Ch. 3

Evan followed Johnathan Elis as he skirted the sides of the buildings, keeping in the shadows if not the emptier buildings when he could. After the first bombardment of the carnivores when he was seven, Johnathan Elis had taken to guiding Evan in how to survive in the world of the FEC. Everything from how to keep to the shadows and avoiding getting caught, to whether or not getting Rosie something for her birthday was a good idea ("Always get a woman a gift, she'll make your life hell if you don't"). If not for Johnathan Elis, Evan knew he would probably be working for Rabbit with Zeke. Sometimes he thought maybe the underlord would be better than the old man.

"Kid, Stop."

Evan froze in place at Johnathan Elis' words. The first time he had heard that tone was back when he was seven.

"Kid, Stop."

Johnathan Elis' softer voice somehow cut through the catastrophe of screams, bullets and the occasional molotov cocktail going off in different parts of the city. Johnathan Elis had spoken as Evan tried to peer over the edge of the window nearby.

"Why? You're not the boss of me?" He had just lost his shoes, he might as well take a look and see if he could find them. Maybe he would be able to see them and then he wouldn't have to find a new pair.

"I'm not the boss of you, you're that to yourself. But I can keep you from ruining your brain." Dark clouds of memory skitted across Johnathan Elis' eyes, as though he was remembering something from a long time ago that still clung to him.

Evan scoffed, "I'm not going to ruin my brain if I look for my shoes."

"Trust me kid, don't."

Evan rolled his eyes and looked anyway.

The first thing he saw was red. Which was annoying, because his shoes were green. Then he saw the fingers, followed by the hand, the wrist, then the arm, and it stopped in a jagged, meaty red torn mess before where the elbow should have been. Followed by a leg, blasted away mid-thigh, a foot on it's own and a footless leg by another building.

As he was staring at what was once someone's leg, a booted foot stamed down, stumbled, then caught the ground underneath. The white boot was stained with red now, just like the rest of the ground. Then the carnivore took a knee to take a couple pot shots at someone running from one building to the next.

Evan was pulled away from the window by the back of his collar, falling on his butt.

"I told you not to kid." Johnathan Elis' voice had lost it's gruff edge, but Evan hadn't noticed. He only stared steadily at the window frame he had been staring out of for maybe a second.

That memory of the first time he had fully seen carnivores always flashed in the back of his head whenever Johnathan Elis used that particular phrase. Maybe Johnathan Elis knew that, which was why he used it. Either way, the memory had the effect of making Evan freeze up, losing any movement for a couple seconds. An ability Johnathan Elis fully took advantage of.

The old man was crouching under the shadow of a tin-roofed shanty by the side of the city. They were in a part of 298 that people generally didn't wander into, unless they were wearing the carnivore white. The FEC base was located off to the side of the city, close enough to intervene when people started to rise up but far enough away that no one in the city was likely to go out there. No one except for the crazies, like Johnathan Elis.

Watching everything carefully, Johnathan Elis carefully stepped out from the shadows and led Evan to the abandoned building he pretty much lived in. Johnathan Elis said it was called a church when he had been Evan's age, it was the tallest building Evan had ever seen. The FEC had taken down most of the taller buildings remaining from the old city for materials to use for the Growth Zone's everything machine, but left this one for whatever reason. Maybe they left it because it was a clear indicator to their clean, white base nearby.

Whatever the reason, church remained and Johnathan Elis had an easy place to live. According to him, the church was the best place to live.

"They never pay attention to what is closest to them" he had said once in explanation, "if it's so close as to being next door, they won't notice it. They'll assume only an idiot would live here, and even then someone with a severe death wish to be so close to their quarters."

"So what does that make you, an idiot or someone with a death wish?" Evan had asked.

The old man only smiled a grimly, "Wouldn't you like to know."

Now as they got close to the stone façade, Evan could see the blinking lights on the diamond shaped monitors that ringed the perimeter of the city. Blue was good, green okay, but never orange was what he had been taught in his FEC mandated courses. Johnathan Elis had told him a different story.

"Blue is so they know everyone's good and knocked out in their headsets, or at least most of the sheep that is. Green means that eh, some to most are knocked out, but there's a couple people out there beginning to question. That's when you have to take warning kid. Don't wait for orange. If you see orange, you run."

Evan looked down before the nearest monitor blinked a cool blue. With each blink they took multi-directional images of the entire city at different depths and areas. The closer you were to one, the more it could read, even down to the thread count in a t-shirt. However, if you were far away, or surrounded by a blocking material, like brick or stone, then the signal was disrupted and the images would be blurred. To counteract this the FEC would have high powered scans go on around the city every five minutes, and these were the scans Johnathan Elis was teaching him to avoid at all costs.

As the blue lights blinked, followed by the purple of a high powered scan, Johnathan Elis and Evan were already inside the church and below ground, Evan slowly learning whatever Johnathan Elis deemed was appropriate that day in order to survive. Survive and maybe even succeed in the world the FEC had created.