Alli fell silent as she brought the Spirit Mobile around another corner, she saw the beginnings of Watt Hill. The aging infrastructure marked the community’s history, but the large project housing towering over the classic buildings most symbolized the neighborhood. Run down in the fifty years since they were built, they were festering pits where innocence died in the face of brutal gang warfare.
While other neighborhoods in the city were gentrified into something livable, Watt Hill seemed to be confined more and more, a cut off area of the city where the criminal element could dwell away from the ‘upstanding’ parts of the city. Alli knew that to be a joke, but it was the kind of fairy tale that allowed River City’s residents to sleep a bit easier at night.
King Drive was fairly well maintained up until it hit the edge of the Hill. From there, it started to degrade into a series of bigger and bigger potholes. The city would quickly black top over them every few years, but even the transit board had given up on the area for the most part. As soon as she turned off King Drive and onto Willow Avenue, the streets were so damaged she might as well be driving on gravel. She slowed down to spare the Spirit Mobile’s suspension, but the ominous figures on the edges of the street made her worried.
It also made her feel bad. Watt Hill was mostly a black neighborhood, with populations of Arabian and Eastern European immigrants mixed in. She knew she shouldn’t assume violent behavior from everyone here. She knew most of the Hill’s residents were basically good people, but she also watched the news. Bad things happened daily in the Hill with random murders and drug related violence being a regular occurrence.
She kept an eye on house numbers s she moved down Willow Avenue. Ziya’s address was a few blocks off the regular route, but she saw it was just ahead on her right. She found a parking spot just a few houses down and pulled the Spirit Mobile in. With a deep breath, she turned off the car’s engine and opened her door. Kaihime followed her.
They reached the end of the walkway to the rundown two story bungalow just as some kind of light flashed inside. Alli noticed the door was askew, hanging open and broken on the top hinge. She started to say something, but never got a chance.
Blinding light ripped from the windows of the house and turned the world white around them. It washed over them both even as they heard the sound of the house exploding before them. Alli didn’t even have time to scream before a wooden plank struck her and sent her sprawling to the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment