Note: Thanks for the reviews all :) It makes me happy.
Glad you enjoyed and I hope this chapter does not disappoint.
Sorry it took so long to update. I have been so busy I haven't had a chance to write. There's plenty of story though. I have it all planned out :)
-Theeph
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"Ash!" screamed Misty as loud as she could. She had lost count of how many times before she had done so since the explosion. This time, however, he responded.
"Misty, where are you?" he cried, not too far away. Her keen blue eyes picked him out amid a sea of buildings. He was limping slightly, and seemed to have been battered quite severely. Many shallow cuts marked his flesh and his jaw was purple and beginning to swell, but he was alive and Pikachu was with him.
She cried out in happy relief and surprised Ash with a sudden hug. He bore it gladly for a while before the pain overwhelmed him, making him moan slightly. Misty pulled back suddenly with a serious, almost chastising expression on her face.
"Oh shit, are you ok?" Misty asked him, cupping his head in her hands for a moment, then inspecting his arms and chest for wounds.
"What on Earth happened to you? I was so worried. I waited for ages," she gushed, "I even attacked some guy with a broken bottle." Ash gave her a funny look.
"He had a broken bottle?" he asked, confused and worried.
"No I had it," Misty corrected him distractedly while she stared into the distance behind him, "What's going on with the army? They're right on top of us."
"It looks like the warning was off by about two hours. Thank you very much mayor," Ash grumbled wryly. "We have to get away from them."
"What about the city? The people?" Misty asked hesitantly.
"Screw this city, and the people will have to get by on their own. I'm not hiding around to get shot to bits, one near miss is enough," Ash cut in harshly. He waved off Misty's questions about the 'near miss' hurriedly. His mind was racing, trying to hold the rupturing bubble of his own private world together, and failing. Misty's face let slip a similar struggle.
A shockwave made the shattered glass on the pavement dance like dejected wind-chime skeletons watched over by yet another curling smoke cloud beginning to unfurl behind the towering buildings like a great amorphous snake rising out of the grass. The high frequency sound of whizzing bullets again played counterpoint to the deep bass rumble of explosions like thunder. They both paled visibly.
"Talk later, run now," grunted Ash.
"No argument here," agreed Misty, "The army is coming in from the north. So south it is?"
Ash nodded and hefted the pack Misty handed him. Pikachu jumped inside and zipped it up from the inside. The two trainers looked grimly at each other then turned away from the impending dust cloud and buzzing helicopters.
---
It took them a long time to clear the city. Barricaded families peered out at them from windows, between the cracks in hastily attached boards, as they ran through the empty, solemn streets.
At one point they noticed a company of fighters, seemingly made up of well-armed police officers and determined looking city folk, rushing past them. It seemed that the city had a defensive plan after all, instead of just mass hysteria. Misty felt a twinge of guilt that they were fleeing when the city needed defending but this wasn't their fight and they couldn't get caught up in it when the bullets started flying.
Ash looked up and saw a man with a sniper rifle running over the rooftop of a tall building, the third he'd seen so far. He and Misty had been forced to stop in their escape as the street was taken up by a convoy of armored personnel carriers and tanks that, although small, did well to not scrape along the sides of the storefronts.
The soldiers had not given them a glance, so focused they were on the oncoming skirmish. Once they had been questioned as to why they were not in a safe house but they ignored the policeman without breaking their run.
As a result of the heightened friendly military presence Ash and Misty had little trouble with criminals who had already, for the most part, fled the streets. This was a comfort as night had fallen and sprinting in the pervasive darkness was bad enough. There were no street lights on, and Ash assumed this to mean either the invaders had taken out the power station or the Lachot military command had decided to disconnect them to obscure the roads and make it easier for ambushes to be sprung.
The cool night air bit at their sweat-soaked backs refreshingly and tempered their scorching brows. Cicadas came alive to sing interlacing nocturnes: an incongruous soundtrack to hasty footsteps and war making. It was a surreal pleasure to witness seemingly sterile alleyways and crumbling arches come alive with such resonating sounds.
Eventually the explosions and gunfire began to coalesce to a single point as the city began their counter-offensive. The two ran along the deserted roads, corrugated by tank tracks depressed into asphalt never designed to hold such weight.
The offices and businesses became houses, which began to disperse as they continued. Tarmac became two muddy channels, textured with tire treads.
No houses anymore. They were clear.
Stumbling up a grassy hill after Misty, Ash called out, "Mist' hold up. I can't run any more."
She stopped and turned to him with a desperate look in her eyes. She then realized that he should not have even run the last few miles. His face was gray and he was bent over, hands clawing at his chest. He had hid it well but Ash was in no shape to continue after the day's events.
"We'll rest here for a bit then," she managed between breaths, as they both collapsed on the crest of the hill. It must have been half past nine. They had covered a distance of almost forty kilometers.
They lay there silently for a while, having neither the energy to talk nor the compulsion. Crickets chirped in the cool night air, and the fresh scent of a nearby swampy river was intermingled with the acrid smell of the smoke still in their nostrils.
The blackened city lit up with the muzzle flashes of tanks as the fighting suddenly recommenced. Tenebrous smoke clouds, rendered invisible by the night, gained brief, blazing and fleeting definition as the explosions rocked the city. It was like watching a far-off thunderstorm as lightning lit up the sky, jumping from cloud to cloud. The repetitive staccato bark of automatic weapons accompanied by the rustle of a soft breeze through long grass.
The destructive lights colored their faces amber every few moments, as the wind tossed their hair wildly about and the stars shone brightly down on them.
"It's kind of beautiful…" Misty commented, not exactly sure why it occurred to her.
Ash nodded.
---
The next morning they awoke, rather alarmed that sleep overcame them, and prepared to travel. They followed the road they had used to enter town, retracing their own steps. Sometimes they even passed the remnants of campfires that had lain undisturbed since they left them days before.
The echoes of battle were growing infrequent; the fighting seemed somehow more dispersed, with blissful periods of silence in-between short, sudden peals of gunfire and muzzle flashes. It became apparent to the dirty, exhausted pair that the main body of the army had remained to pacify the city, now visible to them in the distance from the precipitous, bushy escarpment they were climbing.
To their dismay they could see a steady blue stream of what appeared to be uniformed foot soldiers trooping out of the city and dispersing into the wilderness. Their hearts sunk with the proof the city had been successfully overrun before their eyes.
Advance scouts and patrols for the next stage of the incursion were shuffling out of the gates they had passed the previous day like an undulating centipede. To make things worse it appeared that this progression had been going on for some time.
Misty reached the top of the cliff, and Ash followed soon after. They lay panting on the edge for a moment before sitting up to talk. The heat and humidity were both oppressive and combined with their climb it made them damp with sweat and irritable.
Misty gathered her hair, now a dark red color from her sweat, into a loose ponytail at the back of her head, clawing aggressively at a few impossible strands stuck to the sheen of her forehead. Ash took his shirt and hat off but Misty managed to dissuade him from shedding his sneakers, which would no doubt smell unbearable by now.
"It's really hot," complained Misty, half hoping it would trigger Ash to break his daylong silence. It did not.
"What are we going to do about the army?" she finally cut to chase. Ash remained mute for a long while and Misty was about to ask again when he answered.
"We have a good head start on them, and they aren't looking for us in particular. They won't catch us up as long as we keep moving," said Ash, deliberating upon each world.
"But we're not military trained. They'll be a lot faster than us," Misty pointed out.
"I said we'll be fine," Ash said stubbornly, "They're nowhere near us."
"You can't be sure of that!" Misty was becoming more and more annoyed with him.
Ash inhaled sharply and was about to lecture her loudly when Pikachu's little yellow hand tugged at his sleeve urgently. He looked down at the creature, who motioned silence and then pointed towards the precipice they had just climbed.
Ash and Misty exchanged a wild-eyed glance, their anger forgotten, and crept over to the edge on their stomachs.
There, about eight meters below, was a soldier with his rifle shouldered, kneeling to examine some footprints. He glanced upward and the trainers drew back suddenly to avoid being seen. When they worked up the courage to look again the soldier was standing, his rifle now at the ready, and holding up a closed fist. He then splayed his fingers open and motioned to either side of himself.
It was as if dragon's teeth had been scattered and warriors were rising from the ground. The soldiers, incredibly camouflaged despite the color of their uniform, displayed the utmost professionalism as they rose from their hiding places and spread out in a concentric circle from the leader. Nine in total, all armed and deadly.
Once, when Misty was younger, she was fishing in the river that ran close to her family's house. She found a large spider and, being contemptuous of spiders, she decided to drop a flat river stone on it. The spider, which had recently given birth, was carrying its family of eight hundred on its back. When the baby spiders 'abandoned ship' it was like watching a perfectly circular shockwave ripple out from underneath the stone.
Misty had acquired her fear of insects that day, but had never felt it to such acuity again until this moment. Cold fear scuttled up her extremities and made a nest in her stomach.
Spiders were hunting them.
---
They ran through the knee-high grass at break-neck speed, leaving blatant trails in their wake. Every now and then they would stumble over a rock or fallen tree branch and leave a speck of blood, or a torn piece of clothing behind. It was not surprising that the enemy found them. Anyone could have followed a trail like that.
It happened when night had fallen on their second day out from the city and they were moving into a dense forest. They were tired, bloody, and wretched. To exhausted to talk or think, the two trainers trudged along in the gloomy blue half-light, being bitten out of their minds by mosquitoes. Their arms were regularly brushing as they instinctively drew closer from the cold. Their heads were beginning to loll from palpable fatigue. Ash stumbled and fell to his knees; somehow dragging Misty with him, at the precise time the first shot was fired.
The sedate melodies of nocturnal animals singing to each other were annihilated instantly with the crashing gunfire. Bullets rained on the space where the teenagers' heads were milliseconds before. Ash and Misty were both reverted to an almost primal state, and they crawled on their stomachs away from the bright lights and loud sounds.
Misty was the first to struggle to her feet and, sensing Ash wasn't far behind, ran like she never believed possible. Vestiges of energy she was previously unaware of now made themselves very apparent and ready for use. She was happy to oblige.
Ash was following Misty, who was now a few meters in front of him. He focused intently on her back, clearing his mind of anything outside this tunnel vision, and ignored the painful buzzing sounds of bullets whipping past his ears or bits of obliterated plants and trees striking him in the face and arms.
Ash was amazed at how fast she was running. He was beginning to fall behind when he heard an incongruous sound, like a water-balloon popping, followed by Misty's short shrill scream. He watched her twist like a string puppet that had been suddenly jerked backward and over upon itself. A bright red spray of blood erupted from her torso in a perfectly shaped arc and splattered over leaves.
She twisted as she fell through a cloud of wispy gun smoke, facing her right as she toppled to the ground, landing on her own calf-muscles painfully. Ash's mind hid the implications of such a sight from him in order to protect itself. He ran to where she lay and, displaying that indefinable strength possessed only by those in great danger, hoisted her over his shoulder and ran even faster than before.
The next lucky bullet would have ventilated both of them, but fortunately it never came. A softer, organic crash alerted Ash to someone on his left jumping out of a tree. He had just enough time to register a human silhouette throwing some sort of bundle before he resumed running single-mindedly.
The forest lit up a brilliant orange as the home-made Molotov flooded fire onto three unfortunate soldiers. The enemy leader barked orders and the remaining men took cover behind tree trunks or boulders, laying down suppression fire at the unknown aggressor. Erratic gunfire answered this move, from various directions, with various calibers and types of weapons.
Meanwhile Ash carried Misty past more emerging shadows. When one of them shouted out an order to stop him he cursed inwardly, having no energy to do so outwardly. He scurried away from the sound, but found himself running back toward the battle on a different tangent.
He was treated to a graphic front line view of the huddled soldiers being killed one by one in the ambush. He recognized the face of the leader moments before it fragmented like a watermelon dropped from a great height.
Everything too much to bear, Ash saw a place where the ground had fallen away, ran to it and found himself sliding down a collapsing embankment. He landed on all fours and emptied his stomach onto the soft earth. Misty rolled off his back and moaned something incoherent when she hit the ground.
They both collapsed and listened to the final dying screams of the frightened soldiers as they were systematically put down. When it was over the silence was brief before nature resumed its nighttime ambiance. The inadvertent cruelty of the oblivious night animals struck Ash as he lay in his own vomit, and he envied them their casual acceptance of the world.
When this inane thought had fled his recovering mind he pushed himself onto his knees and rolled Misty onto her back. Her cloudy eyes met his and she murmured something that sounded like 'Hi Ash' before turning her head away and closing her eyes.
"Mist'!" Ash shouted, slapping the side of her face repeatedly.
She moaned again and she turned her face back to him. Her eyelids fluttered briefly but did not open. Misty's cream colored traveling blouse was torn and bloody. The darkest part of the stain centered on her right shoulder just below the collarbone where the torn pieces of fabric, along with leaves and mud, had clumped together in a giant black blood clot.
"Misty!" Ash yelled again, desperation creeping into his voice. He shook her violently, tears blurring his vision of her.
He barely registered the staccato clicking of a shell being rammed into the chamber of a poised shotgun, cocked and ready. He only reacted when the barrel bashed into the back of his head and a harsh voice barked the order to turn around.
He did so with a large degree of apathy. His mind was too consumed with worry for Misty to care about other item on the seemingly endless list of threats to his safety. The gun barrel jerked upwards and another order was issued, to which Ash responded by getting to his feet.
The gun was held, not by a soldier, but a man dressed in a padded khaki overcoat and faded denim jeans. Bright green eyes glared suspiciously out from a black woolen balaclava. A dozen other figures stood a step behind him, all clad similarly. The man's gloved finger began to tense on the trigger.
Ash clasped his fingers behind his head gingerly and raised his head with defiance. A ray of moonlight caught the curve of his cheek as his face rose, fully illuminating one half while leaving the other in shadow.
"Wait!" cried a different voice and one of the figures from the back row ran forward and raised the butt of the gun up and away. "Don't shoot, he's one of us."
He pulled the balaclava away, releasing a shock of dark brown hair, streaked blonde in places. It fell away from his face as he ran forward, revealing a strong jaw-line and an intent, serious stare. Ash's eyes widened in surprise and recognition as he was engulfed in a bear hug.
"Brock!" he managed before a temporary relief overcame him and he wept in the strong arms of his best friend.