Fury - Part 1
(Rising)
The young girl looked up from the battered textbook she was studying to her mother. Black hair fell in tangles down her back and wrinkles streamed across her face as she finished skinning the rabbits from the snares.
"Mom, what's a 'grocery store'?"
"Grocery stores were places where people used to buy things like food and cooking utensils. They were on practically every street corner in the cities."
"Wow, that would be kinda nice to have huh?"
"Yes dearie, they were very convenient. I think convenience was the downfall of the human race though."
"Why?"
The mother glanced towards her daughter with a sad smile. "We all got used to having everything so readily available to us that when the wars came and everyone had to run from the cities, most just couldn't fend for themselves. They didn't know how."
The girl sat thoughtfully for a moment and brushed back a wisp of blonde hair that keeps falling in her face. The woman continued cutting up the rabbits.
"Why was there a war mom?"
The woman straightened from her task and pressed her hands against her spine, feeling the satisfying creak of bones popping back into place. She looked at the girl and smiled sadly. "Blindness mostly. Most people couldn't see that we are all alike. Political agendas and religious seperations. The need for revenge against past wrongs done by the fathers and their fathers' fathers and their fathers' fathers' fathers back to the beginning of time. People never learned how to love each other. Hate and ignorance were just easier to act on than love I think. So, yes, mostly blindness. Now go back to your studies. You don't want to end up ignorant and blind like the world used to be do you?"
"Yes mother!" She lowered her head to study the text book again.
The woman finished with the conies and wrapped the pieces carefully in the hide and set them to the side. "I'm going down to the creek for some more water." she said. "Keep reading. We'll have a little quiz when I get back."
"Ok mom."
There is so much the girl doesn't understand. So much to learn. She can't really fathom the changes that have gone on in her world. She was only two years old when it all started and her mother hid them both away in the mountains. That had been ten years ago. There had been other people with them at times, but they had either gone on to other places or had been killed by the wandering bands of 'waywards' as her mother called them. She and her mother had moved around several times, inhabiting different caves and grottoes in the mountains, always avoiding places of previous habitation.
The war was still being waged, her mother had said, but now it was scattered. Mostly it was people who were once of one nationality fighting one another for survival. The cities had been the first things to suffer. Nerve gasses and deadly disease weapons unleashed on a grand scale. Millions of people had died in the first six months. Most countries were now reduced to massive graveyards without tombstones, bodies strewn about, decaying where they had fallen. No one was left to do the burials.
A sudden gunshot broke through her thoughts. Maybe her mother had shot a deer. That would be a nice change from rabbit. The shot didn't sound like her mother's rifle though. She knew that sound intimately. She got up and went to the opening to peer out down the rocky cliff face that was their home. Nothing. She knew better than to call out to her mother. She went back inside and opened her mother's storage chest. Picking up the pistol, she made sure the clip was fully loaded and went back to the opening. Still no sign of her mother so she sat herself in a small patch of shadow near the over hang to watch and wait.
After an hour she knew something was dreadfully wrong. Steeling up her nerve she climbed down to the floor of their little valley and quietly made her way to the creek. Being careful to remain hidden, she looked out on the scene. Her mother's body lay, half naked, trails of blood running down her sides, eyes wide staring at the blue sky.
Impulse prompted her to run to her mother, but training kept her in the brush, watching, listening, waiting. There was no sound but for the wind soughing in the pine trees. Slowly, silently she approached the body lying on the ground studying the ground for the tracks of those who had done this. She found them, followed them off down the valley for a few hundred yards. There had been three. One was somewhat crippled, the print of the left foot somewhat curved in from that of the right. She looked down the valley. Nothing was moving. They had moved on then, but she would find them, oh yes! She would find them!
She returned to her mother's body, closed the staring eyes and covered the naked flesh as best she could. "I have to go now mom. I have to. I know you always said that revenge is wrong and that's what started this whole thing. I can't help it. I can't let them live after this. Forgive me if you can. I love you mom."
Once again she began following the trail of the men. Their valley opened up onto a larger valley some miles to the east of their cave. Here the tracks turned north. Silently she followed. About a mile and a half further north she heard them for the first time. Talking and laughing, breaking branches for the fire she could smell already burning. They were making camp then. Good. She crept closer. She was well hidden from them now, but could watch them. She waited, pistol in hand, for the right moment to unleash her fury.
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