Free Vending Machine Lunch by Roadbloc Page B

better. Jink knew he was the one
in control, he was the one who held the real power, the rooster of
the wood. He could kill Jad at any moment, with no trace of
remorse.
    The feeling
quickly went, and they both silently acknowledged that they had to
do it again. But this time, more Requiem. They both were no longer
thirsty to satisfy their hunger for food and to survive, a shift of
priority had happened in their head. It was now for their fix, they
wanted the feeling again.
    So the next
day, they caught more Requiem. And the day after they caught even
more. And the more they feasted over the poisoned meat, the more
they wanted more.
    Jink noticed
the change in their behaviour, as probably did Jad, but he didn’t
care. He didn’t care that the veins under his skin were millimetres
from bursting to the surface, he didn’t care that him and Jad
weren't speaking much anymore. When they did speak, it was only
about the Requiem, how much they desired it, both planning together
when, where and how they would catch them. They never spoke of
anything else, and became distant, both of them in each other’s
separate quarters, plotting and scheming and craving. Jink becoming
more and more aware that the feeling of supremacy was showing him
how he could knock Jad down a rung of what little social ladder
they had.
    Unfortunately,
one night, Jink had been too distracted with his own proud thoughts
and Jad had been too vocal with his proud instructions, that Jink
had crashed their car into a small building whilst they were
driving through the swarm of the Requiem, trying to hunt them down
without being ripped to pieces by their many ravenous mouths. Jad
had often claimed, even before he got hooked on the dead meat, that
the Requiem had slowly been getting more violent as time went on.
The scarcity of food was making them take more risks, chase faster,
become more and more relentless each day they went hungry.
Fortunately for Jink, Jad and other Requiem addicted survivors,
food was plentiful. However, this food liked to fight back. Unless
the head was severed or the brain disconnected.
    Jink’s vision
re-appeared. His head was pounding, it had the distinct feeling
that someone had been repeatedly smashing a brick over it. Indeed,
he was surrounded by bricks, small shards of glass and other odd
bits of rubble. He could hear the sound of burning, somewhere in
the distance, the noise of the flames trickling through his ears
meaninglessly. Rubbing dust from his eyes, Jink scrambled up, dazed
and looking around to try and figure out where he was.
    He instantly
turned around to face the wreckage that used to be the car. He had
crashed it into a small building. He knew which one, it was a
shabby looking small one, no bigger than the average bedroom. Jink
had hidden in there once from the Requiem back in his days of
scavenging. But the car crash had now revealed that the back brick
wall of it appeared to have been hiding a set of steps, down
underground. The force of the speeding car had been no match for
the building’s tinny metal doors and the single brick wall, and had
flown straight down a hidden set of steps before coming to an
abrupt halt as it crashed at the bottom, catapulting Jink through
the windscreen.
    The sound of
Jad’s voice crept into Jink’s head. It was an imaginary scolding
for not wearing his safety harness. However once his eyes brushed
over Jad’s assumingly dead body, slumped in the passenger seat of
the car, blood oozing out of his head, he assured himself and his
all-important, Requiem fuelled ego that not wearing his safety
harness whilst driving had been the right thing to do. And now he
didn’t even have to get rid of Jad. On the unlikely chance he was
alive, he’d be consumed by the flames which were currently chewing
away at the car before he regained consciousness.
    Jink span
around, ignoring the ache of his body, to face wherever it was
they’d crashed into. The headlights from the wreck of the