Shift of Power

The man stood at the entrance of a dirt cave, a cold dread filling him as he watched black smoke rise on the horizon, smudging the already perpetually gray sky. His tattered clothing hung on his skinny frame loosely, the designer labels long worn or tore away. His face was streaked with dirt, his body long past needing a much-required bathing, but his eyes twinkled brightly, behind their pale blue hue was the knowledge of who he was, what he had possessed. A woman poked her head out of the cave behind him, looked in the direction he was staring, and uttered a short, choppy shriek.
“It’s them isn’t it?” She said in a shaky, panicky voice. “As if they haven’t taken enough already-”
“Shhh.” The man said quietly, eyes intently watching for any sign of life to emerge from the smoke. “You go back inside and prepare breakfast.”
“Yeah right, breakfast.” She snorted then uttered a bark that was supposed to pass as a laugh. “If you can call meal worms a breakfast.”
“Any food that keeps us alive is called breakfast.” The man said quietly, turning to look at her briefly before returning to his vigil. “We should at least be thankful that we’re still here.”
“You go ahead and be thankful if you want.” The woman answered scornfully, a sneer playing on her once pretty, collagen inflated lips. “I’d rather be dead than to have to live the rest of my life like this.”
At once his head jerked roughly towards her, his eyes flashing with wounded vehemence.
“Don’t talk like that Helen, you know I don’t like it when you say things like that.”
Her features softened as his eyes sought out hers, and her tough exterior melted as she leaned against the dirt they called a home. She emitted a small sob and clenched a fist to her mouth.
“I don’t know how you can be so calm through all this. We’ve lost everything! Everything!”
“Don’t think I don’t know that.” He said, rubbing his once smooth and manicured hands together, now grown callused and chafed by the hard labor they had to endure. “Now get back inside and get our meal ready. I may have to take a journey to the hills to get a better look at what is going on, just in case we need to move on from here.”
“I’m tired of running John, I’m just so tired of…all of this.”
“I know you are baby, me too. We just have to stay strong. It can’t be like this everywhere. We’ll find others like us soon enough.”
“Hah! The pipe dream you’ve been feeding me since day one. ‘There’s others just like us in the same boat Helen’,” She said, mimicking his voice. “Don’t worry we’ll be among our own kind soon enough Helen’, ‘Just a few more days and we’ll find our way out of this Helen…I’m getting sick of listening to your crap!”
This finally shattered his calm demeanor and he turned toward her, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing.
“Yeah? Well if you want I’ll leave you to your own devices and you can find your way through this all by yourself! Is that what you want? Huh?” His voice was louder than he intended, his temper taking even him by surprise.
At once she started crying, large, chest wracking sobs as fat tears rolled down her once beautifully rounded cheeks. She fell to her butt in the dirt and put her face in her cracked, dirty hands.
“I wasn’t meant to live like this!” She sputtered through her sobs. “I’m better than this! They should have protected us better, should have made sure that this wouldn’t happen to, to…us!”
At once John felt bad and he went to her, getting down on his knees and putting his arms around her, drawing her to his breast. She did deserve better then this; his whole life he had made sure she had everything she wanted, allowed her to live a life beyond her wildest dreams. This was surely a cruel and twisted joke.
“I’m sure they tried to do everything they could to help us dear, they wouldn’t have deliberately let it come to this-”
His voice was suddenly rendered silent by the sound of stomping hooves, and when he looked toward the horizon he saw them coming.
“Get inside quick and cover yourself in the dirt! I’ll keep them from getting inside!”
“But they’ll kill you! Come inside and we’ll help bury each other!”
“They’ll see the entrance to the cave and know that someone lives here and they’ll destroy it! I’ll have to take my chances. Better that one of us survives!”
“I won’t live for long without you John, I, I can’t!” And she broke into fresh tears.
“Please Helen, just do as I say! It will be alright!”
“I can’t!”
The sound of the approaching men was getting closer; they could hear their coarse laughter and the whinnying of the horses.
“Please Helen, get inside!”
Fear finally overtook her and she got hastily to her feet and scrambled inside.
“I love you John!” She said as she tore at the loose dirt, flinging it over her body.
“I love you too! Now cover yourself quickly!” He said, hoping that these weren’t to be the last words he ever spoke to her. She couldn’t help the way she felt. She had been accustomed to having everything; having nothing made her feel worthless, like less then a human being…
“There’s one!” A voice rough with tobacco and the harsh extremities cried and at once the men on the horses surrounded John, pointing their hand-tooled weapons at him.
“On yer knees slave and bow before us!” A gnarly man with a wild plume of feathers on his head commanded and as John dropped to the ground the others laughed.
“Nice use of the lingo!” A man with a shaved head and missing front teeth complimented. “Gives us the feel of marauding pirates!”
“Marauding?” The first one said. “Where the hell did you learn a word like that?”
“The prison library! I can read you know. I even got my GED.”
“Oh! Aren’t we a brainiac?” Another said, jumping off of his horse and putting a knife to John’s throat.
“Okay Richey Rich what have you got in the cave? If you have any money now’s the time to relinquish it or pay the consequences!” The man with the feathers said and again the others laughed.
“I feel like this is, like, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ or something.” The man with the knife to John’s throat commented and the man in the feathers grinned.
“I’m just trying to make us seem more authentic I guess. Gives us a sense of dignity.” He turned his attention back to John. “But seriously now. What have you got in the cave?”
“I have nothing, I swear! I lost everything I had when the banks collapsed during the war!”
The men guffawed as they got off of their horses, looking for a place to tie them to and finally settling on a lone oak tree a few meters away.
“Aw boo-hoo! Ain’t it sad boys? The poor guy lost everything he had! That’s what you get for trusting the freakin’ government!”
John wished he could argue with them but they had him there. They were right. All his life he had trusted the government and their institutions but in the end they had shown what a bunch of cowardly, self-serving bastards they were when they turned on the people who had paid for their campaigns, elected them to power and offered them the bribes that they had grown fat on. Instead of helping the wealthy elite they had emptied their bank accounts and fled the country, leaving the once rich and powerful to fend for themselves against a problem the politicians had created.
“The one thing I can say for the government is that they knew who to count on when they wanted the Chinese killed!” One of the men said, a fellow with long, unruly hair and a gold hoop in each of his ears and the rest of the men cheered.
“Here here!” Another cried. “Convict’s make the best soldiers of them all!”
“Depends on how you look at it…” John muttered, but they didn’t hear him over their own gloating. When the government sensed that the country had become too overrun by the invading Chinese, they opened the prison doors and recruited the convicts, offering them a full pardon on their sentences if they helped the war effort, to which the majority agreed. The thing was, the convicts had an agenda of their own and no one could foresee their ability to organize. Before the government knew it the Chinese were no longer the problem. That was when the banks went belly up, when the government sponsored institutions no longer catered to the citizens who had helped them grow strong.
“I don’t think I believe this guy.” The man with the knife to John’s throat said. “I think he’s hiding something.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.” The ex-con with the plume of feathers said. “Get in there and see what he’s got!”
Four of the men entered the cave and minutes later he heard Helen’s cries.
“Stop it! Don’t touch me! Let me go!” She pleaded but was soon dragged out and dumped onto the ground before them.
“Ah, he’s got a woman!” The guy with the shaved head said, licking his cracked, brittle lips. “She ain’t much of a looker but she’ll do!”
At this John’s heart and spirit broke. Helen had once been the prettiest woman he had ever laid eyes on, had been courted by men far better looking than he, but in the end had chosen him because he had more to offer, he was the one who could give her everything she could ever imagine… “Line up boys, let’s keep some order to this, we ain’t savages…at least not yet anyway!” The ex-con in the feathers chuckled as he sheathed his knife, reaching for the buckle on his pants. “There’s enough to go around, everybody will get a turn…”