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“Do what?” she asks, and I want to laugh. She doesn’t even realise how she fits in so well. She doesn’t see it as a problem.
“Look so normal.”
“I don’t really have a choice, I’m stuck here.” She says bluntly. I don’t know how to reply, since she is right. It was wrong of me to assume that she fits in here because she wants to. Of course, she doesn’t want to be like them, she is like this because she has to be. It’s her way of survival.
Aubrey has finished talking to Albert, and Emerson speeds up to talk to her. I take this as my opportunity to talk to him, “Cunningham?” I call out to him, pushing past the girls so I can make my way to the front.
“Yeah?” Pretty boy answers shyly and I glare at him.
“Cunningham Senior,” I clarify, walking up to the older Cunningham. When I arrive at him, he somehow looks down at me with a pitying look. I don’t understand how he does it, since we are the same height. He has a strange way of asserting his dominance with only his eyes so that no matter where he looks, you get the sense that he is watching you. But I don’t back down. I’m not intimidated by him. “I need a new gun.” I tell him, “Since your little friends who kidnapped me stole it and didn’t give it back.”
Cunningham laughs openly in my face. “You’re a kid. You don’t need a gun.” I sneer, wondering if he is really that oblivious to the world that he is sending me back into, or if he just doesn’t care. He created his ideal world for peace, but simultaneously created another world that is anything but peaceful. “You really think that I am going to give you a gun just so that you can go back and shoot my men?”
“No.” I say quickly. “I know that you are going to give me a gun. It’s just for self-defence.” I don’t clarify that he is right, and that, if necessary, it would mean shooting his men. But he seems to have already made up his mind.
“I’m not giving you a gun.” Cunningham’s voice was plain, but his eyes show me everything he is feeling. His eyes are gunshots, pushing me back, blood gushing out of the wounds he has just punctured into me, so that I can’t move, can’t breathe. Everyone seems to move out of the way, so that I can see him in clear and full view. We are two sides of a warzone, and no one wants to get shot in no man’s land.
“Please, just give him what he wants,” Emerson confidently strides into the wasteland. The moment she does I know that I am going to get what I want. Because Emerson holds the same power that Cunningham does.
Emerson is the only one who has any suspicion as to where I get my supplies from back at Beast Eye. Guns are a common commodity if you work with the CSO, but if you don’t, they are extremely rare to find. All unnecessary weapons were banned in households to establish the ‘peace’ that Cunningham supposedly craves. Nowadays, there are very few places you can source weaponry from. Emerson has never said it to my face, but we have mutual agreement to not tell the others that I get my guns and bullets from the Gunners.
The Gunners are a massive gang that has contacts on both sides of the fence. They work in the black market and trade all types of things for weapons. I found them one day when I was ‘in school’ or pretending to be. I was walking randomly around the backstreets of Beast Eye, closer to the fence than most people dare to go when I first met them.
I was curious to see what they were doing, so I walked up to them. That’s when I first saw the guns. Poking out of pockets, hidden under jackets. A guy came over and handed me one, I guess he didn’t care about the fact that I was only 15 at the time. Ever since that moment, I have always had a gun by my side. The Gunners took me to their undercover warehouse, and there were hundreds of bags of them. Missiles, snipers, and my personal favourite, the 19 millimetres. Small, inconspicuous, and yet deadly nonetheless. I have no idea where they source them from, but that’s none of my concern. I just get what I need and get out of there.
When I first came back with the gun and bullets, no one really questioned it. I guess they knew that I was too unpredictable and decided not to comment. Emerson knew about the Gunners, she’d apparently run into them a couple of times when she was by herself. She knew what they could do.
The Gunners are extremely loyal to themselves, but they are also extremely trigger happy. They seem to like me though, ‘the kid’. Usually, I would hate being called a kid, but I’m not going to tell them that unless I feel like dying.
I think the real reason why she is standing up for me now, is not because she wants me to have a gun, but because she knows that me gathering supplies here is safer than me going back to the Gunners.
Reluctantly, Cunningham sighs, turns his back to me and continues to walk on as if nothing had happened. He opens another door and walks into another room, everyone following blindly after him. For all we know, he could be taking us right into a trap. I don’t understand why everyone is following him so willingly.
He is our worst nightmare. He is the reason why I will never be able to have a normal life. He is the reason that I am stuck in Beast Eye. He is the reason that Emerson is the way she is. The reason she is so traumatised from things she can’t even tell me. When she tries to, she starts shaking and humming like crazy, and sometimes yelling random phrases into the night, or blacking out for hours, sometimes even days at a time.
I stop walking and stand before the entrance to the other room. Cunningham barely glances up from his watch as he says, “Hurry up. I have better things to do than spoiling little punks like you.”
“How do we know you’re not taking us into a trap?” I sneer.
“Because if I did that, Emerson would never trust me,” He snaps. “Now do you want your gun or not. If you don’t, you’re more than welcome to leave. It’ll probably be easier on her if you do.” He says, scrunching his eyebrows.
Her? Does he mean Emerson? What does he even care about her? I am so confused but decide to not question it since Cunningham is obviously about to give me what I want, and I am not willing to say anything to jeopardise that.
I walk through the door, and come into a warehouse sized room, head to toe with shelves and shelves of weapons. This place might not be as bad as I thought. I have just stepped into paradise.
Chapter 22 - Emerson Clarke
“Emerson,” a startled voice wakes me up out of my slumber. I am in a large room with walls covered in dark, navy paint, lying in a large bed that lies in the very middle of the room as if it is the only thing that matters. I sink into the sheets. Yes, I think, this is the only thing that really matters.
I roll over onto my right and notice that there is a floor to ceiling projectile window, with a small desk hidden in the corner. I roll over to the other side as I see two doors. “Emerson,” the voice calls again from the other side of one of the doors, but I ignore it.
Something about this place is eerily familiar. I reluctantly pull off the soft covers and step onto the soft, dark carpet. I walk over to the door closest to me and open it. The room is small, with every wall covered with clothes of all sorts. I run my hands along the different fabrics.
* * *
“These ones are cashmere, very expensive but good to keep you warm in the winter. Then of course over here is the lace, velvet, leather, satin. Anything you can think of, it’s all yours.”
Young, eight-year-old Emerson is looking around the mounds of clothes in amazement as a woman walks her around the room. “Why would you give all of this to me?”
