• To start out, I wasn’t alone. There were two of us. It was me and Ben. He was always the one to go out and save the good guys in trouble. I was always the one to go out and kill the bad guys causing the trouble. We made a good enough team, balancing each other out. I had met him while trying to kill a group of Draculoids swarming around my camp. He saw I was in trouble, and shot down every guy that I had missed. After that, it was an unspoken agreement that the two of us were a team. We spent months fighting BL/ind both around and in what was left of Seattle. Sometimes other rebels would join us to help shoot off particularly large groups of Dracs. We were a strong duo, and BL/ind knew it.

    Around a year after I met Ben, we had moved in to the heart of Seattle’s remains. As far as I know, it was the farthest in any radical had ever gone. There were more Draculoids here, but there were also more places to hide. Our plan was simple. All we had to do was shoot everyone we saw that wasn’t on our side and take their guns. The rebels’ supply had grown frighteningly thin. Five days of hiding and shooting had resulted in 25 guns. It wasn’t as much as we had hoped, but it was all we could manage without being killed ourselves. We started to head back to deliver the weapons. Ben and I had hardly gotten past the block when we heard a scream.

    Two blocks ahead I could see a figure crouched down near a pile of crunched and melted cars. The person was surrounded by seven or eight Draculoids, and as far as I could see, they didn’t have a gun. I looked at Ben.

    “Go to the next block,” he said. “Find a good place and shoot. As soon as the last Drac falls help me get them out. I’ll go straight.”

    I nodded and we took off in different directions. I found a pile of bricks not too far from the scene and started shooting. In less than a minute, the Dracs were on the dead. I started out of the pile just as I saw Ben approach the person. I could now tell the victim was a girl about the same age as me. He bent over to help her up, just as a bright light flashed between them. He crumpled to the ground. It was a trap! The girl turned her head and smiled at me, aiming her gun at my chest.

    I didn’t even give her the chance. I only had to shoot once. After she fell, I sprinted up, made sure she was dead, checked to see if there were any other Draculoids about, and then went over to Ben. He was dead.

    “******** b***h!” I screamed. I turned and shot her lifeless form at least a dozen times. I didn’t care if anybody heard me scream. I didn’t care if anybody saw the flash of the guns. Ben had saved my life countless times and I couldn’t save him. It was terrible. I was alone now. He was the one thing BL/ind couldn’t take from me, I thought, and they did.

    Then I realized something. They wanted me to give up. They wanted me to stop caring for my own safety, walk into a mob of Dracs, and die just like Ben. I stood up. There was no way. They had hurt me by killing Ben, but I was going to hurt them so much more.

    Color was illegal? Then I would be the most colorful person alive. Art was illegal? Then I would draw and paint upon any surface I came across. Emotion was frowned upon? Then I would make sure the whole world knew how I feel. Music was illegal? Then I would shatter BL/ind’s every eardrum with sound.