The next few months went fast. Most of time we were shoplifting, but never got caught because of our skill. The rest of the time we were in the back of the truck or in the front, doing various art projects to keep ourselves from getting bored.
Every now and then we would be found by the authorities, but they never had much chance. We were simply in such a frantic race to reach the border, so trucks and helicopters were a simple way to distract us from thoughts of the future.
As each day drew to a close we would plot where we were, and how far from towns and cities we were. We would then throw our camouflage netting over our truck and sleep on foam and sheets which we had stolen from various arts stores along our way. All in all our truck was full of stolen things.
We had a supermarket of various foods. We had a walk-in-robe of a mix of expensive and cheap clothing. We had plenty of arts supplies, and we had a wall covered in a map of our trip so far, and the best route to travel by to get out.
The reason it has taken so many months is the fact that the C.L.O.U.D. was just outside of the capital. which was situated as far from any of the country's borders as possible, as well as our progress needing to be slow so as not to attract to much attention to our vehicle moving non-stop towards the closest border, which was over 10,000 kilometres away from the C.L.O.U.D.
Voulge was more often than not working at night, busying herself in any way possible. Rapier was often up with her, but really all he did was just sit with her and comfort her. As for me, I just tried to sleep, but after what had happened, there was no sleep granted to me, everyone else seemed to be fine with it, but that was probably because of the fact that they had done it many times before this. The others sort of excluded me, not that I minded. I was allowed to write stuff about how my life could have been fine if it wasn't for the government's intrusion into my life.
Our truck also got an upgrade. from a simple pick-up truck, it became a perfectly function weapons system, which Glaive and Katana made together, not sharing how they manufactured the bullets and even a surface-to-air missile. All in all our truck wasn't going to die without some serious attacking power, as it had titanium reinforcements placed on the inside, making it virtually immutable. On top of all of this the window panes became bullet proof, and an air conditioning system was set up in the back, meaning that all of us were able to sit in the cool. All of the materials were provided from random shops where the two of them seemed to know perfectly, despite never being there before in their lives.
All in all our lives were going reasonably well considering the circumstances. Then came Judgement Day.
The day came where Voulge announced that she just wanted to get up and leave, which left us all shell-shocked. After all this time, she was just going to leave us? Voulge, our leader, our mentor, our advisor, was just going to ditch us in the middle of a hostile area, with little to no protection, we all admired her courage for it, but behind our cheerful smiles we were all sad. She was so much part of our group as anyone else, if not more, just throwing that away was a not a selfless sacrifice like she made it out to be, rather a selfish one. She was the only reason that all of us cooperated, and while most of the others would not agree, we needed her in our band, if not to stop Rapier from going insane, as he now had to pick up the pieces and carry on.
There was a small town near the border where we stopped briefly to do our daily stealing, but we dropped Voulge off there and continued on our way, trying to make it seem that she was still with us, and to avoid them tracking her, which would be too much for any of us to bear.
Our immediate exit was less than one hundred kilometres out of this town, by the name of Merton. So we made our way that way, which maybe was slightly faster than we had been travelling for the past few days, but that was only because of our excitement to be finally free of the cage like world that we had been living in our entire lives. This was the biggest break for us, our fate could finally be made by our choices, and not some idiot who thinks they can control us. We could start a new, no more people controlling us and forcing us to do their dirty-work, especially not killing people that we had no problem with.
We pulled into a station just inside of the next border to fill up with diesel, and also grab some food for the road. The first thing we did was make the cameras simply loop what had been happening for the past three hours, which wasn't a lot. Glaive, Katana, Sling, Raven and I went in while the other three remained at the truck filling it up. We then sprung out at the short man behind the counter, who was quite obedient with a sword pressed close to his throat. With Katana holding him, we spanned out, grabbing almost everything in the shop, then leaving without a word. we quickly loaded into the refueled truck, and took off before the man could get our number plate.
We continued down the road and reached a secluded area before dark, where we set about making dinner and getting ready for the night, all knowing that we would find a way to make Voulge rejoin our group.
-
We all rose at around 4am that morning, packing up all of our things and immediately heading off on our way towards town. We arrived and the first thing that we did was work out where the nearest information centre, working out where there was an unoccupied house, we found one just off the main street and drove there, which was approximately 5 kilometres into the town.
We pulled up and took everything that we owned inside. The house hadn't been lived in for 50 years or so, so the wooden floorboards had rotted away. But we quickly set about fixing that up, placing our bed foam in between the panels below the floor and setting up a primitive scaffold to keep the roof aloft.
We then turned our attention to getting our truck out of street view, luckily the building had a semi-driveway, which led behind the building, where trees covered a parking space just large enough to fit our truck in. We then took most of the contents of the truck out and rearranged it, as on the road it had become piles and piles of stuff, we now rearranged it to be set out in order. After this we went back into the room which we had set up our camp, and sat and talked until it became too dark too see each other. We dared not use any light other than natural ones, as it would only attract attention, fortunately our room was in the furthest place from the street, but that didn't stop us taking precautions.
We rose the next morning and Rapier, Loch and Guisarme went into town to grab something for us to put into storage, while the rest of us set about making our room nicer. Raven found timber beams in the shed out the back, and we spent most of the day laying them into the ground and onto the walls, as well as nailing them perpendicular to the other beans on the roof, just for some added protection. There were decent mattresses up on the second floor, with little to nothing else. We all quickly set the mattresses into place, making sure to check if there were anymore. After finding none, we pulled out a map of the town, which we had been given at the information centre, and worked out that there was a bed store 7 kilometres up the road, which would no doubt have spare mattresses in a storage facility around the premises.
That meant that Raven and Glaive headed off to there, and the remaining three waited for their return. The rest of the group returned around 10pm, having taken the backstreets to avoid suspicion and for anyone to know that we were here. It was an extremely successful day, with everyone having more food, and having soft mattresses to sleep on, as well as having a relatively safe roof over our heads.
The next day Rapier took his band off again into town, this time for clothes, arguing that we needed more, even though we had so many clothes that we had to start getting suitcases to fit them all in. I couldn't blame him though, shoplifting requires all your focus on the task, taking your mind off other things, which, for someone who just lost their girlfriend, would seem like a good thing to do.
While they were away, the rest of us got bored and painted our insignia on the wall, making it seem like we were graffiti artists, which I took pride in doing. When we were finished, we let it dry, then we painted the same thing, only askew by a couple of millimeters.
At this point we realized how hard it was to paint it and so, while we let the second coat dry, we made a template for it, which we subsequently used to paint every inch of the walls and floor in, avoiding the beds and walkways, and then painted the walkways when the rest had dried, which made the room look like a toddler in a tantrum had splashed the walls and floors in different colours, yet somehow had managed to avoid the mattresses.
When the other group returned home we had made nine seats and a table in the centre, and painted it all as well. We added the ninth so that when Voulge returned, which she would we promised ourselves, she wasn't discouraged that we hadn't made her a chair. The others took ten seconds to take it all in, but then carried on as it was perfectly normal, which exactly what we had been trained to do since before we could walk.
We made small talk at dinner, finding out that we had 24 new articles of clothing from about seven different stores around town, which didn't even realize they were gone. We also found out that there was an arts store nearby, perfect for our plans to expand our camp into the room next door across, which needed foam to stand on, which we partially did after dinner, but we didn't quite have enough foam.
We woke up almost the same as usual the next day, apart from the almost silent footsteps creeping up towards the room that we were in.
Raven was the first one up, slipping silently into place just next to the doorway. Loch moved into the semi-renovated next room in case anyone came through there. Sling slipped up against the window, with Glaive taking the other one. Rapier and Katana moved into the hallway, but hid behind a pillar, while Guisarme placed herself on the other side of the door, which left me.
I walked straight out to face the intruder who, like we had suspected, was part of the authorities. He noticed me but wasn't fast enough to react before a blade entered the gap between his teeth.
Another man appeared behind him, this one ready for me, broadsword poised. My first priority was the knife still lodged in the dead man's throat. I jumped and rolled until I was aligned with the man's slumped body, and pulled my blade, soaked with blood and saliva, from the back of his mouth.
The man took this as a sign of weakness and attacked, leaving him on the ground with two deep slash marks on his legs.
Then everything fell to pieces. The rest of the group attacked, thinking I was the only one that would attack them. Rapier and Katana left their hiding spot and attacked those coming up behind me, with Guisarme and Raven helping, meanwhile, Loch, Glaive and Sling flanked the remaining ones attacking along the same line that the other two had.
All that happened was the remaining 8 were slaughtered, their faces told their final expressions with sickening detail.
Everyone looked at each other. We thought we were safe, now we have worked out that we aren't, but we aren't going to be bullied out of our home just because some dumb idiot thinks that they are better than us.
We quickly moved all the bodies upstairs, leaving a sea of blood all the way along, at least we can do the red carpet event without any carpet.
We sat council, working out what to do, knowing full well that Voulge would be in even more danger, and trying desperately hard not to worry about her, but that's hard when you have ten dead bodies upstairs because of stupidity.
We all rose, and went back to what we were doing the day before, trying desperately hard not to think about anything that could be happening right now.
Rapier, Raven and Sling went and grabbed the foam needed for the next room, which covered it with 2 metres left over. We now had two rooms, one coated in paint, the other empty.
We set about moving anything that wasn't to do with sleeping and clothing into the empty room or back into the truck, and then spent the day trying to work out where a free computer was. We found one in the library over the street from us, and myself and Rapier headed over there.
Rapier wanted to search up Voulge and see any matches, but when that didn't turn up with anything, I tried searching for new businesses in the area. We found one, which started up yesterday, a bass class in Merton, taught by V. Louge, which was a simple anagram for Voulge, as if she expected us to come looking for her, or worse, for the government to come looking for her.
Rapier could hardly breathe and was so eager to return back to the others that I had to physically restrain him while I closed all evidence that we had even looked at that computer. I put down a fake name on the log, leaving it as Malcolm.
Rapier probably would have woken the whole town if it had been 12 hours beforehand by the way he carried on. He didn't stop until he was in front of everyone, where he seemed completely unable to speak, so I did most of the talking instead, with him adding minor details to it.
All of the group was intrigued by how we now knew the whereabouts of Voulge, but Raven and Sling were reluctant to go and get her, saying that she wasn't really part of the group anymore, as she had left us, a pretty clear indication that she didn't want to be one of us anymore, which suffered heavy blows from both Rapier's and my own views.
After much arguing and little advance, Glaive called for a vote, which left the matter 2-6, meaning that we would be going to try and get Voulge back, or at least save her from the imminent threat of the authorities.
Rapier wanted to go straight away, but we all reasoned that in the fading light, we would never get there and back in time, so we spent the next five hours doing meaningless tasks to pass the time.
It was decided that Glaive, Guisarme and Loch would stay here and deal with any unwanted visitors if they came, while the rest of us would take the truck back to Merton, pick up Voulge, and bring her back, all without alerting anyone or anything to Voulge's whereabouts should she choose to stay. Most people would say it's impossible, but we do the impossible so we don't need to worry about that.
Rapier barely slept, I know this because I sleep next to him. He was up all night explaining how he would ruthlessly hunt down each and every one of the people involved in C.L.O.U.D. and murder them in the most bizarre and unique ways and then proceed with their families, killing them all in different ways as well. He eventually fell asleep, but not without finishing his massive novel sized story of how he was going to make the CEO eat his son's spline while watching his being strung up on a clothesline.
And here is where the backstory ends.
Everyone woke up this next morning and spent their time making sure everything was perfect, as one thing missing would mean the end of us and the mission, which would have not only hurt us but also our pride, which is more valuable than our lives. But when your pride is in your 100% satisfaction guarantee, then dying ruins it.
The group that was going gets into the truck, with Rapier driving and me sitting shotgun. The rest pile in the back. On the way out we grab some more diesel, but the lovely man wasn't there anymore. He probably quit for being called insane or something like that. We grab more food and water for the trip while we are here, but leave as quickly as possible, carefully pulling out and racing off down towards the border that we hoped never to see again in our lives.
Our trip was almost cut short from the boom gates not opening until 8 am, but we waited and sure enough we got through without any fuss from border security, and even if there had been, there wasn't all that much they would have been able to do. They have no bulges where guns would be on a normal police officer, their hands are made for typing, not fighting, and their attitude was way too kind for any kind of killer or even a soldier.
The landscape changed when we entered our old home. It changed from lush and green trees to flat dry plains of cultivated land, which was ridiculous how little the government cared for the environment. Smoke was thick in the air, much thicker than when we were leaving, and the toad seemed more worn than it had been less than a week ago, as if with that time hundreds of thousands of vehicles had passed through that way.