She was on top of a mountain in what was left of an ugly grey prison building complex. It had a large wall with barbed wire on top that was surrounding the building complex. One of the walls had a hole blown through it from whatever had happened. There was a large courtyard to her right and laying on the ground were a lot of dead people in brown clothing. Here and there, she could see a few people in North Korean army uniforms. Black smoke rose from a tower near a large open gate.
The crater she had been laying in had been a small building near the back wall. Emily could still see a single surviving wall. Well, a bit of it survived. Whatever had created the explosion had taken out a bit of the wall to the outside world and a few walls that were attached to the other buildings.
She froze when she heard someone call out orders to look for survivors in a North Korean accent. She had been creeping towards one of the dead prisoners but she abruptly changed directions and headed in the opposite direction. She crawled out of the prison on her belly without looking back. In front of the prison, there was a street that ran the length of the wall. Across the street, and past a few trees was a large multiple level rice paddy field.
Emily took a deep breath then started running. She smiled as she quickly passed what a normal person could run. She nearly screamed in joy as she felt the rush of running nearly sixty miles per hour in a few short feet. She raced across the first paddy and leaped down towards the second paddy. The drop was about ten feet but she took it easily, not slowing down at all. The next paddy was about twenty feet below and Emily jumped landing in a roll to keep her momentum up. Rolling to her feet she kept on running. She kept listing for someone to spot her and order her death but she heard nothing. She kept running through the paddy fields and down the mountain.
The day was getting late when Emily finally made her way down the mountain. She was still naked but covered from the mud of all the rice paddy fields she had run through. She used the mud to hide at the edge of the last paddy as she crawled on her belly towards the wall at the edge of the rice paddy. Across from the rice paddy where she was hiding was a small town. She could see military trucks arriving and disgorging soldiers. Worse yet, she saw some of them had dogs.
“Can dogs smell through mud?” She asked herself. She looked down at herself and shook her head. She was not sure she could take the soldier without any weapons and with her recent capture, she feared being taken again. Not only that she feared losing her powers once more. She really missed her tomahawk and her little black knife. She looked around for a place to hide and spotted a laundromat.
She scanned the area to make sure it was safe before she made a break for the laundromat. She was about to punch the doorknob in but at the last moment, she checked to see if it was unlocked. She smirked to herself as the doorknob turned easily. She looked around one last time to make sure no one saw her before she entered. Inside there was nothing but coin-operated washing machines and dryers. The place was deserted.
She turned back to the door and locked it. She quickly made her way down the aisle with the dryers crouching low so that no one would see her through the windows. She stopped and looked inside the washers and dryers looking for any clothes that she could use. They were all empty though. She sighed when she found the last dryer empty not sure what to do next.
“American! Hey American!” A woman whispered behind Emily in heavily accented English.
Emily turned around slightly terrified and spotted an old stooped Korean lady waving at her from a beaded curtain. “Come away from the window before someone sees you.” The old lady whispered in Korean.
Emily turned and looked towards the window realizing she had not noticed that her path had led to an open area where anyone could see her from the window. She quickly moved back a few steps to hide again.
“Such a dirty girl. Did you come from the prison?” The woman whispered almost to herself.
“Sorry to intrude on you Ma’am,” Emily replied in flawless Korean giving the old woman an honorable prefix hoping the woman wouldn’t turn her in. “I’m an American soldier and I just escaped from the North Korean army. Can you help me?”
“Well, at least you can speak properly.” The woman said with a sigh. “Let’s get you cleaned up and we will talk.”
Emily followed the old woman through the beaded curtain and into a really nice room in the back of the laundromat. The first thing Emily noticed about the room was that it had bamboo flooring. She also noticed an old tv sitting in the corner of the room beside a metal hanger with clothes hanging on it. It was like someone had taken the rod out of a closet and hung it two metal poles. There was a small portable range stove with a bucket of dishes on the other side of the room and a small bed on the floor without a mattress. Emily absently wondered if the old woman lived in the laundromat.
The old woman motioned for Emly to enter a really tiny bathroom. The size of the room reminded her of a bathroom in an airplane. The Bathroom had a squatter toilet where one had to grab a bar and squat over the toilet to do their business. Next to the toilet was a handheld showerhead. Sitting right below the showerhead was a white plastic stool. The old lady handed Emily a bottle of body wash.
“You need to get cleaned up right now. The last thing I need is for my neighbors to see me with a dirty naked white girl. Oh, how they will talk.” She told Emily giving her a push to enter the bathroom before closing the door on her.
Emily sat down on the stool and took a deep breath and grabbed the showerhead. She turned the handle to turn on the water and cold water poured onto her. She didn't flinch at the cold water like a normal person because her powers made feeling the cold water a minor inconvenience. She turned the handle to turn on the hot water but the water remained stubbornly cold. Shaking her head she washed using the old lady's soap.
She ran the water over her head and watched the soapy water drained down into the toilet. She turned off the water once she was done and watched the water drain from the bathroom floor and into the squatter's toilet. When the water was gone she found a towel hanging on the door to dry off. When she was done she wrapped the towel around herself and left the bathroom. The old woman was waiting for her when she was done.
“Here, wear this.” She told Emly handing her a bundle of clothes. As soon as Emily took the bundle the Old Woman turned around and sat down. “Tell me how in all that is holy how you ended up naked and covered in mud.”
Emily told the woman as she put the clothes on. The clothes, while fit, were several decades out of date. The pants were black and polyester and came about two inches above her ankles and the shirt was purple and very baggy in all the wrong areas. There were no underclothes and after looking around for a few seconds the old lady handed her a safety pin to fold the back part of the shirt so that it wouldn’t be so reaving.
Emily told the woman her story skipping some parts of it like the woman in the jungle and the part where she might have died. She was just getting to the part where she was escaping the prison when she heard the door to the laundromat shake. The old lady heard the noise from the door as well. She stood up and did something that Emily couldn’t see to the floor and then rolled up part of bamboo exposing a hidden door in the floor. The old woman motioned for Emily to open the trap door.
“My husband fought in the 6-2-5 war.” She told Emly as she opened the trap door. She was talking about what the world called the Korean war when she called it the 6-2-5 war. “When he bought this place he made sure we had a safe place to hide in case the North invaded again. I’m too old to hide now, but you can use it until nightfall. You can make a run for it then.”
Emily looked down the stairs before she looked back at the woman. “Thank you for doing this.” She told the Old Woman.
“A woman should not be alone with all these soldiers from the north around even if she is a white woman. Also, my husband had many American friends when he was in the army. He would be most upset if I did not help. Now be quiet and hide.” The old woman told Emily.
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Emily hurried down the cement stairs into the well-made cellar. The walls were shored up with concrete and looked smooth. Emily ran her hand across the wall as she stepped down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a bunch of machine bits and wires from broken laundry machines. In the far corner was an old washing machine that was missing the cover on it. The old lady closed the trap door and the room went dark.
Emily turned around and sat down on the stairs listing. She heard several people yelling and the old lady reply tell them that she was alone. They told her to leave and she told them that she was old and would they please not yell so loud. Emily would have smiled at how surly the old woman sounded if it wasn’t so serious of a situation.
She heard a couple of people stomp above her and search the room. One of the men above her told a second person to take all the ‘good’ food. A few seconds later she heard the sound of breaking dishes. Emily heard the old lady start yelling at them in rapid-fire Korean. She sounded faint to Emily which she took it to mean that the old woman was still in the building but not in the room above her.
Emily heard one of the voices telling the old woman to shut up but she was not cowed. She started cursing the man’s ability to have a family. Emily couldn’t stop the grin from her face as the Old woman cursed the North Korean soldier. She lost her grin when she heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh. She started up the stairs to help but stopped right by the door. She didn’t hear the old woman anymore. She did hear the soldiers leave though.
She waited a few seconds but didn’t hear anything else. She gently raised the trap door. It got stuck after a few inches on the bamboo floor but the opening was enough for Emily peak though. She couldn’t see much, just the wall and the tv that was on its side. Fearing for the old lady she pushed on the door and felt something snap. The trap door rose easily after that
Emily carefully climbed out trying not to damage the floor any more than she already managed too. She opened the trap door wide enough so that she could stick her head out to look around. When she did she almost wished she hadn’t. The old lady was lying on the floor just on the other side of the beaded curtain. Her eyes were staring off into the distance and yet they would never see anything ever again. Emily blinked back tears and looked around at the now trashed apartment. It was a mess.
She climbed the rest of the way out of the cellar and went to the old woman. She checked her pulse knowing that she wouldn’t find any but still unable to stop herself. She silently counted to ten but there was nothing. She stood up over the old woman and didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know the woman’s name.
Finally, after standing there over the body she whispered “Sorry.”
Emily silently apologizes once more to the old woman as she went to where the dishes were stacked to look for something that she could use as a weapon. Aside from an old chipped mug, she didn’t find anything useful. There were a couple of different sized chopsticks and a few metal spoons but no knives except for a blunt butter knife. She turned around to look for anything she could use as a weapon but nothing stood out. She thought about taking the tv and using it to smash someone’s head in but she shook head and left it where it was laying.
She did steal the old woman's flats that were sitting by the door to the apartment. She felt both sad for stealing from the dead and grossed out because of the sweat stains inside the flats. She still slid her feet into the shoes. She was glad her powers would protect her from whatever nasty funk that was growing in the shoes.
She left the old woman as she was because she didn’t want anyone to know she was there. She silently promised that she would return someday to visit her grave. The laundromat was empty so she crept into it and looked out through the glass door. She saw several people lying on the ground unmoving. The North Korean soldiers were doing a house to house search and tossing people out of their homes. In the distance, she spotted an old olive green truck that looked like it was straight out of the nineteen sixties but it had a modern machine gun mounted on it.
There was no back door to the laundromat so Emily stayed where she was and watched the soldiers search the houses. A second truck was parked just on the other side of the machine gun mounted truck. Several times she spotted soldiers leaving the houses with stolen goods and loading them up the second truck.
The soldiers were quick but brutal. Anyone who got in the soldier's way were killed. Those who cooperated were left alone. From the way that they moved, Emily knew that most, if not all of them, were supers. She watched, her anger growing, as the soldiers ransacked the town and took what they wanted. By nightfall two of the houses were on fire and several more people were lying on the ground unnaturally still.
The soldiers loaded up in the truck with the mounted gun. “I guess the other truck is too full of stolen stuff.” Emily thought acidly to herself as she watched the two trucks leave.
The trucks joined the back of a convoy at the edge of the town and drove away from the town and mountain. A fire truck showed up shortly afterward and started working to put out the fires. Emily used their arrival to leave the town unnoticed. At the edge of the town, Emily found more dead bodies. They were mostly young women who looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. She walked on, her anger growing.
She stayed close to the road but not on it. She had no idea where she was so she was planning on heading to a larger town or a city and find out how far away she was from the bunker. She was not a hundred percent she knew where the bunker was. She knew the general area but not the specific place. She remembered the dirt road that dead-ended at the bunker, so she was hoping she could find the start of the road and it would lead her to there.
Because she was not walking on the road and it was really dark she nearly walked into at mass grave. The bodies were all dressed in South Korean uniforms and for some reason they were all missing their shoes. Another thing she noted was that all the bodies were facing the same way with their feet towards the road. Emily didn’t want to know why but it was obvious to her how they died. They had been lined up on the side of the road and executed. She walked past the grave searching with her eyes hoping to find someone still alive or maybe some kind of weapon, but all she saw were dead bodies. She started to cry when she spotted a really young looking soldier lying in the pit. He was turned slightly so that she could see his face. Even in death he looked scared.
Emily walked on. The night grew darker but she did not get tired. She once stayed awake for nearly six months, so a day and night was nothing to her now. She found a walking stick that had a somewhat sharp edge to it that she decided to use as a weapon. Not that there was anything out in the forest around her but trees and the dead.
It was very late in the evening when she smelled something electrical burning. She stopped and looked around but didn’t see any smoke. Walking cautiously she kept going. Fifty feet further down the road, she found where the smell was coming from.
A truck had somehow swerved off the road and struck a tree. Emily stopped and looked around with her somewhat sharp stick at the ready. When she didn’t spot a threat she moved on to the truck. The truck looked like it would have fit into a Vietnam war movie. It was a large truck with a green canvas top.
She edged up to the back of the truck and pulled up the flap and looked inside. She found things that would fit in a pawn shop. There were boxes of used tools both manual and electric kind. There were boxes of used clothes and junk food. She spotted a broken box full of DVDs.
“Who uses DVDs nowadays.” She wondered to herself as she looked at all the crap that was loaded in the back of the truck.
She let the flap fall back after grabbing a crowbar from the tools that were in the back. She dropped her stick for her new weapon. She raised the crowbar and walked towards the front of the cab of the truck. She paused by the driver’s side door to switch the crowbar to her other hand so that she could open the door without switching hands.
She popped the door open and spun around with the crowbar raised above her head. The light in the cab flickered on and Emily found herself looking at a dead man dressed in North Korean enlisted uniform. He was slumped on the steering wheel. The window in front of him was cracked in a circular pattern and there was a bit of hair stuck in it. But that was not what killed him. What killed him was sticking out of the dashboard covered in blood and gore. Emily smiled as she recognized the tomahawk.
“Reminded me never to piss off the Cat lady,” Emily muttered to herself smiling.
She looked behind the dead man to the back of the cab and saw that the glass was broken in towards the man. She guessed that when the truck crashed into the tree it sent her tomahawk flying in from the back of the truck and into the cab. It must have clipped the man’s head, taking a very large chunk off, killing him before it buried itself into the dash.
She went to reach in and grab the handle of her beloved Righteous but stopped when she noticed something duct-taped to the handle. She laughed when she realized that it was her little black knife. It was still black so no one had tried to claim it yet.
She reached in and pulled her tomahawk out of the dashboard and climbed off the truck. She reached over and ripped the duct tape off the knife and held it in front of her. She let out a sigh of relief when the knife stayed black. She had been worried that since she might have died it would no longer recognize her but either she hadn’t died and hallucinated the whole woman in the jungle thing, or that it didn’t care that she had died. The only way to get ownership of the knife is to use it to kill the previous owner, otherwise, it would turn into a normal knife.
She kissed the blade and put it away into the waistband of her pants. She spun Righteous around in her hand before she started walking again. Her mood was still very dark but now that she had her weapons she felt a little bit better. Her weapons made her feel safe again.