Sunday, October 16th, 10:55 P.M.
After a long time spent navigating through the
streets of Trebyer, Sam at long last brought his truck to a stop in front of a
large gate surrounded by a tall ivy covered fence. Once he powered the truck down, Sam told
everyone to wait while he, Rinoa, and I went up to the gate. The gate was one of those large wrought iron
things that just screams to people "I HAVE MONEY!!!" In the middle was a large coat of arms
insignia thing that also served as an intercom connected to the demonstrably
large house that was behind the gate.
Sam walked up to the intercom and pressed the call
button, eliciting a chime that was both sweet and annoying. It took a minute for the person on the other
end to respond, but when he did he was not at all pleased. "If it's you fucking kids screwing
around with my intercom again, I swear to God, I will-"
Sam interrupted before the threat was
delivered. "Gin, it's me."
There was a short pause. "Sam?
Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"Hang on, I'm coming down." The intercom cut off and all we were left
with was the sound of silence interspersed with the sound of the sprinklers of
the houses surrounding us going off.
From the house that the gate was guarding came a man. An opfer man dressed in a red smoking jacket
and pink fuzzy bunny slippers. I
understand the smoking jacket, given that this was about the hour people start
readying for bed, but pink fuzzy slippers?
Really? The man walked right up
to the wrought iron gate and said, "Sam?
What are you doing here? The
shipment isn't for another week."
This was the man Sam had talked to through the intercom, the one he
called Gin.
In a morose tone of voice, Sam said, "I'm not
here for a delivery. I'm here because I, and the truck full of people with me,
can't go back to Moenia Prima."
Gin then moved to take a look at Sam's truck. What he saw was something I didn't know about
untill just then. The verbrechers who
were shooting at Sam's truck must have hit more people than I thought they
had. Many of the people riding in the
back had gunshot wounds, some of them multiple, and some of them were dead.
Gin looked back at Sam with a terrified look on his
face. "How's Father? Is he okay?"
Sam replied, "I don't know. Last time I heard he was holed up in his
church with a mob on his doorstep."
Gin fished a remote control out of his pocket and
pressed a button. After he did so, the
gates slowly started opening. "Pull
your truck up to the house, Sam. I'll
call up my doctor and see if I can drag him out of bed." Sam went back to his truck as Gin started
walking back toward his house. It took
Gin a moment to notice that Rinoa and I were following behind him. Gin looked us up and down and said, "You
kids look like hell. When's the last
time you are something?"
Rinoa replied, "I stole something from a gas
station this morning."
I meekly replied, "Not since breakfast
yesterday."
Gin let out an exasperated sigh. "At times like this I wish I was in the
bakery business. Then I'd have a house
full of bread, as opposed to a house full of alcohol."
Gin continued walking up to his house, with Rinoa
and I following closely behind him. Once
we got inside the house, Rinoa stopped and looked out one of the big windows in
the front of the house. Sam had pulled up
to the house and people were beginning to be loaded out. It looked like a triage area out of one of
those war movies, with broken bloody people being tended to on a most urgent
need basis. I followed Gin into the
kitchen where he promptly started moving the contents of his pantry onto his
kitchen table as he spoke to me.
"So, kid, what's your name?"
"Hato."
"You got a last name or are you trying to make
it as some sort of artist?" Gin's
annoyed tone was understandable since, I presume, he was ripped out of bed to
deal with this.
"Shurtleff.
My name's Hato Shurtleff."
As Gin started putting canned soup into piles on his
table, he said, "You a member of Father's church?"
I responded honestly. "Not really. The Father was the first person I met in Dha
Chathair. He hooked me up with Sam who
was going to help me get here, to Trebyer."
Gin seemed intrigued as he separated cream of
mushrooms from cream of chicken.
"Why did you want to come here?"
"I don't, really. I want to go to Amcan, to tell the international
press about what's going on in my home, Moenia Prima, and now Dha Chathair, and
who knows where else in Dolore."
Gin looked at me with a smug look on his face. "You want to go to Amcan?"
With a determined tone in my voice, I said,
"Yes, I absolutely do."
Then it's a good thing you ran into me, because I
have a plane that can get you to Amcan."
I could hardly contain my joy. "You do!"
"Yeah. I
just have to get fuel for the thing, and I can fly you myself to
Amcan." After saying that, Gin
gathered the food he had collected in his arms.
"We'll discuss just how we're going to get to Amcan in the
morning. For now, get yourself some food
and some rest."
Not thinking of helping Gin with the food, I said,
"What, on one of the couches in your living room?"
"No, take one of the bedrooms upstairs. I expect them to fill up fast with all the
new people here, so be quick about it."
Gin went outside with his collection of canned meals
as I started looking over the fridge for sandwich fixings. The beer in this fridge looks rather
tempting, but not nearly so tempting as the jar of dill pickles I'm currently
devouring. These pickles taste sweet,
but not nearly as sweet as finally being able to go to Amcan. Soon the story of what the verbrechers did to
the opfers in Moenia Prima will be told to the world. I can only hope that doing so will make Mom,
Dad, and Sakoshi proud.
Later.
Hato Shurtleff
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