The Right Path Read online

  “I don’t know what’s happening, but stay back. I’m warning you,” I said.

  It was the gang leader’s turn to be surprised.

  “What?” You’re warning me?” He shook his head and turned around in disbelief. He waved his hand over his shoulder and began to walk away.

  “I’m done with this punk and his games. Take him boys. Do whatever you want this time, but don’t mess up that cane. I want it.”

  I took a step back and instinctively went into a defensive stance. I don’t know why, but it felt like the right thing to do. I also knew that if I fought these kids I was going to hurt them bad, real bad.

  “I warned you,” I said as the first one rushed me.

  I didn’t need to expose the blade. These punks were unarmed and I could easily kill them with the cane. When I realized I was thinking this, I stopped in shock and almost got plowed over by a guy rushing me. At the last moment, I sidestepped him and shoved him to the ground.

  What’s going on? How can I do this?

  This was crazy. I wasn’t crippled anymore. I felt strong and confident, and I knew how to fight. Me, who had never won a fight in my entire life. I wanted to figure this out, but now was not the time and I dodged another bully coming at me.

  When the first bully hit the pavement, their leader spun around in disbelief.

  “What the f...,” he yelled.

  I pirouetted in a low circle as one of the punks swung a haymaker at my head. His momentum from the swing exposed his back and I shoved him away hard. He staggered and fell ending up in a heap a few feet away. The next one came at me low to tackle me and I knocked him on his head with the cane as he dove in. He crumbled at my feet and didn’t move any more. I had only knocked him out, but it looked worse.

  The others began to warily circle me, trying to figure what was happening and how I could have bested two of them so easily.

  “I’ll take care of this,” the brawny gang leader said to his cohorts in crime. He stepped into their circle, faking a swing to my head and aimed a vicious kick to my knee.

  He’s attacking what he thinks is my weak point. Smart little bully, probably why he’s the leader.

  I knew he was a good fighter, but I didn’t want to hurt him. I danced out of the way. He followed up the missed kick with a series of punches aimed at my head and stomach. He was trying to distract me enough to land a blow and finish me. Instead, I stepped outside one of his high punches, grabbed his arm, and swung him around. As he spun around, I shoved the cane under his chin and pulled him back in a chokehold.

  “Keep fighting and I’ll snap your neck,” I said.

  He realized his predicament and stopped moving.

  I had no idea that the girl was still in the alley until I heard the scream.

  “Ahh,” a gang member yelled, falling to his knees. He evidently had been sneaking up on me and I spun the gang leader and myself around to face the new challenge. What I saw was just one more shock in a day of many.

  The last gang member was down on the ground with the little twerp sitting on top of him. He had a deadly looking knife embedded in the back of his leg and she was holding another one against his neck.

  “Move and you’re dead,” she said.

  She looked up at me with a triumphant look on her face.

  “Thought you might need some help.”

  I pulled the cane tighter against the leader’s neck.

  “Call your boys off and I won’t hurt any of you.”

  The leader gave a final effort to break free. Today, I was stronger and he knew he was outmatched.

  “All right, no more,” he yelled.

  I released him and shoved him away. He staggered a few feet and looked back at me in deadly anger. The girl yanked her blade out of the downed bully’s leg and eased backwards holding a deadly blade in each hand.

  The gang leader helped his wounded friend to his feet and gathered the rest of his boys. He shook awake the one I had knocked out and two other punks pulled him to his feet. They backed away and when they all reached the head of the alley, the leader looked back at me.

  “I don’t know how you did that, but this ain’t over. Trust me, it ain’t over.”

  Then they turned and ran, disappearing down the street.

  The young twerp walked over to me with a questioning look on her face.

  “How’d you do that,” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, looking closely at the cane and examining the stub on the handle.

  I pushed the stub again and immediately fell on my ass. Pain flooded back into me as I felt the bones moving in my leg.

  “Oh crap, I knew this was too good to be true,” the girl moaned, snapping the knives back together and pushing them into her waistband. “Come on, get up. We have to get out of here before those guys come back.”

  I heard her words, but I had no strength left and my head began to spin. I tried to focus, but it was useless. I was exhausted, in pain and going to black out. The girl wrapped my arm over her shoulder and yanked me to my feet. She was skinny, but she was strong and we lurched forward. Luckily, I held onto the cane and she started to drag me out of the alley.

  “I’m going to pass out.”

  “No, stay with me. I know a place we can go,” she said. “It’s not far from here and then you can rest. Come on, don’t stop moving.”

  I don’t remember anything except moving steadily across the gray, rubble-strewn streets. The pain finally overwhelmed me and everything went black.

  I woke up in a darkened room with the little twerp perched over me like a mother hen. I tried to raise myself up on my elbow to look around, but I was too weak and fell back on the mattress.

  “Where am I?”

  “My place,” she said. “I dragged you here. You nearly passed out after the fight with the gang.”

  “Thanks for getting me out of the alley. As soon as I can stand, I’m outta here. No offense, but I don’t want no excess baggage hanging around me.”

  “What? Me, excess baggage?” she cried indignantly. “I saved your ass back there. Who knows what would have happened to you if I wasn’t there.”

  I lay there staring at her. She looked younger than me maybe 13 or 14, skinny, dirty, and homeless, all facts we had in common. Her clothes weren’t as ripped as mine, but with time, she’d look pretty much like every other stray kid on the street.

  Fat lot of good we would do each other – a skinny girl and a cripple.

  “Hey, no offense. Like I said before, thanks for draggin’ me here, but I don’t know what good we could do each other. I barely scrounge enough food to feed myself. I haven’t been able to find a decent pair of pants in months. You’d be better off by yourself. At least you got two healthy legs.”

  She looked at me like I was stupid, nothing I wasn’t used to.

  “What are you talking about? You just kicked the crap outta that gang and I helped. We make a great team. You still worried about food? We can get enough to feed a whole crew of us. You want a new pair of pants, I’ll steal you a pair. Like you pointed out, I can run pretty fast.”

  So that’s it. Just like always, it was the same thing. She wanted us to be partners. Everyone always wants something. There’s always a price to be paid although I guess maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. There was safety in numbers, but the two of us were just shy of being totally pathetic. Of course, there was this cane thing. I’m not really sure what happened back in the alley and I didn’t know if I could do it again of if I even wanted to. The pain it caused my leg was excruciating. Was it worth it?

  “I don’t know how that happened back there, but it almost killed me. You had to carry me back here and even now I can barely lift my head. I don’t know what that was, but it beat the crap outta me worse than any gang ever did.”

  “I know what it is,” she said. She was smiling like she knew the biggest secret in the world. She crossed her arms over her skinny chest and sat there, waiting, waiting for me to ask her.


  “OK, I give in. What happened?”

  “Not telling,” she replied smugly.

  “Fine, keep it to yourself and you might as well take the cane too cause I’m never gonna touch it again.”

  The smug look vanished from her face. “Wait, wait,” she protested. “Don’t give up so fast. The cane is yours. I have my own weapon the old man gave me.”

  Oh yeah, the old man, the one who started this whole mess. I knew his gift was too good to be true.

  “What?”

  She held up the knife.

  “This,” she replied, “Look at it closely.”

  She scooted closer to me so I could see the knife better. It was beautiful and deadly looking too. The handle had carvings on it like my cane and it was a bit thicker than a standard knife handle. The blade was dual edged, but there was something different about this knife. Embedded in the handle of the knife was a stub. She pointed to the stub as she held it.

  “This is what turns it on. Watch.”

  She pushed the button, but I didn’t see anything different about it until she twirled the blade expertly. She twisted it a certain way and it came apart. She was now grasping two blades and swirling them in a deadly dance. There was no way she could have those skills at such a young age.

  Then all of a sudden it all made sense. The old man had given us memory weapons. Why would he do that? I didn’t know much about memory weapons, just what everyone else on the street knew; that they were from the war and they somehow gave you expert skills. No one I knew had ever seen one. The word on the street was that all those superb weapons had been long destroyed, like most everything else worth a damn in the world.

  She snapped the knives back together and hit the stub again, deactivating them. She slumped forward a bit, but she gave me a lopsided grin.

  “See, told you I knew.”

  The knife had the same stub as the cane. This was all starting to make sense in a very weird and scary way. I had a memory weapon and so did the girl. This day was turning out to be stranger by the minute.

  “Now you look tired,” I said.

  “A little. Seems to happen each time I use ‘em. Nothing quite so bad as you though.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Not really, just a weird feeling in my head when I pressed the button. Did yours hurt?”

  “Yeah, my leg hurt and I feel totally wasted,” I said. “How long did I sleep?”

  “Half the day. I tried to wake you up, but you were out cold.”

  I slumped back down trying to understand everything. When I activated the cane I felt whole, but as soon as I deactivated it, I collapsed. When the little twerp used her knives, she became tired too. It was like the weapons were draining us of energy.

  “Maybe these things need our life energy to work,” I said.

  “Like some kind of blood sucking leech?” she asked, looking askew at the knife she was holding.

  “Maybe, I’m guessing, but it seems like it happens only when you press the button.”

  “But we get mad skills!”

  “Yeah for a price though.”

  “Maybe you used yours too much. When you finished with the gang, you had nothing left and you passed out.”

  I thought about that and realized she was could be right. It seemed like a logical explanation for some very weird stuff. All I knew is that the pain in my leg was much worse than usual. My stomach decided at that moment to rudely interrupt our conversation with an enormous rumbling.

  “See, even your stomach agrees with me.”

  “I have to get up and find some food.”

  “I’d like to see that happen,” she said, laughing at me when I tried to sit up.

  I was feeling better, but nowhere near strong enough to go back on the street and scrounge for food. I plopped back down on the mattress.

  “I got food here. Ain’t much. It’s my secret stash, some stuff I was hiding if things got real bad. I’ll share it with you under one condition.”

  I stared at her, hope written all over her face. “Let me guess. We become partners?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  I didn’t answer right away. I needed to think this through. She’d already proved that she was capable of handling herself. That made me wonder why she wanted to join with me. I was a cripple and pretty useless most days. I studied her face. She looked scared, scared and all alone. I knew the feeling well. What did I have to lose? I hadn’t been doing so well on my own. Maybe it was time to change my strategy.

  “OK, but if we’re gonna be partners then I should at least know your name.”

  She smiled. “Zia Slate. What’s yours?”

  “Abraham Jones.”

  “Abraham? What kind of goofy name is that?” she squealed. “What do people call you for short? Abbie? No, wait, hey Hambone.”

  Zia couldn’t stop herself and she laughed hysterically. It was probably a tension release from all the fighting earlier.

  “Ha, ha, ha, you’re so funny,” I replied. “My Mom and Dad used to call me Abe.”

  That shut her up immediately. She got off the mattress and started to root around in one of the corners of the room, coming up with two packets of army rations. Where she got them was beyond me, but I gladly accepted the one she offered me. ‘Rats’ were a complete self-contained meal full of everything a soldier would need to sustain himself for days. They were worth their weight in gold.

  We ate in silence. I was feeling better when we finished the packets and I was able to sit up.

  Zia looked at me.

  “Like I said, we’d make a great team, I can be your backup. Help you if you get tired again and get you food.”

  Something was still bugging me. I studied her face trying to figure her out.

  “Why don’t you just take the cane and have both weapons? You can use them to get whatever you want. Food, water, shelter, anything.”

  “I was going to do that,” she confessed.

  “What stopped you?”

  “I don’t know, guilt maybe. I had the cane in my hand and I was going to leave you here. This place is hard to find and I figured you’d be OK until you recovered. It’s not like I was leaving you to die in the street, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take it and walk out.”

  I’d only known this girl a short time, but I believed her.

  “Whatever made you stay, thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “Besides that cane is too big for me anyway,” she added with a smirk on her pretty face.

  I let out a feeble laugh and realized it was nice to be around someone who didn’t want to rob or kill me. Maybe this partner thing would work out. Now I was curious about her.

  “Why are you out here alone?”

  I saw a grimace cross her face.

  “Cause someone always wants something from you,” she said.

  “You got that right. Want to talk about it?”

  “It’s a sad boring story, probably the same as yours.”

  “Might as well tell me, we got nothing but time on our hands,” I said and leaned back against the wall to listen to her story.

  She sat for a long time in silence before she began.

  “Life used to be decent until my adopted family hit upon hard times. They never let me forget what a big favor they were doing me by taking me in.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Don’t know. No one ever told me.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Can’t miss something you don’t know about in the first place.”

  I nodded.

  “Anyway, times got harder, food became scarcer and then the first john showed up.”

  She stopped talking and I knew she was thinking about a bad time. I had nothing to offer her so I kept silent. If she wanted to tell me the rest, she would. I didn’t need to know every detail to get the picture of why she was on the streets.

  She sighed.

  “I’m sure you get the picture, but there was no way that bastard
was going to touch me. I landed a lucky kick and got away from him. I didn’t stop running until I was on the other side of this godforsaken city. I was safe, but I ran with nothing.”

  “How did you find this place?”

  I roamed around for hours looking for anything that looked safe, but there was nothing but bombed out shells of buildings.

  “Welcome to my side of town,” I said with a flourish of my hand.

  “Finally, I saw this building and the stairway was still intact so I climbed up and that’s when I found this room. You can’t see it from the street and it was the best place I could find.”

  I looked around the room. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it had walls and a door. It looked safe enough and that was everything in this city.

  “It’s a good room,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  Zia shrugged and got off the mattress.

  “It’s not much, but it’s mine. I’m gonna look outside to make sure no one followed us. We made a lot of noise coming in earlier. I didn’t want to leave until you woke up. You rest now and when I get back, we can figure out what to do next.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  I knew it didn’t really matter what I said because I was too weak to do much of anything.

  “Hey, be careful out there. Lots of animals running loose.”

  “No problem, Ham.”

  “Ham?”

  “Yeah, I like that name better. You got a problem with that?”

  “No, not at all,” I said, a smile on my face.

  Zia was back in a few minutes. “All’s clear out there.”

  “Good. We need to find that old man. He’s the one who gave us these weapons and started this whole mess. I want to know why.”

  “You strong enough to go lookin’ now?” Zia asked, concern fleeting across her face.

  “Yeah, I can make it. The sooner we find him, the better and besides, I don’t trust those punks to come back and try to even the score.”

  Zia helped me off the mattress and we headed out.

  “You got any idea where that old man hangs out,” I asked.

  “Nope, but how hard could be to find an old guy pushing a shopping cart around.”