The Future Ain't So Bulletproof

We drove into the desert, away from the city we had just escaped. The car was silent inside, the kind of silent that ate away at your insides - you knew you should say something, but you were just too afraid of the awkwardness. So, like the coward I was, I kept my mouth shut tight, leaving the job of breaking the uneasy quiet to someone bigger than myself.

Time ticked by at a painfully slow pace and the unchanging scenery crawled past us. I fidgeted in my discomfort and instantly felt four pairs of eyes upon me. My every move was being watched closely, particularly by the people behind me.

"Can we stop staring at her like she’s some kind of freak?" So it was Party Poison who was the bigger person. "It's not like shes done anything wrong."

"She tried to shoot you, P," someone pointed out. I looked down at my feet, returning to my fidgeting.

"She was cornered, what else was she going to do?"

I could see a man with lank black hair in the rearview - he was shaking his head, but the arguing ceased. "Whatever," he said glumly, "I'm going to sleep."

Shuffling and creaking sounds filled the ancient vehicle as everyone settled down for sleep. I was pretty tired too, but I wanted to stay awake a little while longer.

Gentle snores filled the car after a few minutes. I kept my eyes on the sand beyond the bonnet and Party Poison kept his concentration entirely on driving.

Now the seconds were ticking by even slower. I don't know how long I sat in my dazed state, my eyes staring at nothing in particular. A movement to my left caught my eye and I instinctively turned my head in the same direction. Party Poison hung his hand over his nose, mid-scratch, and returned my gaze. I looked away but I could feel he kept taking glances at me between his driving.

"You can speak, you know," he said after a while. I nodded, my eyes in the interlinked hands in my lap. I heard a sigh next to me, a trace of irritation dectectable amongst the sense of defeat. "What's your name?"

My name? They didn't trust me with their names, so how could I trust them with mine. The truth was that I did trust them; I wholly believed they were on my side, but I still couldn't bring myself to utter the two syllables of my name. Instead I kept my lips shut, feeling as though I was losing the ability to speak at all.

"I get it," he said sadly, and then after a few seconds murmured, "have it your way, Ginger." I looked up to see a smile playing on his lips. The corners of my own twitched.

"Cheer up," he touched my face in a playful punch, "we're not your enemy."

"I know," I finally managed to squeeze the air through my vocal cords, my voice croaking out, “but you think I'm yours. I’m not a murderer.” My lips trembled the slightest bit as I said this. My mind took me back to the night I ran away, the night I found the bodies of my mother and father in the kitchen. I was late home from work that night; if I’d arrived sooner, maybe...

“It’s hard to trust anyone in these times. We’ve all seen some horrific things and it sticks like glue in our heads," he stared at the road as he was talking, “guess we’re all just fucked up.”

I nodded in agreement, not wanting to speak much since the memories were now swimming around my head. Memories were awful things and I knew there was a way to wipe them, but I would never dream of going down that route.

My eyes began tiring before my mind did. I settled into a more comfortable position as my eyelids drooped heavily, taking longer and longer to reopen each time. Party Poison seemed to realise I was done talking because he’d placed his full attention back on the road. I let my head fall onto the door of the car and my eyes gladly closed.



It was the deepest sleep I'd had in a long time. The comfort of knowing I had someone else to play sentry was refreshing and allowed me to rid of myself of some of the sleep deprivation that had been looming over me. However, it did mean that when I was awoken from the deepest stage of my sleep, my mind was full of confusion and panic.

"Is that necessary?" A hushed voice sounded to my left.

"If she wakes up...she could tell them where to find us,” a louder, closer voice said, being met with an irritable sigh and footsteps that grew closer. I felt myself being lifted out of my seat and opened my eyes slowly, expecting to be dazzled by the desert sunshine I was so used to but instead seeing black. After trying to shake whatever it was of my head and failing, I began to struggle, lifting my hands to my face. I was stopped by the feel of leather around my wrist.

"No," a man said quietly, “not yet.”

I recognised the voice, but my heart was still beating rapidly with the fear of not being able to see.

After a few minutes of being carried, I was placed down and the bag obscuring my vision was taken off my head. I blinked into the light, my eyes focusing on the desolate surroundings. Even if I had been a spy, I would have nothing to report back - the place looked exactly the same as every other corner of the desert.

I turned and began to head in the same direction as everyone else, noticing a building ahead of me. It looked like a retro diner, the ones you saw in old movies but not in real life as the last real-life diner closed down in Mississippi in 2013. No-one had any use for them anymore; road trips were impossible with the massive tax on fuel and Mississippi, one of the worst affected areas by the fires of 2012, couldn't afford to eat out.

No-one had any use for diners except these guys. They seemed to be heading straight towards it and, as I got closed, I saw it had been customised just to the outlaws’ tastes.

The N and the R has been taken down from the ’DINER’ sign on the roof and the walls were plastered with extermination posters. The two huge, metal framed windows set into the bland green exterior walls revealed nothing of the inside owing to the metal blinds that looked like they hadn't been opened in a century.

I followed the boys through the front door and instantly felt cooler in the shade. The stone walls and tiled floors were heaven to my inceasing core temperature. I wanted to lay on the tiles to cool off, but I resisted the urge. Instead I decided to act upon the thirst that had suddenly overcome me, turning to Party Poison, who was carrying my bag.

"C-could I have that?" I asked sheepishly, pointing to my belongings in his hand. He nodded and began passing them over to me when the angry man - Jet-Star - swooped down on me.

"Why, so you can message your little friends?" He said harshly.

I shook my head irritably and croaked, rather bravely, "no, so I can get a drink. It's hot and I’m thirsty." I was sick of his suspicious glares and the way he treated me like shit.

He looked taken aback by my sudden confidence, but Party Poison, who stood next to him, looked impressed. He patted me on the back as he handed me my dufflebag. Jet-Star stomped off. I smirked inwardly to myself as I tugged in the zip of my bag. This thing had been about to break since the day I found it on a street in Salem and sure enough, today was the day it gave up. One hard tug from me and the zip popped out, spilling the contents of my bag onto the floor. I scowled at the mess, but didn't make a sound.

The boy with the ’good luck’ helmet knelt down to help me gather everything up. He was holding the helmet in his hand, having just taken it off his head, so I could now see his features. He had a slightly squashed blonde quiff sitting atop his incredibly pale face and sharp jaw line. Above the pink sunburn across his nose, two warm brown eyes were staring excitedly at the packet he was holding.

“Crackers?” He said dumbly, turning over the dry snacks in his hands. I had stuffed some food in my bag whilst scavenging from my car. “You have crackers?!”

I cocked my head, brows knitting together. “Uh...yeah. Crackers and tuna have been my staple food since I left home.”

His eyes widened even more and the man with the lank black hair spun around at lightning speed.

“You have tuna?!” He said, whilst the blonde boy opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Tuna fish. Ha.

"In the car,” I pointed over my shoulder with my thumb. There was a scramble and the two men disappeared out of the door. I kneeled on the tiles staring, dumbfounded, at the packet of crackers that had fallen to the floor.

“They’re always like that,” Party Poison explained, stooping down to help me gather my things.

"I've never seen anyone so excited over something so boring." I shook my head in disbelief. Party Poison laughed.

"When you've been living off what we believe to be dog food for two years, you'll understand. Oh, this is yours by the way." He pulled a red fruit from his jacket pocket and tossed it up in the air. I caught it, badly, and smiled at him. “Don’t tell Ghoul and Kobra you have that,” he warned, “they’re like ninjas when it comes to food.”

I nodded, thinking that they wouldn’t get the chance to find out. I would be eating that little piece of heaven as soon as I'd collected my things from the floor.

My apple was bruised and soft and warm, but I munched happily on it as the two boys returned, fighting over my food. I sat at one of the tables of the diner with Poison and the little girl sitting in the booth with me. Jet-Star was loitering in the far corner of the room, presumably as far away from me as he could get in the small space.

The other two boys - Kobra and Ghoul (I didn't know who was who) - were laid on the floor, one on top of the other, fighting over the only bag of marshmallows I had accidentally picked up. Personally I hated marshmallows, but all of the food packaging was the same since BL/ind. took over and it was easy to get confused.

The taller blonde boy won and he danced around holding the packet high whilst the other laid on the floor pouting.

“Aw Ghoul,” the winner cooed, “I’ll let you have some.”



With the marshmallows long gone, the attention turned back to me, though it was much less aggressive than before.

“So where are you from?” The boy I now knew to be Fun Ghoul asked. I told him I had been living in Washington with my parents before Better Living Industries came into power - I left out the reason why I was no longer with my parents.

He then explained that they were all from New Jersey. They'd got a call from their friend - who they referred to as Dr. D - some two years ago, informing them of the things that were happening in California. They'd traveled down to investigate, but ran into some trouble with a group of Draculoids and have had a price on their heads ever since. They didn't dare go back to Jersey and had no idea what had happened to their families.

“What happened to Dr. D?” I asked trepidatiously.

"Oh, he’s still around,” Party Poison said, “he comes to visit from time to time, but he’s a busy man. He’s pretty much every killjoy’s eyes and ears.”

“Killjoy?” I asked, tilting my head.

“It’s what us outlaws call ourselves,” Kobra explained, and then added with a smirk, “we’re out to kill Korse’s fun.”

Throughout the conversation, Jet-Star had sat apart from us, his eyes cast down and his brows knitting together. Party Poison must have caught me glancing over at the corner Jet-Star had placed himself, because he leant in and said, so only I could hear, “don't worry about him. He finds it hard to trust people after...well, Bob was his best friend. He found it the hardest.” I nodded in understanding, then allowed myself to peek over at the mourning man again, this time with less fear in my eyes and more pity.

We talked until well after sunset, about life before, our funniest experiences of being outlawed, and our scariest. When the conversation had finally died down, it was time for us to retreat to our beds.

I wasn't really sure how the sleeping arrangements were going to work out, but Party Poison soon put an end to my uncertainty.

“You can sleep in Boom’s bed with her,” he said before I'd even mentioned sleep, “it’s behind the counter; out of sight if we’re raided in the night.”

Nodding, I looked up at the wooden counter but couldn't see a bed. 

I happily retreated to the cot set into the wooden cabinets, not even phased by the fact I was sharing a bed with a stranger I was unsure about trusting, even if she was a child. As soon as my head hit the flat, musky smelling pillow, my eyelids dropped over my eyes and sleep was upon me.