Wow, it has been far too long since my last update. I have been very busy, but I shouldn't make excuses. Thank you to everyone who reviewed and helped me put forth the effort to finish this next chapter. I will be doing my best to not take as long to post the next one.
When Marcus passed by the spot the next day where he had seen the boy, the child was gone, but Marcus spotted an alley nearby with several large cardboard boxes turned on their sides and various scrap metal lean-to's. He hated to think that that kid - damn, he was just a boy - lived in one of those. But even if he did, he doubted he would have been able to find the kid unless he wanted to be found. The homeless people in this city had a habit of disappearing whenever they didn't want to be found and you'd be damned if you so much as wanted to see so much as a hair of them anywhere. Then, as soon as you'd stop looking, they'd pop right back up as if they never even left. It made Marcus nervous as all hell, but he supposed that everyone needed to learn some things just to have been able to survive those fifteen ungodly years of war.
And maybe that's exactly what had happened to that kid, because Marcus didn't see one lick of him for days, then pretty soon those days turned into a week, and then two, and then all of the days just started to blur together and he couldn't remember if he hadn't seen the kid in one month or two. If he was smart, he'd just forget the louse and dwell on his regrets and continue on with his suicide job until he worked himself into the ground, but there was one problem: instead of that happening, the kid just joined the faces that haunted him at night. It was like a terrifying cycle in his brain. Anya, Dom, his father, the Carmine brothers, the guitar kid, Anya, Dom… There was nothing in his life outside of his job to make his brain stop, to make him think that maybe, just maybe, there was some form of hope in this world. That is, until one day, something did come to break up the monotony in his life with all the force of a bulldozer.
And that something just happened to be Augustus "the Cole Train" Cole.
It was strange, really. Marcus never used his telephone, never gave his number to anyone, and never got any calls. So it surprised him when he came home from work one night and saw the little red light flashing on his answering machine, indicating that he had a message. Approaching the machine as if it may have been rigged, he pressed the play button and immediately Cole's voice came ripping out of the speaker in all of his upbeat, loud glory.
"Hey, Marcus baby!" the greeting shouted in the ridiculously quiet house. "Haven't heard from you in a while! Hehe, get this, they're gonna be puttin' in a thrashball field in a town near you, so I'll be in your neck of the woods for a while! Ya hear that, baby? The Cole Train's back, WHOO! Call you later when I've got more details. Later Marcus!"
Cole. After all these years, and the man still couldn't be seen as any form of unhappy. Fifteen years of war and the loss of a career and he could still be ridiculously high energy and laughing as if he was still living in his glory days. Marcus found himself letting a small, fond smile tug at the corner of his mouth. How long had it been since he had seen Cole? Baird? Hell, anyone he had known in the COG Army? He couldn't remember. But still, Cole had bothered to look him up, and that meant something. Marcus began to make his way to the bathroom, shedding his clothes and rolling them up in a ball in his arms as he went, then dropped them on the floor outside of the bathroom as he stepped inside the tiled room.
Delta Squad. He used to hear one or two lines of news from them when he and Anya were together, but since Anya left, he had essentially cut himself off from the world. He hadn't had any kind of interaction with any of the former Delta Squad until he had run into Carmine at the cemetery. The hot water of the shower washed over his body as he cleaned of the day's grime from him. If only it could wash away the guilt he felt for neglecting his squad like that as well. He shook his head. Guilt would get him nowhere now.
"Besides," he murmured to himself, trying to ignore the fact that he was, in fact, talking to himself now, "there won't be any time for that once Cole gets here." Whenever the hell that would be.
A thrashball field. What a thought. For a moment, Marcus let himself feel horribly and ridiculously jealous of Cole. If Marcus learned on thing in this new, savage world, was that random entertainment was as important to people as their next meal. Here, people were always on edge, always working, so to have something for entertainment was an amazing break. And if they brought back thrashball, well, Marcus couldn't even think a number as high as the kind of money Cole would probably be making.
But the money wasn't why he was jealous. No, he was jealous because Cole had a something to pick up the pieces with. The man had something to go back to, a life that he could rebuild. Sure, he wasn't in his prime anymore and he most certainly wouldn't be playing any games himself, but he would probably end up coaching or teaching or being a talent scout for the new teams, so he'd still be a part of his dream career.
Marcus slammed the side of his fist against the wall. He had had that. He had Anya, the fancy house. He had had everything that his life had been before, had all of the pieces to fit together, but for some reason, it didn't work. Now he was stuck in a jealous and guilty cycle of thoughts switching from his friends, to his family, to that kid with the guitar. Marcus sighed and turned off the water. What the hell was he doing? What was the point? He stepped out of the shower and walked into his room, putting on sweat pants and toweling his hair dry as he went. Nothing in the world made sense. Honest people, good people, had died in the war and scumbags and other creeps had survived simply because they knew how to kill or were just willing to figure out how. The world was now very scarce on the good people. He rubbed his forehead as he sat down on the couch. This was a fine way to present himself to his squad: emotionally beat to shit and physically suffering for it.
"Well, shit Marcus," he growled at himself. "You've really fucked yourself over now."
Thank you for reading! Please feel free to tell me what you think.
