Chapter Thirty-Five

Sacrifice

Such void-empty, unnecessarily suffocating to despondent chatter's aftermath. The air tickled with its glory of festered, putrid death, despite heroism's conquered spite.

The blurriness in Judy's eyes had focused her in a stoic direction into the chasms of end. Her eyelids had forgotten how to function, thus, the ants of stinging were trying to force them to remember. Her sore throat gave life to a strained gulp, while something tugged on her limp arm of burnt fur.

Reaction came slow, and when she did turn around with an awful blink, the little frame of the raccoon, Ron, was all's view-to-be. His paws were huddled close to his trembling body, and Judy almost took the reaction for a trigger to her exit-maroon. But then he spoke, at least tried to.

"You b—" He was pushed away by his sister, as she got in front of him and grabbed Judy's burnt paw with flaring enthusiasm in painful sensations.

"Awesome! Beatin' those… those, baddies!" exclaimed Mati with an attempt to get closer to Judy, but Judy was not having it and drew her trembling paw away to harshness' scowl.

"It was barbaric!" Judy growled at the kids whose ears both crashed, but she did notice the rise of hope inside the boy's eyes, yet no such thing happened with Mati who only radiated ignorance to the words-spoken.

"I wan' be like you, Lilac," Mati said with embarrassment, somehow unaffected by Judy's thin nerves. Forlorn's surge took another turn, and it was as if the room she was existing in just shrunk by too much, spacing smaller than the Pangolin Arms' living hell. The dark voice in her head was calling her to scream, while her paws' claws wanted to dig into her bloody eyes. Mati wanted to be like her, this shriveled and corrupted manifestation of a rabbit? Indecent, brutal and stubborn to reality?

"Kids, haggle! Time's a loss," Meeka called from nearby as she and her husband were putting their knapsacks of miserable belongings. Mati jumped in spot with defiance-unspoken, but then released Judy's paw and dusted away.

All of a sudden, the room of existence felt more bearable. But there was still an issue in its air and windows, as Ron was still there, still looking, still waiting.

"What?" Judy whispered in the impossibility of her sanity, yet the kid was not taking any step back, which was unlike him since he had avoided her from beginning's call.

"Ughm… you do right thing," Ron said and shuffled his feet, but he was not blinking away from the befuddlement of the grey Judy. Her jaw's slack tried to find a solution, yet her mind couldn't spot the exit to the maze of sleep deprivation and exhaustion, so she just motioned her shoulders to the strain of her back.

"Where did you hear that?" Judy asked in monochrome. The boy's reaction, as if caught doing something he shouldn't, instantly told her he was hiding something, courtesy to the police academy. Nevertheless, the uncertainty was broken in a step of closeness to Judy, as the boy reached in his coat's inside pocket and looked around himself carefully, too much.

"Lehre, he want speak," Ron whispered, his body now pushing too close to Judy's comfort, but she noticed him nudging something to her paw with both his clamped ones. Had Ron lost his mind just as she had during those awful times at Maker's Breath, the blasted generator of life?

"Ron, listen to your mother an—"

"Take, take!" Ron insisted with his head slashing around frantically. She decided to humor him so she could go back to her broodings, although this distraction for sure had drained her out of the hollowness of her recent decisions. Something warm touched upon her stinging paw and Ron quickly closed her fist in gentleness.

Then, he just ran off in confusion's aftermath, which Judy was forced to linger with. Something alive was inside her paw, and it was tapping within in a systematic rhythm. Her paw moved close to her face with the slow opening of fingers. The silhouette of a small creature appeared in thick clothing, almost impossible to recognize if it were not for the rodent-shaped muzzle, white whiskers of age and pink skin that lacked any sort of fur, as if sickness had caused it to decay.

"Stash me, lassie." It was a… some kind of rodent! But weren't they viewed with hate in this part of the world? She took the words quickly and closed her fist, only to remember the creature was in there, which got her heart to turn into smashed pulp for a moment's glance. Where should she hide him… He wanted to talk, but how could…

With a snort of expressionless stoniness, she reached for one of her ears and pushed the old rodent into the crevice of her meaty listener, where she felt him nestling in tingles to the ringing of her mind.

"Gurhhh… hear, lassie? This is good for my paradigm comfort," the voice was speaking quietly, but it was as if there was someone inside her head, an itch her paw was asking to rid her from. There was a creature in her ear… "Just mutter, this old body still lives."

"Why were you with Ron?"

"He's a phenomenal kid. Lots potential… Tho, I don't know how it functions anymore. Been decades, damsel."

"What are you suppo—"

"Someone fandangle. Past's relic."

"Lil', group's shorting, let's hustle!" Meeka said from the distance and waved for Judy to get up and finish what they had all started, despite the blood, death and sizzling smells-disgusting. She wanted to ask more, but the creature cut in, replacing her thoughts with his presence.

"Don't twist yourself in a black hole, fizgig. You did what was right, against the odds of survival." He was agreeing with her decision about Bruno deserving to rot all his life, about how she had enjoyed melting the gas mask on his face? His presence in her ear was now like a growing tumor, and she was tempted to grab and throw it at the malice-infested crowd.

"Guess you'd say the same about the good ol' days and how it was all better after Mammalia levelled 4 cities to the ground, huh?" she snarled, the shuffling of his body audible and felt easily within her ear. Her knapsack was as if heavier, the cloak around her too hot, while her legs would stumble the lifeless rocks' path. Yet she got to the Sleazel family and followed laboriously.

The crowd was thinner, less impactful and thoroughly dispirited.

"Not about how we feel, what we want or what we believe in. It's about statistics, information and objectivity. Pore on it. The deaths of many, serving as the salvations to millions, is a choice right." Did he just say the ends justify the means? Such bullshi—

"Nice excuse. Every dictator's reasonings… pft, it's hypocrisy," Judy said in the twirl of her conflicting thoughts. Ron glanced at her with a tug of smile, but her conflicting emotions made him look away instantly, as she was internally squirming for air.

"Doing such, when the decision was justified to the extent of known information, it is the right thing to do. Just like you did."

"It was emotional!" she shouted, the people behind and in front giving a peek to the short mass of cloaked rabbit.

"No less wrong, despite the bane of influences."

"So I shouldn't care about my actions, as long as they were made with a pure intention?"

"Not exactly, but you're getting there. The concept is doing the right thing. It is your sanative." A few hyenas quickly passed by with dark side-looks of distrust.

"What is the right thing?"

"It's about wrighting choices without you putting needs, wants or beliefs within them. You wright the choices by being outside your head."

"Why are you even trying to tell me this… isn't it even like dangerous for you to be seen? I heard th—"

"It is, lassie, it is. But… you struck me as a person of action. Selfless, righteous, courageous. You're rare. I don't want you falling in the paradox of guilt and self-doubt. It may wright you into a societal destroyer." The words had turned into riddles to the confines of Judy, yet she was glad for this distraction, since it was directing her thinking elsewhere from the claws of black.

They were climbing the narrow path between the cliffs, belongings of past's people scattered in dust and forgetfulness… The crowd was deaf, only the movement of cloth, dingings of clasps, belts and knapsacks were managing to pierce the air of grief and anticipation.

"And are you a person of action?" Judy murmured to the prolonged nothingness, the rockiness underneath her stinging her soles.

"I'm an old, small pouch of bones. If my species'd see me, they'd say I were an abomination. I've done no less on my part of this district, and I failed…" Failure, a word of resonance to Judy's mind of interest-new.

"How?"

"Time. Health. Influence. My species was seen as a tumor to this world, and I tried to change the status quo. I tried to show them you can come back, that they should stop with the genocide. All I did was to cripple myself, to fail, to remove any efficiency left in my existence."

"So that's what I'd become?" she asked out of accidental reflex and immediately was poked into the ear by sharpness. The creature was nearly pulled out of there and thrown under the people behind Judy, were it not her scrunched teeth and patience of curiosity.

"No matter how far gone, you do no stop until you're dead. I may be brittle and useless, but I've found a way, a way to get back the influence of the past. My ideas, my words… the younger generation, they're smart, they're the future. Ron, an exceptional boy…"

"So I'd go against my wants and always do the right thing?"

"Yes."

"But it's not working!"

"Because you care about what you want, lassie."

"I… I… just want to make the world a better…"

"By wanting to do the right thing, making the world such is a part of the right thing. You see?" No answer was needed, she could see it as clear as the bluest sky. Immediately acceptance and full understanding couldn't be achieved, since the cacophony within her head was screeching, yet it had been tamed to a certain normality. If she just sought the right thing and would abandon herself from the picture of decisions, then no matter what would happen, she'd always know she was in the right, always true, always ahead and pure.

Peace felt finally reachable.

They were now at a field… she couldn't describe it as a field, more like a rocky desert stretching to the cavernous-dark wall, where this tall, tunnel-like structure moved up into the ceiling's lack of vision. Around: projectors, cameras and bunker-like nests with obscured weaponry. There was nothing to hide behind, other than the people's bodies. There were no holes, no structures. There was nothing but level rock and the road that surely led to those old and hopeless doors the group had deviated from before the attempted massacre.

The group shrunk closer together and Judy accidently looked to the side, where she saw this ginormous structure of steel, rock and concrete. It was… it was exactly like the artistic statue in the wall of the Keepers! Instead of asking anyone from the Sleazel family, she chose the right person who just had sneezed in her ear.

"What are those big doors for?" The fold of her ear was carefully moved, and after a bit, the creature nestled himself once more.

"District was meant to be part of the city. Contractors lied it was fine to dig these caverns. They shut it from the outside world, deliberated to open them for the populace. Found other uses for this forsaken district. It's under martial law, but it's anarchy, totalitarianism."

"Mammalia knows about this place?"

"Why wouldn't they? We close to the Border? The Ladder?"

"It's a flat area… there's like a structure in the wall we're walking to… why?"

"Life's Border, if I remember. The only way for us up, our only chance."

"Can't people just dig out of this place?"

"All've been caught. Only way is to be smuggled, to bribe or be clean."

"But— but Mammalia has laws against such things. They can't just force people in a hole. They are living on the same land!" Judy shouted, the echo bouncing off the walls and the ears of new glances. It was inevitable frustration in need of release, as all of this was so complicated. Her paws wanted to just grab the gap between those two massive, distant doors and just pry them open into freedom.

"Such is why to why I see you can do great good, las—"

"Individuals, you are entering restricted territory in Mammalia's control. Any act of hostility will be treated with full force. Obey." It was once again the cold and awful voice of Command, but this one at least had the less formal tick to tongue.

The crowd increased in width as they neared the fortification of fences, barbed wire and concrete bunkers. Heavy blast doors marked the entrance or exit in the narrow distance, followed by the rocky road of unwashed engine oil and ancient dust. Cameras blinked from everywhere and sensors tracked. Monitors flared to life with words of order and instructions of how not to get shot.

From the open surface of nothing, they were again in similarness to the claustrophobic passage, yet this one was full with surveillance and hidden killers. The dark residue stuck itself on Judy's feet, despite her efforts to save herself the trouble of further strain, and the crowd's quietness was turning into an atmosphere of impatience and fear. It was worse than the marauders and Judy saw herself as trapped in this flanked position all of them had freely walked into.

"It's all a front. They hide their skeletons, they know their crimes, they need to pay for all the lies, lassie. Remember my words an—"

"Wait! I want to ask you so—"

"Lilac, can you haggle him over?" Meeka asked, as the crowd stopped moving, having had ran out of space. Wide-eyed, Judy gawked at how the motherly raccoon had known the old creature wanted out. Was it because they were at this… border?

"What's your name?" Judy asked to Meeka's closing in of reach, not expecting an answer at all.

"Mird. Never mention me if you value your skin." In a flash, Judy's ear had the sensation of touch and Meeka turned around with clasped paws. Was Judy losing her awareness, or Meeka was a champion of speed? Also, had the old creature threatened her, or was it a genuine advice?

"Thorough examination will proceed. Illicit entities will be punished. Any previous misconducts will require the appropriate documentation."

"Meeka, who was that and why are you hiding him?" Judy whispered closely to the motherly raccoon. Meeka had her paw in her pants, where she was doing something unknown to Judy's understanding.

"Someone… who's helped us lots… just-let-me, ugh," Meeka groaned as the shuffles grew louder. The other family members had formed something like a wall in front, and only Judy was looking at the mother's strange behavior.

"T-there… so," Meeka turned around and sighed with flicks of her prior-holstered paw. "He deserves this and we will help him as he helped us."

"Did you just…" Judy looked down at Meeka's groin and tried to rationalize what the implications held.

"You're a femammle, you should know." Immediate discomfort made Judy to scratch her belly as the answer was put hot. If such measures were required, this world they lived in, it made her sick.

"Smuggling is punishable by death." The looming threat rang around the narrow passage, while the crowd lumbered towards the side of those beast's blastdoors. The elevator's elongation was towering, and loud clangs were coming down in echoes to distance. Was this another nightmare like the one with Nick's betrayal, the storage room, the marauders, her friend's death…

"Stop pushing!"

There was some kind of awful heat and lack of humidity. The dryness with all the new dust was turning snot into Judy's nose. "But who is he?" Judy tried to ask, only to be nearly killed by big tiger's wrongful step.

Nevertheless, she got her answer from an unexpected someone, "One of them, the diggers," Verhel whispered and lost step to come close to Judy. His focus beamed around him as he kept his paws close to his children.

"Ughm," her mind tried to remember the name, "B.D-M?"

"Yea. Lead architect."

"But, but this was more than a hundred years ago!" Judy said in disbelief, but Verhel only shrugged his shoulders.

"More… we need get him out. They need him, we all do."

"Cut in again, I fucks your head, bitch." Red lights lit the surroundings, while the white projectors increased the darkness-eternal.

"Nocturians, disturbance of peace and control is a postpone to district's withdrawal." Loud crashes reverberated. Judy didn't know how to respond, as everything around her was too much for the senses to have the calmness of clarity. Of course, Gird, the lead architect of this place, had been in her ear just minutes ago, and it was hooking out too many questions-unanswered.

"Who needs him, why are you risking your family for this?!"

"You already know." Verhel smiled and moved his kids aside from an impatient crowd member. The shift of the crowd got Judy to be now stuck between Verhel and Meeka, so she took the moment of frozen possibilities to look around the cliffs on the sides. So many muzzles pointed at them, so many pipes leading to many places, while wires hung in between the cliffs like tarps of knives.

"That's all? Telling people what their beliefs should be? Can't you just take all the insights and just do it instead?"

"It's more than that, girl. But not here— come closer." They were finally nearing the side entrance of those thick blastdoors, and there Judy found a familiar-looking soldier of war. But this one was modernized, deadly and impregnable. There was no chance the species could be recognized, as the form was encased in full steel. Bunkers for small soldiers were all over the soldier's chest and stomach, like a dozen nests.

Its big limb pointed at the entrance, while another person stopped by this mass for examination of tools. The head was painted with a face, but there were no eyes, no mouth. It was a ball of steel, lifeless, like a prison. Sensors all around this structure of war moved everywhere around the crowd, while glints followed from its bunkered chest.

"Kids, you haggle close. Hear me? No matter what! If not with me, with your father," Meeka shouted at the two small raccoons and hugged them in haste to the coming of their turn. "Lilac, do you have your card and cash?"

"Ughm, yea, I think."

"Okay, haggle in front."

"No-no, I'll be right behind you, okay?" The raccoon nodded in understanding, while the crashes grinded to the deafening of pain.

A scuffle broke somewhere at the back of the group, but it faded away from Judy's awareness as the Sleazel family was now in turn to the tall body of the mechanized soldier.

"Declaration of family members."

"Four," said Verhel and weak light scanned the whole bunch in front of Judy.

"False declaration. Deception is punishable with permanent restriction to the outside warzone."

"She's pregnant!" Verhel spat at the unphased mass.

"Manual inspection must commence."

"You're not going to—"

"Arrival of convoy, all Nocturians, clear the road immediately. Incompliance is punishable by restriction of freedom for up to three decades."

The entrance closed instantly and the soldier moved in front of the way, drawing its assault rifle from its back. The crowd erupted in rage at this new development, but then the blastdoors scrunched loudly as they opened.

From the belly of the beast crawled out old trucks, spitting diesel's tar from their side exhausts. The air rained with the smog of coughs, and Judy tried to climb on the side of the cliff as to have a better look to what was going on. It was obvious the entrance to Zootopia was halted.

The trucks were crawling through the crowd, as there was not much space for people to get out of the old road. Command continued ordering the path to be cleared, while the trucks revved their engines-sputtering.

A jeep entered the monochrome display of ancient technology, and Judy saw an officer with his official uniform and medals pinned on the chest. It looked like… her eyes were making it unsure. It was a goat, who lacked armor, his cigar and black sunglasses reflecting on the shouting crowd of lesser.

The convoy stopped and bashes against metal came from the front, where the crowd ganged-up on the spreaders of fuming poison. The goat stood in the jeep and put his hooves on the open ceiling's rims, from where he scowled at the crowd and chewed on his cigar. He reached for his officer's cap and threw it on the seat, while the stars on his shoulder mark shone into the light.

"You miserable wretches. Look at you," the goat shouted at the tamed crowd, all ears upon his hungry form.

"Disperse. Disperse. Disperse."

"Cockroaches scattered in the shadows. Where do you think you're going?! You think you know better, you think you deserve to be anything than dirt?" The door scrunched under his fingers in the bite of his cigar, his voice now filling the void of Command's abstinence.

"It's because of me! I am who allows you to crawl out of your worthless lives. You exist because I allow it! I am the General of Mammalia. You are nothing, you are filth, scum." The group simmered to the vile words of the general. Or was it the General, the one with whom Diablo talked to? Could it be?

"And then, after everything I've done for your despicable, deplorable existence, you award me with this?!" The voices of the crowd exploded, as he was booed and insulted even by femammle and children.

"You know what? Price of entry just rose to three point five k. If you can't afford it, go throw yourselves off the cliff!" Judy covered her ears from the noise. It was as if machine gun fire was erupting from each's mouth to the goat's sneer and trembling mouth.

"Drink shit!" someone from the group yelled and threw unsavoriness at the fuming general, who didn't react to the projectile of hostility. But then the mash-up of brown fell like led before the jeep, only small amounts of the contents managing to smear themselves on his chest's medals.

With a look at his stained pride, the goat brushed the dark substance off and said something to the driver.

"Warning, individuals at ground zero. Immediately disperse. All units, assist, regard, liquidate."

The truck in front swayed and from the tarps came out the biggest person Judy had ever seen, but this person was cold, heavy and metallic. There was this giant container on its back: obscured, black and burdensome. The face was blank: no paintings, no initials, just empty surface of metal, while sensors flickered on the sides and looked everywhere on itself.

Then it jumped.

Earth shook and the whole crowd squatted for balance from this tremendous weight. The giant soldier then stepped quickly at the direction where Judy was at, and its limbs' ends glowed red with heat. The general had sat in his seat, disinterested to what was to occur, while the front of the crowd pushed back from the wobbling air of heat the limbs of this thing were making.

Fire crawled out of the small nostrils at the end. There were no fingers there, only tubes of streaking, slow fire. It was sticking to the ground like napalm, while the soldier stepped over it like nothing, ever so moving into the crowd's space.

The heat was already hurting Judy's face, despite the nostrils not having had been fired at all. Her leg thumped to survival's hints, but then the trucks blew the same dark ash over the air and the convoy moved.

Yet, the soldier raised one of its limbs at all the people, and everyone at its aim tried to hide behind the bodies of others, resulting in lives scattered everywhere on the ground, including the Sleazel family.

But amidst the heap of servitude and dread, Judy kept her body on her legs as she glared with blood at the nostril of requiem. This wasn't her first time meeting the Reaper's scythe, and she somehow knew it wasn't going to be the last. Eye contact was kept for a while of longness, and then the soldier just dropped its aim and followed behind the convoy of smog.

Her lungs contracted in a cough, as she tried to stop shivering the stress of this boxed cavern. These were the memmle and femammle who served to protect her country? Intimidators, warmongers and megalomaniacs? A sudden urge to charge at the soldier nearly made her sprint, but she just sat on the urge with the shuffle of her knapsack's contents.

The convoy kept moving, which meant the crowd no longer saw it viable to try and stop this row of weaponized slaughterhouse, while more than half of the crowd headed back, something Judy knew for sure was the reason of this increased fee.

It disgusted her.

"Verh, we won't have enough… I think we won't haggle enough, check-check!" Meeka panicked as she drew the kids closer to the cliff's wall, while the remnants of the crowd funneled to the opened entrance-anew.

The raccoons checked all their pockets and compartments of their knapsacks, as well as those of the kids, while the crowd thinned and thinned, until it was just them and two leftover people of luck, and the lifeless soldier of entry, the gate before Heaven. Meeka was pulling her head's fur, her body forfeiting control as reality was visibly trapping her in a box, which Judy knew by heart and bruise.

She knew the money left in her wallet wasn't going to be enough to get her out of this place, it was a sure fact the moment she had heard about the prices down at the crater area. But here was a family, still full and undamaged, ready to be torn apart or thrown back into the cesspit of this district's filth. The answer was obvious, Mird has affirmed her views.

"Border closure imminent, stragglers are advised to depart immediately."

"Listen, I ca—" Judy tried to say, but was cut off.

"Kids, scamper, they're closing!" Meeka rushed her children to the guard, as the last of the people from the group entered through, the guard giving off body language it'd get in as well. It stopped at the entrance and actually looked down on the small family of raccoons, Judy stopping behind them and waiting for the right moment with the hidden contents in her paw.

"Change in terms, increase of two thousand five hundred."

"But we're just four, we're four! I'm just pregnant— We're short on eight hundred, please just let us in, please-please!"

"Specification was made for the rabbit," the soldier spoke with more choice of words, rather than obligation to protocol. It felt more personal. Meeka drilled her eyes in Judy, desperation, yet hopeful and ready.

"Verh, go. Go, this is your chance. Get them out of this world, let them live better lives than us. Stay with them. Help them, guide them, see them grow right!"

"W-wait, you don—" Verhel tried to defy in failure, while both kids exclaimed to their mother's cede. But she just gave them all a deep hug as the money in her paws pushed against Verhel's shivers of indecisiveness.

"Time's a hustle, husband mine. Go."

"You go with them too, Meeka," Judy interjected with lightness in her body and stepped in between the two teary raccoons, who were in disbelief to her smile and contents of her paw.

"You didn't ha— why did yo— What about you!" Meeka shouted, but then an alarm rippled everyone's ears and made the Sleazels to huddle into a stack.

"Border's seal, sixty seconds."

"Take it and live your lives," Judy encouraged and just pushed it into Meeka's chest's grunt. "You deserve it."

"What will you do?" Meeka asked.

"I'll make the world a better place, because that's the right thing to do." Unexpectedly, Judy was embraced in a deep and passionate hug, the motherly raccoon giving all her gratitude through this hasty and final goodbye, while Verhel was already at the guard, pawing it the required rite of entry.

"You've already done it, bunny. Thank you," Meeka parted with a kiss on Judy's cheek, hurrying to pass by the guard and through the doorway of freedom. But then the raccoon stopped herself and reached for something in her pants, all the while adjusting them to fit right in between her legs.

"Lilac!" Meeka shouted from the distance, and Judy noticed something metallic in her paw. "Area Servile, number 103, basement," she finished and threw the object at Judy, which she failed to catch as her burnt paw stung at the touch, the raccoon getting out of sight and the door closing after the guard's entrance with a loud bang.

It was a key, imperfect, pawcrafted. Area Servile, number 103, basement. Easy to remember, easy to forget. Her fingers tweaked the metal in lightness to this new feeling she was experiencing. Even with all the grief, pain and suffering, somehow her mind knew all was right, all was set, all was proper to her ideas, goals and beliefs.

She was stuck in this primordial world with no way back home. But she no longer felt alone, no longer wanted rest, as she knew for sure what her purpose was.

And it was all achieved through sacrifice.

Author's notes:

Hesitance jumps around your mind,

Grooms decision thus chosen blind.

Your thoughts most succulent of snack,

All delivered by luscious feedback.

So don't hide like a tiny shrew,

Thus share that belovable review!

- Don't forget to check our collection called Independent Returns. It's on my account and is worth reading!

- Also we're producing high-quality YouTube videos of animated tendencies. Support us there by checking us out and leaving your precious feedback!

Social Links:

* To use a link just replace {dot} with a full stop.

- Youtube: youtube{dot}com/c/inlet

- Twitter: twitter{dot}com/inletreal