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One man leaped forward, grabbing at one of the meal replacement bars. His movement spurned the others. I tried to press myself back, but one of the men still ended up kicking, sending me rolling to my side. The men started desperately opening and eating the food, all while moaning like they were having an orgasm.
“St-stop, it’s all going to be gone!” Their leader, the previously cool-headed one said, even though he was on his knees with cans stuffed under his arms. “We could sell some of this.”
“I’m going to eat it all.” One man said, raising a can of green beans he had managed to open, bringing it up to his mouth.
“Eat, my ass! I want all of this food! It’s more than I’d make with you all in a year!” One guy suddenly pulled out his pistol and shot the man who was about to pour the can down his throat.
His head exploded, but the man only focused on snatching the beans out of his hand as his body fell. There were a few seconds of silence, and then all the men started pulling out their guns.
“This is ridiculous, we’ll share the cut!” The leader shouted. “All of you, put away your guns now and ahhhhhhh!”
Vrrrrooooo!
The man with the chainsaw spear turned it on and slammed down on the leader’s shoulder. He let out an ear-piercing shriek as the motor came to life and started chopping at him. Another gun was shot and another person fell. The remaining men were trying to grab their share of food while keeping their gun on the others. One greedy man tried to snatch something from someone else’s pile and he ended up getting two bullets in the head.
It was blood and carnage everywhere. I had never seen death on this scale before. In only about thirty seconds, a half-dozen men had lost their lives. They were still all glaring at each other, holding their food and water like they were gold. The water seemed a bit less important to them. Two bottles were left on the floor. One guy tried to grab one only to end up dead.
While this was happening, they were completely ignoring me. I wasn’t the only one being ignored. There was also the woman. She had managed to scoot herself over to a car, and she was frantically rubbing her arms behind her. She was trying to cut a rope, I could tell that easily. The five remaining men had divided the food somewhat equally. At least, it was at the point where they were starting to calm down.
Any moment, they would put down their guns, look to the side, and see the girl trying to escape. Then, they’d probably rape her if they didn’t kill her. As for me, they’d want to know where that food came from. That would lead to the mirror and my family. Just imagining these bandits coming through the mirror to my house, then raiding our kitchen and having my sister and mother, it filled me with a horrific rage. It was then I noticed a single can of soup. It had been kicked under a piece of wood, and none of them had seen it.
The five men looked between each other; their guns trained on everyone else. They all broke into smiles, laughing awkwardly.
“Hey, boys, let’s leave it at this. We can all be rich, or we can all be dead.” One of the guys said.
“I’ll put it down when you guys do.”
“You all have more food than me!”
“Yeah, but you have more water!”
“Filtered water isn’t unobtainable, and you all know it!”
“Look, we can trade peacefully after. Do you want a piece of food? Fine… for 2 bottles of water, you can have these peas.”
The men were in a standoff with all of their guns pointed at each other in a circle. They weren’t paying attention to me or the woman. She had rolled out of their sight, and was cutting her ropes on a sharp piece of metal.
Ever so slowly, I edged my way to the spare can under the wood refuge as the group started to lower their guns. It sounded like they were starting to relax their guard. With my foot, I kicked the can out from under the wood, sending it rolling right between the five men. The quickly deflating atmosphere suddenly turned deadly again.
Bang! As a head exploded, everyone started shooting. The gunner hadn’t been one of the five men though, but the girl. She had finished cutting her restraints and pulled a gun from one of the bandit bodies. As soon as she shot a man, two others fell full of holes as they fired wildly and took cover from each other.
Keeping low, the last two living men were too busy hiding from each other to notice her there. She picked them off one at a time with calm precision. Her eyes didn’t waver a single bit as she pulled the trigger and ended life after life. When the last man fell, she even walked out and put a bullet into one of those on the ground who was still twitching.
Her movements showed a level of skill and experience that didn’t match her age at all. Some of these guys were young too, but they were also clumsy. She moved like a professional. I took a knife from a body next to me and cut my restraints.
The only reason I was calm was that I still felt disbelief. None of this felt real to me at the moment. I was moving almost like I was in a dreamlike state. First, I had been taken by a bunch of gun-wielding monsters, and then they all died over twenty-five-cent cans of food. That was very difficult to process.
The woman bent over, and I found myself looking at her behind. In those short shorts, she was extremely alluring, and I gulped involuntarily. Then, I immediately chastised myself in my head and averted my eyes. This woman had almost been raped, and here I was leering at her like a pervert. I felt like a dog. It must have been the shock that had my brain moving like pudding.
She picked up one of the dropped bottles of water. She immediately opened it and took a drink. Then she took another. She drank down the entire bottle like she was dying. She should have been in one of those Gatorade commercials. If any man saw her drinking that water, just a bit of liquid leaking down her chin and breasts, they’d certainly be life-long customers.
I stepped on something crunching, making a noise. This caused her eyes to jump to me. She almost jumped like she had forgotten I was there. Then her eyes narrowed. Her expression went from sexy to threatening in just a few seconds. She reached for her gun, she had a holster at her hip I hadn’t noticed before, but she had put the gun she had taken from the corpse in it.
“I…” I turned and ran.
The look she gave me was a threatening one. Maybe, she just wanted to keep me from taking the food. If that was the case, she could have it. I planned to leap back through that mirror and not come back to this world again. It was far too dangerous.
I only made it ten steps before I was struck. Rather, I was tackled. She jumped on me, and I could feel too soft things pushing me down into a hard place, that being the concrete ground. I struggled, desperately trying to flee from her. However, all thoughts of escape ended the second I felt a gun pressed to my head. I had never felt a gun pressed against my head before, but once you felt it, you knew exactly what it was.
“Your food stores. I want them.” She said in a dark, angry voice.
“Food… stores?”
“The clean food!” she shouted. “I know you have more, I want it all!”
“B-but… I helped you escape.” I said weakly, not knowing how to respond to her suddenly violent temper.
“That’s just because you’re an idiot colonist! You haven’t been out here long enough to understand the truth.”
“T-truth…” I repeated, mostly just feeling scared.
“You can’t trust anyone!” She snorted. “Everyone will stab you in the back if given a chance!”
“Doesn’t that mean… if I give you the food, you’ll kill me when you’re done?” I pushed through my fear, and I decided to play along a bit.
“I might… I might not… but you don’t have a choice. I will kill you if you don’t.”
“I… see…” I spoke hesitantly. “Then, I guess I have no choice.”
She frowned down at me before finally getting off. “Get up! Walk-in front! No funny business!”
I stood up, keeping my hands up. However, I only took two steps before I stopped.
“What is it? Why did you stop?” She jammed the gun in my back.
“I don’t know where we are.” I admitted honestly, “I was unconscious when they brought us here and I’m not familiar with where here is.”
“You’re not familiar with Argos city? Then why come? It’s suicide!”
“F-for the foodstuffs! Yeah… I had to recover them. They’re in that building you found me at. B-but you’ll never find the food unless you bring me there!”
I added that last part in a rush because I was afraid, she’d shoot me right there. I wasn’t lying. There was no food unless I went through that mirror. She’d never figure It out on her own. For some reason, despite her harsh attitude, I wasn’t as scared of her finding out about the mirror. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt like she didn’t really want to kill me. Don’t get me wrong, she’d kill me without hesitating, but I had a feeling like she’d only do it if she felt she had to.
She looked at me suspiciously for a moment but then nodded slowly. “Very well. However, the sun is starting to set. We’re too far to reach it before sun fall. We’d be better off finding a place to stay the night.”
“N-night?” I felt my throat go dry.
“You don’t want to be outside at night, trust me.”