บท 76: Dead weight (1)

*CLACK*

Lazar sat behind the steering wheel of the truck after slamming his door, not seeing the key in the ignition, he turned his head to his right, "You just figured out that I wanted Francis to come with us to New York, didn't you?" He asked Amandla, who was staring at him with an annoyed look on her face and her arms folded.

"This guy's a fucking dead weight and you know it." She replied, listing one of the many reasons she had in mind explaining why it would be a terrible idea to take him with them.

Lazar rolled his eyes, "I'm more than aware and I'd rather not even know why he doesn't have his weapon anymore, because I'm pretty sure the answer to that question will be ridiculous enough to further diminish the little esteem I still have for him." He said to Amandla, thus indicating her that he agreed with her on this point.

She sighed, "At least tell me how he will help us?" She demanded, thinking that if Lazar wanted Francis to come, he must have had a good reason.

The latter hesitated to tell her a lie much more convenient for Francis than the truth, but in the end he preferred to be honest, "He will be completely useless, but abandoning him here would be going against my principles. If he stays in Boston, he'll be in trouble because of me, and since I owe him a debt, the least I can do is to get him to a less dangerous place than..."

*Bam*

Lazar was interrupted during his explanation by successive blows against the metallic sheet that separated him and Amandla from the back of the truck, he then realized that his 'other passengers' were getting impatient.

*BAM*

Amandla responded by also hitting the metallic sheet with the side of her fist...

She did it with such power that Lazar was more than sure that they must have understood the message when they saw a part of the metallic sheet take the shape of the outlines of a hand on the other side. The said message being in other terms; you better behave yourselves now.

Realizing that in doing so Amandla had just found a pretext to express her anger towards him, Lazar chose to remain silent. Anyway, since the conversation was about Francis, he couldn't see how he could make her see a more positive perspective.

She narrowed her eyes, "Let's clear something up right now." She said with an irritated tone, "If it's something that affects both of us and it's outside of this city, you don't make the decisions alone."

"I don't know what kind of debt you owe him, but technically you just saved his life. Don't you think you paid him off?!" She added, trying to make understand to Lazar that he didn't have to make so much effort for Francis, "And, did he even thanked you for that?!"

Lazar started thinking about what he should do while staring at the sky through the windshield.

The memory of a particular event in his shared history with Francis quickly allowed him to make a decision, 'Fuck it, he should have thought about the risks before doing this.'

"You're right... I will let him take care of himself." He ends up saying calmly to Amandla.

'It should have taken longer than that.' Amandla thought with her eyebrows raised, not expecting Lazar to be so easy to convince.

'We have to take advantage of the fact that it is still early.' Seeing that his watch was indicating 7:15 a.m, Lazar thought it was about time they set off, he was hoping that the Ganipotes and Garaches didn't like to wake up early so as to avoid crossing them on the way.

"Can you hand me the the set of keys?" He asked Amandla while stretching out his hand to her.

"One more thing..." She said as she pulled the keys he was referring to out of one of her pants pockets, "What did you write on that paper?" She asked with curiosity, because when she and Francis had seen him writing something earlier, he had given them an explanation that he had necessarily invented for only her to understand that it was false, which made her realize right away that he didn't want to tell the truth in front of Francis to avoid him bothering them.

"In order for them to cooperate, they had to think that they only had one way out, so I made them believe that their only option was to wait here until we got rid of the monsters in town." Lazar responded before putting one of the keys of the set that Amandla's dropped in his hand in the ignition.

He didn't add anything, which made Amandla understand that his sentence was finished, so at the beginning she didn't understand what the problem was because she also thought it was their only alternative...

Then she remembered something that was changing everything, "The monsters we are talking about don't circulate in the city during the night, the survivors can go back home tonight..."

"Now you know what I've written." He concluded with a slight smile before starting the engine.

...

5 minutes later

...

"You're sure there's no presence other than ours?" Lazar asked to Amandla, while the truck was at a standstill not in front of Madison Square Garden where the army was based and where he logically had to deliver the people he had evacuated from the M.I.T except Francis, but on the sidewalk in front of a house that was part of a residential neighbourhood similar to his though a little more fancy.

"No monsters, only neighbors. I'll let you know right away if anything changes. Make it quick." She told him with her eyes closed as it seemed to give her a better sense of her surroundings.

"Okay." He said promptly before he took the key out of the ignition and opened his door.

Lazar got out of the truck without closing the door behind him in the case Amandla called him and he would need to leave without wasting any time.

He walked to the back doors and opened them.