Post by The Omnipresence on Aug 3, 2010 3:39:02 GMT -5
Here's a short story I did for a class earlier this year. A bit rushed but hey some people liked it.(Unless they were lying to me, THEN THAT WOULD HURRRRRT SOOOO MUCH!)
The old rusted doors flew open with a screeching sound as Alice charged through them. She didn’t know how they found her, but she was not going to let them catch her. She ran through the dark corridors of the building, the only sound that could be heard were her own footsteps echoing throughout the hallways, she had no idea where she was and the darkness didn’t help as well. Alice stopped and tried to catch her breath while she strained to listen to her surroundings, hoping that they didn’t follow her in here. Her fears were confirmed however when she heard two voices out in the distance.
“Come on out little girl, ain’t no use hiding from us!” said one voice.
“Boss preferred you to be alive, but I reckon he wouldn’t mind if you were dead.” A second voice added in.
Alice was trapped; the only way she would make it out of this alive is if she fought back, but in order for her to do that she was going to need a weapon. She ran into the nearest room and desperately searched for something, anything that could be used as a weapon. The only thing she could find in the room was a group of cylinders with one that was dimly lit in the corner of the small, dusty room. She could hear footsteps getting closer towards the room so she franticly tried to pry open the glowing cylinder with her hands. The cylinder started making hissing sounds as cold air started to flow out.
Inside the cylinder was a slim, unshaven man who looked to be in is thirties, wearing nothing more than a hospital gown, he stared down at this small, freckled girl named Alice and noticed her tattered leather jacket that looked as if it had scraps of cloth patched onto it and ripped denim jeans that seemed almost too loose for her and had a pretty good idea what was happening, he calmly scanned around the dusty room that looked like it hadn’t been used in quite a long time and confirmed his suspicions.
“I’m in some kind of post-apocalyptic future aren’t I?” Said the man in the tube.
Before Alice could answer the door behind her swung open with enough force to break the already rusted hinges revealing two large muscular men.
“Ah there you are little slave, you made the boss real mad,” Said one of the muscular men.
“Excuse me but I was asking this lady here a question,” the man in the cylinder said.
“The hell do you think you’re talking to like that you punk?” The more muscular of the two men said as he started to crack the knuckles of his fist with his hand.
“Lady, I do believe it’s time for you to move out of the way now.”
As the mysterious man said this, Alice darted away from the center of the room and with that the mysterious man became a blur right before Alice’s eyes as he forcefully shoved the palm of his right hand into the face of the closer of the two men, bone could be heard cracking and blood flowed out in two small arcs from where the man’s nose used to be. While that was going on, the second man went for a gun, but before he could pull it out of its holster he was face to face with the mysterious man, who then punched him in the stomach, causing him to fall to his knees where his face would then meet with the knee of the mysterious man, knocking him unconscious while also breaking just about every bone in his face. With the two thugs now lying on the dusty floor, the mysterious warrior turned towards Alice and said “So yeah, about my question.” Alice stared at him in amazement; he was the one that could help her, quite possibly the only one that could. “Sir you have to help me there’s these raid- “Alice said before being interrupted.
“Hold on there lady, first of all, my name is Jack, please don’t call me sir. And another thing, you still haven’t answered my question, you know what don’t answer it, by the ways thing look around here it’s pretty obvious that just about everything has been destroyed.” Jack said as he started heading towards the hole where the door used to be.
“But I need your help, and I think you’re the only one that can do anything.” Alice said. By this time Jack was in the adjacent room looking through cabinets to find some decent clothing. “There are these raiders that have taken control of my village, making them do horrible things for them. Everybody is too afraid to do anything about them. That’s why I need you to help me.”
“Why should I help a bunch of people I don’t know about in a world I know nothing about? What’s in it for me?” Jack asked.
“Well we do have a gold mine near our village, I’m sure they will be happy to pay you.” Alice replied. Jack found some dusty pair of pants and an even dustier overcoat in one of the cabinets. Jack came back over to the two bodies and started to search them and found a pistol and car keys. He pocketed both items walked towards Alice and said, “Ok lady, you have yourself a deal, but we need to go stock up on supplies at my old safe house, its it still there of course.”
Alice and Jack exited the building; the sunlight blinded Jack for a moment while his eyes adjusted. When he could see again he saw the world around him, to his surprise there were a lot more trees around than he thought there would be. The city had become a forest in the time he was away. The tall skyscrapers were wrecked and some had trees growing out of the windows. One of the moss covered buildings was missing its top half, which was scattered in ruins on the street below. In front of those ruins was a two seated buggy. Alice and Jack both got into the buggy and drove their way out of the city and into the surrounding desert.
There was not much in the desert; there was an occasional wrecked airplane, some with its cargo being searched by scavengers or being used as a shelter for others. One particular airplane had a giant hermit crab living inside of it. Some miles later the buggy came across a run-down gas station with a convenience store, the windows were broken and there were many cracks on the walls of the building, the place looked as if it would collapse at any moment. Alice and Jack got out of the vehicle and walked towards the gas station.
“Ha, I can’t believe this is still here!” Jack said as he walked to the door, extending his hand to push the rails of the door of the convenience store. “You’d think all the nukes would tear this place apart.”
“Well it wasn’t just nuclear weapons that destroyed the world.” Alice said, she looked at the convenience store noticing how beat up it was from years of abuse.
“Oh?” Jack replied, “So what else destroyed the world then?”
“A lot of things, there was the meteors that bombarded the planet, various terrorist groups using experimental doomsday weapons they had stolen, the destruction of the moon which had devastating effects on the sea level and the chemical spills from the many refineries that caused mutations in much of the plant and animal life.” Alice said. “There are more, but I don’t think we have much time to list all of them.”
“Oh that must have been a real bad day for humans, huh?” Jack said.
“Yeah, where were you when all of it happened anyway? Alice asked. “The end of the world isn’t something people normally skip on.”
“Well, Lady, I don’t normally sleep in pods for the heck of it, I happened to be resting from some simple surgery after my last job.” Jack said.
“This is your safehouse? It doesn’t look to safe to me.” Alice said while inspecting the faded yellow and red text that was painted on the wall. “Why would you put supplies in a place like this?” Alice asked, “I would think this would be the first place people would loot.”
“Well lady, the supplies we want are under the store and that’s a secret I don’t tell my customers.” Jack said while walking around the sales counter, searching the floor with his hands. His hands felt a small indentation on the floor which he promptly began to pull up, flipping over a section of floor and revealing a flight of stairs leading down into darkness. Jack motioned for Alice to follow and the two headed for the stairs. Jack started running his hand against the wall to find a switch, Jack found the switch he was looking for and to his surprise nothing happened when he flipped the switch. “Oh yeah no power, silly me.” Alice stared at Jack with disapproval. Jack searched the wall again and this time he found a large flashlight hanging on the wall. He turned it on and their pathway was illuminated, if only in a small section. The two stepped down the small corridor, dust blew out of the way of their feet with each stair they stepped on. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, Jack laid the flashlight down on a nearby table lighting up the wall on the opposite side. On that wall were many, many guns ranging from pistols to automatic weapons, also clipped on the wall were various newspapers article that described attacks on many weapon manufacturing companies from a group of mercenaries. “Why would you need so many guns? What were you expecting?” Alice asked. “I just liked to be prepared for anything, that’s all.” Jack replied while stuffing an assault rifle and ammo under his jacket. Alice picked up a shotgun and carried it by the strap with her shoulder. Jack looked at her and chuckled to himself. “You do know how to use that gun, right?” “Of course,” Alice replied, “Just pull the trigger and aim at what you want dead, simple.” Jack just kept chuckling to himself and with that, they both went back up the stairs.
When the both got above ground they were greeted to the sounds of people entering the store. Jack looked into the corner mirror of the store and saw five men searching around the store. Alice recognized these men from the town and popped her head from behind the counter and pulled the trigger on the shotgun which made an unsatisfying clicking sound each time she pulled. The men were alerted to her and started to run towards her. Jack couldn’t help but laugh as she panicked and gave her his pistol and shot four of the five men. The poor quality of the pistol caused the gun to jam when Alice fired again allowing the fifth man to get in close enough to swing a metallic object at Alice which hit her in the side of the head, knocking her unconscious. The attacker was so focused on Alice that he did not see Jack still in the stairway with his rather large weapon fire into him and tearing him to shreds. Jack picked up Alice and put her over his shoulder and walked out of the store. Outside the shop there was a truck, probably used by those five men, with its keys still in the ignition. Jack put Alice into the passenger seat and ran back into the store and back down the stairs to stock up on more weapons and put them into the back of the truck. Jack got into the driver’s seat and started the car. Jack searched Alice to see if she had directions on how to get back to her village, lucky for him she had a map on her. There was a sheet of paper on the dashboard with detailed instructions to kill Alice and any other slave that escaped from the gold mines. He could imagine himself being showered in gold and being able to buy whatever he wanted, although he didn’t know what exactly he could buy in a place like this.
Night was beginning to fall when Alice regained consciousness. She had a terrible headache, but other than that she was fine. She looked to her right and saw the familiar sight of mountains; she was nearing her home for more years than she could remember. She turned to her left and saw Jack and punched him in the face. “You jerk! How could you just sit there in laugh like that, what’s wrong with you!?” Jack chuckled, “How was I supposed to know you were going to miss that last guy, if it’s any consolation, I thought you were a pretty good shot back there, well when the guns loaded at least.” Jack said as he was about to burst into laughter again.
Jack stopped the truck in a forest that was a small distance away from the village. The village was located right at the base of a mountain, there was an orange glow coming from this small town that blended into the starry twilight above. The town itself looked like it came right out of a western with most of the buildings made with wooden planks which itself was surrounded by a wall of large wooden logs with a large gate out in the front with two guards in front of it each of them carrying automatic weapons.
“So, lady, do you have a plan?” Jack asked.
“We could break down the front gate with this truck. I'm sure this truck could take a pounding.” Alice replied. “Then we could rescue the rest of the town from the prison and take out any remaining bandits.”
“Sounds like a good enough plan for me.” Jack revved up the engine of the truck and floored it towards the front gate. The two guards immediately notice the large truck flying towards them and start to fire upon them. Perforating the body of the truck and shattering the windshield, yet the truck continued its charge into the gate shattering it and sending splinters in every direction killing one of the guards and injuring the other. The front end of the truck was completely smashed in and slowed to a stop in front of the prison. Alice got out of the passenger’s side of the truck and at the same time the door of the prison opened as well. She took out her shotgun and pulled the trigger which made a very satisfying blasting sound as a hole in the door was also made for the man behind said door. Meanwhile on the driver’s side of the truck, Jack was busy dodging a hail of bullet fire and firing a few shots of his own from his assault rifle. He ran away from the truck and sprinted towards the passenger’s side of the truck, bullets were whizzing past his head and into the truck, making sparks and even more holes, turning it into an oversized cheese grater. Jack ran into jail following Alice.
Jack meets up with Alice Inside the prison; many of the cells were filled beyond capacity with miserable people. Alice was busy getting the cells open from the keys from the guard she blasted away earlier. Upon opening the cells many of the captives started to rush out of the building. “Lady, what are you doing? You can’t let them out now while there’s gunfire right outside the door!” Moments later all of the captives ran back in in an attempt to avoid the storm of bullets outside. Alice and Jack ran back outside of the jail and came out from behind the truck with guns blazing, sending many bullets and much wooden shrapnel flying across the town. The tide of enemies seemed like an endless wave of madmen armed to the teeth with various weapons.
Eventually the gunfire stopped, it seemed the bandits’ inferior, poorly maintained weapons were beginning to fail on them and Jack and Alice used this to their advantage to take out as many as they could by firing continuously into the mob. By the time they were done firing the sun was peaking from behind the mountain and a trail of empty ammo clips were scattered across the ground.
The captured villagers came back out of the jail when things quieted down considerably. Alice and Jack were only two figures standing when it was over, they stood there panting and sweating from the intense firefight. Jack decided it was reward time and ran into the nearby mineshaft hoping to collect on his payment. When he got to the lantern lit gold mines and started searching every mine cart for gold he could collect for himself. To his horror, he noticed the gold was soft while he remembered real gold being more solid. He then stormed out of the mines in a rage at discovering the fool’s gold he worked so hard to gather.
He got outside and noticed all of the people, some laughing and other crying in tears of joy. Jack saw Alice in the crowd hugging an older man, he came over and Alice introduced the man as her father. Alice’s father shook Jack’s hand and said, “Thank you for all the hard work you’ve done for us. I’m sure some of the gold in the mines is a suitable reward for what you have done here.”
“No problem, sir, but I think this is fool’s gold.” Jack replied, holding up the soft material in his hands.
“But that is real gold; it’s supposed to be like that.” Alice’s father said.
“Well even if it isn’t real, other people would probably think it is and I can still get some money for it, right?” Jack said smiling.
“So what are you going to do now that it’s over?” Alice asked.
“I’m not sure yet, I have my gold now. Maybe I’ll find some bar out there and just drink myself silly with a bottle of whiskey.” Jack said.
Three days later Jack left the town on foot with a bag of gold and some leftover guns from the truck. Alice would pick up rumors from travelers and traders about a man who would help others if the price was right.
The old rusted doors flew open with a screeching sound as Alice charged through them. She didn’t know how they found her, but she was not going to let them catch her. She ran through the dark corridors of the building, the only sound that could be heard were her own footsteps echoing throughout the hallways, she had no idea where she was and the darkness didn’t help as well. Alice stopped and tried to catch her breath while she strained to listen to her surroundings, hoping that they didn’t follow her in here. Her fears were confirmed however when she heard two voices out in the distance.
“Come on out little girl, ain’t no use hiding from us!” said one voice.
“Boss preferred you to be alive, but I reckon he wouldn’t mind if you were dead.” A second voice added in.
Alice was trapped; the only way she would make it out of this alive is if she fought back, but in order for her to do that she was going to need a weapon. She ran into the nearest room and desperately searched for something, anything that could be used as a weapon. The only thing she could find in the room was a group of cylinders with one that was dimly lit in the corner of the small, dusty room. She could hear footsteps getting closer towards the room so she franticly tried to pry open the glowing cylinder with her hands. The cylinder started making hissing sounds as cold air started to flow out.
Inside the cylinder was a slim, unshaven man who looked to be in is thirties, wearing nothing more than a hospital gown, he stared down at this small, freckled girl named Alice and noticed her tattered leather jacket that looked as if it had scraps of cloth patched onto it and ripped denim jeans that seemed almost too loose for her and had a pretty good idea what was happening, he calmly scanned around the dusty room that looked like it hadn’t been used in quite a long time and confirmed his suspicions.
“I’m in some kind of post-apocalyptic future aren’t I?” Said the man in the tube.
Before Alice could answer the door behind her swung open with enough force to break the already rusted hinges revealing two large muscular men.
“Ah there you are little slave, you made the boss real mad,” Said one of the muscular men.
“Excuse me but I was asking this lady here a question,” the man in the cylinder said.
“The hell do you think you’re talking to like that you punk?” The more muscular of the two men said as he started to crack the knuckles of his fist with his hand.
“Lady, I do believe it’s time for you to move out of the way now.”
As the mysterious man said this, Alice darted away from the center of the room and with that the mysterious man became a blur right before Alice’s eyes as he forcefully shoved the palm of his right hand into the face of the closer of the two men, bone could be heard cracking and blood flowed out in two small arcs from where the man’s nose used to be. While that was going on, the second man went for a gun, but before he could pull it out of its holster he was face to face with the mysterious man, who then punched him in the stomach, causing him to fall to his knees where his face would then meet with the knee of the mysterious man, knocking him unconscious while also breaking just about every bone in his face. With the two thugs now lying on the dusty floor, the mysterious warrior turned towards Alice and said “So yeah, about my question.” Alice stared at him in amazement; he was the one that could help her, quite possibly the only one that could. “Sir you have to help me there’s these raid- “Alice said before being interrupted.
“Hold on there lady, first of all, my name is Jack, please don’t call me sir. And another thing, you still haven’t answered my question, you know what don’t answer it, by the ways thing look around here it’s pretty obvious that just about everything has been destroyed.” Jack said as he started heading towards the hole where the door used to be.
“But I need your help, and I think you’re the only one that can do anything.” Alice said. By this time Jack was in the adjacent room looking through cabinets to find some decent clothing. “There are these raiders that have taken control of my village, making them do horrible things for them. Everybody is too afraid to do anything about them. That’s why I need you to help me.”
“Why should I help a bunch of people I don’t know about in a world I know nothing about? What’s in it for me?” Jack asked.
“Well we do have a gold mine near our village, I’m sure they will be happy to pay you.” Alice replied. Jack found some dusty pair of pants and an even dustier overcoat in one of the cabinets. Jack came back over to the two bodies and started to search them and found a pistol and car keys. He pocketed both items walked towards Alice and said, “Ok lady, you have yourself a deal, but we need to go stock up on supplies at my old safe house, its it still there of course.”
Alice and Jack exited the building; the sunlight blinded Jack for a moment while his eyes adjusted. When he could see again he saw the world around him, to his surprise there were a lot more trees around than he thought there would be. The city had become a forest in the time he was away. The tall skyscrapers were wrecked and some had trees growing out of the windows. One of the moss covered buildings was missing its top half, which was scattered in ruins on the street below. In front of those ruins was a two seated buggy. Alice and Jack both got into the buggy and drove their way out of the city and into the surrounding desert.
There was not much in the desert; there was an occasional wrecked airplane, some with its cargo being searched by scavengers or being used as a shelter for others. One particular airplane had a giant hermit crab living inside of it. Some miles later the buggy came across a run-down gas station with a convenience store, the windows were broken and there were many cracks on the walls of the building, the place looked as if it would collapse at any moment. Alice and Jack got out of the vehicle and walked towards the gas station.
“Ha, I can’t believe this is still here!” Jack said as he walked to the door, extending his hand to push the rails of the door of the convenience store. “You’d think all the nukes would tear this place apart.”
“Well it wasn’t just nuclear weapons that destroyed the world.” Alice said, she looked at the convenience store noticing how beat up it was from years of abuse.
“Oh?” Jack replied, “So what else destroyed the world then?”
“A lot of things, there was the meteors that bombarded the planet, various terrorist groups using experimental doomsday weapons they had stolen, the destruction of the moon which had devastating effects on the sea level and the chemical spills from the many refineries that caused mutations in much of the plant and animal life.” Alice said. “There are more, but I don’t think we have much time to list all of them.”
“Oh that must have been a real bad day for humans, huh?” Jack said.
“Yeah, where were you when all of it happened anyway? Alice asked. “The end of the world isn’t something people normally skip on.”
“Well, Lady, I don’t normally sleep in pods for the heck of it, I happened to be resting from some simple surgery after my last job.” Jack said.
“This is your safehouse? It doesn’t look to safe to me.” Alice said while inspecting the faded yellow and red text that was painted on the wall. “Why would you put supplies in a place like this?” Alice asked, “I would think this would be the first place people would loot.”
“Well lady, the supplies we want are under the store and that’s a secret I don’t tell my customers.” Jack said while walking around the sales counter, searching the floor with his hands. His hands felt a small indentation on the floor which he promptly began to pull up, flipping over a section of floor and revealing a flight of stairs leading down into darkness. Jack motioned for Alice to follow and the two headed for the stairs. Jack started running his hand against the wall to find a switch, Jack found the switch he was looking for and to his surprise nothing happened when he flipped the switch. “Oh yeah no power, silly me.” Alice stared at Jack with disapproval. Jack searched the wall again and this time he found a large flashlight hanging on the wall. He turned it on and their pathway was illuminated, if only in a small section. The two stepped down the small corridor, dust blew out of the way of their feet with each stair they stepped on. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, Jack laid the flashlight down on a nearby table lighting up the wall on the opposite side. On that wall were many, many guns ranging from pistols to automatic weapons, also clipped on the wall were various newspapers article that described attacks on many weapon manufacturing companies from a group of mercenaries. “Why would you need so many guns? What were you expecting?” Alice asked. “I just liked to be prepared for anything, that’s all.” Jack replied while stuffing an assault rifle and ammo under his jacket. Alice picked up a shotgun and carried it by the strap with her shoulder. Jack looked at her and chuckled to himself. “You do know how to use that gun, right?” “Of course,” Alice replied, “Just pull the trigger and aim at what you want dead, simple.” Jack just kept chuckling to himself and with that, they both went back up the stairs.
When the both got above ground they were greeted to the sounds of people entering the store. Jack looked into the corner mirror of the store and saw five men searching around the store. Alice recognized these men from the town and popped her head from behind the counter and pulled the trigger on the shotgun which made an unsatisfying clicking sound each time she pulled. The men were alerted to her and started to run towards her. Jack couldn’t help but laugh as she panicked and gave her his pistol and shot four of the five men. The poor quality of the pistol caused the gun to jam when Alice fired again allowing the fifth man to get in close enough to swing a metallic object at Alice which hit her in the side of the head, knocking her unconscious. The attacker was so focused on Alice that he did not see Jack still in the stairway with his rather large weapon fire into him and tearing him to shreds. Jack picked up Alice and put her over his shoulder and walked out of the store. Outside the shop there was a truck, probably used by those five men, with its keys still in the ignition. Jack put Alice into the passenger seat and ran back into the store and back down the stairs to stock up on more weapons and put them into the back of the truck. Jack got into the driver’s seat and started the car. Jack searched Alice to see if she had directions on how to get back to her village, lucky for him she had a map on her. There was a sheet of paper on the dashboard with detailed instructions to kill Alice and any other slave that escaped from the gold mines. He could imagine himself being showered in gold and being able to buy whatever he wanted, although he didn’t know what exactly he could buy in a place like this.
Night was beginning to fall when Alice regained consciousness. She had a terrible headache, but other than that she was fine. She looked to her right and saw the familiar sight of mountains; she was nearing her home for more years than she could remember. She turned to her left and saw Jack and punched him in the face. “You jerk! How could you just sit there in laugh like that, what’s wrong with you!?” Jack chuckled, “How was I supposed to know you were going to miss that last guy, if it’s any consolation, I thought you were a pretty good shot back there, well when the guns loaded at least.” Jack said as he was about to burst into laughter again.
Jack stopped the truck in a forest that was a small distance away from the village. The village was located right at the base of a mountain, there was an orange glow coming from this small town that blended into the starry twilight above. The town itself looked like it came right out of a western with most of the buildings made with wooden planks which itself was surrounded by a wall of large wooden logs with a large gate out in the front with two guards in front of it each of them carrying automatic weapons.
“So, lady, do you have a plan?” Jack asked.
“We could break down the front gate with this truck. I'm sure this truck could take a pounding.” Alice replied. “Then we could rescue the rest of the town from the prison and take out any remaining bandits.”
“Sounds like a good enough plan for me.” Jack revved up the engine of the truck and floored it towards the front gate. The two guards immediately notice the large truck flying towards them and start to fire upon them. Perforating the body of the truck and shattering the windshield, yet the truck continued its charge into the gate shattering it and sending splinters in every direction killing one of the guards and injuring the other. The front end of the truck was completely smashed in and slowed to a stop in front of the prison. Alice got out of the passenger’s side of the truck and at the same time the door of the prison opened as well. She took out her shotgun and pulled the trigger which made a very satisfying blasting sound as a hole in the door was also made for the man behind said door. Meanwhile on the driver’s side of the truck, Jack was busy dodging a hail of bullet fire and firing a few shots of his own from his assault rifle. He ran away from the truck and sprinted towards the passenger’s side of the truck, bullets were whizzing past his head and into the truck, making sparks and even more holes, turning it into an oversized cheese grater. Jack ran into jail following Alice.
Jack meets up with Alice Inside the prison; many of the cells were filled beyond capacity with miserable people. Alice was busy getting the cells open from the keys from the guard she blasted away earlier. Upon opening the cells many of the captives started to rush out of the building. “Lady, what are you doing? You can’t let them out now while there’s gunfire right outside the door!” Moments later all of the captives ran back in in an attempt to avoid the storm of bullets outside. Alice and Jack ran back outside of the jail and came out from behind the truck with guns blazing, sending many bullets and much wooden shrapnel flying across the town. The tide of enemies seemed like an endless wave of madmen armed to the teeth with various weapons.
Eventually the gunfire stopped, it seemed the bandits’ inferior, poorly maintained weapons were beginning to fail on them and Jack and Alice used this to their advantage to take out as many as they could by firing continuously into the mob. By the time they were done firing the sun was peaking from behind the mountain and a trail of empty ammo clips were scattered across the ground.
The captured villagers came back out of the jail when things quieted down considerably. Alice and Jack were only two figures standing when it was over, they stood there panting and sweating from the intense firefight. Jack decided it was reward time and ran into the nearby mineshaft hoping to collect on his payment. When he got to the lantern lit gold mines and started searching every mine cart for gold he could collect for himself. To his horror, he noticed the gold was soft while he remembered real gold being more solid. He then stormed out of the mines in a rage at discovering the fool’s gold he worked so hard to gather.
He got outside and noticed all of the people, some laughing and other crying in tears of joy. Jack saw Alice in the crowd hugging an older man, he came over and Alice introduced the man as her father. Alice’s father shook Jack’s hand and said, “Thank you for all the hard work you’ve done for us. I’m sure some of the gold in the mines is a suitable reward for what you have done here.”
“No problem, sir, but I think this is fool’s gold.” Jack replied, holding up the soft material in his hands.
“But that is real gold; it’s supposed to be like that.” Alice’s father said.
“Well even if it isn’t real, other people would probably think it is and I can still get some money for it, right?” Jack said smiling.
“So what are you going to do now that it’s over?” Alice asked.
“I’m not sure yet, I have my gold now. Maybe I’ll find some bar out there and just drink myself silly with a bottle of whiskey.” Jack said.
Three days later Jack left the town on foot with a bag of gold and some leftover guns from the truck. Alice would pick up rumors from travelers and traders about a man who would help others if the price was right.
[M0n:2225]