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A Fraction of Justice (Chapter #9)

Here we go! Chapter #9. Poor little fella, it’s a big scary world out there! This man just wants something to eat!

Previous: Chapter #8

Next: Chapter #10

CW:, injury, blood, so much angst, gore

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A FRACTION OF JUSTICE

Chapter #9: Roadkill

Word Count: 2,904 Read Time: Approx. 17 mins

[Alexander’s POV]

When I awoke, the downpour had ceased, and as the first fingers of dawn began to creep over the horizon, I was greeted with the dulcet, pleasant tune of early morning bird song. How was it that birds managed to live right alongside humanity yet still maintain their freedom from them? Oh, right, they could simply fly out of reach of harmful hands. I envied them.

But at least, I was alive. As I rubbed the painful dryness from my weary eyes and cracked my stiff neck and back, I was suddenly reminded of one of those ever inconvenient conditions of the living: my stomach growled painfully. I hadn’t eaten in almost an entire day.

Rolling out from my hiding place, I found my way to my feet, gazing down at my injury, and almost vomiting at what I saw. It was a natural part of the healing process, of course, but the wound was weeping with puss and looked just horrendous. I realized that it was probably safe now to do away with the tourniquet, and undid the tight knot above my knee, pocketing my tie just in case. Freshly armed with my dagger and leaning on my crutch, I stood there in the chilly early morning, darkness still surrounding much of the ground, and considered where to go from here. Clearly, I needed to eat something, and I’d be hard pressed to find anything edible in this pesticide-soaked, artificially manicured wilderness. Anything out here was almost guaranteed to make me sick.

Since I had landed in a golf course, I realized I was obviously quite close to humans, and, as much as I loathed to admit it, where there were humans there would be food. I couldn’t, no, I wouldn’t allow myself to be captured but I had to get my hands on some kind of sustenance and I recognized with a heavy heart that my best chance to achieve that goal would be to flirt with the ultimate danger I’d pledged to avoid.

It was very early in the morning, however, and therefore, the perfect time to slip in unnoticed and steal away before most of them had even risen from their beds. Freshly determined, I picked a direction and just started walking. I figured I’d run into evidence of humanity sooner than later. The air was incredibly still on this chilly autumn morning, a stark contrast to last night’s whipping rain. The earth smelled renewed and reinvigorated after being refreshed with rainwater. I made sure to pause and lap up beads of water balancing delicately on low hanging leaves, just to make sure I was keeping myself properly hydrated. I hobbled on for a while before finding a break in the underbrush and discovering a clipped, flat patch of lawn and a concrete path snaking along to my left.

Like some unnatural, stony river, I figured I could follow along this path and I was guaranteed to find humans on the other side. I knew I needed to find some sort of public gathering space. Ideally, I’d find myself in a residential area. Where there were humans gathered in groups, there would be trash, and where there was trash, there’d be food. I knew this firsthand, as I’d watched the old man take his meals from his office desk, and dump a half-full plate of perfectly good food into the trash. Not caring for a moment that the refuse he decided not to consume could feed a whole host of starving pets for days. My stomach pinched and growled again.

I knew it was rather ironic that I found myself reliant on the laziness and selfishness of humans for survival, but what else could I rely on humans for? That was all they were really good at. Keeping to the plants and trying to stay covered as much as possible in case of a stray early morning jogger, or, worse, dog walker, I made slow progress and followed the path, keeping my head on a constant swivel.

Eventually I found my light at the end of the concrete tunnel. Well, I say light… more like terrifying death trap. The sidewalk ended in a roadway, thick, white lines punctuating the black asphalt to create a crosswalk for golf carts and human pedestrians. The road ran two directions with two lanes on either side. I’m sure any human would see this as some small, insignificant back road on the way to bigger and better things… but from where I was standing, it was a never ending, flat, unyielding war zone. In the purplish, pink hues of early morning, I trembled with horror as a car rounded the curve to my left and whipped impossibly fast by me, paying me no mind, of course. Yellow headlights seared my eyes, before the cab and wheels of the car sped past. In the immediate aftermath of the machine’s passing, I was thrown about by a gale force wind. My stomach flipped as I stumbled back.

Beyond the road, I could see structures, still lit in golden industrial light from the night before. I had no choice but to cross. I certainly couldn’t stay here on the curb. Still, the thought of coming face to face with one of those death machines made me quake from head to toe. I craned my neck, searching the snaking asphalt for signs of danger. As I peered over my right shoulder, the obscure haze of night fizzling in the light of the rising sun, I could make out a horrifying sight I hadn’t clocked before.

The air caught in my lungs as I took in its twisted, broken form. Five or so feet from where I stood was the carcass of a squirrel, mangled and broken. Roadkill. Flies buzzed and landed on its dead, fear stricken, glassy eyes. It was bigger than me, and still was laid to waste by deadly rubber tread careening at top speed. I swallowed the lump in my throat. Knees knocking. What I wouldn’t give just to be human. If only for a moment.

The road was still. I heard no rumble of engines or grinding of tires. Now was the safest time to cross, when fewer humans would be out on the road, but with enough light that I wasn’t trying to cross in utter darkness. I straightened my spine. It’s now or never.

Gripping onto the twig that held me upright, I sucked down a breath of fresh air before clamoring down from the curb, an acrobatic feat in and of itself. When I landed, a dizzying pain coursing up from my leg, the crunch of pebbles and dust beneath the soles of my shoes, I faced an expanse of black, gritty road, over twenty times as wide as I was tall. All’s quiet on the Suburban front… I mused bitterly. Everything was clear, I had to move now or risked getting crushed between tread and curb.

My pace was agonizingly slow. I huffed as my face grew red and hair hung in my eyes, for all my effort. Swinging my immobilized leg out in front, as I leaned my weight on the crutch, I managed one stride at a time, the heels of my dress shoes grinding with a pronounced crunch at each footfall. I was about halfway through the first lane, a quarter of the way until I hit the strip of grass separating the two directions of roadway, as I came closer to the rodent corpse, lying mangled and flattened into the asphalt. I felt near to vomiting as the smell of blood, rotting flesh and fear entangled my oral cavities. My stomach flipped as felt bile rise in my throat. What a nightmarish way to die. As I glanced at my own reflection in its swirling grey, bulging eyes, I heard a horrifying noise.

From over my left shoulder, an overwhelming rumbling, like some impossibly massive heard of wild beasts hurtling over packed, sun soaked earth, a fiery roar of pistons and oil, gasoline and gears actually shook the ground beneath my feet. Like a literal deer in headlights, I turned to face the car as it came hurtling towards me, the painfully blinding light rendering my eyes wholly useless as my vision faded to nothing but pain and white.

I HAD TO RUN!!!

Adrenaline pumping though my veins, i hobbled as fast as my broken legs could carry me. The blinding lights and murderous sounds of mechanical fury were threatening to consume me. I couldn’t see a thing, I just willed my legs to move faster, towards any direction that got me furthest away from certain death.

I threw myself forward, my hands chafing and raw from gripping the makeshift crutch as hard as I could.

It seems even a little thing like me didn’t know his own strength every now and again, because as I slammed the stick into the rumbling asphalt that made my legs quake like jelly, I heard a sickening snap. And the only support I had for the right side of my body collapsed beneath me. I slammed to the hard ground, skull cracking on the stony surface as my knee buckled and twisted with the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life.

I was seconds away from death. I was certain of it. The car’s noise was louder than anything I’d ever heard before. Those lights all consuming as I trembled, helpless to even run from my demise. And then within the next heart beat…. A shadow consumed me. Hot, angry, screaming metal flew overhead as I stared straight forward, the black rubber tires so close to my prone body they practically batted my eyelashes. Those wheels, those massive instruments of death tore by me in a flurry of motion so impossibly fast, I thought the rules of physics themselves must bend to the will of this dangerous machine.

As the sun creeped evermore beyond the horizon, bathing the lavender, dew-soaked morning in a picturesque golden glow, I just kept staring, unblinking. Hyperventilating. Frozen to the spot.

I was in shock. Trembling from head to toe. Completely shattered by what I’d, somehow, just lived through. I’d been missed by mere millimeters. I couldn’t move a muscle, despite the clear and present danger I was in. I just sat there, crumpled up on the cracked asphalt like something barely alive and, at the same time, practically dead.

Some faint alarm bell far in the back of my cerebrum screamed at me to move, run, fight for my apparently very lucky little life. But it wasn’t until I noticed something pitch black alight on the road next to me, it’s squawking and chirping, pulling me out of my reverie that I was truly able to dust off my frozen state. It was a crow, three times as big as myself. That had found an ample meal in my rodent friend who hadn’t been so lucky in his dance with death on this strip of road. With horror, I watched the long sharp beak tear into the smashed and bloodless flesh of the animal. That could have easily been me.

Shivering, I realized I had to keep on. In spite of everything, I couldn’t go down without a fight. But how was I going to walk now? Well if I can’t walk, I’ll crawl. Rolling my shoulders back, I did exactly that. Miraculously making it to the median with no further encounters.

Using the base of a perforated metal street sign as an anchor to pull myself to standing, I found that the shock and adrenaline allowed me to bare at least my partial weight on the tattered leg without bowling over. At the very least, I’d be able to walk instead of crawl across the second half of the road. I just wanted this nightmare to end already, and I bargained that either I’d make it or be crushed to death and either way, I’d be finished. With no real regard for my own safety, I hobbled across, a car only careening past and whipping the clothes on my back as I clamored up onto the opposite curb. Elated to have made it, yes horrified to have endured it, I tossed my head to the sky and shouted; an exasperated, dry and desperate scream into the unfeeling void. My noise at least startled the mourning doves nesting in the decorative tree that pleasantly dotted this roadside. At least I can still make some impact on this giant world around me. I found myself in front of a curving sidewalk flanked by bushes and a decorative iron fence. The buildings I had peered at from the opposite side of the street were apartment buildings, fenced in for keeping out unwanted guests… Human sized guests that is. The bars more than four inches apart did nothing to stop a little thief like me from turning this residential area into his personal hunting ground. I’d never set foot in or near an apartment before, but I’d seen enough pictures over the years to get the basic idea. The only thing that mattered to me was finding food. I was half starved and weak in the knees for all my troubles.

My skin crawled at the mere thought of being near humans. Especially after all I had just suffered. But what else was a pathetically tiny man supposed to do? I needed to find where the people living here discarded their trash. My mouth turned to sandpaper at the mere thought of having to eat half digested, tossed garbage just to live. No one deserved to eat his meals this way. But what other choice did I have? Balancing on the ball of my right foot and favoring my unharmed left side, I snuck into the complex, being careful to keep to the meager landscaping and drain pipes, slipping in and out of shadows as dexterously as someone with a stint on one leg could.

As I searched from building to building, cowering under cover every time I heard the squeak of a garage door or the booming tone of human voices as they loudly chatted on speaker phone as they shuffled to their cars, I encountered plastic trash bin after plastic trash bin. An all too cruel enemy of thick green and blue, lidded plastic, towering high above me with no way to access what was thrown inside without trapping myself first. I shuddered to think of finding myself stuck in one, much too tall to ever hope of escaping. Blue and green plastic again and again. I was bone tired, my muscles trembling on my flesh. I needed to find something soon before the day slipped away from me. There was no way I’d risk being stuck here overnight. I needed to find sustenance and some place safe from giant hands to rest my head. In front of one detached garage, not far from the safety of a few scrubby bushes, I stood in front of a crack in the concrete, just before the corrugated, metal water spout. A pool of water had collected here from the rain the night before. Slowly shuffling down before the rippling liquid, I caught a glimpse of my own eyes staring back at me.

I recoiled immediately from the face I saw in the natural mirror. I looked more zombie than man. My face was covered in sweat-streaked grime, and dried blood. My clothes (just at cotton undershirt, slacks and shoes) were rent to shreds, stained and bloodied. I’d never looked more pathetic in my entire life. Not even when the old man’s groundskeeper had snatched me up all those years ago. I couldn’t stand the sight of myself. How quickly my world had turned upside down, and all based on the selfish whims of the humans around me, who dictated my very right to exist. Anger boiled up in my veins as I cupped the water, desperate for a drink. But as I raised the liquid to my lips, I saw an iridescent sheen rippling across the surface. Oil. I dropped my hands. Humans found a way to ruin everything. My stomach growled miserably, as I sat there, I recalculated my odds.

Even if I managed to find a scrap of food, the likelihood that I would remain unseen in this vast complex filled with hundreds of humans was slim. And for all the buildings I’d checked, not one had access to something edible. Was there anything worth living for at this point? Wouldn’t it be easier to just lay down in the mud and give up? I didn’t even really care that I was out in the open anymore. My shoulders drooped as a tear cascaded down my face. What a pathetic excuse for a life! I didn’t want to live like this. I didn’t think I could. It just wasn’t fair. If only they could see. I only they’d listen. What did a pet have to do to find something, anything to eat?

Just then, as if in answer to my cry, I was smacked on the side with something, crackly, metallic, light. It made my heart leap in my chest at first, but as I drew my weapon and stabbed at the unknown, blinding object, I realized the breeze had picked up an aluminum food wrapper. A chip bag by the looks of it. There had to be more where this came from! Reinvigorated by the need for food, mouth salivating as my stomach continued to twist into knots, I hobbled off in the direction of the breeze, hoping my hypothesis was correct.

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