one day i'll be king rat but hell, just a cockroach is fine for now

[dmboogie]

((Abe never thought he’d be the type to hit the ground running when shit hit the fan, but, well, here he was. Running.))

Abraham Watanabe figured there were a lot of words that described him, mostly variants on the theme of “dipshit” or “bastard man” or “fucking piece of shit stoner.” Definitely not like an alpha Chad survivalist bear piss-drinker man who’d thrive in a situation like this.

He’d never been the type of guy to imagine how he’d react in a disaster scenario. Thinking about tragedy just made him, well, kinda sad; and it’s not like he was often given to deep introspection anyways. But if you cornered him and asked him, well, he’d just turn it into a stupid joke, right? Like, if he woke up on SOTF, soh-tiff, he’d say like ‘Aw yeah I’d find a clown costume from the clown daycare and hide in closets and pop out and go “yow” and scare the shit out of people and then run away honking a bicycle horn’ because that was like, his brand. Spending his last days living it up by doing a stupid gimmick.

But this wasn’t funny. This really wasn’t fuckin’ funny. Seeing a lady get her brains blown out in front of a live studio audience wasn’t fuckin’ funny. Terrorist pieces of shit all holding up cards like ‘please clap’ and ‘please stop screaming’ and ‘those in the front row, please don’t wipe the blood off of your face.’ Metaphorically. There were no cards. Where the fuck was he going with this?

Where the fuck was he going? He was running. Through a fuckin’ forest of happy little trees, aw, wasn’t it cute? Lungs burning, blood pounding, god why had he been such a couch potato? Didn’t he know he’d have to run for his life one day? Dumbass. Why was he running? Why wouldn’t he be running? Chessmate, dipshit.

Yeah yeah he’d done the whole routine. Woke up, shat his pants, metaphorically, that was a fucking metaphor, don’t look at him like that, it was a metaphor, rooted through his bags, found the fucking knifeman dreamman spookman glove, got a real hearty chuckle out of that, didn’t he, boy how many of those shitty fucking movies had he watched, he put it on, because of course he did. He’d poked the knives experimentally and they were like metal, but cheap metal, so he was really just cosplaying. That was fine. He didn’t really wanna go “snicker snack” with his Freddy Knifehands hands and kill someone anyways. He didn’t wanna hurt anyone. He really, really fuckin’ didn’t.

His other bag just had a two-liter of Mountain Dew and a big fuckoff bag of cool ranch Doritos. Both unopened. He’d gotten the snacks but his stomach had been feeling a bit queasy from all the bussing so he’d saved them for later. Now he was the fucking Gamer King of dipshit island. He shoved the goodies into his larger terrorist duffel bag and left the other bag behind, because what was he, a tourist, one bag was just fine.

Abe had been standing there, with his stupid glove and his duffel bag, just kinda staring into space for a second, just breathing for a second. The introspection came to him unbidden, like an encyclopedia salesman, knocking on the door, pounding on the door, ringing the doorbell, hitting the door with an encyclopedia briefcase, bashing down the door, breaking into the house. He didn’t want to think but he thought, because he had to.

He didn’t have any dreams, or goals, but if he did have them they’d sure as hell not involve dying. Abe thought he’d have time to figure himself out, thought it’d be fine to drift for a while, fine to work at his dad’s coffeeshop for a while, fine to have a good time with Forrest until she figured out where she wanted to go to college and left him behind, because it’s not like he had ambitions, right?

Forrest was in a motherfucking arm cast, what the hell was she supposed to do here? She could get hurt, and the thought of her getting hurt, well, it hurt, and man Abe wasn’t used to intense feelings, and he didn’t want to feel these feelings, but he didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want her to die, and he usually was certain of jackshit, but he was certain enough of this, and well, that was something, right?

So he was running to a vague destination for a vague purpose. He just knew that he had to do something that wasn’t sitting still and panicking, so he was running and panicking instead. Much better. Much much better.

There was a shape on the ground, on the trail, distinct from the shrubbery and brambles. A human shape. A shape that wasn’t moving but definitely human. Were they already fucking dead? Had it come to this already? He didn’t see blood.

Abe recognized her when he got close enough to see she was still breathing. Nona. Didn’t really “know” her, but she went to the coffeeshop a lot while he was working there so they’d talked a bit. Seemed decent enough, but - Nona? More like, ‘No One He Cared About’, ha. Haha. That was mean. She didn’t deserve that. But Abe didn’t deserve any of this, so like, she could suck it up.

‘Cause, see, she had two bags next to her. Two unopened bags. And she was still knocked the fuck out from the terrorist’s patented knockout gas. Ohohohoh. Fucking ojou-sama anime girl laugh. He had a plan. It wasn’t a very clever plan. It was obvious. But like, that’s what he got for being the early bird in this scenario.

He carefully unzipped her larger bag. Nona looked like she was out cold, but he really didn’t wanna wake her up. Good thing, too, because there was a motherfucking submachine gun in there. His heart stopped for a moment. Early bird gets the gun. Bird with a gun. Flap flap caw caw bang bang motherfuckers. He had a gun. People who had guns tended to live longer, right? Right? He wanted to live longer. He wanted the gun.

He took the gun. Took the ammo. Took half of her food and water. Rooted through the first-aid-kit, decided he had no idea what the fuck most of it even was, just took the painkillers. Didn’t even bother to re-zip the bag. Left her personal bag alone. A guy had to have standards.

Abe paused for a moment after the theft was done, looked at Nona’s peaceful, sleeping face. Man. He was a dick, wasn’t he? Didn’t even hesitate. Oh well. C’est la fucking so it goes. He started to jog away, then hesitated, turned back and rooted through his own bag again.

Next to Nona, he left a few of his items: the Freddy Krueger glove. The Doritos. The Dew. The slip of paper that had his name and weapon on it. It was a receipt, right? That made this a trade. He was trading without permission, not stealing. He took her shit, he gave her the shit he didn’t want, but he also gave her a purpose, right? If she wanted a refund, well, she knew his name. She didn’t know where to find him, but if she did, well. Fair was fair. "Thanks for your patronage," he muttered under his breath as he turned away.

((This time, Abe was unambiguously running away. While he ran, he wondered how many of his classmates would have shot Nona in the head while she slept, right then and there.))