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The war was grueling. It had been going on for so long now, she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been enlisted. She couldn’t even remember what it was all for anymore. Their cause? Unknown. Their numbers? Too vast. The destruction? Far spread, and growing.
And Bethany had grown tired.
But not tired enough to not have noticed an entire restaurant springing up on her patrol route.
That was definitely not there yesterday.
Well. No. Not restaurant. More like a diner? One of those places where you would see couples sharing a milkshake, or the waitresses wearing those cliched dresses, and the cooks in the back could always be counted on to have a vat of lard. Everything looked like it was in order, from the big neon sign declaring “EAT” to the parking lot that needed repaving.
But wait, was that a guy on the roof? It was hard to tell with the huge sign saying Mignight Burger blocking her view.
Bethany was trying to get a better look without moving beyond her vantage point behind the ruins of a destroyed Taco Bell. She couldn’t tell if they were friendlies or not. They had no flags or signs, nothing to indicate which side they were on.
Frankly, these days Bethany hardly knew. So many people came in and out of the fighting and had opinions on whether or not there should even be fighting that it was hard to tell who was who. All she knew was that at this point, she was on the side of whoever could get her out of this alive.
And right now, this diner that flew no colors was a UFO.
Unidentified Fucking Object.
And she can’t afford to have that on her patrol route. Not if she wanted to continue her quest for survival.
She spotted a mound of rubble near the front entrance of the diner. Looking around the street, confirming she saw no other movement, Bethany took a deep breath, feeling her muscles tense in preparation.
Like a bullet she burst into activity, running with every ounce of energy she had in her, knowing every second she spent out in the open a second she was inviting someone to shoot her dead. Bracing herself, she threw her body at the ground just behind the rubble, skidding the last two feet before she put her back against the pieces of building that provided her cover. Quickly, she looked around as she took stock of herself, knowing that in a fit of adrenaline she might have missed the initial pain of a bullet.
Feeling no pain she took a careful peek around the corner, realizing that the mound actually put her much closer to the diner than she initially hoped. She was too close to get a good view at the roof now, unable to tell if the man was still up there. She hadn’t seen any movement inside when she first looked, but now she got a clear view of a woman hunched over at a booth, looking down but Bethany couldn’t see what was on her table from her viewpoint.
Why is she just sitting in that booth, next to the windows like that?!
She was still deciding what she should do, if she should call this in to command or investigate further when the swinging door to the kitchen opened up, and two people walked into the diner proper, arguing.
One of them was a small Latin woman, brown skin and dark hair. The other was a White man not much taller than the woman next to him, brown hair save for a few spots of grey. It was unclear anyone if in the diner identified as part of Bethany. They didn’t look like any Bethanies she knew. No signs of war, no hunger in their eyes or bodies.
No fear.
It had been so long since Bethany had seen anyone who didn’t seem even remotely touched by war. She needed to know how it was possible. How had they survived the burning of the world? How had they managed to keep themselves intact? How were they not showing allegiance to any side and still alive?!
Questions about what the diner was, where it came from, who they were, all those were gone. She only wanted to know how.
Without knowing why and–for the first time in a long time–without fear, Bethany stood up from behind the rubble, exposing herself.
Maybe they could teach her how, too.