Keep Running

The van quickly passed the ‘Welcome to Battery City’ sign and slowly rolled in. Battery City was no different from your average metropolitan city minus the BLI logo stamped on every inch of it. People shuffled on the streets going about their daily lives not really paying attention to their surroundings. Billboards promoting BLI mechanize and skyscrapers dominated the sky. There was a giant TV screen in the middle of the main plaza displaying a spinning hypnotic wheel to persuade passersby to think BLI. Gerard pulled the van over so everyone could take the city in.

“Damn, this place has changed since we were last here” Ray said amazed.

“Yeah, looks like BLI turned the city into its Bitch” Frank added.

“Been like this as long as I can remember,” Mindy said.

“Yeah, because your dad still had his will to live back when we were here. Although by the time we left BLI was slowly easing its way in. Never thought I’d see it like this before” Gerard said.
.
“So where to?”

“To McGill Street. That’s where we’ll set up base” Blaze said pulling out a small handheld computer.

“McGill Street? Are you kidding? That’s the dirtiest place in the city! It’s where all the nasty people live! Why are we going there?” Mindy asked disgusted.

Blaze began typing on the small device “for that exact reason, its where all the nasty people live. We’ll fit in there. Don’t you think we’ll stick out a little in the better parts of towns? Most of us haven’t been in society for a few years and we didn’t exactly fit in when we were here. No, we’re gonna hang with the scum. There the eyes and ears of this place anyway.”

“So—where are we setting up base?” Kelly asked hesitantly.

“Lucky for us there’s a motel on McGill. We’ll stay there until we have our information.”

Everyone looked at each other concerned then at Blaze who was still typing.

“Okay, so where’s McGill?” Gerard said putting the car into gear again and pulling onto the street again.

Blaze shut the computer closed with one hand and pointed forward “that way.”

A few stop lights and turns later, they drove down McGill Street. The street felt like it didn’t belong in Battery City. It was unkept with garbage scattered on the street. There were a few people sitting on the curb with defeat on their face. A few whores were on the corner on business and a couple of kids were poking a stick at a huge dead street rat. This was the place BLI shoved all the scum into, in order to keep the rest of the city clean. The group looked around somewhat disturbed.

“Our car is gonna get jacked” Frank muttered.

“Good point. We should park in another place,” Gerard said.

“Yeah, let’s get a room and unload first,” Blaze said. Gerard parked the car next the entrance to the motel. The building’s plaster was cracking and the ‘e’ on the motel sign was missing. Everyone got out and looked at the motel.

“Nice Motel” Mikey said.

“I’m staying with the car. I don’t want to lose our shit” Frank said and slammed the door shut.

Chrisanne covered her mouth and nose looking around the street. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Come on,” Blaze said grabbing the collar of her shirt and dragging her into the motel. The others followed reluctantly.

The man at the front desk was overweight in a white beater with glasses. He grinned at the potential costumers and half his teeth were missing. Chrisanne was about to make a noise but Blaze covered her mouth with her hand.

“Hello, we would like a room please,” Blaze said politely.

The man scanned the group and chuckled a little “business or pleasure?”

Kelly was about to say something then Blaze grabbed her collar with her free hand still covering Chrisanne “don’t answer that.”

“Listen, we just want a fucking room,” Ray spat annoyed.

“Bad choice of words Ray,” Blaze muttered quietly as the man’s smile grew like the Cheshire Cat.

“Pleasure, I knew it. I’ll give you the big room,” he said turning over to the wall with all the keys. He grabbed on and placed it on the desk. It had a red feather hanging off it. Everyone looked at the key then at the man and the he winked.

“I promise not to disturb you,” he said “That will be $50.”

Blaze dug in her pockets and pulled out a 50 dollar bill and slammed in on the desk grabbing the key. The man dragged the bill to him smiling. Blaze glared at him. “Have a nice time,” he teased as the group went back outside to grab their stuff.

Frank opened the van door “how’d it go?”

“Great,” Kelly said sarcastically.

The kids screamed as the street rat came back to life and began chasing them. Everyone watched from across the street grabbing his or her bags. Mikey put the unicorn under his arm as it squeaked quietly.

“And we couldn’t stay at a slightly nicer place because?”

Everyone grabbed their stuff and went inside. Gerard & Mikey drove the car a few blocks away in a more secure part of town. The group climbed up the old stairs, which creaked every other step. The creepy desk guy watched them smiling. They walked down a hallway passing by weird noises coming from behind the other doors. Finally they reached a giant red door with their number on it. Blaze jammed the key in it and turned the knob. The door slowly creaked open.

The room was about the size of two rooms. In fact, you could tell by the different colored walls that the rooms were at one time separate. There were two windows facing different sides of the room. Like everything else in the motel, the plaster was cracking and the carpet had stains that nobody wanted to know about. The room was painted the same red as the door and in the middle was a giant heart-shaped bed. A pink love seat was in the corner. Everyone dropped their stuff in the corner.

“Well this looks lovely,” Mindy spat tossing her bag with the others.

“Beats the streets,” Blaze reminded her.

“Barely.”

Kelly poked her head inside the bathroom “It’s kinda clean.”

Everyone inspected the room and windows. Blaze sat on the corner of the love bed and opened her little computer again and began typing.

“Ugh, how can you sit on that? Who knows what has happened on there,” Frank said in disgust.

“Well, I somewhat have a good idea what’s happened on here and besides I’ve scanned it before I sat down. It’s as clean as it is gonna get.”

They heard a small squeaking in the hallway getting closer and closer. The door opened and Gerard, Mikey, and the unicorn came inside.

“Huh” Gerard said looking around.

Mikey tossed the unicorn on everyone’s bag and it squeaked on impact.

“So what’s next?” Ray asked hesitantly sitting down in the love seat
“Well you guys can go explore the city if you want. See what you can find. I’m going to go place cameras near the BLI entrance so we can start surveillance.”

“Maybe we should go in groups,” Gerard said.

“Yeah, that’s probably better. Although you’ll have to go join another group after I’m done with the cameras. I’m trying to get an old friend to meet with me afterwards and he’s a little on the paranoid side.”

“What?”

“I might have an inside guy who can get us some information on BLI so we can find a way in and navigate it once we’re inside. Problem is, well, he’s a little unstable and I’m afraid if he sees any of you he’ll try to blow your heads off.”

Everyone turned to look at Blaze. She looked up feeling everyone’s eyes.

“What? He’s a nice guy once he decides you’re not out to get him and he’s really smart. First time I ran into him he knew I was an android right away and placed a magnet to my head and started reciting binary out loud. I thought it was cute at first but after 30 seconds of it I got annoyed and punched him in the face. Not too hard but just enough to tell him to stop. After some convincing that I wasn’t sent to kill him we became good friends. He keeps tabs on everyone and no doubt he’s been keeping tabs on BLI. The company freaked him out even then and his knowledge will be able to help us out greatly.”

There was silence for a moment.

“uhh okay then” Gerard said “two groups then?”

Everyone nodded.

“Alright, Kelly, Chrisanne, Frank, and Mikey; you’re a group and the rest are with me.”

“So we’re just roaming the streets for intelligence?” Ray asked.

“Yeah, see if you find anything unusual and give me a call. We’ll meet back here before sundown,” Gerard said.

“We get the van; BLI is a little too far for walking,” Blaze said closing the computer and putting it in her pocket.

“Ahhh” Chrisanne groaned "I was gonna call shotgun.”

Blaze, Ray, Mindy and Gerard all jumped into their vans and headed off to go find out as much as they can before they meet up to destroy the likes of Better Living. Chrisanne, Frank, Mikey and Kelly headed off in the opposite direction, on foot. Chrisanne turned around and stuck her tongue out at the guys as they sped off with her ride. The streets were all battered up and run down and the sidewalk was on a whole other level of incredibly horrible on its own. They all were trying to avoid getting their foot stuck in a pothole filled with all the shit that was around them as they were walking out to Battery City’s capital.

“Where to know?” Frank asked, looking over to the girls.

“We have a whole city to crash before we leave, we should at least have some fun with it,” Kelly looked over at Chrisanne, smiling demonically.

“Frank probably wants to go take on some Battery City dumb fuck now since you brought the word “fun” into this whole thing,” Mikey laughed.

“What the fuck?” Chrisanne exclaimed, breaking her own silence for a moment there.

It wasn’t too long before they arrived into the capital, where Better Living was implied, as so they say. Everything looked brand-new and shinny, although the heavens seemed dark over there. The guys all stayed together, Chrisanne a tad bit nervous since all eyes were on them. Mikey’s head kept spinning, as he was on the lookout for any characters wanting to come near. He eventually spotted a hobo approaching them. He pointed at his ray gun but the hobo seemed not to care and walked faster towards the girls. Mikey took off after him and started chasing him when he grabbed Chrisanne by her waist and tried to drag her away. Kelly was pulling on one of her legs while she was screaming and trying to push the nasty bitch away. Mikey went behind him, trying to pull his hands off Chrisanne. The hobo flung his arm back, smacking Mikey in his face, taking him out for a couple seconds. Frank watched the guys in their failed attempt to help Chrisanne up, became irritated and punched the guy in his face. He held Chrisanne’s hands and pulled her up, hugging her while he gave the hobo his bad eye as he got up off the floor and left.

“Come on, Chrisanne. Are you hurt or anything? Why are you crying?” Frank kept passing his hand on the back of her head.

She wiped her eyes, “I’m fine! But he was so gross!!!”

Kelly and Mikey both burst out laughing and Frank tried to keep a serious face for her but just couldn’t hold back his emotions and followed.

“Oh, let’s go have some real fun!” Frank grabbed all their hands and pulled them forward.

They ran through the streets of Battery City, visited all the knickknack stores, ate and finally let go completely. They visited a weaponry shop down the corner from a movie theatre that was previewing “Controlled,” some movie having dealt with the whole concept of mind control.

“Why is everything white? Even the ray guns, damnit!” Kelly muttered.

Chrisanne turned over and gave her a sympathetic smile.
“Hey! There’s a photo booth over there! Let’s go, guys!” Chrisanne yelled in excitement.

Frank and Chrisanne hopped in first, put in two bucks and snapped away. Mikey and Kelly went in after them and all you heard after that was constant giggling.

“You guys had fun in there?” Chrisanne winked.

“Oh shut up!” Kelly giggled, “Oh, look at my photos!”

The guys were all staring at their stuff as they were all heading back to the motel. Frank accidentally bumped into someone as he was talking about how excited he was with this whole adventure.

“Fucking outlaws,” Some guy said under his breath.

“Wait,” The surroundings went dead, “how do you know we’re outlaws?” Chrisanne looked sort of concerned. Did he know? How he knew?

“It’s obvious who you are. What other group of people do you see running and smiling around here like a herd of jackasses?” The strange dude said, “You stick out of the typical crowd, no?”

“I thought Blaze said we don’t stick out!” Chrisanne whispered under her breath, “Well, how can you realize something so unreal in a second? What do you know about outlaws anyways? You’re just a local here aren’t you?”

“Or are you?” Frank started to become suspicious.

“I was once an outlaw, living in zone 6. I got kicked out of Battery City because I refused to be controlled by BL/ind. They eventually came back for all of us. They thought that we’d make pretty good prisoners to control, at least if we wanted to live to see another minute.” He continued, “I was one who fought back, but couldn’t do anything about it after they injected me with meds. I came to my senses and broke my way through back to city life. I would do anything to feed Better Living the shit they’ve shoved down our throats ever since their leader had fallen short and was manipulated by his personal assistant.”

“The bitch,” Mikey whispered.

Chrisanne looked at Frank, Kelly looked at Mikey and the same thought ran through their devious minds.

“You have to come with us!” They all said.