This girl didn’t need to be here, he thought and was determined to take her to the gate.
The Mustang’s engine roared as he passed the last couple of wrecked cars on its way back to the gate. The rescued girl stopped screaming and was now just sobbing. Erik wanted to offer her something but only had little food in his bag and a half-drunk pack of beer.
“Do you want a beer?” Erik asked. The girl stared at him through her tear-soaked eyes then put her head down and covered her face with her hands. ”Sorry, couldn’t think of anything else to say,” Erik apologized with a slight smile.
The gate approached quickly and immediately Erik noticed the high-powered automatic weapons on top of the wall. They jerked and then pointed themselves at Erik, the girl, and the car. Erik drove quickly until warning shots whipped just over the windshield. Erik stomped on the brake causing the tires to skate across the broken asphalt. The noise got the attention of the guards standing on the outside of the wall.
“Hey, asshole!” shouted the taller guard, a bandage wrapped around his head to cover his bloody ear. “What the hell you doing back here. If I had control of the guns I was shoot your sorry ass right now.”
Erik stepped from the Mustang with a weary eye on the motion-sensitive weapons on the wall. He stepped forward till a shot ricocheted of the front of the car.
It took all the anger management Erik had not to scream and run at the guard as he pointed the rifle at him.
“Move again and it will be you next time.”
“I have a little girl. She doesn’t need to be here. I don’t want to leave just take her,” Erik shouted.
“You want to negotiate now? The last time you fuck’n shot me. Fuck off.”
“It’s not a negotiation just take her,” Erik insisted.
“I ain’t opening the gate for fuckers like you. It’s not opening for anyone. Anyways, your little girl doesn’t want to leave.”
The guard laughed and pointed. Erik turned to find the little girl had walked nearly a hundred feet while he argued with the gate guard.
“Crap..,” Erik climbed back into the Mustang and turned it around. He slowly drove up to the little girl but she ignored him. “Little girl, what the hell?” She walked and said nothing.
“Where you going?” Erik asked as he blocked her path with the Mustang. The little girl stopped. Her face was hardened and determined. “Can you stop playing this mute game?” He asked as she stared past him. “I know you’ve been through a lot of crap but you can’t walk through this place without me. You will die faster then hell and I can’t live with that.”
The little girl began to sob and Erik held her.