Page 118 of The Warrior
My hunger didn’t care for the excuses and to make a point, my stomach gave a loud growl of complaint.
“I could cut off a leg. That should be plenty of meat.” Leaning my head back, I looked up to the sky, wondering how long it would take me to cut off the leg. “I don’t have time, it’s getting dark soon. And what if the blood from the leg attracts wolves? I don’t need to become the hunted one.”
Lowering my gun, I hissed out, “Fuck!”
I couldn’t kill the bear; I would have to find another way of feeding my growling stomach.
The hike back to the cabin should have taken an hour, but without my wristband to guide me, I had to rely on the marks I’d noticed on the way here. It would have been fine, if the snow hadn’t started falling so hard that I couldn’t see a thing.
Lost, cold, and miserable, I promised myself that if I made it back to the cabin, I’d fly south to buy provisions. The downside to being recognized was nothing compared to the chance of dying alone in the wilderness.
That’s why the next morning, I found myself back in the small rural town where I’d left my drone and bought the old one that had taken me to the cabin.Fresh food and friendly service, it said on a handmade sign outside the only store in town. I didn’t find either, when I entered the shithole of a shed that was half empty and only had canned, frozen, or processed food. Picking up a bag of nuts, I checked the expiration date and put them down again. March 2437 was nine months ago.
“No need to be greedy,” the old man who worked here said in a gruff voice when I emptied his shelf of the only eight beers he had out.
“I’m thirsty – do you have more in the back?”
“No.”
I could tell a liar when I met one and insisted. “Would you go check?”
His upper lip lifted in a grimace of irritation as he shuffled his feet past me toward a door in the back of the store. I wrinkled my nose at the stench of alcohol and unwashed hair and clothes that reeked from him. Not that I smelled too good myself, but that old fucker was disgusting with his greasy hair, his beer-reddened nose, and the rotten teeth that showed when he spoke to me.
“Don’t think I don’t know who you are. All high and mighty, coming in here giving orders as if I’m your personal slave or something.”
“I only asked if you had more beers.”
“More beers, more beers…” he mocked and disappeared behind the door.
Less than five seconds later he returned. “Nope.”
“You sure you don’t have any more beer?”
“That’s right,your highness.”
Marching past him, I slammed the door open to see for myself. As I suspected, he was lying.
“That beer isn’t for sale,” he said behind me.
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s for other customers.” He ended the sentence by muttering something under his breath that I didn’t hear.
“What did you say?”
With his bent-over posture, the greasy old man turned his back on me and moved away.
In two quick steps, I grabbed his shoulder and swung him around. “Answer me.”
“The beer is not for sale. Go back to the palace. I’m sure you people have more than enough.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Careful what you say, old man.”
He smirked. “Or what? Are you going to kill me? I’m not scared of dying. It would be a fucking relief compared to living this miserable life.”
“Your misery isn’t my fault.”
He scoffed. “Then whose fault is it? Why do you get to have a wife, live in a palace, and own that expensive red drone that you hide behind Elton’s house? It’s not my fault that I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my fucking ass like you were.”
