The Holdout

Reya walked through the BART tunnel at a fairly good pace, a lantern on her head, heart beating pretty heavily. This area of the track tended to be populated by Crips. They could come out at any time, especially if you were an obvious target, and they weren’t there for tea. Reya had had her share of run-ins, but also had a comparably higher number of safe travels within the tunnels, as well as making camp there when environment dictated. Besides, there was nothing on her person to be stolen. Save for the locket in her pocket with Keith’s Army picture inside.

A shadow leapt into view directly in front of Raya. She stifled a scream with her hand and gasped, wide eyed. The rat was as big as a chihuahua, and had red eyes. It looked directly at her. “No, no, go away” she breathed. It moved closer, inches from her feet, and stayed there, Reya’s heart pumping high in her chest. Then finally, it ran in the opposite direction as fast as it came. Raya stood on the tracks hyperventilating, hoping the noise would not signal an aggressor. When finally she collected herself again, she walked on toward Balboa Park.

The air began to warm up the way it did in stations, and light started being visible. Within fifteen minutes, Reya got to the end of the station. Getting out of stations was the most dangerous part. She crouched under the platform listening, looking for shadows from above, any sign of life. She heard her name. The shadow people. They did this frequently.

With a dry mouth, and hearing things, Reya climbed up the ladder on the end of the tunnel, clearing the view to the right with each rung. Once on the platform, there was nowhere to hide. She leaped into view and scampered in quick bursts to the exit. She climbed up the escalator slowly, noiselessly, with her head lamp off. “Fuck!” she uttered as she tripped on a bottle of booze wrapped in a paper bag. She heard voices above, and stopped midway to listen.

The words were mostly indiscernible, but they included a lot of cussing and malice, such as a group of miserable street people-turned-schizophrenics might utter, and lots of gruff laughter. These people tended to react in all different ways in Reya’s experience. She was armed, but vulnerable to her pistol being taken from her, and clearly outnumbered. There was no way they would let her through without paying “toll or fare.” Fortunately, there was about a gram of pot and some dry yerba maté in her bag.

As she crouched up to the top of the escalator, she could see them sitting there. A group of figures in hoodies, smoking crack and throwing around hateful speech, cackling to jokes and stories that could freeze one’s blood.

“…And then I went like this, right? And I held her hair to her bleeding scalp while I stripped her…” a guy was saying.

Reya unholstered her gun, and holding it both hands sprang from the escalator and into the corridor. One of the crackheads looked at her as she came into view.

“What’re you gonna do, bitch? Kill all us? Good luck.” He started to stand up but stumbled. The others started laughing hoarsely. Then finally, the heaviest looking one of them got to his feet and held a baseball bat up. “Good luck getting by me ya fuckin’ cunt sucking bitch!” He moved the bat up and down.

Reya pulled back on the hammer. “It’s not worth it dude! Just let me through. I could take you out in a second. Two other guys got to their feet. She could see there were five of them.

“You’re out numbered, cunt. And I bet you have a nice, tight twat. If not, we’d just take you from behind.”

They all laughed.

Reya aimed for the guy with the bat, but as she squeezed the trigger, another one grabbed the gun and pulled it up, sending the shot into the air, shrapnel coming in all directions, missing Reya by a hair.

“Let go!” she yelled, fruitlessly.

The guy wrestled the gun out of her hand and turned it back on her. Her heart froze.

“Get on your knees, bitch” demanded the guy with the guy. The guy with the bat gained and grabbed hold of her shoulder.

“Wait. I’ve got weed,” Reya said. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“Hear that? She got weed. Sounds like we get weed and cunt, free!” He grabbed her other shoulder and Reya prepared to be raped, possibly killed. Her life flashed before her eyes.

“Stop” a male voice yelled from the station entrance. It was a familiar voice. Jamal.

“Yeah?? What’re gonna do??” The guy with Reya’s gun put it to her head.

“I’m gonna kill you, ya fuckin’ crackhead,” yelled Jamal. “That’s what I’m about to do! Put the gun down. It’s not worth it. She’s one of ours!”

Another voice from the same area yelled “It’s not happening without a fight! Don’t mess with the Alliance!”

“Oh, shit!” The guy with the bat unhanded Reya and dropped the bat on the ground with the sound of a hollow metal pipe on stone. He crouched down with his hands up, like a weakling.

The guy with Reya’s gun stayed in place.

“She dead! You’re gonna kill her! Don’t move.”

There was a gunshot. He lurched backward, then fell to the ground, the gun falling out of his hand. He gurgled and blood came from his scarred, messed up face, then he fell on his face.

The remaining four scoundrels sat down on the ground, shaken and looked at the advancing gunman saying things like “We didn’t mean no disrespect, please let us go.”

Four shots took them out.

Reya trembled in shock and watched as Jamal and Sam advanced. Sam Extended a hand, while Jamal fished Reya’s piece from the pool of blood growing around it.

“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” said Jamal. Are you okay?”

Reya nodded and the three left and went the rest of the way to the Alliance bunker, pausing only to pick limes from the park.

Once at the bunker, Reya took a shower and Angelica cleaned the blood off of her with alcohol and fed her some stew. Sam used the ham radio to notify headquarters in code about the fight, but that Reya had arrived intact.

Reya took her locket out and looked at Keith’s picture. “Thank you,” she whispered tearfully.

On base in South Korea, Keith wondered about his girlfriend. Last he’d heard, she was doing fine in acupuncture school in California. Once the army dropped out under top secret orders, there was nothing left but imagination. Keith teared up as he performed routine repairs on the unit’s one Apache helicopter. If government was a thing again, he could leave the army and take advantage of the G.I bill, and hopefully find Reya if she were still alive. Until then, it was just a matter of holing up and waiting for advice from the states. Something that hadn’t come for a while.

He put down his wrench and got cleaned up for a crew lunch of MREs and filtered rain water.