665: Chapter 4
Below is a chapter from my one book, 665. I will warn you, this book is edgy.
It’s narrated by a young Christian woman, Jessica, that is stuck in a quarantined, future city of Pittsburgh with a substantial bounty on her head, which was placed by the anti-Christ.
Fortunately for her, 665/Xerxes/Five, who is the twin brother of the anti-Christ, has decided to aid her during her plight.
The full book can be found here:
Chapter 4
Cyborgs, and Psychopaths, and…
Miracles abound around us: as if Xerxes receiving back his vision wasn’t enough, we had the opportunity to spend almost eight days in quiet seclusion — which allotted me some much needed extra training time. Meanwhile, the city of Pittsburgh is going nuts: riots, mass lootings, and cases of arson are rampant, and taking a toll on the already heavily burdened police and National Guard. This, as you can imagine, has incited additional riots all over the country, due to some viral videos containing footage of Pittsburgh police officers using excessive force on some young teens — don’t worry, though, Ice is safe and sound with his friends on the other side of Pittsburgh in Oakland, in the heart of the mayhem, but still secure. Some analysts are claiming that the video footage is clearly false, but certain groups instigating the fury are negligent to these professional assessments. (There’s probably some sort of ulterior motive behind their apparent scotosis, or at least that’s what Five explained.)
So why am I bringing all of this up? Oh, it’s because Five and I have to venture out into the wilds to find me some insulin, or else I’ll die — that’s all; no pressure. I do have one dose of insulin left, but that won’t last me very long after dinner. Hyperglycemia can have a toxic effect on someone’s eyes and nerves; — actually, I don’t want to think about it — we’ll find more insulin, Five’s resourceful. Surprisingly, Five explained that the citywide chaos is something we want. It’ll be harder to find a needle in a haystack if a tornado is swirling around the haystack midair in cyclonic chaos. Regardless, while we may have a greater chance of avoiding the police, the odds of us getting swarmed by random looters still frightens the bajebus out of me. And, no, I don’t feel quite cutesie right now so as to place an emphasis on the ‘me.’
Five loaded up our gear: he gave me his body armor vest, which uses little disc plates of graphene plastic to form almost a chainmail esc vest for the torso. (Five claimed it can stop shrapnel from a grenade. Let’s not test that.) It was fitted specifically for Xerxes, as he was one of the co-designers, so it’s a little loose in some areas and too snug in others — mainly around my ki-ki-wuu-ah-has. (That’s a euphemism for my breasts.) But I guess the one advantage to having little boobs is that when you wear a man’s body armor, then it won’t be too uncomfortable. I can’t help but compare me wearing Five’s body armor to some high school greaser in the fifties letting his girlfriend wear his cool leather jacket. ‘Eehhhh!!! (finger pointing) don’t die on me!’
The handgun I’m carrying is the Springfield XD subcompact 9mm; it’s a pretty good weapon, or at least Five thinks so; I like it because the safeties on it are pressure triggered, so the odds of it discharging while in my coat pocket will be next to impossible. It also fits well in my hands, too, but I’d still almost prefer something that’s a teeny bit tinier — like mee! Now let’s talk knives! Strapped to the front of Five’s body armor, which I’m now wearing, is his main knife of choice: just under six inches in blade length, this mean plastic comprised… knife is ergonomically designed to fit one’s hand exquisitely; it has a slight curve in the handle, which is comprised of an almost rubbery substance, which allows for a good grip — even with sweaty or bloody palms. This beauty is extremely light and sharp — like moi — and also dark and durable — unlike moi. Positioned upside down, which means that the handle is pointing towards the floor, and a little to the right, it is easily accessible for quick access to my left hand, which is my off hand. And other than that I have an extra magazine of ammo in my left pocket; it holds thirteen rounds in it, but the extended mag, which is in the pistol now in my right pocket, holds sixteen — so that’s 17 rounds in my right (counting the one in the chamber), 13 in my left, which equals out to thirty chances to completely miss any target, due to the fact that I’d be worried sick to actually have to pull it out on someone. But, for what it’s worth, I did get a little bit of target practice in the house after Five found us some earplug bullets.
They’re kind of neat; you start off with an empty shell casing, you squeeze an ear plug into it, let it expand, and then you stick a new primer (the little thing that gets struck, either by a hammer or firing pin, that goes bang — which makes the gun powder in the shell go BANG!) at the end, and — boom — you got yourself a harmless foam bullet. Apparently one of Ice’s friends must have come up with the idea and made a plethora of them in the basement, along with some homemade explosives… yeah, these guys are more dangerous than I originally anticipated. Five suspects that Ice’s friends may be affiliated with the infamous Christian gang, the Pittsburgh Stealers. (They’re kind of like me in that they’re primarily comprised of people that didn’t register with the government by denouncing any faith in God, which means they live off the grid, but they’re very much unlike me in that they’ll rob people/places in order to survive. Think of a modern day Christian rendition of the Merry Men [Robin Hood’s gang].) But, anyways, I did get a little bit of target practice in with the Springfield throughout the house — but Five warned me, though, that firing a real ammunition is different. Let’s hope I don’t have to find out firsthand.
Five taught me how to breathe, how to react in case I’m confronted by multiple hostiles, but I’m sure there are tons of surgeon students every year that go through medical school, ace every exam, but then get wicked butterflies in their stomachs before they’re about to actually go into the operating room and perform a surgery for the first time. But some training is better than none at all, unless the trainer is awful, then it’s actually better not to have been trained in the first place. That’s why Five’s actually glad I’ve never had any kind of self-defense training previously. I was a blank slate before he met me, and now… I’m… still scared out of my mind.
But I’m stronger now than I was before. If any guys try assaulting me like they did the other night, then I’ll shoot them down — center mass, double tap. Forget thinking twice, I won’t even think once, as long as someone’s a clear and present threat to me. Not that I want to hurt anyone, but as they say in Israel, “Never again.”
Back on topic, on to Five’s gear: he has his own specialty handgun, the Xerxes-seven, and two mags of ammo, one with silent subsonic rounds (even though his gun already has a built in silencer) and one with armor piercing Osmium bullets. His other knife, which he will be carrying, is worn on his belt, a karambit. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know what it was either. It has a ring at the end of the handle that allows for the wearer to reach in with their index finger and deploy the knife super quickly; and this implies he’ll be using it primarily underhanded. I asked him which was better, holding the knife in a standard/saber grip or underhanded, and he explained that while they both have advantages and disadvantages, he prefers that I use his primary knife, which I’ll be mostly using in a saber grip.
Bla-bla-bla — Oh! I thought this was pretty cool: Five’s long sleeve shirt, mask, pants, gloves, and boots were woven together with strands of graphene plastic too, which does make him bullet proof as well as flame resistant. He also mentioned it can prevent his thermal signature from being detected as well — apparently that’s a thing spies and whatnot have to worry about:
‘Hey, Tom! how did your mission go last night?’
‘Oh, dude, some guy totally detected my thermal signature and busted me!’
Poor Tom.
I don’t feel so bad wearing Five’s body armor vest after he told me how durable his clothes are, it’s just that his vest is, like, super tough. Typically Xerxes to always be extra prepared — unlike Tom. Oh! here he is now.
A black sedan parks along the street in front of the house. Five’s in the driver seat waving for me to come out. It feels a little refreshing leaving the house for the first time in over a week. It’s cloudy, though, and chilly; perhaps this is a bad omen. We wouldn’t be leaving like this at three in the afternoon if not for my dire need for a functional pancreas, or insulin, as a substitute. I turn the front door handle twice to make sure it locked before briskly making my way to the passenger seat of the old Nissan. Five quickly corrects me — oh yeah! I’m supposed to get in the back. Tucking myself away, I lay on my side while Five hits the gas.
“Nice car,” I comment.
“It’ll meet our needs,” Five estimates.
Pulling the black hood up on my dark jacket keeps my hair from getting dirty from the car seat. I decided to put my hair into low pigtails, with one ponytail holder being pink while the other black. I kind of figure it matches my personality in some odd ways. I may be super cute but I’ll cut you if you attack me!
I ask Five, “How did you find this?”
“I walked around for a while until I broke into someone’s garage to steal it,” Five admits.
“You didn’t hurt anyone, did you?” I nag.
“No, I didn’t,” Five clarifies.
“Sweet. So I’m not feeling too good right now.” My stomach’s feeling upset and queasy, and I think I may have juicy fruit breath.
“We’ll be at the hospital shortly, Jess — don’t worry. ETA eleven minutes.”
“Mm-k. Do you think we’ll come across any, trouble?”
“Hopefully not.”
Peering out the window provides little information to pinpoint our current location, but my best guess is that we’re on Route 28 heading south, towards the heart of Pittsburgh, the eye of the storm; wait, I guess it wouldn’t technically be the eye of the storm since that’s actually the safest part of a hurricane, right? Maybe I’m wrong — whatever; but basically we’re heading towards whatever part of a storm that’s most dangerous — or… just, a storm, a storm is a fine. We are heading towards a storm. Gulp.
“So are we meeting up with Ice afterwards?” I question.
“We’ll have to take it one step at a time; but Ice did tell me his location.”
“Can we trust his friends?”
“I’m quite pleased you ask,” Five authentically praises me. “No, we cannot; but I don’t see us having many other options. It will still be too risky trying to escape from this city today. I’m actually surprised that this quarantine lasted this long.”
“I’m just glad they didn’t find us yet. We were so close to the crash site this entire time.”
“Well, I played a role with that. I sent out an array of disinformation regarding our location.”
“Right, you mentioned that before.”
Five’s scanning what appears to be a heavily looted Walgreens that we’re passing on our left side. He keeps driving. I don’t question his decision to do so, even though there’s a very likely possibility that their pharmacy may still have insulin. There has to be a reason he didn’t want to stop there. Oh well, onwards to Allegheny General.
Seeking to break any moments of silence due to my level of angst, I then blurt the first thing out of my mind: “I’m just imagining if we had kids, you know, and I can just see us having four little daughters all going, ‘me-me-me-me-me-me-me!!’ all simultaneously.” I chortle, and add, “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“What brings that up?” Five asks.
“Oh, like if we were on a road trip and they were all in the back seat of the car together.”
“Ok, I’m envisioning it now,” Five glances back to me and smiles. He then adorns a more serious expression on his countenance, and admits, “I never would have predicted I’d say this, but recently I’ve pondered the concept of having a family, one day, perhaps.”
“Maybe I’m rubbing off on you,” I comment.
“Scheisse! — ” Five exclaims as he slams on the brakes, throwing me nearly off the seat, but I manage to brace myself, though. “Buckle up!” Five yells as he instantly puts the car in reverse, and floors it. While looking back, he puts the car into neutral and yanks on the steering wheel, causing our car to do a reverse 180 degree turn, and then he follows through by putting the car back into drive and stepping on the gas. I poke my head up and tug on the seat belt, but the locking mechanism is ironically preventing me from buckling it. Gazing back, I see the instigator of Five’s reaction: he’s nearly a seven foot tall man, covered from head to toe in dark metallic battle armor — he looks like a technologically advanced knight while carrying what I presume to be a giant war hammer, which looks like a steel beam with a crude wedge attached to the top. Five’s now driving over thirty miles an hour, leaving our pursuer in the dust, but the man/machine — whatever — was almost gaining on us for a second, as he/it sprints like an Olympic athlete.
“FIVE!” I instinctively holler right before Five collides with a random guy that was standing in the middle of the narrow two lane city street. His other friends barely jump out of the way, but the unlucky one bounces off the hood and now flops over our car. There are cars parked up and down both sides of this street — there’s no way Five could have avoided that impact unless he stoppe — the tires hiss — it sounds like Five just ran something over, and now he’s slamming on the brakes again.
“Drive!” I uncharacteristically yell at him.
Five replies, “The car’s dead! We need to move!” He then exits with his pistol already drawn and begins to shoot into an angry mob, which is chasing after us: they look hostile, they’re wearing white bandannas over the bottom halves of their faces — some have crowbars, others have pocket knives, but the ones with guns have already been shot by Five. Some scramble to pick up the deadly weapons dropped by the slain, and one is even running to check on the status of the guy Five just hit with the car accidentally. I turn and attempt to open up the right side car door — a baseball bat hits and shatters the car window next to me and cold beads of glass splash across my face
-But I’m ok —
After flinching, I look up and see that this assailant too was already shot by Five, who ran around, and is now opening my car door for me. He can’t spare a hand to guide me out chivalrously — his right is holding his pistol while his left has his karambit — out and ready. I sluggishly ascend from the car, feeling this awkward sensation that time has slowe d d o wn —
Six!-No!- Eight!-I can’t even count — they’re running — ON US!- they collide with Five, who, while hopping back, keeps repeatedly stabbing with his knife and shooting with his pistol — injuring and killing the assembly — BUT MORE TAKE THEIR PLACE
A guy pops his head into the car, espies me, and then lunges on me. Unlike the others, he isn’t wearing a bandanna, so he flicks his nasty forked tongue at me while his hand grips my ankle. Like some kind of steroid freak, he begins to pull me out of the car effortlessly; I kick him in retaliation with my other foot, but this doesn’t faze him; he merely closes his one eye and absorbs my foot with gaiety. I’m half out of the car — and reaching for the pistol in my right coat pocket! My left arm grips the front passenger seat, but my measly strength can do little to resist a man who’s presumably on bath salts.
I can’t — pull out — my pistol is stuck — I aim through my jacket pocket and squeeze the trigger twice:
BANG!!-(Nothin)
There’s now two smoking holes in my jacket pocket, and two in my assailants chest — even though I only heard one round fire; — he shudders back, recomposes himself, and then lunges on me another time! (This must be why Five would have preferred me having hollow point rounds instead of full metal jackets — but a girl takes what she can get during the Great Tribulation.) I can’t deploy my pistol with him lying on top of me! — and I can’t shoot either, lest I may shoot my own leg!
Wiggling under his weight is a challenge, but I attempt to go for my knife; meanwhile his hands go to claw at my face; — an unseen force rips him off of me after tearing and tossing the car door:
It’s the giant with the big ass hammer!
I turn and frantically crawl to the other side door, but the giant, with one massive hand, grabs the back of my jacket and pulls me out of the car, and asks, “Are you alright?” His modulated voice hardly masks his expressed concern for my well-being, which is both welcome and endearing during this havoc —
Five, in response, gets a running start before leaping onto and then off of the hood of the car and lands a dropkick on the giants face, which, even though it’s protected by a durable looking facemask, still possibly renders him unconscious;- Five slams to the ground before the giant does, and heavily grunts from the impact of the fall, but only Five pulls himself up, using the car for support — but as he’s doing this, a random creep with a white bandanna hurls a flaming glass bottle towards my beloved:
Five reactively lets loose a horrible, unbearable cry of anguish as flames consume his body, and part of the car. I trip backwards on a black net, which is caught up underneath the front wheels of the car, and is now also aflame; Five drops his karambit and immediately draws out a metal tube from a storage pouch along his back and tosses it away from us, and then he proceeds to shoulder bash through a few more vagrants, directly towards a measly amount of filthy slush along the side of the road: — he dives head first into this muck, bathing his exposed skin into it before the melting starts.
I push and scurry myself away from the flames, feeling the heat against my legs; after I pull out my 9 before attempting to stand — and it’s a good thing I did! Two men leap on the opportunity to assault Five while he rolls in the slush, extinguishing the fire. While on my side, I discharge — I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW MANY SHOTS! — maybe four; some of the bullets miss — one even pierces through a window of a fancy looking restaurant with illegible writing for their sign — the glass window splinters — one man drops, and the other flees.
I was wrong regarding the condition of the giant in the full metal suit: he springs up with an unpredictable amount of dexterity and bolts towards the metal cylinder that Five threw over past him — but why? The giant lunges his body towards it, but right before he lands, a random guy sweeps in and kicks it —
PTTAHWW!!!
An invisible shockwave rocks my insides, my large bowel and bladder let loose, and now sparkling black dots are flooding my eyes, tampering with my vision. People are scattering all about us; some are white bandannas fleeing from the fray, but a gang of forked tongue lunatics is preying on the weak, using the chaos to fuel their unbridled yearnings for violence. Pushing myself up — damn! I’m blacking out! Shit!-no! not again! Not now! Resisting the urge to lie down and die like the rest of the victims surrounding me,
I arise.
Gun in hand, I aim it on a few forks that are hacking a man and woman to pieces with machetes — the victim’s frantic pleas for mercy are met only with a taunt from the one asshole: “THE WATERS OF LUCIFER ARE BECOMING!!”
The giant, who clearly has cybernetic augmentations, bursts in and swings his war hammer on that asshole first: his body flips and skips across the road before crashing into a parked car. Becoming roadkill? The giant then follows through with another, upward, swing on the second. This devastatingly powerful attack sprays crimson blood across a blue lettered sign that says GOODWILL over the top of a nearby store.
Irony — or perhaps not; he may have saved those two people’s lives.
As seemingly perplexed as I, the giant spins around, witnessing the epitome of human desecration: the pipe bomb — that’s what it is — didn’t kill that many people as far as I can tell, but it’s almost as if it was the bang signaling the beginning of a murder marathon; more and more people are falling victim to the merciless forked tongues and their machetes; chaos must be their calling and Satan their god.
In rebuttal to this egregious contest, the giant bellows loud enough for the whole city to marvel, crying, “IMORTALS!!” He then moves towards another small band of psychopaths that needlessly kill for the sport of it — probably under the pretense that they would never get caught during such hectic circumstances, but the giant is their judge, and so is Five:
Rolling on his back — one-two-three-four gentle pangs erupt from his gun — and four bodies drop; it didn’t appear to me that he even looked nor aimed, he just fired his pistol into a horde surrounding him with no collateral damage.
Looking at the dead bodies is making me sic — I’m losing consciousness again, God! I can’t lose it AGAIN!
Five hardly brushes the smog ridden slush from his face before unsteadily rising to his feet — gripping a bloodied machete from a corpse along the way — and approaching me. Then he orders:
“FOLLOW!”
I can’t feel my legs moving as I’m trailing behind him, it’s as though I’m floating above my body, peering down on it like a kite. But my elbows are out and my arms are holding my pistol up and a little cockeyed, which means that I’m ready to shoot — excluding the guy that just ran up and stabbed Five in his side with a butterfly knife — how didn’t I see him!? — he was right there!-
Five reflexively counters by slashing at the man’s face with the machete he has in his left hand in the exact instant he was stabbed, and then his right hand, which still grips his pistol, twists, along with the rest of his body, to shoot a bullet through the man’s cranium. No one in the world could have made that shot in less than a second like Five just did — it was truly ingenious, remarkable. Whatever’s possible for man to do with a gun, Five can do it faster: he is faster: I now believe in predestination — but don’t call me a Calvinist.
He didn’t wince from the stab, not once — he’s just still moving, it’s not like it could have penetrated his reinforced shirt anyways, but I’m certain it still smarted him sorely. Five’s movements are dizzying: he’s literally carving us a path through this mob of demented fiends, but their ranks are thinning out, dispersing within the rest of the rioters that are clearly fleeing, just as we are. Five’s cunning with who he shoots/stabs/slashes/kicks/pistol whips, he only wastes a bullet if he has to; it’s almost as if he can instantly analyze who the potential threats are and then immediately reacts to them appropriately.
The one girl is screaming bloody murder and collapses to the ground, covering her face with her forearms, before Five and I — kind of feels like what I want to do right now, but for some reason I’m still trucking. Five’s leading us through a pleasant alleyway with snow on the ground that hasn’t been died red, yet; this alley takes us to a parallel street — some people are already running ahead of us in various directions, but Five chooses the one furthest away from hammer guy.
Glancing back, I swear I see another person dressed in similar armor to the giant, only this individual is much smaller, almost feminine looking, and she, (I’m assuming it’s a she,) has strange looking robotic legs that support not only her frame but also a giant backpack. Fortunately for us, she is coming from an entirely different street and heading towards the giant cyborg, so she pays us no mind, which is good because I think she may have been dual wielding riot shotguns. And — now I can hear shotguns blasting.
My arms start to shake from holding my handgun up so I relax them a little by aiming my gun down; my legs, on the other foot, feel great! — I feel like I can sprint like this for hours! My eyes focus on Five’s amazing ass, honing in on it and it alone — it’s like I’m staring at it through a small paper towel roll. Five’s running ahead now, we’re cutting across a parking lot. I’d yell for him to slow down some, but that would take precious air to do that —
POWW!!
FIVE’S BEEN SHOT!
Time slows to a halt
I can see cement debris floating past my face, and it looks huge
I wonder how big Five’s penis is.
I bet, like, when he first shows me it, I’ll hear Godzilla’s roar, and it’ll be scary big.
Wait!… what if he dies?
He trips to the ground, but immediately pushes himself up and sprints towards a proximal parked white car for cover. I follow in suit, burning everything I can to fall in right behind him. He immediately grabs my jacket and almost forces me to crouch behind the front end of the car. (Amidst such mayhem I can hardly remember the most basic lessons he taught me: if you take cover behind a vehicle, make sure you’re behind the front end of the vehicle, or on whichever end houses the engine. Otherwise the bullets might still penetrate through the doors or trunk.)
“Are you-k?!” I hysterically ask in between heavy breaths.
Grimacing, he quickly examines his left calve and determines, “I’m fine,” and then he yells loud enough for the shooter to hear, “HOLD FIRE!!” He then tosses his bloodied machete to the side so it’s visible to any assailants.
“HOLY FUCK!” a man yodels; and another, “FUCK YES!!” Then the third — (I’m determining that these voices are all coming from a red brick building across the street from the car we’re hiding behind) — “Hold fire!-Hold it! Hand over the girl and we’ll let you go!” I peak above the car for a second: there’s several men holed up in that building, some of which have assault rifles.
Despite the tunnel, my vision is incredibly sharp — it’s like I have greater than 20/20 right now!
Five pulls me down and discreetly orders, “When I give the signal, lay down suppressing fire into that second story window — empty your mag, then reload your weapon.”
“The one that’s busted?” I ask.
“Yes,” Five elucidates.
“We’ll give you ten, seconds — ” the man’s clearly choking on his words — , “I don’t want any issues with you, boy, but give us the girl and there won’t be any consequences, n’that.”
The hell?! Do they think I’m some Barbie that can be bartered with?
Five clearly doesn’t think so: he pulls out his pitch black mask from his side and covers his slushy face with it, and then he unloads his Xerxes-seven and replaces this mag with the one containing armor piercing rounds. Balancing on the balls of his feet but nestled low behind the car, he readies himself for war — poised like a lion before pouncing, his left hand remains idle, erect — I brace myself for what’s about to happen:
We’re about to engage in a firefight — we’re trapped, but we’re not the prey.
