Ericson's Boarding School vs Little Lamplight
They say truth is the first casualty of war. Some say it is innocence. But there are those who manage to preserve them both, and have learned to thrive despite it. In the wake of the apocalypse, these communities act as a beacon of hope for the future.
"Biwwy, Princess, you two go down the creek, mungos like hiding out by the water," a voice whispered through the trees. The sun dipped low, drawing long barred shadows across the wooded underbrush. Four small figures stood around a flickering campfire, the only light source combatting the shadows of the setting sun.
Leading the pint-sized crew was a kid, no older than 12, decked out in an oversized olive-green field jacket that draped to his knees. A white scarf was wrapped around the kid's neck and an army helmet covered his light brown hair. While his youth smoothed over most of his facial features, a permanent scowl carved itself across the young leader's face, and the assault rifle in his hands ensured he meant business.
"But I don't wanna go with Pwincess," a smaller kid, Biwwy, piped up from the other side of the campfire. This kid sported less of a militaristic look than the leader, wearing a white youth's baseball jersey and sporting a bright red baseball cap, but yet a metallic boxy rifle was slung across his back, the trigger well-worn. "She's gonna get me shot and we'ww wose!"
"You're coming with me Biwwy!" the girl screeched, her hot pink dress and sawed off shotgun making quite an oxymoronical pair in the fading sunlight. "But not because stupid MacCready said you should, but because I say it's the most tactical maneuver."
The last kid in the circle remained quiet, sitting on a stump and fiddling with a small box while the others bickered. He sucked at his teeth as his screwdriver turned and pliers pinched at the contraption in his lap.
"Knick Knack!" the leader grabbed the kid by the shoulder, startling the inventor and almost causing him to drop his experiment into the fading fire. "Is it ready?"
Knick Knack turned the box over once more in his hands, holding it out in the light of the fire for the group to see. In his hands was what looked to be an ordinary lunchbox, a small radio device duct taped to its side.
"Ready as it'll ever be, mister mayor!" Knick Knack chirped, tucking the small box into the small bag on his back.
MacCready nodded in acknowledgment and the kids paired off with each other, guns at the ready. The young leader kicked dirt over their dying fire as he watched Biwwy and Princess creep along the rushing stream and motioned for Knick Knack to follow him. They moved silently through the underbrush, nothing but trees and the faint smell of squirrel stew to guide them.
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"That ought to do it," an eighteen-year-old boy said, stepping away from a cast iron pot and dropping the wooden spoon to rest against the side of the cauldron.
"Great job Aasim," a girl said from the other side of the smoldering fire, a bow held in front of her with an arrow nocked in preparation. Her short straw-like hair framed her angular face, piercing eyes sitting atop bags that didn't belong to a girl of her age.
"What's the plan now, Violet?" a smaller boy piped up, his grating voice slightly garbled as he spooned some of the squirrel stew from the pot into his jagged-toothed mouth. Aasim smacked the spoon out of the younger boy's hand, letting it fall to the ground. His eyes sharpened toward the older boy, his teeth gritted in angry silence.
"He's right, don't eat the stew Willy," Violet said, pulling out a map of the forest. "We want the smell to lure in those twerps so we can pick them off from cover."
Violet then used her finger to trace a line from their campsite to the winding creek to the south.
"Willy and AJ, you two should follow the creek to make sure they're not trying to circle around us," Violet continued, eyeing Willy and the even smaller toddler behind him. Willy, not having noticed the small kid behind him until just then, jumped and let out a mild scream before calming himself back down.
"Don't sneak up on me like that!" Willy harshly whispered at the bright-eyed child. AJ looked inquisitively up at Willy, holding out the older boy's bow.
"Don't lose your weapon." AJ said definitively as Willy snatched the bow from the child's chunky hands. AJ reached behind him to grab his pistol, a .38 revolver, and quickly checked the cylinder to make sure he was loaded.
"Just try to keep up, pipsqueak," Willy spat through his teeth, before heading off to the creek to the south. AJ rolled his eyes before giving one last look toward the leader, Violet.
"I won't let you down." He said, pursing his lips to put on as serious of a face as he could. Violet gave a tired smile, tousling the kid's afro before giving him a pat on the back for him to follow Willy into the woods.
"You want the bricks, or leave it to me?" Aasim asked, holding out a knife toward Violet and nodding upward at a duffle bag suspended from a tree. Violet took a quick glance at the dangling stuffed bag before pushing the knife back to Aasim.
"Your idea, you spring the trap," she said before ushering Aasim back into the thicker part of the woods with her to take cover and wait.
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Willy and AJ crept through the underbrush, bow and revolver at the ready, respectively. On their right was the creek, the water low enough to expose the rocky bottom in many places, and the woods expanded into the growing darkness to their left. A snapping twig caught the attention of the two boys as they ducked behind a fallen log, the bramble of branches and dead leaves hiding them as the two peered parallel to the creek.
"Be cawefuw, don't step on the cwunchy sticks," a small voice whispered. Two figures came into the boys' view, a girl in a dirty dress followed closely by a boy in a baseball cap. AJ took aim with his revolver, but Willy put his hand on the top of the gun, shaking his head to wait for the other duo to get closer.
"I'm the leader of this squad!" the girl snapped back, turning her back on the unseen boys in the brush. "You don't tell the leader how to sneak!"
"But thewe's onwy two of us, you can't caww that a squad Pwincess," the boy whined, hands falling at his side in exasperation.
Behind the downed log, Willy raised his hand from the smaller kid's gun, nodding to him in affirmation. AJ nodded back, closing his left eye to aim down the iron sights of his pistol, his tongue jutting out from his lips in concentration as he drew the girl's back into this line of fire. He counted his breaths as he steadied his hands, the two kids in the open still bickering and unaware of the ambush being played, and squeezed the trigger.
The shot rang out and the little girl howled in pain, dropping her shotgun and holding the back of her shoulder. The rubber bullet fell to the ground behind her, disappearing into the fallen leaves. Willy popped out of cover with a big toothy grin, pointing at the girl cursing at her pain.
"You're so dead!" Willy laughed, only to be answered by the furious eyes of the red-haired girl.
"That's not fair! Biwwy distracted me, I call redo!" Princess shouted back. Biwwy ducked behind Princess, using her for cover as she plead her case. Willy pulled back his bow and sent an arrow flying at the duo, the blunt-tipped projectile catching Princess in the gut.
"OW OW OW!" She shouted, throwing her hands up in defeat. "Okay I'll get out!"
Princess began to cross the creek, leaving Biwwy by himself against the other two. He pulled up his own laser rifle and pulled the trigger. A bright red beam of light burst forth from the gun, painting a red circle on Willy's forehead.
"What the hell is that?" Willy crossed his eyes to see the laser.
"Wazer Wifle," Biwwy shouted before ducking back behind a tree, occasionally poking his head out to see his enemy. "Heaviwy modified, of couwse!"
"Bullshit," Willy cursed under his breath, turning to his companion still ducking behind the log. "Up to you, squirt."
"Don't call me squirt." AJ stomped his foot, his eyes piercing into Willy's. Willy shrugged it off and held his hands into the air as he crossed the creek to catch up with Princess on her way back to the fortified boarding school.
AJ looked above his head to see the laser pointer flash blinks of red in the dying light, shining on trees in the distance. He calmed his breath as he waited for the laser fire to die down.
"I know you'we back thewe! Pew pew!" the laser firer shouted, not letting up his barrage of light beams which he voiced to life with every shot. AJ got down to his hands and knees as he crawled to the edge of the log, peering out from the side as he caught a good look at his opponent. He lined up his sights once more and fired, sending another rubber bullet downrange. The shot caught Biwwy in his hat, knocking it clean off to reveal an already-forming welt at the top of his forehead.
"Nice shot!" Biwwy smiled through the pain, returning his laser rifle to his back as he picked up and brushed off his hat. He made his way to the small gunner to shake his hand, which AJ took graciously.
"Better get going to catch up with Willy," AJ advised. Biwwy nodded in agreement before bolting into the growing darkness. AJ puffed out his chest in pride and smiled to himself before orienting himself in these woods to link back up with his compatriots.
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"Gotta be a trap," MacCready peered into the clearing to see a giant black cauldron atop a small burning pile of sticks. The smell of well-seasoned stew drifted throughout the clearing, but the two wasteland survivors knew better than to bite such obvious bait.
"Definitely," Knick Knack nodded behind him, eying their options. "Could sneak around and flush them out, run them right into my lunchbox."
"I like it," MacCready said, turning Knick Knack around and reaching into the bag on his back. He pulled out the small lunchbox Knick Knack had been tinkering on earlier and returned it to the young inventor's hands. Knick Knack flipped a switch on the side of the lunchbox and laid it gingerly into the dirt.
The two kids split, creeping just beyond the tree line as they encircled the clearing. MacCready kept his rifle shouldered as he chose his steps carefully. Knick Knack, on the other side of the clearing, held his knife outward as he crept.
A crashing of sticks and snapping of rope drew Knick Knack's attention upward, only to see a falling stuffed duffle bag accelerating toward him. He didn't have time to react before the bag collided with his face, throwing him to the ground and breaking the zipper, a few Styrofoam bricks tumbling out of the now open bag. Knick Knack slid out from under the bag, giving a slight smirk, before shouting.
"I'm dead!" Knick Knack yelled at his compatriot before running off into the woods to leave the battlefield.
"You can't talk when you're dead!" Aasim shouted back, rising from his cover of a rusted over truck, only to be answered by a rapid firing of gunshots, sending bullets whizzing around him and Violet. Aasim was pegged by one of the rubber bullets in the left pectoral. He fell backwards as Violet returned fire with her bow. He shook his head, returning to his feet to make his way back to the school.
"How do you like that, Mungo?!" MacCready shouted, his oversized helmet bouncing on his head as he was shook by the recoil of his rifle. While the gun fired rubber bullets, they still tore through the wall of green leaves behind his target and pinged loudly off of the scrapped vehicle.
"Psst…" a voice whispered from the distance. Violet looked to her side to see AJ crouching unseen in the brush and a smile spread across her face. She motioned with her hand toward the gunfire and AJ nodded, crawling through the grass to get a flanking position. Violet drew her bow back and poked her head out of cover enough to keep MacCready's attention, firing a shot when she could between the kid's reloading.
A spring and a bell rang between MacCready's shots as he turned just in time to see the small boy AJ standing over the lunchbox, now popped and having shot small red bottlecaps into the air. AJ looked perplexed and transfixed by the bottlecaps now littering the ground.
"Bottlecap mine, stink-breath!" MacCready cackled, taking the chance to reload with the last clip of his rifle. "You're so dead!"
MacCready turned quickly to see Violet raised with her bow drawn. His eyes went wide as she released her grip, the blunt-tipped arrow flying toward him. He ducked his shoulder back just in time as the arrow zoomed past him into the greenery, before raising his rifle and firing off an instinctive three round burst, each rubber bullet catching the older girl across her chest.
"Take that, Mungos!" MacCready shouted in victory, pumping his fist into the air. Out of the woods limped a girl on crutches, her left leg missing below the knee, and a smile spread across her face. Her black curly hair was tied behind her head underneath a white baseball cap, the blue D emblem on its front faded and tearing from its hem.
"You did good AJ," the girl said, removing her hand from one of her crutches to pat the young boy on the head. "Don't beat yourself up about it."
"Thanks, Clem," AJ responded before ducking into the shrubbery to make the trek back to the school.
"Buncha good fighters you guys 've got," MacCready smiled, returning his rifle to his back and approaching Clementine. Clem nodded, holding her hand out for a shake, which MacCready took gratefully. His bright, yet serious eyes stared up at the taller girl, both battle-hardened and weary.
"We've still got a long way to go," Clementine conceded, watching Violet and AJ walking into the dense woods in the dying light. "This exercise definitely helped though, thank you for that. Raiders won't know what hit them next time they come knocking."
"Next time is back in D.C.," MacCready said. "You mungos are honorary Little Lamplighters in my book."
"I'll keep that in mind," Clem laughed before they both turned to walk side by side back to the safety of the school.
Winner: Little Lamplight