Forever Running

Forever Running | Chapter Twelve

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I stepped out of the washroom, and walked into the large cafeteria that I was previously eating in. The room was completely empty, no a single person left. I looked carefully around and noticed that the lunch that everyone was eating was still on the table, left as it was before.

Looking around, I walked back into the hallway, and heard a faint noise. I followed that sound and found myself in front of an exit door. Leaning in towards the door, I heard a voice behind it.

I pushed open the exit door to find the large crowd standing outside. The sun was almost down, the sky had streaks of pink and purple blue clouds. The same faint purple sky light poured over the large group of children in front of me. The excitement that I had once felt in crowd in the cafeteria was replaced by an eerie feeling. The children were seated on the floor, the older teenagers stood behind them and stared intensely ahead.

Walking closer to the crowd, I noticed that someone was speaking...yelling almost, to the rest of the crowd. I moved in quicker to find James, who seemed to be in a deep and empowering speech.

"It is now our responsibility to educate the public. Let the people know what the government has done. Let them understand how to bring back our city!"

A wave of mummers in agreement flooded over the audience.

"Tonight, we will scour the city, pressing and preaching our stories, to everyone. There will be someone very special listening to us," the audience leaned in for insight. A smile, no, a snarl spread across James's face.

"The mayor himself."

The room erupted with cheers, screams and joy. I looked around for Stella, when I caught a glimpse of her, her smile was stretched from ear to ear and her electric blue eyes sparked with excitement. I looked to my left to see a wall full of weapons. It was stacked with multiple types of guns, knifes, items that I guessed were grenades, and many others that pulled anxiety all over me.

"Beautiful isn't it?" Stated a voice from behind. I whipped my head in direction of the voice. A dark haired boy, who looked about in his early 20's, stood behind me smiling. His black almond shaped eyes stared at the wall of weaponry in a dreamy way.

"You have strange idea of beautiful," I muttered under my voice and turned my attention back to James.

"Tonight, we will split in groups of four. Each group will travel around one corner of the city. Team North will scour the north part of the city, Team South will scour the south. Does this make sense?" The large group agreed in a loud and rhythmic yes.

"In my eyes, beauty is power." Remarked the boy quietly, trying not to disturb James's speech. "Nothing says power like a HK416 Assault Rifle," I pointed the large gun, that looked a lot more like a machine gun than a rifle. "or the Thompson M1921 Submachine Gun." A small smile appeared in his face.

"These are two guns that rank the top ten of the most powerful guns in the world." he stated dreamily. While the boy was being pulled into his own little world, a thought had occurred to me.

"How do you manage to get two of the most guns in the world?" I asked, leaning in to the boy, searching his eyes for any type of fraud.

"We raided the army once." He recalled, turned to me halfway. I snorted loudly in utter disbelief. James stop speaking for a second and looked my way. I flushed deeply, the almond eye boy side glanced to me followed by a quick smirk. James resumed back to his speech.

"There is no way you could raid the army, that's not possible," I whispered frantically.

The boy stepped a bit closer to me and whispered. "It not that hard if you were once part of the army." He smiled lightly at me as I stared back, my eyes wide with shock.