RED or DEAD

[Pippi]

((Nanna-Fiora Kroos continued from Tip On The Tightrope))

And now it was evening.

Nanna-Fiora stood with her toes in the water, gentle waves lapping over her feet, threatening but never quite managing to splash against the hem of her skirt, as the sun began to sink down into the ocean, turning the horizon a deep, vivid orange.

It was pretty. Undeniably so. The sort of picturesque setting people dreamed about living in, spending every evening on their porch with a glass of wine in their hand, watching the sunset from their clifftop villa. At least this stupid, pointless program had provided her with one good thing. Maybe when she was lying lifelessly on the cold ground, her parents could send the government a letter. “Dear General Adams. We’re a little upset that your program killed our only daughter, but on the other hand, she got to see a rather delightful sunset, so that balances things out.”

She shook her head and let out a disgruntled sigh, closing her eyes momentarily to feel nothing but the wind running through her hair and the sound of the ocean flow through her ears. Her parents would never even think about sending a letter to anyone in a position of power in the government, sarcastic, angry, or otherwise. When she died, she knew that they’d say nothing, do nothing, and just go on with their lives. She didn’t begrudge them for it. In fact, she felt the complete opposite. Nanna-Fiora utterly adored her parents, for so many myriad reasons, but right at the top was the fact that they had both, in secret, shared several of her un-American sentiments and points of view. They had, after all, been turned away from small businesses more than once, just for the way they sounded or for the colour of their skin. Her dad in particular had been on the same page as her. His personal theory, before being carted off for his second term of service, was that they were sending all the non-American guys off to fight multiple times in short succession just so that they could get rid of them. The spirit of rebellion lay dormant within every member of Nanna-Fiora’s family.

But what would one man striking out on his own do? What would her mom or her dad raging against the state once she was dead and zipped up in a bodybag bring about? Either they’d be eliminated from the public eye, and people would learn not to try and mess with the government, or they’d be ignored entirely, because what could one small family, or a group of families, or even an entire community of grieving angry parents do against the might of the US military?

Nanna-Fiora opened her eyes, blinking a couple times in rapid succession. The sky had turned a darker orange since she’d closed them. She quickly looked behind her, at the spot where she’d dumped her bag and carefully draped her trainers and tights on top of it. Still there. Thank god. She was no stranger to having her stuff stolen. It happened every now and then. Maybe it was just racist assholes taking her stuff because she was black. Maybe it was people getting ‘revenge’ because they saw her as a thief, as if she needed to feel even shittier about her kleptomania. But back home, it was just something that made your day slightly shittier. There were enough thrift shops to get new shoes from.

Here? She didn’t want to think about being forced to run without her trainers, cutting her feet to ribbons on roads and pavements and gravel paths, as she tried to escape from someone who wanted to murder her, gaining on her every second…

Nanna-Fiora shuddered, and turned back to look out across the ocean, grabbing the zipper of her jacket between her thumb and forefinger and yanking it closed. She jostled her shotgun slightly and tightened her grip on it. She was silent, and unlike the hurricane inside herself, she was still. There were patrol boats out there. Hard to see as the light was fading, but as soon as it got dark enough, they’d surely start shining searchlights towards the beach, just to make sure nobody tried anything they didn’t like the look of. But she didn’t have to see them to know they were there. One step out of line, and she’d know, as the bullets ripped through her body.

There had to be something she could do. Some kind of rebellious action she could do, now that she was on her own. Something that’d make the people on those boats sit up and notice. Even if it resulted in her death, she wanted to do something that’d send ripples down through the military to the very core of the government.

The only problem was, she’d been standing here at the water’s edge for a half hour now, and she hadn’t though of a single thing that’d make an impact.

She could hurl her shotgun into the ocean, watch it sink between the waves and disappear without a trace, lost where no-one could use it anymore. Let them know just what she thought of them giving her a gun, let them know exactly what she thought about their expectations for them all to start killing each other cause they said so.

Yeah, that’d really show them, when minutes later some murderous fuck stumbled upon a weaponless black girl and got a kill handed to them on a silver platter. That’d show the soldiers just how darn right she really was, as she bled out onto the sand.

Perhaps she could wait until night, wait until one of those spotlights swung across her location, and blow her brains out when she knew one of those soldiers would be watching. It was tempting, and Nanna-Fiora felt as though she had exited her body before being violently thrust back into it the moment she realised how seriously she was considering it. Jesus. She was talking about killing herself, here, and the first thought that crossed her mind had been how effective a point she would make by doing so.

God, it was probably a stroke of fortune that she’d quickly realised how pointless it’d be. It might shake some lowly soldier or gunner or light operator forever, watching a teenage girl point a shotgun at herself and pull the trigger in front of their own eyes, but for the rest of the world? They’d be watching it at home, warm and safe and a million miles away on the other side of a screen. They’d mourn for a moment, pity the tragic, senseless loss of life, and then switch channels and forget everything they’d just seen.

No, that wasn’t an option. Scrub it from her memory, or try her best to do so. There were enough awful things fogging her brain up already, after all. She didn’t need to add the vision of shooting herself to that list.

Nanna-Fiora looked out to sea again. She reckoned she could see one of the boats now, or at least the vague, faint outline of one, bobbing gently in the water.

Her finger twitched. She fought the desperate urge to curl it around the trigger. She had a weapon now, and here, not a million miles away, were the people who had helped to make her life worse just because she didn’t fit their bill of being ‘American.’ This was a chance. This was a chance people like her dreamed of. She’d be killed before she could even fire a second shot, most certainly, but if she took someone down with her, someone deserving down, maybe that would be enough.

If their oppressors gave them weapons, she would be the first to turn her gun on them, rather than on her fellow oppressed.

Could she do it? Oh, she certainly could. She could do it in a heartbeat.

Would she do it?

…

Nanna-Fiora loosened her grip on the gun slightly, feeling her hands pulsing, only now realising just how tightly she’d been holding on to it, and turned to walk back onto the sand. Maybe, maybe if she was hidden better, maybe if she had a gun that wasn’t a freaking shotgun, maybe then she’d have done it. But as it stood, she had a weapon that was designed for close quarter combat. Not taking out individual people on boats so far out she could barely see them. Besides, they would have sniper rifles and binoculars and all that crap on the boat with them. They’d never even let her raise the gun.

She sat down on her bag and sighed. She leaned the gun against it, before she began to brush her legs with her hands, trying to remove both the water and the sand that was clinging to them. The light was fading with every passing second. She needed to move elsewhere before it turned pitch black, either somewhere with actual lighting – fat chance of that, she knew – or somewhere that wasn’t as hopelessly exposed as this stretch of beach.

And yet she stayed for a good while longer, even after she’d slipped her tights and trainers back on and the shotgun was back in her grasp. There had to be another way. Another way of showing some form of rebellion to General fucking Adams and his murderfest, one that didn’t result in her own death at the end of it? But what? Being the last person left alive wouldn’t do it; that was what the General wanted, after all. And dying would leave her, well… dead.

How much time left did she have to think of an answer? How much luck did she have?

Well, she’d been given a gun, at least. A gun, whilst her friends were probably running around scared with dildos and American flags and cat food, or whatever ‘joke’ weapons they’d doled out for this version. That meant that any luck she might have had originally had been extended even further. She had a good few days, four at the least, where this thing alone would be enough to deter most would-be players from trying anything stupid.

She stood up, suddenly, and quickly gathered up her things. She still had time. She still had time to think of an answer. Four days at least. And if she played things smart, kept her cool, didn’t pull another moronic stunt like she had back at the cottage? Maybe she could make her own luck.

God, this was the most optimistic she’d been about anything for a very long time, wasn’t it? That was pretty damn sad.

Nanna-Fiora felt a smile crawl onto her face, as she slipped her bag over her shoulder and headed back up the beach. Maybe there was someone looking out for her, like Yvonne had said. Like she still believed. Maybe there wasn’t. She didn’t know. She didn’t know a lot of things.

For now, though, she knew one thing; she’d have to rely on herself. Just the way it had always been.

((Nanna-Fiora Kroos continued in Seek A Way Out!))