Chapter 12 – The massacre

It was still mid afternoon and sun was still shining brightly. The air wasn’t too hot or too cold, it was just perfect. Vince, Christina and Pete were actually enjoying their walk. Whilst caught in the good times of the day they were planning their next step. Vince was hoping to build a machine that will reverse this so called curse that is present in this city along with nearby cities.
- “How long do you think it will take you to build it?” Christina asked.
- “That depends. But I’d gamble on at least a couple of years.”
- “The city will be in chaos by then.”
- “That’s what I thought too. Unless…”
Vince got an idea. Christina and Pete looked at him anxiously, waiting for a clever answer.
- “Unless what?” Pete asked.
- “That device back in the lab, it was still in a pretty good shape. Maybe I can re-modify it for the reverse purpose, and this way it should take much less time.” Vince suggested.
- “That’s a brilliant idea!” Christina agreed, “Why create things from scratch when you can just fix an already existing one.”
- “Hey wait up.” Pete suddenly said, “Can you hear that?”
- “Yeah. What is that?” Christina wondered too.
There was a faint sound of people shouting and screaming a long distance away. It seemed that it was coming from where they were heading.
- “This might just be another riot.” Pete said.
All three of them hurried forwards. The screams were getting louder and so they knew they were on the right track. Soon they saw a massive crowd of people. They could barely see anything in there. All they could see was a huge crowd of people, pushing each other, as if they were poor beggars fighting for a solitary gold coin.
- “I don’t like the look of this.” Vince said, “Do these riots happen often?”
- “Relatively, but not quite as big as this.” Christina admitted.
Suddenly several gunshots were heard, followed by some pain-driven screams. Each of those extreme sounds made Vince, Christina and Pete jump from fear. The atmosphere of the place was more negative than anything ever before in this city. More gunshots were heard and more screams after that. The crowd of people got more frantic. It began to clear out a little bit now as many people were getting shot. Vince and his friends could now make out what people were shouting about.
- “What are they saying?” Christina could barely understand it.
- “Something about the shops lying.” Vince said, “about prices.”
- “Tell me about it. I’ve experienced first hand of what it feels like.” She commented.
- “We better hurry home. The sooner we fix this, the sooner this massacre will end.” Vince said.
- “You’re right.” Christina agreed.
More gunshots followed here. A lot of rebels were getting shot down, and now that the crowd cleared a bit more, Vince and his friends could now see a line of troopers further along the street, facing in their direction.
However some more gangs of rebels were coming and this time they threw some explosives at the troopers. Some loud explosions were heard. Vince, Christina and Pete began getting the hell away from this place.
There was so much blood and fire everywhere that it looked like a torture chamber from hell. Citizens seemed very angry and were fighting to the death. It’s as if they had nothing to lose anymore. There were gunshots everywhere.
Suddenly Vincent heard an ear-piercing whistle to his right and a second after that an enormous pain flowed through his right arm.
- “Vince!” Christina shouted.
One of the bullets escaped the battlefield and hit Vince on the arm. He began to bleed from it. Christina quickly grabbed his arm.
- “I’ll be OK.” Vince said through his teeth while enduring the pain.
- “We must get back home quickly.” Christina said nervously.
The three of them added some speed and ran on the very outer side of the battlefield. Managing to get to the other side safely they felt a bit relieved and the further from it they ran the more the painful screams died down.
Only ten more minutes and the trio was back home. Christina quickly got the first aid kit out and ran to get Vince’s arm fixed up. It only got him near the elbow and wasn’t too deep. It looked like it just hit a vein. They were lucky none of them was shot dead. That riot was the beginning of many more to come in the future, and they knew it. Their city began to fall apart once again.
- “You’ll make it, Vince.” Christina said still a bit nervously.
- “Thank you. Don’t worry about me. We all are very lucky that this is all we’ve received from that bloodbath.” Vince admitted.
- “Me and my friends have always been targets of collateral damage.” Christina said sadly.