The assault could have been worse.
This was the only thought racing through the troubled mind of thirteen-year-old Ezra Banks. He huddled next to the rough and worn bricks that built one of thousands of tall buildings in post nuclear war Boston, Massachusetts. His arms were wrapped around the quaking body of his nine-year-old sister Syble.
Ezra replayed the mugging which had occurred only a scant few minutes prior.
A dirty, smelly, disheveled and obviously high woman wearing cobbled together steel fragments upon her shoulders and wrapped around her thighs whose face evidenced the mud and blood which smeared her cheeks and forehead had chanced upon the children, pointing her ten-millimeter pistol at Ezra's chest before he had a chance to raise the barrel of his own makeshift pistol pieced together of steel and wood.
With her other hand, the raider junkie pushed the deep burgundy bangs of her filthy hair, styled down from what resembled a mohawk style if it had suffered through weeks of radiation-filled rain storms followed by a blow-drying of sorts by the dust-filled winds.
The only thing the young boy could do was raise his hands in surrender as the raider flashed her crooked grin. His body shielded his younger sister from the raider as he stepped backward nearer to the dark red brick apartment building.
The raider had insisted that all she desired from the pair was his cap sack and not his life. She seemed nearly apologetic when she had realized just how young her new marks were. However, her faltering high and the threat of chem withdrawal spurred her desperation for the Commonwealth's resident currency. Therefore, she felt as though she could not relent. Her reputation – as well as her high – was at stake and so she could not exempt the two children.
Ezra fought to remain calm as he slowly handed the woman his cap sack. She looked inside and made a quick estimate.
"Nearly fifty caps." The raider mused, "Not bad, kid."
Ezra said nothing, only looked at the raider woman with a look of concern. She pocketed the caps without lowering her pistol and she winked at the boy before slowly walking backward, her aim never wavering.
When the woman disappeared around the corner, Ezra finally allowed himself to breathe deeply. His heart pounded in his chest at how near he and Syble may have been to simply no longer existing. The Commonwealth was tough and, to a thirteen-year-old, at times scary place. But he had Syble and he had his pistol. Life was rough, but he knew if he let his sister down – let himself down – that life had not a single chance of becoming better for them. His faith waned more and more each day of things ever changing, but Ezra looked to Syble and he swore to himself that he would always keep fighting, keep hoping for a better life not for himself, but for her.
Ezra believed that wish had nearly been snuffed out along with his and Syble's lives.
He cursed his lack of awareness before he turned and knelt beside the huddled and trembling form of his sister.
Syble raised her big blue eyes to meet his smaller green ones in a silent question of their safety.
"Next time I won't get caught off guard." Ezra promised her.
Tears flowed from Syble's eyes and travelled down her dirty cheeks, marking them. She sniffed as her mind tried to decide whether to act like a big girl for her brother or to allow her inner child to show through after the frightening threat of violence.
Ezra flicked his eyes to the horizon just over the many tall buildings of downtown Boston.
"Come on," Ezra urged, "The sun's going down."
Syble wiped her eyes and stood awkwardly, her slight four-foot frame shivering with the combination of the cool air and her fright.
"That's right," Ezra responded, "You remember how I taught you never to walk around at night, right?"
Syble wiped her eyes again and cleared her throat.
"If it's night, there is fright." Syble mumbled as she recalled the rhyme Ezra had told her many times.
"Right." Ezra confirmed, "We need to find shelter."
"One door, three walls, bad guys will fall." Syble recited from memory.
"Exactly." Ezra smiled.
Ezra lifted the barrel of his cobbled together pistol and slowly made his way around the brick building, his green eyes narrowing in concentration. He looked to where his father had once told him human enemies would likely hide.
He scanned the streets that traversed the buildings which lined both sides. He checked the roofs of the buildings as far as he could. As he turned his head to ensure his and his sister's safety he spotted a single raider just down the street from him perched on the crumbling roof of a three-story apartment complex.
"Shit." He whispered as he crouched.
His eyes focused to the cemetery on his near right and he took Syble's hand and the pair quickly jogged to the brick wall and the wrought iron fence. The cemetery was square shaped and was covered by wall and wrought iron on each side except for the front gate which featured five steps leading from the cemetery grounds to the sidewalk.
Ezra moved toward the steps but Syble held back.
"Ghouls?" She whispered.
"I know, Syble. I know, but ghouls are slow. There's a raider up on top of that building. He'll see us if we walk that way."
Syble was afraid, it showed on her face. Ezra holstered his pistol and produced a twelve-inch-long combat knife. The scratched but still shiny steel looked enormous in Ezra's small hand. He gripped the handle tightly and gave Syble his best reassuring smile. She gulped but she was really a brave little girl.
She nodded and Ezra slowly led the nine-year-old past the damaged cemetery gate. Slow as he could he crept through the soft overgrown grass and weeds and dirt, in between headstones and the skeletal remains of trees. As often as Ezra had experienced the wasteland in his thirteen years of life, he had to admit that this part was always scary to him. He had trouble above him down the street leading to one of hundreds of small camps that Ezra and Syble had created in the two years they had been alone and so the pair were forced to make their way through a large, eerie graveyard.
Ezra stopped suddenly and held Syble back with one hand. She immediately gasped and pressed her hands across her lips at the sight of the deathly slim form of a feral ghoul. The husk was a human being at one point in time, before the atomic bombs fell across America destroying everything that had ever been and forcing mankind to take shelter in underground fallout shelters called vaults, Ezra recalled. He knew that the ghoul had absorbed a lethal amount of radiation, but due to some unknown twist of fate the person did not die. The person had ghoulified. The skin fell from this person's muscle in ribbons and before long he became a hideously mutated shell of his former self. After two-hundred years his brain had finally rotted to the point where he could no longer tell right from wrong, friend from foe. He only felt hunger and he had lost the ability to reason, finally having become more or less a zombie.
Ezra also knew that the ghouls could not see well in the dark. Their perception was much weaker than a normal human's. The thirteen-year-old looked deeply into Syble's eyes and warned her with only that one look to hide behind their current gravestone, belonging to a Gerald Seaver, and to under no circumstances follow him until he told her.
It was a look Syble knew well.
Ezra looked back to the ghoul blocking their path and crept slowly from behind the gravestone. Luckily the ghoul faced the rear wall, therefore the ghoul presented its back to Ezra. The boy crept along as silent as the night that descended across the Commonwealth. His eyes never left the husk of a man as his feet carried him nearer and nearer. As Ezra came to within two feet of the monster he leapt as quietly as he could onto the creature's back. He wrapped his arm around the beast's throat as it roved left and right trying to dislodge the human who was riding the ghoul.
Ezra pulled his right arm back before thrusting the sharpened steel of his combat knife deep into the ghoul's skull. The sudden intrusion into the ghoul's brain killed it instantly and Ezra fell from his back landing painfully on his knees.
Ezra breathed, but the piece did not last as a high-pitched scream pierced the silence. Ezra spun around to find himself face to face with another of the irradiated ghouls. He barely got his arms up before the ghoul had grabbed him. His left hand fought to block the creature's salivating jaws by pushing its chin upward and away from his body.
The ghoul was much larger than Ezra. With the last of his arm's strength waning Ezra thrust his knife into the ghoul's skin. The stab which he had intended for the creature's throat instead went awry and the blade of the combat knife was embedded in the ghoul's chest.
The ghoul growled in pain before battering Ezra's right hand with its left. The impact knocked the blade from his hand and it fell to the cobblestone path with a metallic clang. Ezra's right hand moved to push with all of his might, but the ghoul's jaws inched closer and closer to Ezra's neck.
Ezra felt the hot saliva drooling on his skin and he stared into the soulless, dead eyes which saw nothing more than Ezra's exposed flesh. The sharp, yellow teeth that remained in the ghoul's ravenous maw shone in what was left of the sunlight.
Ezra's strength failed. As the creature's mouth rushed toward Ezra's fresh neck Ezra froze and contemplated.
He wondered why the weight of the creature seemed not so great anymore. He wondered why the ghoul had stopped just short of ripping his flesh apart for its own sustenance.
Ezra opened his eyes and stared into the soulless, now lifeless, eyes of the ghoul that had just the moment before been on the winning end.
He then turned his eyes just to the right of the imposing monster. He saw Syble. He noticed the combat knife in her hand. And he noticed the blade embedded deep into the ghoul's rotting skull.
Syble was drenched in blood but she stood shaking, tears flowing at the deep tension that had just resulted. Syble dropped the knife as if she had been burnt by it, its blade never escaping the ghoul's skull even an inch. She backed away with her blood-stained hands to her mouth.
Ezra thought swiftly and pushed the big ghoul off of his body. He stood on legs made weak by the great amount of effort it took to escape the jaws of death. He approached Syble and moved to his knees. She stared at him in shock, her wide-open eyes never blinking and her red stained hands never leaving her speechless mouth.
Syble had taken her first life.
"Syble, honey. Just breathe." Ezra began.
She dropped to her rear on the cobblestone path in the center of the cemetery and cried while she stared at the ghoul's lifeless body, having finally become the corpse that it had portrayed for two-hundred and ten years.
Ezra slid over toward her and cradled her in his arms, softly shushing her as he rocked her shuddering body.
"I… I killed…" Syble tried before sobs racked her once again.
"You saved my life." Ezra cooed.
Those words became a mantra he repeated time and again as he rocked the nine-year-old under the last rays of fast fading light.
Several minutes later under the dim light of a crackling fire, Ezra watched a gently sleeping Syble.
She had stayed awake long enough to eat a bowl of noodles and a mutfruit. Ezra ate only a stale television dinner of Salisbury steak and a few sips of purified water before insisting that Syble drink the rest of that too. Ezra's stomach growled but he felt he had absorbed enough nutrients to at least keep him going for another day whereas Syble was resting on a full stomach.
That was the most important thing to Ezra.
He felt weak, sure, as he moved about during the day looking for important food, weapons and caps in the dilapidated buildings that dotted downtown Boston. But his priority was always Syble.
She hadn't said a word since the Cemetery debacle. She had originally poked at her noodles until Ezra insisted that she eat every bite. Hunger finally made her cave and she ate the noodles and mutfruit to the last bite. She had felt bad when Ezra opened up the small Salisbury steak dinner and heated it over the fire. However, one simple look made her turn her head away. She was still sad for him, but she didn't try to push the issue of her eating more than him.
She wouldn't understand, Ezra thought. She could never understand.
This was one of the safe camps that Ezra dreaded the most. A parking structure only a twenty-minute walk from the danger zone that he and Syble had strolled through made up the base. The upper tier was safe due to a pile up of rusted out cars and trucks creating a natural barrier to deter anything on foot. There was only one entrance and that was the stairwell as the former entrance to the parking structure had mostly collapsed leaving only one or two miniscule openings in the debris.
But once Ezra and Syble hopped the cement railing into the stairwell they could descend into the structure itself. They followed the cement car ramp down one level and into the rather spacious lower tier. It was mostly devoid of cars except one full sized car forever stuck on the ramp leading up toward the main tier and a tiny single seat vehicle which had exploded long ago leaving only the skeletal remains of sharp, twisted metal.
The exit door that led from the lower parking tier and into whatever building the parking structure represented had been nailed shut by Ezra shortly after he had discovered the fateful find. Ezra and Syble spent the day looting several nearby residences and commercial buildings for the meager luxuries the hideout allowed.
One red leather easy chair upon which Syble now slept. Wood enough for months of camp fires and stone and brick enough to encircle the blazing wood for safety's sake. An old worn out Armature where Ezra stored whatever food and water he could find. It was barren at the moment save for one bottle of purified water he was saving for the next day. One chest of drawers in which Ezra and Syble stored their clothing. The left side was Ezra's, while Syble utilized the right side. One frayed round rug of diminishing color. Finally, one badly damaged basketball backboard and hoop which was missing its net. A basketball inhabited the corner of the room closest to the hoop which held air surprisingly well. It was a rare find.
Ezra poked at the fire once more before he looked at the still form of his sister, sleeping deeply in a nearby red leather easy chair.
He smoothed Syble's hair, who had curled up on the soft chair cushion to sleep. He drew her blanket tighter around her shoulders and she moved gently, mumbling in her sleep before settling once more beneath the fabric.
He grinned at her softly snoring form and unrolled his sleeping bag onto the hard concrete. The lack of any other form of furniture in this campsite made the uncomfortable cement floor the only option he had. The sleeping bag was thin and he had no pillow, but his joints and bones ached from the tough travels the pair had taken to get here.
And so, before long exhaustion outweighed the discomfort and he drifted off into a deep sleep beside the crackling fire.