Saturday, October 15th, 9:37 P.M.
There are things that happen in your life that you
know will never happen again. Not things
you are sure will never happen again, not things you are confident will never
happen again, things that you know will never happen again. Things that happen because of a combination
of environments, situations, circumstances, and persons that you know will
never, ever, combine in just the same way ever again. One of the things I saw in Moenia Prima fell
into that category for me. The sight of
a mob of verbrechers converging on me to do me harm is something I thought I
knew would never happen again. This was
something I knew. Not something I know,
something I knew.
Once I heard Spiker finish his speech and the crowd
begin to chant "Freton!
Freton! Freton!" I ran
straight for the barn. There I found
Sam, who had previously been working on the truck, staring at his radio with a
stunned looking on his face. I yelled at
him, "Sam! We gotta get everyone
out of here." Sam didn't
respond. "Sam!"
Slowly Sam turned to me, stunned look still on his
face, and said, "This is how it begins, isn't it?"
Finding Sam useless, I stepped out of the barn and
started speaking so that everyone could hear me. "Everyone. Everyone, listen up! There are people coming for us. The Church of the Lord has turned violent
toward us."
One of my fellow workers responded, "Why would
they do that?"
I angrily shot back, "Because they've been
convinced it's a good idea. Look,
everyone, we need to cram everyone we can into the delivery truck and get the
fuck out of here!"
Knocked out of his daze and now taking a leadership
role, Sam emerged from the barn and said, "No. Everyone get in the barracks. Once everyone's inside, lock and barricade
the doors, windows, and any other way you people can think to get in."
Looking at Sam, I said, "Why can't we take the
truck?"
"Because I can't get the damn thing to
start. Everyone, get in the
barracks. Hato, come with me." Sam grabbed me around the shoulder as a way
to gesture me toward the main house.
Once inside, Sam said to me, "Hato, go upstairs to one of the
bedrooms with a window facing the city and act as a lookout. I'm going to call The Father and see if he's
okay."
I ran upstairs to the first bedroom at the top of
the stairs, threw open the window, and started scanning the area for the
verbrecher mob I knew was coming. In my
rush to act as lookout, I didn't notice the person sleeping in the bed who I
woke up.
"Hey, what's going on?"
It's weird seeing someone you're into just after
they've woken up. Weirder still when
it's the middle of the day.
"Rinoa? What are you doing
up here?"
"I wanted to ditch work today."
"So you came up here?"
"Yeah.
You can't catch an afternoon nap in the barracks, too many people."
"Well, there's certainly too many people in
there now."
"How come?"
It was then that I saw the thing I thought would
never happen again. I, joined by Rinoa,
looked out through the window and saw them.
"The verbrechers are coming."
I tore back downstairs, Rinoa following closely behind me, and found Sam
sitting at the kitchen table in front of a moderately sized arsenal.
When he heard us enter the kitchen, Sam looked up
from the revolver me was loading and said, "Got something to report,
Hato?"
The sight of all those guns on Sam's table stunned
me, so I couldn't speak. Thankfully the
guns did not have the same effect on Rinoa.
"There's a mob of verbrechers heading this way."
Sam put the last of the bullets into place, slid the
chambers back into alignment, and said, "I thought we'd have more
time. Shit."
My stunned state was broken by a voice coming from
Sam's phone. "You shouldn't use
that kind of language, my son." The
voice was The Father's.
"Father," I said sounding slightly
desperate, "you're all right?"
"Yes, my son, I am, although I get the
impression the people pounding on the doors of the church wish I wasn't."
Rinoa, in a more steady emotional state, said,
"Do you have a car or a truck, so that you can get out of there?"
In a stern tone of voice, The Father said, "I'm
not leaving this church. I am sure that
God will protect me and this building from harm."
I didn't want to tell The Father that I didn't
believe what he had just said. However,
I did want to save my ass. "Do you
have a truck we could swing by and get so we can get as many people from the
farm to safety?"
There was a short pause, a pause made longer by the
situation we were in, then the voice from Sam's phone spoke. "Don't you have a truck at the
farm?"
As he was continuing to load bullets into clips for
the pistols that sat in front of him, Sam, said, "The goddamn thing won't
start."
The Father scolded Sam, "Language, my son. Now, what is it that is wrong with your
truck, Sam?"
As if to rebel against his scolding, Sam shot back,
"The damn thing won't start. The
piece of shit stopped working yesterday for God knows what reason. I've checked the battery, spark plugs, oil,
alternator, radiator, every goddamn part of that fucking truck I could think to
check."
Nobody said anything for a moment, then The Father
said something basic and profound.
"Did you check to see if the truck had any gas?"
A really dumb look came over Sam's face in response
to The Father's question. "Damn
it."
Rinoa looked at Sam and asked, "Isn't there
cans of gasoline in the barn?"
Upset, probably because he was just embarrassed by a
member of the clergy and a young woman, Sam got up from the table and said,
"Hato, go to the barracks and tell everyone we're taking the truck and
leaving. I'll bring the truck around,
assuming my dumbass can find one of the many gas cans in the barn."
Sam went off to the barn while Rinoa and I went to
the barracks. It took Sam some time to
come around with the truck, which was good seeing as it took some time to
dismantle the hastily constructed barricades in the barracks. In that time, I got to take a good look at
Dha Chathair as it was being torn to pieces by mobs of verbrechers in t-shirts
from The Restoration Of The Truth rally.
To their credit, the Dha Chathair Police Department was attempting to
put up a fight against the mob, it's just hard to do so when you're outnumbered
three to one.
At long last, Sam showed up with the truck. We started piling people into the back of the
truck, cramming people just as tight as they could get, just as the mob of
verbrechers reached the farm. The mob
fanned out across the farm. Some were
slashing and setting fire to crops we had put so much effort into growing. Others were tearing apart the fences that we
had put up, not caring that the fences were made of pressure treated wood and
sharp barbed wire. However, most of the
mob was marching up the road that ran straight down the middle of the farm
property, right toward the barracks.
Some of them had machetes, some had baseball bats, most had guns, guns
that some members of the mob were firing at us as the marched. Once we crammed as many of us as we could
into the truck and Rinoa and I took a seat up front next to Sam, a thought came
to my mind.
"Sam?"
"Yes, Hato."
"How are we going to get out of here?"
"We're going through them."
"Them?"
"The mob."
Then Sam gunned the engine and the truck started
blazing forward. As the truck got closer
to the mob, the people who had been marching toward the barracks stopped and
wondered about the truck heading their way.
It suddenly dawned on the mob that the truck that was barreling toward
them wasn't stopping. Some got out of
the way. Some didn't. I'd like to say that the fact that Sam hit
some verbrechers with his truck didn't make me slightly happy, but I sincerely
can't say that.
As we pulled away from the farm, the members of the
mob who had guns started firing on the cargo of the truck. Most missed their target, some hit the metal
parts of the truck, however a few people in the mob hit their target. The sound of people getting injured is
distressful to me, but seemed to be devastation to Rinoa. Rinoa kept on asking, pleading, begging Sam
to stop and get some help for the injured, but Sam did not stop, slow down, or
even change his route. He was going to
the freeway, he was going to Trebyer, he was doing this no matter who or what
he had to go through to accomplish this.
Once we hit the freeway, everything seemed to calm
down. The ride got smoother, we
encountered less people, and the people in the back of the truck quieted
down. I don't know why they quieted down
and I'm not looking forward to finding out.
I don't like having to leave a place under these
circumstances. I dare say no one
does. I can only hope that getting to
Trebyer means that I will be getting to Amcan sooner. Hope, because at this point I sincerely do
not know.
Hato Shurtleff
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