I think I’ve got a title, Niu Zeelandia. Niu from Niu Sila (Samoan for New Zealand) and Zeelandia (Nova Zeelandia - Latin). Don’t ask why I do things, it’s a working title. Also, today was worse than yesterday! But tomorrow, tomorrow will be better. I keep falling asleep while writing so who knows if the following even makes sense?
Niu Zeelandia: Day 5
Word Count: 871
“What did you say?” Glasses, who Eli really considered calling Reptile because all she could now focus on was the fact that he looked incredibly like a bespectacled Tuatara, gripped Eli’s shovel and pushed past her towards Dex.
“I said,” Dex began, the sound of hard plastic connecting with skin took Eli by surprise, as Dex doubled over, winded by the handle of her shovel thrust at his stomach by Reptile. “Fuck!” He grunted through clenched teeth.
“Didn’t your parents ever teach you manners?” Reptile seemed to find his quip hilarious, “Before they dragged them off, that is.” The urge to break the man’s face threatened to take hold of Eli’s sense and chuck it out the door, white hot rage coursed through her. The rage itself didn’t unsettle her, but rather the tinge of grief which always threatened to turn into a tidal wave of guilty shame that she felt would never ever go away. However she managed to keep her anger, and more importantly her hopelessness, in check, choosing instead to keep her eye on Rifleman, who continued to hold the gun aimed at Dex’s back.
“Greg- we have to get back, I told you couldn’t leave Lorna with the girls alone for long.” Rifleman spoke, eyes flicking from Reptile, no, Greg, to Eli to Dex before back to Greg. “Can we just grab who we came for and go?”
“Don’t be such a wet blanket John, we’re just having fun, aren’t we kids?” Once again he looked at Eli as if she was a fly to be ensnared.
“I need to get home, look grab the rifle.” John, making possibly the biggest mistake of his life extended his podgy arm out with the rifle to Greg. As Greg realised the mistake he made to quickly snatch the rifle from the larger man’s arm, his movements weren’t nearly as quick as Dex’s who grabbed the rifle and wrenched it from the man’s hand.
In what Eli could only describe as stupidity Greg lunged at Dex, the shovel clanging on the ground as he moved forward. The shovel was in her possession before she even realised she’d lunged for it; the heavy garden tool a welcome weight in her hand once again. She swung it around and aimed the flat scoop at John’s face, “I wouldn’t fricken’ move if I was you.” She advised.
“What are you kids going to do?” Greg laughed, “Kill us?”
His earlier words came to mind, it was one thing to try to hold us captive for the sake of taking any food we had or rounding us up for ‘sacrificial reason’, but it was another to make jokes about the fact that their parents had been ripped away from them for the sake of the upper classes’ survival.
She did everything she could to keep the survivor’s guilt at bay, Eli combated it every night before attempting to fall asleep. But it was more than survivor’s guilt, not the way that Dex was entitled to feel when his parents were mentioned. No, Eli’s guilt was warranted, because it was her fault her family was gone. Her fault she wasn’t able to see her mother’s face or her little twin brothers again.
“I’m trying real hard not to right now but you’re just asking for it.” Eli snapped. Dex clipped Greg on the side of the head with the barrel of the rifle, an impeccable show of self-restraint on his part. Eli wanted to smash the man’s face in with the sharp part of her shovel. Podgy John’s voice cut through and stopped her from knocking Greg’s yellowed teeth out of his ugly non-existent lipped mouth.
“Look I have a wife and kids, they’re waiting for me-” John began to plead. Eli turned to contemplate the doughy looking man, wondering what it was he did before the Incursion.
“Fuck up, John.” Greg sneered; Eli caught Dex’s gaze before walking to stand behind the thinning-haired man, kicking in his knees so he was kneeling.
“You shut your bloody face.” She looked over at Dex, “What do we do?”
“Oh now you want to listen to me?” Was Dex picking now, of all times, to bring up the fact if it weren’t for my impatience we wouldn’t be in this mess?
Meanwhile John continued to beg, “Please? We were told to keep two teenagers we saw preoccupied-” The whizzing sound of an arrow cutting through the air and sinking with deadly accuracy into the side of John’s neck cut him short, the man barely had a chance to register that he had an arrow sticking out of his neck before he toppled over, dead.
Dex grabbed Eli’s arm and pulled her towards the side of the building, not even caring that Greg was left unattended; the piece of shit followed the teenagers anyway, another arrow narrowly missing him. “Where’s it coming from?” Eli tried to see where the arrows were being shot from; Dex grabbed hold of Greg’s collar and shook him.
“Who the fuck is shooting fucking arrows at us?” He barked, “What do you want from us?” He shook the man with each word, but Greg’s smug look no longer present, replaced by absolute terror.
