling a bit; while he was here, why not get a drink or two?
\"Hawk! That was it! Their eyes scare me a li\'l. Ya know, peerin\' into yer soul or somesuch. Ah, well. Nice enough folk.\" Johnny ducked under the desk, his motions comical. He dug through a few things below Kevin\'s eyesight, jingling eminating from beneath the wood. After all these years, and the desk was still polished and shiny as new. Amazing, how people took care of the little things...
\"Here we go!\" Johnny took Kevin\'s paw and plopped an old, heavy, iron key into it. Kevin had to resist his instinct to counterattack, instead smiling slightly to the old man; he wasn\'t a threat in the slightest. \"Room 301! Hope y\'don\'t mind a bit of a view!\"
\"Nah, I actually like a good view. Thanks, Johnny.\" Kevin nodded to the man, licking his lips. \"Now, since I\'m here...\"
Johnny instantly pulled out some old, dusty bottles, placing them on the desk/bar. He then pulled out a shot glass (clean, of course; Johnny wouldn\'t have it any other way), placed it in front of the lion, and smirked.
\"Lookin\' ta get yerself a li\'l relaxed \'fore bed, Mister?\"
\"Just a touch.\" Kevin laughed heartily, as he hadn\'t done in weeks; it felt good to laugh again, even at something so small and inane as that. \"Oh, hey, do I get to meet Maria this time around?\"
Johnny\'s smile only widened at the mention of his daughter. He\'d talked about her the last time Kevin had come around, about how beautiful the girl was, how amazing her singing voice was, and how she and Kevin would be so very perfect together. She\'d been out of town, of course, gathering supplies for the hotel, but the picture that Johnny had painted of Maria was one that not even the weathered and jaded Kevin could resist, if only to see if she lived up to the hype.
\"She just got back inta town yesterday. Supplies fer the month an\' all that. You\'ll meet \'er later, should ya come down for dinner tonight. She\'ll be providin\' th\'entertainment, singin\' and whatnot. Gawd, that girl\'s a splittin\' image of \'er mom. Pretty eyes, hair, fur, all that...\" Kevin was about to ask about the fur part until he was rudely interrupted by the door being thrust open.