Free Dream Chasers (Dystopian Scifi Series Book 1) by Logan Stark Page A

place.
    ‘Ha, look at this.’ Spotless
rummaged something from the mop’s bristles, not minding getting his gloveless
hand a little messy. ‘Think this’s bone.’ He brought it over for Peter to see.
‘What do you think?’
    For some reason, the blood on
the floor – now mostly foam and red bubbles – didn’t affect his hunger.
Earlier, when the blood was still thick in redness, he’d wondered about this,
thinking that the sight of gore should’ve removed his hunger, but it didn’t. But
this all changed when Spotless had decided it’d be a good idea to show Mr Peter
the remainder of a deceased Mr Noni Makaratzi’s skull.
    The contents in Peter’s
stomach, which were very little, mostly sticky liquid and clumps of
half-digested mussels, whirled around and then shot into his throat. His throat
was a ball of acid that wanted to come out. Peter mustered enough willpower to
swallow the acid back into his stomach, but it didn’t work. The string of hot
liquid made its way back up his chest, past his throat, and into his mouth. Now
he knew exactly what he had for breakfast and what he had last night – a
combination of milk, seafood, and bread. He was going to throw up, he thought,
any second. The hot liquid wanted out.
    ‘Shit, you okay?’ Spotless
asked. He threw the piece of skull away like a Frisbee. He didn’t pat Peter’s
back, he pounded as if Peter were his only family member alive and choking on
food.
    Milky-green vomit spilled from
Peter’s lips. It was hot and a lot. When Spotless saw that he was wrong about
the whole Peter-choking thing, he backed away and screamed something in
Japanese. Peter wasn’t too sure if the man was laughing or crying, maybe both.
But what he was sure of were footsteps running toward him.
    Peter lifted his dripping-vomit
chin and saw guns out; they were waving them in the air like a group of
lunatics, screaming in English and Japanese. One of them had his eyes wide
open, screaming at the top of his lungs, knocking the bucket of blood water
over. They stepped over the red wave and swung their guns at Peter as if they
were casting spells.
    ‘He’s not dead. Not dead!’ the
wide-eyed Asian screamed.
    ‘Check pulse,’ another said.
    ‘What happened?’ one of them asked,
looking at the bucket of spilled blood water.
    A voice squeaked from behind,
Spotless’s voice: ‘Think I know what’s going on.’
    ‘What’s going on?’ the Asian
with the big eyes asked. ‘Tell me!’
    Spotless laughed, which was a
mistake.
    Wide-Open-Eyes Man looked at
Spotless with a terrible hate on his expression. Peter, who felt like gurgling
another wave of vomit, watched in horror as the man pointed his gun at
Spotless, and thought he was going to shoot him, but he didn’t. The gun,
however, did go off. Thunder clapped as bullets sprayed on the roof, making
dust rain. Spotless wasn’t laughing anymore. The men in black coats were
looking at each other, some of them still trying to understand what was going
on.
    The man checking Peter’s pulse
had rice stuck on his lips. His breath smelled of chicken and a lot of soya
sauce. When Chicken Breath was satisfied, after checking Peter’s pulse for the
fourth time, he turned around at the waving machine guns and told them – with preaching
arms in the air – that everything was okay.
    The only person not okay was
Peter, who still had warm acid stuck in his throat. It’s a good thing Midori
wasn’t sitting in front of him when he had fired from his mouth. Thinking about
that made Peter want to laugh, and then he felt like crying. Everything that’d
happened – Ohko shot in the head, the thoughts of his mother waiting and
wondering about him, Noni shot in the head, the pool of blood on the floor, the
scent of takeaways while being locked as a prisoner – it was all too much, and
the stress had come out as vomit.

-12-
     
     
    Evil worked full-time, holidays
included. The time was somewhere around 2 a.m., and the outside moon