#not setting any expectations though my goal for 2025 right now is just survive | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ecotone99 · 5 years ago

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[RF] Whispers absolute no King (Final Part)

It was around noon when we made breakfast, we couldn't eat in that house and after we cared for the twins and made our way far enough from the cottage to light a fire and prepare the canned foods the sun was already high in the sky. This day there were hardly any clouds and the heat was burning on our skin. We almost reached our goal, Birmingham was only half a day day away.

Liam had to walk on a makeshift crutch and Noel had half his face covered in bandages but Logan was making jokes and pulling faces in front of them to cheer them up and I have to admit he was pretty good at it. He made one joke about fish-sticks that made me laugh so hard snot came out of my nose. It was good that we not only physically but also mentally survived that encounter.

As the sun was setting in front of us it lit up what was now the biggest city in England, it built like a palace from the small buildings around it to the tall spires in the middle, like a mountain there was harmony in the chaos and beauty in the roughness.

What we searched for was so close none of us wanted to wait another day so we pushed through the night. The darkness hit when we reached the first brick buildings, for a while everything looked so similar we questioned our sanity, till we reached a big structure labelled: “ASDA Shirley”.

This was our last stop before we made it to Wilbur Lane, we stocked up on supplies there but it was so big we had to split up to cover everything. It was like some kind of magical place that had everything you wished for. Dara and me were piling up more foods that we could ever carry in a trolly, but it was really fun. I was mesmerized by some sweets in a purple bag that had the picture of a bald man with a face like an orange on it and the words: “Monster Munch” written above it. “What do you think that's supposed to be Dara? … Dara?”

A rough-looking bearded man held a double-barrel gun in Dara's face, behind him there was a slender woman with short blonde hair pointing a gun at me and a short elderly man with an eyepatch casually eating jerky out of a plastic bag.

“Why did you kill all those people?” the bearded man said with a stern voice.

“Wh- what?” I muttered.

“The people on the road, women, children … you slaughtered them.” the man continued.

My mind was racing and all I could get out of my mouth was: ”What?”

The bearded man got visibly angry pushed Dara to the side now pointing his big gun at me. “Say what again I dare you, I double dare you Mother...”

“It's not them!” a female voice shouted from behind me. I turned around to see Isaac, Logan and the twins followed by two men who looked like they hadn't bathed in weeks and a tall muscular woman, she had bits of dried red paint on her face and in her hair.

“They're just kids!” For a moment the bearded man looked at all of us in confusion then his demeanour changed form angry to friendly in a spilt second.

“I'm sorry I spooked ya, we mistook ya for some … ahm … bad men.”

“You mean the green men?” Dara said. “They … on the road … I mean they … “ Noel tried to add.

I can't really describe it but the air grew thick like you could almost choke on it and you could fell the sadness in the room.

“It's OK” the bearded man replied “but yeah they did some bad stuff on the way through the country and we've been tracking them here. I apologise again that we mistook you for those monsters.” The man tried desperately to lift the mood by telling a joke about a horse in bar the nobody except for Logan found particularly funny.

“Wait you said you've been tracking them … Here?” Isaac said with a shocked look on his face. A loud motor sound came from the street below us.

The old man with the eyepatch nonchalantly walked over to the window, looked outside and said: “ Yep time for action.” as he pulled two grenades out of his bag. The tall woman looked nervous and said: “You guys should leave, there is an exit in the back!”

I tried to tell her that we could fight but told us that she will not have our deaths on her conscience. Looking back we probably would have died, we were young and stupid and the twins were in no shape to fight. We started running in the direction she pointed and towards our original goal. To this day I still regret that I didn't take one last look at them.

It took an hour or two until we got our heads straight and found the street-sign for Wilbur Lane. We were so close I could taste victory. It was one of those streets where every house looks the same, red bricks and all attached to each other. This part of town had hardly been touched by the war and it wasn't long till we found 14/B.

The entrance looked cleaner than the surrounding houses, the downstairs windows were boarded shut and the blue front door was slightly open. I took out ol'Batsie, told the others to be quiet and slowly pushed the door open.

It was dark and the air smelled stale, I waited and listened for a few moments but there was only silence. I signalled Isaac to get his torch out, it was a hallway with a staircase at the end and a door to the right. We argued a bit whether or not we should split up but I convinced them that we should stick together and search the ground floor first. The door let to a dining room with a big table surrounded by mismatched chairs and a couch with muddied bootprints on one end. The room had a doorway to the kitchen, unfortunately it was already raided clean the only things left were a couple of dishes and the windows that oversaw an overgrown backyard but we didn't care much it wasn't the reason we took this long trip. The bedroom had to be upstairs, I was halfway up the stairs when I heard a click followed by a hissing sound through the air.

Everything went silent except for my heartbeat that felt like it was about to burst through my chest, when I saw the knife that had stopped half an inch left of my face. It was attached by a plank to the ceiling. It took a couple of minutes to gather my thoughts and stop sweating, we took the plank down and used it to test the other steps for more traps, but there was no more clicking and no more knives. At the top of the stairs was a small window that had been painted black and a door to the right.

I opened the door very carefully ready for knives, raiders or even scourgers to pop out, but the room turned out to be a paradise.

Supplies, supplies and even more supplies. Beef jerky, canned chilli and curry, drinks in every colour of the rainbow on a table in the middle of the room, clean clothes, wellies, raincoats, medicine and even a crossbow on the shelves to the sides.

I could feel the excitement of my friends but there was still one more room we had to check before we could start looting. The red of the door on the opposite side of the supply room was vibrant like the pearly gates of heaven.

We were pretty sure there was no one beside us in the house, they surely would have heard us, but we still wanted to be careful. I opened the door with one swift motion and I was proven right, the room was fairly empty except for a massive bed beneath a coloured window and a small night stand with a framed photograph of a family on top of it.

The walls were covered with drawings in crayon, they reminded me of the ones I used to draw for the old man when I was younger, they were rubbish but he kept all of them in a drawer in his room, they seemed to make him happy.

There was a sense of serenity in the air, but the twins snapped me out of it with a loud and almost harmonious: “LET'S RIP 'EM OUT BOYS!!”. We took our knives and about anything we could use to tear out the floorboards and had Logan take watch at the window in case we made too much noise, the looming threat of the green men was still in the back of our minds.

Taking the boards out was harder than I expected but we never got disheartened at the sight of emptiness, cause it just meant that the chances of it being under the next one were higher. Eventually we got to the last floorboard and we were all pretty knackered, getting the bed through the door into the storage room was the worst part though, if Dara had said “PIVOT!” one more time I swear I would have punched him.

But there we were, the last hurdle on our path to glory. I slid my knife under the weaker side and counted down in my head 3 … 2 … 1 …. “crack”. I felt the adrenaline rushing through my veins as I pulled the board up and … … Nothing. It was empty like all the ones before. No one said a word, our hopes and dreams shattered. Happiness truly was destroyed in the war along with the rest of the world.

Was this really just a sick joke the old man played on us? We sat in silence for what felt like an eternity. Isaac got up eventually and started to pack the things in the storage room, one after another we followed suit.

The things we were gathering felt like a consolation prize, Logan seemed to still have the most spirit still in him, he got excited as he picked up a small knife that had another knife, a saw and even scissors in it that you could pull out. “Hey Isaac look what I fouaaaaa!”

There was a loud crash as Logan who had turned around, stumbled and fallen head first onto the floor.

“What the hell was that” he exclaimed. He looked back at his feet and saw a saw a floorboard that was sticking out from the ground.

Could it be? Did the previous occupants move the bed? We all instinctively rushed over, none of us were ready to be disappointed again. I took out my knife and jammed it under the board, took a deep breath and pulled it up.

I remember a heavenly light coming from the gap in the floor, I know it probably wasn't there but in that moment it felt real. Almost afraid to touch it I took the artefact out with shaking hands, it surpassed even our greatest expectations.

The writing on the front of the artefact read:

“October 2025 Special Edition Playboy Magazine.”

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