Volume 11: Part 4- Vierdestad: Thursday, October 27th, 7:04 P.M. (Part 3)

Thursday, October 27th, 7:04 P.M.  (Part 3)

Last night, when Ushtar, Grace, Rinoa, and I had lunch and conversation, the are we were sitting in was marvelous.  The location had beautiful architecture, full leafy trees, well manicured shrubbery, recreations of classical sculpture, and an absolutely serene atmosphere.  That doesn't exist anymore.  The architecture, once beautiful, now lies in pieces strewn about the general area.  The leafy trees have been knocked down and trampled underfoot.  The blood of the dead feed the now disheveled shrubbery.  Water flowed, instead of into the ponds and other specified receptacles, into the street where it collected the dirt and the grime typical of city streets as well as the blood of the dead as it made its way to the stormdrain.  The formerly serene place had been obliterated by the advancing verbrecher forces, leaving many, many dead in their wake.
The obliteration of this serenity served to help me in getting to The Redford, as unfortunate as that might be.  The dead, the many unfortunate dead opfers, served as cover for me as I made my way through the more open areas of Vierdestad.  Whenever verbrechers, armed and bloodthirsty, would come near, I would imitate the dead.  My open and trickling headwound helped with this illusion.  It's not good to say that a situation this bad thing helped me, whether that help was a large amount or even the tiniest little bit, but that's what happened.
After slowly inching my way through the Vierdestad city streets, I finally got to the loading area in the rear of The Redford.  It was dark, mostly due to power being cut to the building.  There was nobody in this area, so I quickly made my way through the loading dock, into the restaurant area, up to the door leading to the lobby.  Slowly, I opened the door, efforting not to make a sound as I did so.  When I opened the door a crack and peered into the lobby of the hotel I did see someone.  Two verbrechers holding high powered assault rifled looking very menacing.  They were standing at the entrance to The Redford looking out.  Always looking out.  In fact, during the time it took me to walk across the lobby over to the flight of stairs, without making a sound, they never once looked into the lobby.  Verbrechers are stupid.
I didn't want to make a sound as I climbed the stairs up to the floor where I knew Rinoa was.  That turned out to be a good strategy because that place echoed and amplified every sound that entered it.  As I walked down the hallway toward the hotel room, I noticed that it looked like  every door in the hallway had been kicked in, including the door I was looking for.
I slowly approached the room Rinoa and I shared, afraid of what I would find inside.  When I looked inside I didn't see Rinoa.  Except for the door, the room looked perfectly in place.  The bed was made, my clothes were where I had left them, Rinoa's skirt and shoes carefully laid out on the table, nothing looked wrong, except for the fact that Rinoa wasn't there.  I was in a panic.  In my panic I yelled out for the woman I love.
"Rinoa!  Rinoa!  Rinoa!"
A still small voice called out to me, saying, "Will you shut the fuck up?  They'll hear you."
I looked around for the source of the voice.  I saw a hand emerging from under the bed waving me to crawl underneath.  Underneath the bed, among the dust, random bits of trash, and an appalling amount of empty condom wrappers, was Rinoa.   Lying prone on the concrete carpet next to her, I said, "Are you okay?"
"Yes, now shut up.  They might come back."
"Who?"
Rinoa didn't answer my question.  The sound of bootsteps echoing up the stairs did.  Closer and closer they came untill I could hear them in the hallway.  Soon these bootsteps were accompanied by voices.
"I thought we cleared this floor out."
"We did."
"Then what was that voice?"
"What voice?  I didn't hear anything."
"Were you listening for anything or just thinking about pussy?"
In the doorway I saw two sets of boots stop, point toward the room, then continued traveling down the hall.
"What the fuck do you think?"
"I think if you didn't think about pussy, you wouldn't think."
"You say that like it's a bad thing.  The male mind thinks about sex one every six minutes.  I'm just above average.  Furthermore..."
The men continued with their sexist conversation as they continued walking down the hallway.  Once their voices were out of earshot, I tried talking to Rinoa again in hushed tones.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah.  Are you?"
"Yeah.  How long have you been under this bed?"
"I don't know.  I don't have a watch on.  They started kicking in doors not long after you called.  I've been down here a while.  What took you so long?"
"I had to slowly crawl along the streets in order not to get spotted.  That's why I smell like blood and death."
"Yeah, that's what that smell is."
The voices from the hallway started getting louder so we shut up.
"I swear I heard something."
"You were just hearing things."
"No, I wasn't.  I swear I heard someone yelling up here."
"It was probably just the sound of the explosions coming in through a window or something."
"Yeah, I guess."
"You know what you need?  Pussy."
"Yeah, I guess.  I think I'll go down and fuck one of those freton bitches we've taken prisoner."
"Yuk!  That's like fucking garbage."
"True.  Also, like garbage, you can burn a freton when you're done with it."
The men continued laughing as their voices again faded away along down the hall.  Only when their voices were too soft to hear did I feel comfortable enough to speak.
"Okay.  Let's go."  I started to crawl out from under the bed when Rinoa grabbed my arm to stop me.
"Wait.  What if they come back?"
I turned toward Rinoa and looked her in her beautiful eyes.  "They're not going to get you.  I will not allow that to happen.  We're going to Velas and we're doing it together.  But, if we're going to do this, I need you to trust me."
I could see the confidence beginning to build on Rinoa's face.  "Okay.  I trust you."
I took Rinoa's hand and said, "Good.  Now, let's go."
We emerged from under the bed and ran down the hall away from the elevators and the stairs I had climbed earlier.  My assumption that there would be a flight of stairs to be used in case of a fire was proved correct.  This flight of stairs also echoed and amplified every noise that entered it.  If Rinoa had been wearing her heels when we left, we would have been toast.
At the bottom of the evacuation stairs was a door leading to a hallway.  At one end of the hallway was a door.  At the other end of the hallway was the main lobby of The Redford.  Not knowing where the door would lead us, I chose to head toward the lobby.  The darkness of the hallway coupled with the darkness of Rinoa and I's skin gave us plenty of cover.
When we got to the lobby, the two verbrechers who were guarding the door were nowhere in sight.  Rinoa wanted to run for the restaurant but I, thinking that the two might go back to their post, wanted to wait.  After a couple of minutes of waiting, Rinoa ran for the door to the restaurant.  She wasn't spotted.  I cautiously followed after her, looking out for the guards along the way.  They weren't there and Rinoa took that as a license that we were home free.
Rinoa ran through the restaurant toward the loading area.  When she got there she stopped cold and took cover behind a wall.  When I joined her, I saw why Rinoa had stopped cold.  The guards, the two verbrechers holding high powered assault rifles I had seen earlier, were standing in the loading area facing outward.  If they had been facing inward, we would be dead.  As we stood behind the wall, we listened to them and learned why they were facing outward.
"How come we have to do this out here?  Why can't we do this out front?"
"Other than we'd be doing it in front of everyone?"
"Yeah."
"There are corpses out front, dead verbrechers as well as fretons.  Major Nicholas made it clear to us that we are not to piss on the dead."
"Why?"
"What do you mean why?"
"Why can't we piss on the dead?  Not that I think fretons are worthy of dignity, but we fuck their corpses.  What's the differences between defiling them one way and defiling them another way?"
"Major Nicholas said urinating on people is a form of torture and torture is more effective on the living because they can then go tell others of the horrors of their torture.  When we fuck we're just satisfying a biological need."
"But we're not torturing someone right now.  We're pissing because we have to piss."
"Look, the Major said don't piss on corpuses.  That's the order and that's where it stops for me.  Hey, what's that?"
"Oh, that looks like one of those armored military vehicles."
"Huh.  I guess the base must have fallen.  I wonder what they're doing here?"
"And why they're coming so fast."
"Shit!"
There was a large crash after both of the guards yelled shit.  Silence followed this, a silence broken by a horn blaring and a man yelling.  "Hato!  Rinoa!  Hato!"  Rinoa and I poked our heads out to see what was going on.  In the loading dock sat a large armored military vehicle with Ushtar sitting in the front seat blowing the horn and yelling out the window.  "There you are!  I thought I was going to have to come in there to get you."
Rinoa ran across to the armored vehicle first.  When I got in, Ushtar told me to take the wheel while he took the giant gun on top of the vehicle.  Ushtar had a lot of faith in me to drive that vehicle, especially since most of my driving experience involves a video game.

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