Chapter 3 – 20 years later – July 12th 2033

Four hours later

"Where's Robert! Tell me!" My fist was covered in blood. In all honesty I wasn't quite sure if it was my blood or his. I couldn't remember how long I'd been beating him for information, the more subtle approach had not worked initially, and I had no ration cards to give him, so after he rudely declined to answer my question I proceeded to use the less subtle approach.

"Stop! Please!" The man was cowering beneath me, his pockets were full of ration cards, more than he should have. Obviously someone wanted some information and this was obviously the guy. Unfortunately for him, he was a pathetic excuse for a man, and I really was not in the mood. My left hand was gripping so tight on his shirt it was ripping it apart.

"Where! Tell me!" My face was inches by his and I could see the fear in his eyes.

"Two people come through earlier, he's through the back! A guy and a girl come round like five minutes or ten minutes ago, come on man let me go!" I threw the man back to the floor, and me and Quaid walked through the door.

"You're going to get us killed one day by doing that." Quaid looked at me, I heard disapproval in his voice, but I didn't care. I knew he was right, but all I was thinking about was the weapons that we'd lost because of Robert.

"What the fuck?" I didn't respond to Quaid's statement, he knew why I did it. What I wanted to know was, why were Robert's men dead? I'd recognized them from earlier, by the South Tunnel. Whoever came here already did our job for us.

"Let's just follow the bodies, keep an eye out for any stragglers." Quaid lead the way, following the trail of bodies left by the two people who'd come here directly before us. I kept checking everywhere, every corner, every shadow. Whoever had come through here was dangerous, and had no problems killing somebody. They were probably a lot tougher, and a lot better equipped than both me and Quaid. We followed the trail of bodies, through corridors with twists and turns and open areas full of old rusty machinery until we heard somebody scream in the distance.

"Who has our guns?" A woman's voice calmly asked. Whatever was going on she was putting Robert in a lot of pain.

"It was the fireflies. I owed the fireflies." I stopped listening at that point. This didn't make sense. Why would he kill the fireflies if he owed them? Stupid thought, why wouldn't he kill them if he owed them? Because he didn't owe them jack shit any more and would be a supply of guns up. 'Selling' the weapons to the fireflies in the city allowed him to find out where the were located, to finish them off. The son of a bitch. My personal feelings didn't matter though, he needed to die. The fireflies had their guns, mine and Quaid's failure didn't matter, the way I see it the job was done. Me and Quaid hid behind a wall and looked through the window into the alleyway. Robert was on the floor obviously in a lot of pain, with two people standing over him. A guy, probably in his fifties, and a woman in her thirties. They looked battle hardened.

"That, is a stupid idea." The woman pointed her gun at Robert's head and fired two shots into his skull.

The deed was done, me and Quaid no longer needed to get our hands dirty.

"They seem like real hard bastards. We might want to get out of here. Before they kill us. Wait. Where's the old timer got to?" In the midst of conversation me and Quaid had not kept an eye on the situation, and in unison – we both looked at the doorway leading to the alley.

"Hands on your heads, turn around. You Robert's men?" The old timer looked rough, but behind the visage of age was obviously decades of experience.

"No! Look, no, we were here for the same reason, the gun-" Quaid was cut off by the old timer before he could finish the sentence.

"Those are our guns!" The old guy had a thick Texas accent and despite his age, was very intimidating.

"Look Marlene hired us to get the guns delivered to the fireflies! Doesn't matter now, this guy basically did it for us!"

"You believe 'em Tess?" Me and Quaid looked at each other and chuckled slightly. Quaid's Dad used to own a dog called Tess, it used to run into walls for some weird reason. Even in the most dire of situations we still tried our best to stay motivated. It kept us alive.

"Ask her yourself. Queen firefly" Tess motioned towards somebody, Marlene entered the building.

"Shaun Mason." She walked towards me and I stood up and smiled.

"It's been a long time Tess. That's a nasty wound there you oka-" Before I could finish my sentence she slapped me square on the right cheek.

"That's for leaving without saying goodbye you son of a bitch!" Marlene was still as fiery as ever. It was attractive, in a strange way.

"In his defence, he did stay in contact." Quaid was quick to my defence, despite having a gun to the back of his head.

"Yeah, through letters, for business. Thanks, real great." Marlene was still hurt from what I did, can't say I blame here. But like I said before, no reason to get emotionally attached to something you're almost certain to lose.

"You know these two Brits?" Tess questioned Marlene, she sounded surprised.

"Yeah. They're smugglers too, they've done a lot of work for the fireflies. Got us a lot of gear." Did I detect a hint of gratitude in Marlene's voice? Or was in contempt? I couldn't honestly say, what with my face still stinging from the slap I'd just received.

"Look I want those guns back."

"Doesn't work like that. I paid for those guns. If you want them back you have to earn them."

"Bullshit!

"I want something smuggled out of the city. You do it for me? You can have your guns back, with a few extra thrown in. You two can help." Marlene looked deadly serious. What was going on? We'd risk our lives to smuggle the stuff in, what was she going to give up all those weapons for, just to smuggle one thing out of the city, and most importantly. What made her think we'll help?

"What makes you think we're going to help? We smuggle stuff in the city, not out. Do you know what it's like out there? I'm not talking about the infected!" I wasn't angry, I was scared. I knew what was outside the city, what people had become. Any humanity they had left was purged from their systems, they'd given up morals in exchange for survival. Understandable, but it was ugly.

"Trust me. After I show you the amount of guns we've hoarded? You'll want to help."

"I don't care how many guns you have, we're not doing it!" Quaid didn't sound scared, he was angry.

"Come see what you're smuggling. You'll want to help." Marlene looked at the four of us. A few moments ago we were trying to get the guns back from Robert, so she already had the guns, and now we're trying to get them for ourselves, to smuggle one thing out of the city? I think it's curiosity which made me do what I did next.

"We'll do it." I said in a calm monotonous voice.

"What? Are you insane!? You're going to get us killed!" Quaid argued back, he was inches from my face. "What is it with you lately!? You're taking more and more chances, one day we're going to be dead and it'll be your fault!"

"Look we do this, one job? We'll have enough guns and ammunition for a lifetime. We'll survive. We've been through worse."

10 years ago

Me and Quaid were on the outskirts of the city, standing next to an old 4x4 Hummer that we'd found a while back. The are was quiet, and the view of the city was fantastic. Nature was claiming back what mankind had made. It almost looked peaceful in a way. Marlene was with us, and she's asked me and Quaid to smuggle a child. This job seemed like it was impossible at the time. It was almost impossible to get anything in or out of the Quarantine Zone it was on full lock down 24/7, let alone a kid.

"You want us to smuggle her in? How?" How the fuck would we get a kid, a six year old kid, into the city without getting caught; I wondered.

"That's for you to figure out. I just need her in the city, you get us in safely, and you'll get your ration cards." Marlene was tight lipped about why she wanted her in. As long as we got paid, we didn't care.

"I've got an idea, she's pretty small right?" Quaid always was creative.

"Love that you're asking me that. Look at her, she's tiny." I immediately regretted saying that out loud because the little girl hid behind Marlene. She was scared of me, and it made me feel pretty bad about myself. Like I was the bogeyman in the dark.

Quaid walked over to the hummer and opened the boot and removed the backing and threw out the spare tire, which left a small opening in the trunk, enough space to fit a small child. Hummer tires were massive, it would be roomy for the kid.

"She can get in there. She'll fit." Perfect, the solution to our problem. Quaid looked proud of himself, and sent a gentle smile towards the little girl, who in turn smiled back.

"Alright Marlene, put the kid in the boot and put the cover back on." Marlene did exactly what I said straight away. I took Quaid to one side out of earshot from Marlene so she could not here what me and Quaid would be saying.

"She can't be trusted, you know she can't. We're going to get killed!" I whispered to Quaid.

"We don't have a choice. We're not going to let her die." He retorted, and he was right. How could we just let a kid die? I walked towards the hummer and looked inside the boot towards the small child we had just placed into the car.

"Well whatever you do, don't, open, it." I said in a quiet and soft voice so she could understand without being scared of me.

"Whatever you do, don't, make, a sound." Quaid also told her, the little girl gave us a nod to inform us she understood.

"We can sneak past them. I know it's not your style but we'll see how it goes." Marlene had noticed a few soldiers up ahead still looking for us. They had heard the gunshots from Tess.

"Yeah, thanks for that by the way. Real subtle killing him with an unsupressed pistol." I said with a hint of disdain towards Tess. She knew soldiers were in the area, and a gunshot would alert them easily.

"Subtle? Fuck you! You beat a man half to death because you didn't have any ration cards to give!" Tess walked towards me, she looked like she was going to beat me half to death for questioning her judgement.

"Alright pipe down, the both of you. We can go all Maury right here right now, or we can sneak past these soldiers. I'd rather not get into a firefight with a bunch of trigger happy ass-holes." Like Quaid was for me, Tess was the voice of reason in Tesses ear.

"Follow me. Keep quiet and keep low, nobody has to know we're here." Marlene lead the way, we followed her through what looked like an empty warehouse, moving slowly from cover to cover so we were not seen or heard from any soldiers. We slowly inched up the staircase to the roof.

"I count three." Tess informed Joel.

"Let's move past them, slowly, we don't have to fight. No need to alert any other people of our whereabouts." Marlene was remarkably calm despite the situation. I'd remembered her being a lot more jumpy. I guess being Queen Firefly builds confidence.

Marlene, Joel and Tess moved left, and followed the outskirts of the roof, attempting to move without being noticed. We let the three of them move to the far staircase first, observing the soldiers as they moved from cover to cover. When they had finally reached it, we decided to follow. I followed the same route that Marlene had sneaked through, and I reached the staircase, Quaid then followed me, but just as he was about to move to the next cover, a soldier decided to walk towards him. Quaid bumped right into the soldier. Realizing what was going to happen if he didn't react quickly, Quaid threw a quick punch to the soldiers throat so he couldn't shout and alert the other soldiers. In the moment of confusion, he grabbed the soldier, ran towards the ledge, and threw him off the roof. Silence.

I gestured towards Quaid that it was clear and he followed me. That was close, to close. We were having a lot of close calls lately and I was beginning to worry that we were getting old. Then I remembered hold old and capable Joel was, and immediately pushed the thought to the back of my mind, just as fast as it had entered. We slowly descended the stairs and entered what looked like a storage area.

"So where exactly are you taking us Marlene?" I questioned. Curiosity had brought me here, but that close call had almost made me change my mind.

"You'll see soon enough." She responded, giving none of us any hints to what was going on.

We followed her up a staircase which lead to a sturdier door which I helped her open. As I opened the door she fell forward onto the floor, the pain from her wound was to much to bare.

"Whoah, hold on there sweet heart." I leant forward to help Marlene up, then I felt a sharp pain in the side of my right leg.

"Ah! Fuck!" I fell over in pain, my right leg was bleeding profusely. I looked over my shoulder and a familiar face lunged towards me with a knife.

"Not so fast there you little shit!" Quaid come to my rescue as he grabbed the teenage girl by the wrist and twisted slightly so she dropped the knife. Luckily she hadn't stabbed me with enough force to seriously wound me, just enough to injure me, then I realized something. Why she was familiar. Quaid glanced towards me, like he'd realized at the exact same time.

"That's not possible." I said, still astounded by the chances.

10 years ago

"Keep your head down, don't make a sound."

"Shh, everything's going to be fine. You're going to be alright."

"We'll keep you safe from the bad men, don't worry."