„I don´t wanna live forever
I just wanna stay another day
And lay here near beside you
´Cause you and me belong together
Love is gonna find another way
I´ll never be without you
Be without you..."
Shakra: Love will find a way
Chapter 30
Moskvin's base lost power. At the same time, the red light flashing on one of the huge pillars between the electric fences also went off. At least that's how Yamato Chiba thought two hundred meters away.
So far, they - himself, Rena Bando, Baku Baisotei, and Gouki Hayata - have been out in the open near the campfire, but now that the storm was raging, they've had to take shelter. They found a tree with wide crowns that looked like an umbrella next to the electric fence, and thanks to that, they were almost free from the fat, cold raindrops. Some water had found its way through the leaves, so the boys used their uniform coats as protection. Rena, being a girl, did not have such a piece of clothes, so she got the raincoat that was received by the last supply drop.
It could be hours they spent there sitting under the tree, as close to each other as possible to avoid being cold. In front of them, there was the dangerous fence between zone A3 and the next area. A massive metal grid filled out the space between the pillars, and all of those pillars had a lamp on them as a sign if the fence was being powered.
Yamato and his companions could see one of these red flashing lamps, but as it was mentioned before, only Yamato noticed that it did not have a signal anymore.
The boy stood up with an inquiring look. He pulled his coat tighter over him and walked out into the shower. The other three who remained under the tree gave him a weird look.
"What's wrong, Yamato?" Gouki asked, "Do you see something?"
Soon he followed Yamato into the open ground which turned into an ocean of mud by now. Baku and Rena could not hear their conversation, the wind and the thunder were too loud. Yamato was explaining something to Gouki with vehemence, then Gouki answered him in a few words. After Yamato's last thoughts they returned under the treetop. These two did not sit back. One of them was faster than Rena, who opened her mouth to ask.
"Look, guys. We have to hurry. We might have not too much time. No questions, just follow me!" Yamato said hastily.
Rena made another attempt to speak, but Gouki and Yamato were already gone and Baku also jumped up to catch up with them. So she hesitated no longer, went after the trio, paying no attention to the sharp wind which hurt her face and made her hair messy.
"Could you tell me at least, what you're up to?" she asked angrily, but then realized that it was a little rude. "Please," she added.
Gouki gave her the answer.
"Yamato says the power's out. He thinks if the lights are down, it means the fences have no power."
Yamato nodded.
"We need to get out of here while we can."
"But... how do you know that the next area has not such a fence around?" Rena argued "What do you expect us to find out there? Where are we going to go? What if we are in the middle of a military zone? No one will welcome us with open arms!"
The hope and relief they got with Yamato's idea, was ruined by the girl in no time. She sounded who preferred to get themselves killed by another, perhaps an unartful classmate.
Baku gave her staring eyes:
"Rena, don't you want to escape out of this living hell, or what? What could be worse than that?"
"Sadly, we can save our skin now." Gouki pointed out "If we start gathering others, I'm sure we'll miss the only chance to clear out!"
Rena remained in silence. She closed her eyes with great pain in her heart. She could not get Dan out of her head. How could she accept letting her love die out there somewhere, while she ran away like a selfish coward? And she took a promise, dammit.
Meanwhile, they almost reached the electric fence. Freedom was less than one hundred meters away. They saw more blind lamps from that distance, their luck endured. Rena fell more and more behind when she finally stopped and simply stared at the fading silhouette of the three boys like a ghost. The hood of her raincoat was blown off her head by the wind, so the rain watered her blonde hair from now on.
She ignored it. She made her decision from one second to the other. She turned back and set forth running in the opposite direction. Her raincoat waved behind her like a sail. Her feet in the summer shoes sank deeply into the muddy soil, she became dirty up to her calves.
She did not want to look back, just speeded up the tempo. She barely made up to the hill, someone yelled after her.
"Are you crazy, girl? What are you doin'?" it was Gouki's rusty, thin voice.
Rena still refused to turn around. She stared at her vet shoes with a large number of tears in her eyes. She felt confused looks on her back and an urgent need to scream like an animal.
But she sighed instead and shouted back:
"Go without me! I'm not leaving Dan here!"
"Don't be a fool! What if Dan noticed, too that there's no electricity?" Baku tried to convince her "You're playing the hero for no reason!"
Unlike Gouki and Yamato, Baku sounded grumpy. Rena would have put a bet on that, that he could not wait until they were at the other side of that fence. Playing the hero, huh? So you think I do that because I shot down Fukashi, finished the job instead of you? How would you feel if your girlfriend, that Kina or who, had to play this goddamn game and you had to flee knowing, that she is alive in the unknown? What if she did not notice the power cut? What if she's busy to fight for survival?
She would gladly shout these all out into Baku's face, that he had no idea what was it like to be Rena Bando right now. She realized that she wanted to find her boyfriend more than ever. I can't live without Dan. Being aware that he's no more. I'm going to stay. If that is our fate, we'll die together!
That was a clear decision, she was not afraid of the future.
"Just go!" she shouted back to the boys "Don't wait for me, I won't go with you!"
Gouki wanted to oppose.
"But don't you understand...?"
"You guys don't get it!" she interrupted him "I know, probably it will be fatal for me, but I don't want to do all this without Dan!"
Rena saw that none of the classmates continued their journey. Only Baku took a look at the still-dark lamps very often.
"So shut up and go already! Don't blame me if you miss your only chance to get out, because you are just standing there stiff as a post!"
"And I promised Dan that I'm going to watch over you, no matter what!" Gouki answered in a raised voice "It happened yesterday when Fukashi attacked us!"
"Believe me" Yamato added, "Dan wouldn't want you to die because of him!"
Yamato was getting tired of the pointless arguing. It will go nowhere if they continue like this. And what's more, Rena was right about the power cut, it was a never returning chance to escape.
"Don't worry about me." said Rena for the last time "My place is at Dan's side, dead or alive." then without waiting for an answer, she jumped into the bushes and disappeared from the boys' sight.
She could hear that Baku, Gouki, and Yamato tried to call her like 'No, Rena! Come back!', but she did not show herself again. She felt a strong desire for going back to the hesitating trio though - they still did not touch the grid - but she resisted. It was good to know that some of them will survive this disaster. She was waiting behind her hiding without a word until her friends (because they are) finally started to climb up to the currently not electric fence.
That was the time when Rena Bando heard noises from behind. Before she could turn back, she felt a powerful hit on the back of the head. Strange emptiness swirled under her feet - last time she experienced such thing, she fell down from a tall tree as a little girl - and she felt a pull in the stomach.
Everything lasted only for a few seconds. With the last thud, the blurry image of the environment went black.
[Number of students: 14]
