Snake Plissken (i_escape) wrote in we_coexist, @ 2011-03-02 17:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | jake chambers, snake plissken |
Two Different Worlds, Two Different Gunslingers [Complete]
Well, this was familiar. In the sense that it was completely and utterly not familiar in the least. It was starting to become a staple of Jake's life, that nothing ever stayed the same. In the City, it was literal.
He'd walked this way from school to the tower dozens, maybe hundreds, or times. Maybe he'd just let his mind wander this time. Or maybe, more likely, the City wanted him to stay on his toes. And why not? It had cost him another five years, taken his ka-tet just when things seemed to be getting back to normal, and taken his new family away once again.
Warehouses lined the streets. Jake couldn't remember ever having seen them before. He had only two plates with him, stowed away in his satchel with his schoolbooks. Jake knew it was fairly unreasonable to bring the Rizas to school with him, but when the City was so unpredictable, it seemed insane not to have some form of defense. But knowing that he had no guns and only two plates made Jake feel oddly exposed. Vulnerable. Young he was, not even a teenager, but Jake knew better than to seem vulnerable. Life with Roland had taught him, hard and fast.
But a twelve-year-old boy was easy prey to some. And in the shadows of a building, an old sign naming it The Full Moon Garage, eyes watched.
Oy stuck close to Jake's heels. The billy-bumbler was just as nervous as his master, but just as loathe to show it. But his hackles raised suddenly, and Jake spun, plates in hand as though appearing by magic. He sensed rather than saw the shift in eyes, the way they dropped from nearly six feet off the ground down to three-foot-something. Something feral touched the air, and Jake felt a twinge of primal fear before the cold mask of gunslinger instinct took hold.
They were circling, whatever 'they' were. Animals of some kind? Oy was snarling, and Jake's eyes narrowed, searching for his targets. Two plates, but there were more around him. The sense of them was odd; he could Touch no individual mind, but one shared consciousness. A pack he realized. As many as five, his senses told him.
He heard the scrape of claws on concrete, and reacted. "Riza!" The shriek left his lips as the plate left his hand, sailing into the shadows. A howl was cut short in a crunch of blood and bone, and lupine forms leaped out of the darkness towards him.
Snake had partially taken Zoe's advice where The City was concerned. After filling his belly with his first sustaining meal in years, he slept. Of course, he did not take claim to any particular residential space. He was not ready for that level of comfort or commitment, and The City seemed to understand. When Snake was ready to accept this new place as home, he would find the place he was meant to uproot in. Until then, he would live as he always had. Off the land. Off the streets. With one eye always on the lookout, and trust carefully hidden in his back pocket.
He didn't know what he was looking for when he began surveying The City. Getting a lay of the land, so to speak. Snake was trying to come to some sort of understanding with the high rises, the parks, the streets, and the endless change of buildings. He was so accustomed to a world of poverty, of departmentalized degradation, of trampled hope, of bureaucratic moralities, that The City seemed more than foreign to him. It was as though he were on another planet entirely.
It was almost a relief to come across the warehouses. They were darker, less clean than what he had seen so far. Snake could relate to this dingy underground. Though he was never a self-made criminal (the war and the government forced his hand in that direction,) he had become more at ease among the filth of society. Did he share their same values for crime and violence? Not exactly. Though it was difficult to see from the man he had become, Snake was a patriot. He believed in the rights of all people regardless of race or creed. Unfortunately, in his world, that made him an enemy of the state. And enemies, regardless of their crime, were dealt with the same.
He had been watching the Full Moon Garage for a few hours now from a fire escape on the building across the street. What better way to learn about society than by its unsavory characters? It might not have been what the Amazonian was hoping for him. But it was a start.
Snake flicked the ashes from the cigarette that hung loosely from his lips. Hell, it had been years since he'd had a cigarette that good. For a moment he thought he might have been in heaven. Were it not for the rancid smell of the gutters down below (and the fact that he didn't believe in a holy kingdom in the sky.)
It had never been his intention to make contact with any of the men that entered the garage. In his own way, Snake was simply curious. Wanting for knowledge that he couldn't get through conversation with strangers outside of Chinese takeout joints.
Then the boy showed up.
This is none of your concern, Snake. Stay out of it. You don't know their rules. His conscience was right. He could have ended up in The City's version of Manhattan Island or Los Angeles. Hell, for all he knew, this place was run like Cleveland. Hell if he wanted to find himself in another Cleveland again.
The men (were they men?) began to close in on the boy and his strange looking dog. Snake pursed his lips into a snarl. It was that same displeased expression he made when he was forced into something he didn't want to get involved in. But he would get involved. One of the creatures' heads was sliced clean by a weapon thrown by the boy. This created a momentary pause among the others. Confusion, if even so fleeting, was the best moment to attack.
The gun, despite its size, was drawn and aimed. Thinking ceased. The echo of the gunshot didn't reverberate until after the lupine to the left of boy collapsed to the ground, a bullet hole the size of a walnut wedged in the center of his forehead.
Everything froze for a moment, as Jake saw the bullet hole appear in the wolf's brain. The gunshot didn't have the roar of thunder that Roland's guns did, but Jake knew a gunshot. He knew a bullet hole when he saw one.
Relief was held at bay. Instinct was still moving him. The second plate was in his hand, but instead of throwing it, Jake spun to his right, arm lashing out and slicing through the chest of another leaping lupine. The wounded wolf let out a yip of pain, rolling aside and dragging one of its front paws as it tried to back away. Three. Two left.
Oy had engaged one. The billy-bumbler was far smaller than his opponent, but his jaws had latched onto the wolf's throat and were not letting go. Jake whirled at the fifth wolf, lifting the plate in his head. "Riza!" he screamed again, not yet willing to throw his last plate away, but waiting for the wolf to attack, to get in range of the plate's razor edge.
Snake quickly leapt down from the fire escape, his heavy combat boots clunking against the cement. His killing distraction seemed to be useful to the boy and his dog (which now, upon closer inspection, barely resembled a dog at all -- more like a raccoon and a cat melded with the protective qualities that came with a canine.) Snake finished off the lupine that began to crawl away from the boy and his razor sharp plates. Another bullet, this one aimed directly at the creature's chest. A yelping howl cut short, forever trapped within clenched vocal cords.
Though the boy's words were foreign to Snake's ears, there was something reminiscent about it. Perhaps, because he was a man forever bound to battle, he heard a familiarity in the war like cry. Maybe it was something calling from a past life. (If he were one to believe in such holy hocus pocus.) Or maybe it was just something he had once heard on television, back before television had been censored to the masses as a scientific evil that caused young people to engage in immoral acts of sex and violence.
That was all bullshit, of course.
Snake ran up on the wolf that the billy-bumbler had latched onto, smashing the butt of his gun against the wolf's head. Once. Twice. Three times. The blood spattered against his own face, as well as on Oy. Snake's violence upon the attacking beast continued until the wolf collapsed, its face imprinted with the dent of the weapon, blood seeping onto the sidewalk.
Then he stopped.
Jake was breathing hard, but still caught up under the rush of adrenaline. The plate in his hand was dripping with blood, blood that was splashed on his shirt, soaking his sleeve. That didn't bother him, not really. Oy was still clinging to the beast's throat. The fight had lasted only seconds, but the still forms were beginning to shift and change. Back to men, from the wolves they had attacked as. Four men and one woman, all naked save a belt of dark fur around their waists.
Jake felt when the hormones drained from his system. His limbs turned to water, and his body began to tremble. His lips felt dry, throat moreso, as he tried to get Oy to leave the body alone. The only word he managed was the billy-bumbler's name, but that was enough. Oy released the man's throat and walked back over to Jake.
Jake set the plate down, arms reaching for his friend, and he looked up at the man, noting the patch over his eye, noting the gun. "Thankee-sai," he said, bringing up his left hand to tap the fingers thrice against his throat. "Thankee big-big, I beg. Woulda been a hard fight not for you."
Screw hard. Jake would have been dead if not for this man, and he knew it.
After the danger ceased, Snake returned his gun to the holster on his leg. It was a heavy weapon for what seemed to be a simple task of killing, but it suited Snake's needs. Besides, it was one of the few things he had in remembrance of the world he came from. A reminder that he had to be prepared for the worst. In his case, the worst being returned to his reality.
He watched with a curious staunchness as the bodies reverted back to human form. Hell, Snake had seen a lot of messed up shit in his time, but that was just weird. But if it phased him in anyway, he didn't let it show. That was one sure way of getting yourself in trouble; letting others know what got to you. He preferred the poker strategy of life. Keep your face straight and your aces up your sleeve.
He looked over at the boy with his one (and only) good eye. The boy's manner of speech was strange. Off. But Snake seemed to sense that the boy was being overly polite with the way he spoke. It was almost as if the boy's words were of a greater, higher speech that that of normal conversation. But there was no need to be formal. Snake didn't expect that of people. Certainly not of children.
"Forget about it."
So Snake had saved his life. What was it to him? It had been instinct, not kindness.
Jake laughed a bit at the response. "Not gonna happen, sai. I think you."
"just saved my bacon. Mine and Oy's. So thankee big-big, I say true." He smiled, but then caught a look at the shallow wounds on Oy's hindquarters and paled a little. "Aw, shit," he muttered, pressing his hand against the lacerations. "Damn... wolves." They weren't wolves anymore, but Jake wasn't pretending they hadn't been a minute ago. He looked down at himself, but his shirt was already stained with too much blood to be of any use. So Jake looked up at the man instead. "Do you have a handkerchief, sai? Or a bit of cloth? He's bleeding, and I don't want that wolf-blood getting in him."
Snake hadn't noticed that the dog creature had been injured during the fight. He pursed his lips together as he watched Jake and the billy-bumbler interact. It brought back memories from a childhood that he hardly even remembered, let alone let his mind think about. That life didn't even seem real to Snake. A life as a young boy with his own canine companion. It was so far away. Too far away to be true.
He blinked, letting the memory disappear from his thoughts.
After regaining his thoughts, Snake slipped his leather jacket off his shoulders and ripped a portion of his left sleeve from his shirt. Then he stepped up to Jake, leaning in close to look at the small animal's injury.
"If it's venomous you could try sucking it out with your lips," Snake said, holding out the piece of cloth to the boy.
Jake quickly considered that, but then shook his head. If it was cursed, then Oy was already infected, from the droplets of blood that had fallen into his mouth. Jake didn't think it would be, but his instincts were warning him not to get any of that blood on his own lips and mouth. If he did, he was going to throw up at least, and his stomach was telling him he might go ahead and do that anyway.
"Probably not venom, but some kind of magic," Jake said in answer. "Oy's gotten past that kind of thing before." In the tunnels under the Dixie Pix, back in '99, in fact. He didn't know if that would continue to apply, but Oy had shown a previous high tolerance for things not of his own world, and Jake was counting on that now. He wiped away the blood on Oy's muzzle with his own shirt-tails first, before using the man's shirt to start cleaning the cuts. They were bleeding freely, each from the wolf's claws, but none looked very deep. Jake didn't think any sort of bandage was going to do him any good, not with how the marks were placed, so he stirred at the dirt where Oy's blood had fallen, mixing it into mud and using that over the wounds.
"It doesn't look too bad. None of them got very deep." Jake let out a breath of relief, and looked up at the man, smiling a little. The smile gave him his youth again, brought most of the stillness from his blue-grey eyes. "My name's Jake. And this is Oy." His eyes flickered towards the weapon the man wore. "What kind of gun is that?"
The boy knew his pet better than anyone else, so Snake didn't offer up any more suggestions about the wound. In the end, the world always worked mysteriously. Either the creature would die and the boy would have to move on. Or it would live and die another day. Pessimism was definitely part of Snake's repertoire.
The smile was nice. Good. It was fitting for the boy. But it had been a long time, years, since Snake had seen a smile on anyone, and he wasn't entirely sure how to react. Mostly because he didn't feel any of that happiness. He hadn't experienced any change recently except for that of scenery.
"Call me Snake."
He slipped his arms back into his jacket and then began a search through his pockets for another cigarette. He had to give up his other one too quickly. Then Jake asked about his gun. Snake raised both brows at the boy before looking down at the weapon strapped to his leg.
"It's a MAC-10 fitted with a sound suppressor and scope mounted on the silencer. Standard United States Police Force issue in the prisons."
Snake reached behind his back where a double holster hid another pair of firearms. He removed one of them and held it up near his face.
"Smith and Wesson 629 Hunter .44 Magnum revolver. Performance center modified equipped with Aimpoint red dot scopes."
He offered it up to Jake.
"Try it out."
Now that he'd described the weapon, Jake could see the way the barrel fit against the silencer, and why the scope was mounted on it; there was no room on top of the gun for the scope to sit. Not with the double bar that seemed suited for bracing it against your chest for firing two-handed. Given the style and the size of the clip, you'd have to use it two-handed if it was in full automatic mode.
Blue eyes gleamed when he was offered the .44. Jake took it in one hand, feeling the metal with the other, just running his fingers over it. The Ruger he'd stolen from his father and brought to Mid-World had been a .44, but this was a revolver, not an automatic. The grip felt good in his hand, even with the added weight of the scope. Jake held it in his right hand, aiming it at the sign for the Full Moon Garage. The sight was distracting - Jake gave it a glance and flicked it off. He didn't neat some red beam to tell him where to fire. All he needed was his eye, his mind, his heart.
Still one-handed, the way Roland had trained them. There was no bracing your weapon with your other hand when you were a gunslinger. No, your other hand fanned the hammer, or fired your second weapon. He squeezed the trigger twice, putting bullet holes in the centers of each O in 'Moon'. The shots flew true, and Jake smiled. It felt good to hold a gun again. He liked the Orizas, say true, but gods it felt good to hold a gun again.
Watching Jake with the gun made Snake a little ... sad. Well, not sad in the sense that he was going to weep for the future of all young children forced to live in a world that required guns for survival. But sad because, even in this strange new city which seemed to have nothing in common with the place he came from, he appeared to have found someone who understood what it was meant to skip over childhood. Manhattan was for the birds these days. Los Angeles, on the other hand, had become more than just an island prison. Children were sent to L.A. for filling their bellies with a bit of stolen bread, for smoking, for being too rebellious, for not attending church, for eating junk food, for doing anything not befitting of what the tyrannical government felt was right for all God-faring Americans. Jake was the sort of boy they would have tried to send to the island. Hell, he would have been on the first boat over.
But there was also something comforting about being near this boy. Perhaps it was that glimmer of excitement at the thought of holding the gun. Jake seemed mesmerized by it. As though it held a deeper meaning than just a method for putting large holes in things. Snake could relate to that. Snake didn't have a connection with people anymore. But weapons, well, they couldn't betray you or hurt you or break your heart.
Cold. Mechanical. And yet he loved them.
Jake handled the revolver well.
"Keep it. If you want."
Jake's eyes widened, undeniable pleasure on his expression at the offer. "Really? Thanks!" He ran his fingers over the barrel again, then popped the cylinder with the ease of long familiarity and let the shells, both spent and unspent, fall into his other hand. "My dihn, my father, taught me to use guns. How to be the weapon, instead of just wielding it." A wistful expression touched his face, and Jake reloaded the unspent cartridges back into the revolver. "Sometimes it feels like that was a long, long time ago."
The revolver had no safety catch, but Jake wasn't about to walk the rest of the way home without it. Not after this. Once he was in sight of the tower, he would unload the gun and stow it safely, but for now, it felt better to be packing iron. He tucked it into the belt of his school uniform for now.
Kneeling, Jake scooped up a few handfuls of dirt and tossed them against his bloodied plate, then rubbing at them in an effort to clean off the blood. "Throwing the Orizas is good, but I don't have as many of them," Jake said. "I started off with nineteen, but I've lost a few on the way." Having scraped away as much of the blood as he could, mostly what was still damp, Jake held out the plate to Snake, for inspection or trade. "You can grip it safely here," he explained, showing Snake the part where the edge was blunted.
"My father taught me how to use a gun, too."
But that had been a lifetime ago. Snake could hardly remember his father. His face was a blur in Snake's mind. He remembered that the man drank too much when he was alone. He remembered the sounds of a the man's voice whispering to a ghost in the middle of the night. He remembered that he had a temper shorter than any man in town. But he also remembered going out into the woods and learning how to shoot. Most of the memories that Snake did have weren't any good, but that one was. It was a bonding moment that couldn't be explained to anyone who hadn't experienced it first hand.
Snake took the Oriza in hand, careful not to touch the sharpened edges, and admired it closely. From a distance it didn't look like much more than a plate, but up close it certainly showed its teeth. It was a weapon he would have liked to learn how to use.
"I like this ... Oriza," Snake said, careful to try and pronounce it properly. "It's deceiving, but true to its nature. You must be a very skillful throw to handle this."
Snake held it back out to the boy.
"A man doesn't deserve a weapon he cannot use properly. Maybe you'll teach me sometime."
Jake smiled as he took the plate back. "I'd like that. Teaching you. It'd be a good way to keep in practice, too."
Snake's words also struck a nerve in him. The boy looked over the bodies, and his eyes came to rest on each of those fur belts they wore. The color of the fur on the belt, his mind's eye was telling him, related to the color of the wolf they had become. He knelt beside the nearest of the bodies. "They don't deserve these," he said, finding the clasp and pulling the belt away. The moment it was in his hands, however, Jake let out a startled sound and dropped the belt.
It was alive. Not quite still living, but it still held the essence of the wolf it had come from. Jake knew that the wolf had been skinned alive, it had still been breathing, it's heart still beating, when the pelt was cut from it. It was the animal's pain, it's rage, that fed the belts. Made them powerful. Made them hungry.
Get them to Dinah. To the wizard.
Jake swallowed, trying hard not to vomit.
Snake didn't understand all of this magic. True, he came from a society that had advanced technologically, but the science behind the wolf pelts eluded him. It wasn't that he was unwilling to believe in sorcery or illusions, but Snake stopped believing in many things a long time ago. And magic seemed to be a thing for children's bedtime stories. Besides, the world was tricky and evil enough without adding supernatural forces to the mix.
The sound Jake made when he picked up the pelt was similar to the yelp made by the second wolf he slaughtered. Again, Snake was snapped from his memories. He never used to do that. Why now? Something about this city made him feel as though he didn't have to have his wits about him every second that he was living. Despite the wolves and the vigilantes, this city was safer than any city he had ever been to before.
Jake looked ill. And part of him looked to be in pain.
"What's wrong? Jake?"
Jake's hand shook a little as he lifted it, pointing to the belt. "It's... shit, it's alive. They... they skinned it while it was alive." He was pale, still trembling, but he looked at Snake and remembered to breathe. "I can't leave them here. Someone'll pick them up, and... they're... they're just evil things." He started wiping his hands against his pants, as though trying to clean them off.
"Dinah knows a wizard. He can get rid of them." Jake didn't know how he knew that, but he wasn't going to question it. It was the Touch. He slipped the cuffs of his sleeve down over his hand and picked up the belt again, grimacing, but shoved it into his satchel anyway. "God, some people are sick."
If he were anyone else, Snake might question the boy as to how he knew about the truth behind the wolf skins. But the how never seemed to matter as much as the why. Why would fur belts be dangerous? Why would they turn people into creatures from grim tales of nightmares? Why would these people be wearing them?
Perhaps the why didn't matter either. What mattered was the effect the belts were having on Jake.
"Give it to me. I'll carry it."
He didn't know if he had the same strength of will as the boy, but Snake had been through a lot. He'd survived New York. He'd survived L.A. And Cleveland. And Atlanta. He could survive one trip to this boy's friend's place with a bag of possessed wolf fur.
And he had gloves, stashed in the pocket of the long hanging leather jacket. A gift from the USPF when they sent him to the island off the coast of California. He had little use for them there. But here they might prove essential. He slipped the gloves over his hands and picked up the other wolf pelts. He, too, felt a peculiar surge through him. It wasn't strong, but it was significant. Like a tingle through his nerves. He imagined that were he not wearing coverings over his skin that the feeling would have been more effective. More sickening. He quickly shoved the belts into the boy's satchel.
Jake handed over the satchel in wordless relief. He would have to deal with the pelts later, but for now, he was glad to be rid of them. "Thankee-sai," he said again, still giving the man a quantity of respect. Snake was a gunslinger himself, Jake could see. Different from him, but there were enough similarities for Jake to feel a kinship there. And Snake had saved his life, and given him a revolver. Why wouldn't he be deserving of some gratitude?
He had no watch, not since a few lifetimes ago in the city of Lud, but Jake could tell time by the sun. "Shit," he muttered. It was late enough that Dinah would be starting t worry. "I've gotta get home." He winced a little, looking back at Snake. "The lady I'm living with... she's cool and all, but I don't know how she'll react to... well, to you, sai Snake. She doesn't much like guns, do ya ken?" Jake thought he could convince Dinah, in time, but not when he was coming home covered in blood. The boy also wanted to get Oy cleaned up, and soon. The cuts seemed shallow, but he wanted them all treated and cleaned anyway.
Snake understood. He understood all too well. He wasn't the sort of man who went over well with most other people. He was a conundrum, in both his world and in others. He nodded his head in response to Jake's words. Well, he couldn't fault the kid for honesty. And that was hard to come by these days.
"Then I will follow you, and carry this only as long as you need me to."
Which was enough to say that Snake would drop it off at Jake's front door and leave immediately afterward. He'd spent enough of his life inadvertently starting fights with other people's brothers, mothers, sisters, employers. He wasn't going to willingly walk into a hornet's nest of his own making. Especially not with someone who might become a friend. And he hoped Jake would be a friend. Even if it were only a friendship made up of shared weaponry.
"Lead the way."