Download the new FREE ebook called Stomping Grounds by DLSIJ Press. Stomping Grounds is a collection of stories, essays, and poems by DLSIJ Press authors, including a short story by Ginger Rodgers called, Retibution. Find it at www.dlsijpress.com or www.dpbookstore.com
For the first couple of hours, the gruff stranger half-carried, half-dragged my ass through the dark and dangerous streets of a city at war, keeping behind and between the charred ruins as much as possible. Beyond that, my pain was so large, I was willing to die, if it meant I didn’t have to move anymore.
Edaris stopped for a moment to catch his breath. I collapsed into a boneless heap under the skeleton of a huge, naked tree despite the venomous threats of doom and gloom breathed against my ear. The explosions were in the distance now, and I needed a time-out.
“You’ve got to get up,” Edaris quietly urged as he tried to pull me to my feet.
Nothing doing. I was limp as a wet noodle.
He was persistent. He got behind me to use his body as a prop.
“We can’t stay here. We’ve got to move,” he insisted in as loud a tone as he could whisper. He brusquely raised me to a standing position, which was impossible to maintain with rubber legs. Like dead weight, I crumpled hard to the dirt.
“Do you want to die out here?” he bellowed in his bizarre whisper-voice.
“Save yourself, asshole,” I grumbled loudly, “I gotta rest.” He was really starting to piss me off, but that was probably a good sign. If I could still bitch, I was alive enough to keep on living.
“Shhhh, damnit,” he cursed softly. “If the drones pick up your voice patterns, so help me, I will leave you to them.”
“Screw you,” I mumbled, lower this time. I didn’t have enough energy left for volume, and my capacity for speech was quickly dwindling. I struggled to get a grip on my thoughts, but the inside of my head looked like a freaking repair manual in a language I didn’t understand. Technical schematics and detailed blueprints flashed across my memory board until I accessed the images representing what Edaris had called a drone.
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