Chapter 2 - A Little Game of Tag

There is silence. Then, there is chaos.

The air fills with screams as everyone begins running in several random directions. Though no threats have been made to end anyone's lives personally, they begin scattering like roaches caught under a kitchen light.

"Remember, you have an hour. By the by, there are weapons in the buildings and the vehicles. Just to make it easier. They're super strong, a couple of strikes is all you need to kill. Sounds good, I'm sure." The turtle's teeth retract inside of its head, falling quiet as it innocently leans against the megaphone.

"Yawn... wake me up when you're done having fun."

"Grab... head for shelter!" A man yells, some of his words drowned out to me by the multiple screamers around us, sprinting to scoop up his son. The woman he's talking to nods and picks up her daughter, beginning to run towards the tall buildings.

"We just all have to kill someone to not die, so grab a weapon!"

A weapon... I try to get to my feet but my hands and legs are shaking like crazy... someone trips over my body, hitting the ground with a yelp.

"S-Sorry!" A voice yells out an apology. I tumble over as well, my head reeling. The stickiness on the side of my head is getting more and more uncomfortable. My tongue rubs sandpaper on the insides of my mouth. I feel my eyes shut, just briefly.

... let me have a moment to pause. Like in a controllable dream, you know?

... It seems not, as a high pitched scream shatters my brief break. I open up my heavy eyelids again to look over at what... or who is screaming.

A woman is pinned down to my left by a larger man. She's crying and shaking, her ankles and wrists struggling to get out from under him.

"No, let me go! Let me go!" She shrieks, walnut brown hair falling across her terrified face. She spots me and begins to scream louder.

"Help me! Help me!"

"I gotta live! Nothing personal, lady, but I gotta do this! I'm going to stay alive and get back to my family!" Holding her wrists above her head with one hand, he raises a fist and begins to punch her face repeatedly. Bruises and swelling appear immediately. Her screams turn into wails, never ending. Sobs choke at her throat as she struggles harder, her heels scraping against the road. Her arms bend at confronting angles as she tries to break free of the bludgeoning, all her attention on her attacker rather than me.

Two women are swinging punches at each other whilst their children watch fearfully from behind a stop sign. There is already a man dead five metres away from me, face down, blood oozing out from under him. A woman with a sprawling bun stares down at him, clutching a knife to her chest like a newborn, face splattered with drops of blood. Her gaze flicks upward towards me and her body jerks as if startled. Scared she's been caught... or something.

Move. Move. Come on, damn it, move! I try to push myself to my feet.

A shadow falls over me. I barely manage to look up before a leg swings into my ribs, sending me rolling across the roadway, all wind knocked out of me. I splutter for air, the searing pain rippling across my ribs. Who... I look up to see a teenage boy with sandy hair in a white t-shirt and black pants, fear and frustration in his eyes as he lunges down and grabs me up by the collar, the force of it causing my neck to snap back in shock. Ow-!

"Let- let go of me!"

"You. You'll do." His voice comes out rough and raspy as he begins to drag me across the concrete towards a nearby building with one arm. My hands reach out to grab whatever I can hold onto- another body, a lamppost, the side of the gutter, but the boy continues to keep dragging me as if I were going willingly.

My shoe slides off of my foot and the sock snags on every uneven rock on the ground as he pulls me onto the pathway, then through the doors. The fabric tears and the skin on my feet begins to peel.

No... use... it hurts even trying to grip now. I might as well be going willingly now. Maybe those people out there are just pretending? Or better yet, it might be a movie set! The actors are so good... I reckon if I look closely enough outside, there might be cameras. No one really looked up in the air... so maybe an aerial shot?

But the cameras won't reach in this building anymore, so surely he'll stop at some point and drop me. But to treat me so roughly... look, my hands are bleeding!

"Hey, haven't we gone far enough? You... you can let me go..." I look up at him, holding gingerly my hood away from my neck so that he doesn't choke me first.

His back is turned but his arms are gripped tightly, muscles bulging from smooth skin. ... This guy's ripped...!

"I don't think they'll see us here... so..."

"That's the whole point, dumbass." The boy replies, beginning to haul me up the stairs, or rather, drag me up the stairs.

D-Dumbass? Hey, respect your elders!

Each step stabs at my bottom and the string in my hoodie keeps hitting my throat, so it's all I can do to not splutter and choke as I'm dragged along. Damn it, just how high do these stairs go?! My cheeks are gonna fall off any step now...!

"Let me go! Hey, stop it, it's not funny anymore, you know?!" He ignores me as he kicks a door open and throws me in. I bounce off of the smooth carpet and come to a stop when I bump into someone else who lets out a high pitched squeal of terror. I groan in pain, trying to sit up. It's a... storage room, by the looks of it, but it's so bright. A calm wind blows from behind my neck. We're outside? No, there's a roof above us. A hole in the wall, then?"

The door squeaks shut, it's timber shivering as it closes against the door frame. The boy who was dragging me is rummaging for something off to the side whilst a girl and a younger boy still watch us with stone faces.

"Hey, just what is going on-?"

"Be quiet!" A voice hisses into my ear. "Or they'll throw you off too!"

"S-shut up! Shut up, or you'll be next!" A girl shrieks to us. She's standing a fair distance away from us, jabbing the air with one manicured finger. She's got her hair tied into a side ponytail and wearing a red sweater which shows off one pearly shoulder. On her plump red lips is a terrible snarl, her eyes trembling with fear.

"I'll do it! I swear I'll throw you off!"

There's a smaller boy who is sitting on a dusty looking couch against the right hand wall, knees tucked to his chest and spectacles shining out from under his messy black mop of hair. He's dressed in all black, as if at a funeral. He's muttering to himself, the likes of which I can't hear.

"I don't know if pushing people off of buildings counts as killing in that turtle's game, so I found this too." The muscular boy pulls out a crowbar from the mass of furniture, bringing it over as if it were a sword.

"The turtle mentioned weapons killing them, so maybe pushing them doesn't count, now that I think about it."

What?

I look over my left shoulder to see through a large broken hole in the wall, the cityscape below. Faint screams emanate from below. The hole is framed with broken plaster, splintering wooden boards and iron bars for... scaffolding, I guess? There's a woman just behind me, holding onto her fearful child. She must've been the one who hissed for me to stay quiet.

Wait... I recognise them.

"M-Mother?"

She jerks up from consoling her child, and recognition floods her face, tears appearing immediately as she speaks tearfully,

"Seito?!"

"N-Nii-san?" The child in her arms, no older than 12, looks up, his brown eyes puffy and red from crying.

"Tomoki..." I stammer out as my little brother starts crying again into our mother's lap.

... So much for family reunions.

"S-Shut up! All of you, shut up! Quit that useless crying, it's making my ears hurt!" The girl squawks, still stabbing that finger in the air like a sword.

"You all know each other? Good, then tell that kid to shut up! J-Just because we kicked a man off of a roof, that's not the cue to start crying!"

"Nii-san... Nii-san... they..." Tomoki's words are muffled, but I can hear that his voice is trembling.

"Our... our father... they... he landed face down!!!" Those last few words he screams out, his fists scrunching Mother's skirt fabric before he dissolves into tears again.

Face down? The image of that man face down a couple of metres away from me down on the street comes back into my mind. No... him? Dad?

"Boy, that man died before he hit the ground. Tsk." The older boy comes over and grabs Tomoki by the back of his shirt, hauling him to his feet and beginning to drag him over to the hole in the wall.

"Now that I think about it, that wouldn't count at all. I can't risk becoming a human skewer since there isn't much time left, so I'll take this one first, okay?"

"F-Fine, just make it quick! We're running out of time!" The girl is violently trembling at this point. The boy on the couch is still shaking and muttering to himself.

"No, please! Please don't!" Mum screams, clinging onto the blonde haired male's legs.

"Please, there must be some other way!"

"Mum!! MUUUM! Don't let him take me!!! Please!!" Tomoki is shrieking, legs pedalling helplessly in the air.

"Let go of me, hag-!" The male swings the crowbar at her arms. There is a crunching noise as her hands are knocked away from his leg, her forearms bent at right angles with horrible swelling at the broken parts. She stares at them, stunned briefly, before screaming in pain, holding her arms out in front of her, which are now bent at near right angles. Her back hunches over as she continues to scream in pain, holding her appendages away from her like unwanted toys.

"Oh..." Is all the male says, looking down at the crowbar in his hands.

"Oh..."

"Is that all you have to say?!" I scream at him, demanding an answer.

The boy continues to stare at it in his hands, quiet for a long moment. Then,

"The turtle was right. What a strong weapon. I didn't even use that much force."