Kiani’s Journey- Mayhem Read online

  “Even if they are kids, we’re outnumbered! We need backup, Ron.”

  “If we take them out, the Boss will promote us. We’ll no longer have to guard this run-down truck stop! He’ll put us back in the city,” Ron says.

  “So how do you propose we do it?”

  “James, we saw them split up. We’ll take out the group of three first and leave the group with the little kid for last. They're going to be the hardest, even if they do have a handicap.”

  “Ok, the first group is in the food court. How do you want to do this?” James asks.

  “Do you have your gun on you?”

  “Yes, but if the second group hears gunshots, they might run away.”

  “Dammit! We’ll have to surprise them and use our knives.”

  “Wait a minute,” James says. “Those two black kids fit the description that the Boss gave us!”

  “But those two kids should have been by themselves. He didn’t say anything about them traveling with a group.”

  “So you’re saying that it’s impossible for them to pick up a couple of stragglers on their way to the city.”

  “If that is them, we have to take them alive. But he didn’t say anything about killing the other ones.”

  Derrick motions for us to take a few steps back. We lean in close to each other so that our voices don't have to carry so far. “We need to take them out.” I can see the fear in his eyes. This game is finally starting to feel like a reality and it’s not one that I really enjoy playing.

  “I'm with you,” I whisper. “We need to do it now before they leave and find the others. Christine, stay here and cover Isaiah in case others come. Here,” I hand her my gun. “That knife won't do you any good against a gun.”

  I can see the questions dancing in her mismatched eyes. No one knows about The Game, other than me and Derrick. It’s getting to the point where we won’t have a choice but to let them know. “You can't shoot them right now anyways,” she finally responds. “If anyone hears the shots, they may come and investigate. We have the same problem as them.”

  “I guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Derrick says as he cracks his knuckles and gives me a sly grin. “Let's go, Kiani.”

  We creep down the hallway. Stopping every couple steps to make sure we still hear them arguing. Once we’re at the opening of the door, I lean forward so that I can get a layout of the room, which is more like a walk-in closet, it's so small. Two men sit at a desk that takes up much of the space. Atop the desk are four computer monitors. On one of them I can see Ashlynn, Ashton and Brian. My heart begins to hammer as I realize we may be caught. But as I scan the other monitors, I realize that we’re in a blind spot.

  I move out of the way so that Derrick can get a look. Once he’s got a good look at the layout of the room, he signals for me to go for the one on the right and he’ll take the one on the left. He starts to count down from three, but we hear chairs being pushed back against cement. Show time.

  The men turn around as soon as we rush into the room. My fist immediately connects with the jaw of my opponent. Sadly, he doesn't make this easy for me. He grabs my wrist and uses my momentum against me by throwing me against the wall, I get hit with a feeling of deja vu. Thankfully the room is small, so I didn't have far to fly. Tragically, the room is so small there's not much room to maneuver; especially with four bodies fighting in it.

  Ron or James, I don't know who it is, grabs me by my throat and pins me against the wall. With a sadistic gleam in his eyes, he proceeds to try and choke the life out of me. For some reason, this feels like foreplay for him. “The boss is going to reward us for getting rid of you,” he sneers. I have to end this quick, or I may pass out. I reach into my pocket and grab the handle of the sheathed knife. I try to keep eye contact so that he doesn't see what I'm doing. We’re nose to nose and his breath smells like sewage and disappointment. Using the wall and my butt, I unsheathe my knife. Adrenaline shoots into my system as I grip the knife tighter. With all of my strength, I bury the knife handle deep, right where I'm hoping his heart is.

  Great screams of pain escapes RonJames mouth. He finally releases me, and I fall to the floor, gasping for air. I scramble up immediately, ready to defend myself if needed. But as I stand, RonJames falls to the floor.

  “I was wondering how long you were going to play with him,” Derrick says, with sarcasm dripping heavily in his voice. I try not to let my heart stutter at the way his heart resonates within me. Derrick is easily six feet four inches. His dark skin complements his black hair. He has on a green shirt with smudges all over it, and a pair of equally dirty dark blue jeans. Even as haggard as he’s looking, my heart still stutters when I look at him. He could be so intimidating at times, but I know how much of a goofball he could really be.

  “Oh, you know,” I huff. “I like to drag it out a little. I just love the feeling of slowly losing my humanity.”

  His grey eyes crinkle with amusement. “Yeah, well, we need to hurry up and gather the others. If this was just a point in a Bandit’s territory, that means we’re coming up to the city. We need to find a way around it without running into anymore Bandits. This is a good sign.”

  “This is not a good sign. This means that we’re getting closer to him,” I argued.

  “Which is what we want.”

  “It’s what you want. I want to do what’s best for the group.”

  We stare at each other, neither one of us wanting to back down from our position. Derrick and I tend to agree on almost everything, but this is one thing that we won’t agree on. Derrick wants to play the game. I refuse to.

  Derrick and I check the Bandits and the room for anything that may come in handy for us later. We come up with: one handgun and extra ammunition, a knife, and bottles of water and snacks. Call me fat, but I’m more excited for the snacks.

  “Let’s go find the others,” I say.

  We leave the room and head back down the hallway where I can see Christine and Isaiah crouched down and attentive. Once she spots us coming, she stands up and meet us halfway.

  “How did it go? That was pretty quick,” she states. “I heard a pretty loud thump.”

  “It would’ve been a lot faster if Kiani didn’t spend five minutes getting felt up by her new boyfriend,” Derrick says, trying to lighten the tension surrounding he and I.

  “Oooh yes, and if I wasn’t so dark, you’d be able to see the love marks on my neck,” I retort.

  “Well, I’m glad you guys are ok, and it seems like you have water and food for us. I think we should find the others before they get themselves in trouble, yeah?” Christine asks.

  “I agree, let's go,” I say. As we head towards the side of the truck stop the others have gone to investigate, I look over to Isaiah to see him staring at the ground. “Hey bud,” I say as I walk over to take his hand. “You alright?” He doesn’t look up at me as I give his hand a squeeze. “Isaiah?”

  “I’m fine,” he says quietly. “I’m just tired of fighting and death.”

  I give his hand another squeeze as I reply. “ Me too, bud. Me too.”

  3

  Kiani

  I cast worried glances at Isaiah as we make our way through the truck stop. I hand him one of the water bottles that we’ve found; it’s not much in the comfort department, but it’s the best that I have to give right now. I was never really comfortable with emotions. I can punch things, I can read and collect knowledge, but ask me to comfort you? Good luck.

  Isaiah looks at me with a grateful smile and releases my hand so that he can open his water bottle. He makes sure to take small and careful sips so that he can conserve it for as long as possible. Because, you know, we don’t have fresh water lying around and all. The fact that he knows how to do that without me having to tell him makes me smile a little. It always takes just a little pressure off of my shoulders when I realize that my friends are constantly thinking about the small things that will keep them alive.

  We stealthily
make progress down the hallway. It’s slow and slightly annoying, but so is a knife to the stomach. Derrick makes sure to take point, even though I’m fully capable of leading us through tough situations. That’s just how he is; how he’s always been. As we approach what could only be the food court, we plaster ourselves against the closest wall to us. The space is so open, which means that there are more angles to be attacked from.

  There is an old gift shop, a Dunkin Donuts, and some kind of pizza place. I can’t really tell what the other areas are, but they look gutted and forgotten.

  “Don’t let your guard down. I doubt they have any food just lying around here, so let’s just find the others and leave,” Derrick says.

  “I see them,” Isaiah says.

  Now, how he saw them before we did will forever amaze me. But sure enough, there were the twins and Brian in the direction that Isaiah was pointing. They were sitting at a table and Ashton was resting his head on it. My temper spiked seeing them sitting there in a vulnerable area without a care in the world, especially when we made a rendezvous point. Didn’t they remember that we were in a Bandit’s territory? I took a deep breath and started charging towards them; until I felt a hand land on my shoulder.

  “Relax,” Derrick says,

  “Relax? Are you shitting me?” I retort.

  “Yes, relax. If you go over there and start ranting and raving, you’re going to start more problems than we need right now. I’m sure there’s a good reason why they’re sitting right there in the open.”

  “Fine,” I huff. “But you should get the information out of them before I lose my patience.”

  He doesn’t bother giving me a response. We follow behind him as he leads us over to the others. As we get closer, Ashton lifts his head and stares at us.

  “What happened?” Derrick asked.

  “We walked this whole side of the truck stop and came up with nothing. Not a piece of food, not a bottle of water and not any Bandits. We walked and checked every spot that we saw and nothing. We’ve been waiting here for you guys to find us, so we can head on out,” responded Ashton.

  “We’ve been waiting for almost an hour,” quipped Ashlynn. “This place is only so big. It shouldn’t have taken you guys all that long to get here.”

  “Chill, Ash,” said Ashton.

  “We had to fight Bandits, unlike you,” says Christine.

  “Excuse me?” says Ashlynn.

  “We heard arguing towards the back of the stop. We came up to an office and overheard two bandits planning on ambushing and killing us. They were going to get you guys first since you’re just sitting here. We took them out, collected their weapons, and found food and bottles of water. We are definitely approaching a Bandit’s territory, so I do not think it is smart to sit here in the open when we don’t know how many potential enemies we have in this area,” Derrick informed.

  “Wait, so there were Bandits here?” asked Ashlynn.

  “I’m sure he didn’t stutter,” I said.

  “And I’m sure I didn’t ask you!”

  “Seemed like a pretty general question to me.”

  “Anyways, we haven’t been sitting here with our thumbs up our asses. We’ve found some information on where we are,” interrupted Brian. “We happen to be about five miles out from Wichita.”

  My attention immediately focuses in on him. Brian, from what I can tell, is a funny, yet serious person. He has a sense of humor most of the time, even though I haven’t spent much time talking to him one-on-one. He’s a little bit taller than me, with curly black hair, and smooth caramel skin paired with soft brown eyes. He’s not as bulky as Derrick, but he’s pretty solid. Whereas Derrick is handsome, Brian is beautiful. I don’t know why I’m even comparing them right now, it’s not like I’ve ever gotten to really know him.All I know is that he can be counted on when needed. Can’t say the same for the twins; or more specifically, Ashlynn.

  “Wichita?!” I exclaim. Just our freaking luck! We’re coming up to the biggest city in Kansas. Do you know what that means? This will be Bandit Capital! I can just feel the dread pooling into my stomach. We can’t already be at the Boss level. “Can you show us where you found our location?”

  “Yeah. It’s over there at the counter that’s literally labeled ‘Information Center’,” he responds, with a little mirth in his voice. I stop from face-palming myself. Of course, it would be right there in my face.

  “Thanks,” I say while making a face. Derrick and I walk over to the desk and, sure enough, we spot a map and a circle with the words ‘You are here’, pointed towards it. “Dammit. What are we going to do?”

  “We don’t have much choice. This is where he wanted to meet us, I can feel it. If we go around the city, it’ll take us too far off course and we can’t risk running into another huge body of water. She needs us.”

  “If she’s even alive,” I sigh. “I just wish we didn’t have to go through there.We shouldn’t have been as stupid as we were. The last time we barely got out of it unscathed, and we didn’t have Isaiah at the time.”

  We had found Isaiah almost a year ago. He was wandering the streets and was starving. He wouldn’t tell us what happened and why he was alone, but we didn’t hesitate to offer for him to come with us. Before we had found him, though, we had to cross through a major city that was full of Bandits; that was the first time I had to kill someone. Until we make it to Russia, it won’t be the last.

  Brian and Ashton had proven to be a major asset since they joined our ragtag group of explorers, but we have to get Christine and Ashlynn up to par with fighting or we’re going to truly struggle to get to our destination.

  “We’ll keep him safe. We’ll make sure that all of us remain safe. We’ll have to travel quiet and stay out of the city. Stay in the farming areas. That way, we can minimize our chances of encountering any Bandits,” he says. “You know that we have to tell the others.”

  “Right now?” I ask.

  “We don’t have to tell them everything, but we should at least tell them our plan.”

  “Fine. Let’s go inform them,” I respond sullenly. I can’t say that I’m too thrilled to be putting Isaiah in so much danger, but it can’t be helped. If we want to get to Russia before the last shuttle leave, we have to keep going forward. We’ve already lost so much time. And that’s just something that we just don’t have. God… I’m going to have a brain aneurysm with all of this worrying.

  As we make our way back to the group, I can see Christine standing toe to toe with Ashlynn. The two are so different in every way possible, that the square off is almost comical. Christine is small, no taller than five feet five inches, but she is built like a professional athlete. She doesn’t really talk much, preferring to observe instead of being heard, but that doesn’t mean she won’t speak up if there’s something on her mind. She has loose chestnut curls that flows down her back and beautiful eyes. Like, scary beautiful. One eye is hazel and the other is a pale green. She’s so racially ambiguous that I can’t tell where she’s from, and my Mama told me it’s rude to even ask. So that’s a mystery for another day.

  I secretly wish that I could open up to her about the stress that’s beating me down ever since I had to be in charge of so many lives, but I know I can’t. Their survival depends on me being strong.

  “So what do you think we should do?” Christine asks without breaking eye contact with Ashlynn.

  “We think that we should stay away from the city and keep to the farmlands. I’ll grab a map or two from here, because we can’t keep getting blindsided like this. Let’s look around the mini restaurants here and see if we can find some knives and hopefully a crumb or two and then we’ll head out,” I say.

  Everyone broke off in search of anything of use, Christine and Ashlynn did so with great reluctance, while I head back to the information desk to grab some maps. I can feel Isaiah following me, so I stop so that he can catch up. Isaiah’s a very beautiful little boy. There’s no other way to describe him. He has light
brown skin, hazel eyes, and silky, curly hair that sticks out around his head. He comes up to just about my chest and when he smiles, which is extremely rare, it just lights up his face. He’s my adopted little brother at this point.

  “I’m scared,” he says softly. “If we run into Bandits, what will I do?”

  “You’ll run. And if you can’t run, you’ll have to fight.”

  “But I don’t know how to fight,” he points out sadly.

  “Then you will have to learn.” I look into his eyes, sad that I can’t comfort in the way that he deserves. We head back to the group with our maps and ready ourselves for the rest of this journey.

  We depart from the truck stop and make our way down the winding highway. The scorching sun was beating down upon us like a migraine after a night of drinking. There’s still lightning behind us, but that doesn’t mean that we’re in the clear. The group is uncharacteristically quiet as we walk down this highway from hell. I look over at Isaiah and I can see that he’s deep in thought. I wish that I could make all of this a little easier for him, but the truth is, I need for him to be able to cope with all of this alone. The way that this world works now, there’s not a guarantee that we’ll stay together. Especially after what happened to Sam.

  Sam was a friend of Derrick and me from our childhood. She was very hyper, brave, and a little reckless. We used to always get into so much trouble. Sam convinced us to do things that usually straight-laced Derrick wouldn’t have approved of; but he couldn’t say no to Sam. Hell, we didn’t want to say no to her. Sam was my opposite in almost every way. Where I was tall, she was short. Where my skin was a beautiful cocoa brown, hers was a beautiful creamy white. She had long, brown hair and bright green eyes. Sam was soft and sweet, and I missed her so much.

  We lost Sam almost immediately into our journey. We were traveling through a Bandit’s territory and at that time we had little to no information on how hard it would be to slip through undetected. We were walking down the sidewalk with our heads down, hoping that if someone saw us they would see that we weren’t dangerous. We were looking for somewhere to sleep when it happened. Four men came out of the shadows brandishing weapons and sinister smiles.