Free The Altonevers by Frederic Merbe Page B

piece and his pocket change then told me to
run. He said he was done for, that at least I could get away. I
did, I left him to save myself, and I heard the wheeze of the dying
breath leaving his lungs louder than the shot that actually killed
him.”
    “ But you lived?” she
asks.
    “ For awhile, running like a
rabbit lost in the woods. Losing everything we've taken, everything
we had in that one day. I was filthy, dirt covering my face and in
my hair, sleeping curled up next to trees like any other animal in
the woods. Slowly starving, trying to eat leaves, snails and
insects, anything to stop the aching of my empty stomach. I came to
a freshwater stream, a god's send. I knelt down gulping gallons
from my dirty hands. Not knowing what else to do I followed the
stream for days, and nights. My shoe's and suit tattered away,
expensive stuff’s not really made for the wilderness. I was
barefoot on the forest floor, my feet became blistered, splintered,
sore with open wounds, every step was painful. A few days later I
came to the waterfall that was feeding the stream.
    I climbed the rock wall and walked
along it until I came to the wood's edge. To the fringes of another
small town, this one a smoky skied from coal mining, with a new
town square of freshly placed stones and clean storefronts. I was
drooling at the sight of a breakfast cart, then my eye’s met the
bank. Three floors, pristine, standing gloriously in the sunlight.
I thought it was an oasis made just for me, to feed my appetite for
the job, and fill my water filled stomach with feasts. I had
absolutely nothing but the piece I was given, and the only thing I
know how to do was sitting like a duck in front of me. I was
desperate and naive, thinking it was my luck, good fortune to find,
either way it was my fate.”
    “ What did you do?” she
asks.
    “ I went for it, and it went
well. They were more horrified at my scruffy appearance then the
piece I was pointing at them. The clerk, a busy woman who seemed
not to be scared but just wanting to be done with it, quickly
handed over the money. On the way out from the easiest score of my
life I heard shouting. They were shouting my name, they knew I was
there. My first job alone, I panicked and held the whole place
hostage. After two hours they demanded I release the young and old.
I didn’t want any hostages, to do that to anyone, they were all
innocent to me, but that's what I was dealt. I was desperate and a
life of hard labor, cutting stones was not gonna to cut it as my
luck.
    I was letting them all go, but as they
were filing through the front door the pencil pushers yelled my
name again. Then opened fire on a guy they thought was me, it
wasn't, but they can't shoot straight. Missing the guy entirely,
instead killing a seven year old child, who died in the doorway on
the edge of safety, safety from me. I took cover behind the clerk’s
desk and shot back, before feeling absolutely sick with guilt.
Nauseating to my starving stomach looking at myself in the tattered
clothes, feeling the dirt masking my skin, my face, the mud in my
hair and under my fingernails. The blood on the carpet was not my
own. Asking myself, what about my own life is worth more than that
kid’s? that question plays through my head at least once a day for
as long as I’ve been alive. I knew I couldn't live with it, that
guilt, of knowing that a child's life is collateral damage to my
own. To surrender, I would be locked in a cell alone with nothing
else to think about, so I resigned to take my own life.”
    “ You don't have a hole in
your head.”
    “ No lead left,” he says, “I
took a letter opener from the desk and opened my arms and thighs.
It stung, but my heart was pumping with adrenaline and panic. I was
weeping and stumbling as they were again wildly firing. I passed
out a minute later and bled out in the bank vault, alone, and
lifeless...for awhile anyway.”
    “ For a while?” she whispers
her question.
    “ I heard a