Anti-Hero

Chapter Three

Chapter Three:

 

I wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid, my dad used to pick me up and fly me around on his shoulders. It was one of the most exciting things we ever did. He was this super man, and I was his daughter who he’d always protect. On our side of the fence, no one would bully one another because we were always finding out new things about each other. 

Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say we never bullied each other. But daddy kept me out of most of it. Most people respected a man who could fly. And he took advantage of their respect and made sure they never beat up on his daughter. 

He and my mother always taught me to keep sex a pure and sacred thing. It was something they taught me from the time I was probably six years old. It wasn’t that strange when you considered what had happened to them. They were terrified that my hair and eyes meant I was diseased, too, and they were right. They just wanted to protect me. But they didn’t need to worry. 

None of my peers ever really trusted me. 

My parents never did either, once they found out about my disease. 

I shook my head as I walked across the empty lot in front of the building. This used to be part of a high school, but now that the population here had decreased so dramatically, we used it per the army’s orders. They’d turned it into a facility for creating monsters, in my opinion, but what did I know? 

We walked over to the van, and I stepped up to the driver’s side. 

“I don’t let women drive,” came the gruff voice of one of the soldier’s as he attempted to grab my hand with the keys. 

I yanked my hand back and looked up into the face of an impossibly tall and broad man. He was one of those muscle-bound men you’d see on the covers of romance novels, not someone in the army. 

“And I don’t ride with soldiers,” I responded flatly. He pushed me away from the door and barred it, not saying anything. “Look, if you don’t want to go be with your command unit, that’s your deal,” I said, not wanting to deal with this man when I was in the middle of a crisis of my own, “but you don’t know roads down here like I do, and you can’t get around on your own. So shut up and get in the van.”

The man glared at my response. It was clear I’d wounded his pride, but he didn’t seem interested in talking about it. I sighed. 

“You don’t seem to understand,” I told him seriously. “Roads down here don’t work the same way they do up there. You’ll just get us into a wreck, and then some nutcase will go disease on you.” 

The man seemed to be listening, but his posture had only eased slightly, and I wasn’t about to take any chances. “Just trust me on this one,” I told him, and saw his shoulders tense. I winced. Poor word choice. “I don’t mean it like that, you big knuckle-head,” I said. He glared at me. The others weren’t helping matters. 

Looking at their tense stances, I decided I wasn’t going to win. “Fine,” I said. “I don’t care. I’ll just take my car and report to base and explain to your commander that a bunch of strong men are too afraid to ride with a woman when they’re commanded to do so. It’s all good. I’m sure he’ll understand and even send someone back for you. If he’s not too busy.” 

I turned and walked away towards my smaller Kia. It was old but reliable, and I wasn’t about to let the intimidation of a bunch of muscle-bound soldiers get to me. They weren’t my keepers and weren’t in charge of me. I kept walking until I got close and pulled out my set of car keys, working them into the lock before I heard the shout.