The Chase (Original Work)

 They ran. It was like all the world chased them as they ran in the crowd of those fleeing. They must have made quite a sight, he thought to himself. Two grown adult men, identical in every respect; hair cut in the same style, matching hazel eyes, dark skin, and lithe builds. He could not say for sure, but he would be more than willing to bet that they had identical looks of horror on their faces. Their hands were joined as they pulled and dragged at each other to keep pace with the crowd. Their pursuers, riding their vehicle, could have overrun them at any moment, but they would not. This was a game to them, after all. A sick, sick game. “Ben. Run,” He remembered telling his brother as they ran.

He already felt his breath begin to fail him. He and his brother had been born identical in every exterior aspect, but inside them, the difference could not be more obvious. His brother had been born with two healthy lungs, and it would be a stretch to refer to what he had as even a single lung, never mind a healthy one. This run was taking all that he had. Each step came to him harder than the last. Each lumbering step felt like he was dragging is body through water with lead weights wrapped around each ankle. His body was not made for this. 

His brother did not reply him. His plea was ignored as his brother ran ever faster. He kept their hands joined and pulled and dragged him along even as he knew that he was doing nothing but slowing himself down, lugging around dead weight. This was the role Ben had played in his life from the day they opened their eyes. ‘Your brother is weak, Ben. You must protect him,’ he remembered the night his father had said those words. Had burdened his brother with a bag of stones he was not allowed to ever drop. 

“Please, Ben, please. Leave me.” They were laughing. The bastards in their truck were laughing, laughing as they aimed their device again. He heard the telltale zap. He tasted the electricity on his tongue. Another man a few paces behind them had been reduced to dust. 

“Shut up, Rick. Shut up and run,” his brother finally replied, turning around to deliver his words. He’d screamed. Ben had never screamed at him. That was the first time, and that alone told him just how dire the situation was. He spotted the intersection ahead. The road branched off into three. They could pick a side. There was a two-in-three chance the bastards would choose to chase the others. 

“Just until the intersection, Rick. Please stay with me until the intersection. We’ll take a left. They won’t follow us” Ben had seen it as well. He nodded with a determination that he did not truly feel. He felt a burning in his chest. Every breath scalded his chest as it passed through. He had half a lung, and it was screaming its protest at the exertion. 200 meters more. He told himself. The distance to the intersection and then some for just continuing to run and making sure there would be no chance of them getting sniped from staying on the edge. 

He forced each step. Half running, half being dragged across the distance, he had the uncharitable thought that without the unusually large amount of elderly people that had been at the mall today, he would have been a dead man. He heard the sound again and tasted the taste. Another man turned to nothingness by his side. 

The truck was beginning to accelerate. It was moving faster, his mind told him. Even the idiots on the truck must have been capable of seeing the coming intersection and realising what it meant. 

“They’re moving faster,” he wheezed at his brother. The only sign that Ben had heard a single word he’d said was that he was dragging him even harder. They were close—so close to the intersection—that it felt like he just had to reach out and touch it. He forced foot after foot, throwing his body forward. It was generous, referring to what he did as running. 

He struggled to keep his mouth closed even as his chest burned at him. He could not fall for the temptation. The burning was good. It meant he was alive. He had to keep thinking about it that way. Feel the burn. Lean into it. Welcome it. 

Run faster, run faster, he screamed the thought over and over again in his mind. He heard the zap sound again. This time, it was a person in front of them. He got to watch it happen in real-time. A person being erased from existence with nothing left for them to remember. Nothing but the unpleasant smell of burning rubber. He and his brother ran past the space the woman had once occupied. Another zap. Another person extinguished in the blink of an eye. It was like they were taking those close to the intersection. 

Their position in the middle of the pack turned into more of a blessing than he’d previously calculated. He tried whatever he could to distract himself from the fact that moving now felt more like wading through syrup than water. By his side, Ben was handling the run well. Rick knew that if he was not certain to draw attention to himself and lose them their lives, Ben would have picked him up on his back already. 

Another zap. Another dead. Ben turned to him. His eyes were resolute, and he tried to send him a message with them. They’d shared one womb for twelve months and lived every day of their lives by each other’s sides. He could hear Ben’s thoughts as well as he could hear his own. And right now, those thoughts were telling him, ‘Please run, don’t stop, we’re almost there’. ‘I can’t’, he wanted to reply but did not. He would not disappoint Ben. Not in this. He pushed his body harder to run further and faster. The first people had already crested the intersection, and almost like everyone had the same idea, they cut either left or right. 

“No one is going forward,” he screamed. Whatever air he had remaining in his sole lung seemed to have been knocked out of him with those words. That took their odds down to one in two of surviving. Ben knew this, but he dragged him along either way. They crested the intersection themselves and ran left. 

The people next to them ran right. Go right, go right, go right, he begged the idiots in the trailer. He prayed to God, to Allah, to Yahweh. He prayed to whoever would listen. Please let them go right. 

He heard a familiar roaring engine. An engine that had plagued his existence for what felt like decades. 

They turned left. 

“Keep running,” Ben screamed at him. But he had cheated nature for too long. His legs would not take another step. He fell to the floor. He could not stand, no matter how he tried or how Ben dragged him to get up. 

“Leave me, Ben. Go” He shouted at his brother with strength he did not feel. A drop of salty liquid fell on his hands. When had he started to cry? He could not tell. But now that he knew he had, he could not stop. The tears flowed smoothly. An irony of life. The only thing in his damned body that worked as it should were his bleeding tear ducts. 

“Leave” He shouted again. Ben struggled to pull him, but they both knew the truth. They could hear the song. The fat lady was singing. “It’s over, Ben. I love you. Tell Mother I love her.” 

“And Agnes,” his brother asked with a severe look on his face. 

“Tell her I tried. Go,” He commanded. 

“I am your elder brother. Listen to me for once, damn you. Leave. Save yourself,” Ben was crying, an absent part of his mind noted. He could hear the truck getting closer. It had stopped firing indiscriminately into the crowd for some reason. 

“Orders denied, Captain.” He screamed and wailed as his brother gathered him in his hands and began to drag him. The truck was getting closer to them. Too close for comfort. 

“What do we have here, boys?” A voice asked. One of the idiots on the truck, he knew. 

“Seems like we have a couple of stragglers.” Another replied. 

“It was a rhetorical question, you fool”, the one who had asked replied. 

Ben ignored them and did his best to run with them in his grasp. His body was nonresponsive. He begged it to do something—anything—to push Ben away so he could save himself. Nothing worked. It replied with silence. He begged and got no response. 

“How much battery do we have left in the atomiser?” The leader asked.

“Enough for one shot, barely,” another replied. That voice—he swore he could recognise it. 

“I guess it’s your lucky day, boys. One of you gets to leave her alive. So which one of you is going to be?” the leader asked. Part of him knew what he was doing—he was playing with them—but the rest of him told that part to shut up as he grasped on to the hope and refused to let go. 

“Take me” He screamed. 

“Oh ho. What is that? The cripple can speak?” 

“Please kill me” He begged them. Ben had to survive this. 

“What are you doing?” His eyes asked harshly 

He begged for him to keep silent and follow his lead. 

“You must be even dumber than expected if you think I’d let you kill my brother”, Ben said, dropping his non-responsive body on the asphalt.  His head was on the ground. He could not see what happened next. 

He heard Ben’s footsteps. He heard them, clap, clap, clap, as his smart shoes made contact with the asphalt.
“This one has a mouth on him, doesn’t he?” 

“More of a mouth on me than a brain on you” Ben replied. 

“Ben, stop” He shouted, trying to get his brother to stop this madness. 

“We will kill you, you know that, right?” The leader said. They were both ignoring him now. 

“As if idiots like you could. It probably takes all five of your brains together to aim and fire that thing.” 

Zap.

His breath stopped. He smelled it—the smell of burning rubber—and heard something fall to the floor. 

“Well, I’ve never seen that one happen before,” One of them said in a thick brogue. 

“Probably because of the low batteries. Let’s get out of here, boys” 

He heard the sound of the truck reversing and zooming away. He could not turn around. He knew what he’d see. Nothing. And so he pressed his face against the asphalt. He tried not to think. Tried to will himself not to breathe. To die. He could not do it. Ben was gone. Whether he saw it or not, the truth remained. His twin brother was dead. He was alone. Nothing in the world would ever be right again.