The Red Nights

1- The Town

The sun rays came in through the window. Jamal removed slowly his sheet and went out of his bed, " Ha, here we go again " sighed Jamal with a little sad smile on his face. He went to the bathroom took a shower, prepared himself for the long day which was waiting for him, took his bag, and left his place.

He lived all alone in a little apartment even though it was easier for him to get a bigger house, " a little place like this one is much enough for me, " he said the day he chose the apartment. He preferred tight places as they were easy for him to handle, and he has been like that ever since the deaths of his parents, which had happened before he was even 10, and even more after his older sister had disappeared 2 years ago.

He left his home, went down the stairs, and at the moment he stepped out on the street a little boy ran toward him in hurry and started to shout and cry " Jamal! Jamal! Help me Jamal ... Karen... you have to help ... Karen is in danger... please ".

" Calm down first and tell me what happened," said Jamal with a calm tone while doing his best to not show any sign of anxiousness in his voice or expression, even though he was naturally worried himself.

" It is the two guys of the last day... they came back again! "

Without needing to hear further things and respond to anything, Jamal ran in the direction the boy came from. He followed the voices that indicated there was some sort of altercation, then he stopped on a corner where a girl was assaulted by two big guys.

The young girl had found refuge on top of an emergency staircase and was trying her best to push away the two maggots who were grumbling at her from below while trying to catch her.

The situation was quite odd as there was an easy way for them to get to her, as they just had to lower the ladders that permit to access to the stairs or combine their strength so that one could help the other get on the stairs as they were not that high from the ground. However, they went for the most stupid and unproductive idea which was trying to catch the girl as she was hiding there.

However, Jamal didn't have time to think about all that, nor did he care. He threw down his bag, run and jumped towards them, since they were surprised, he took advantage of it and started beating them starting with the taller one. He gave him three punches on his face before he cleared up his mind and threw him to the floor. The last one tried to fight back but Jamal was too fast, he kicked him on his belly followed by another kick in the face and he fell to the ground.

That normally would have been enough to knock them out, but to Jamal's surprise the two men shortly got up on their feet as if they were totally fine, moreover when they tuned around their eyes were blank as if they were not even conscious.

Jamal found that weird and stayed on guard, deciding to not attack but instead wait for them to come at him so he could figure out what they were up to. They suddenly charged at him, quickly closing the distance, which surprised Jamal since they had a speed he never suspected them to have, especially for their sizes, considering that it was not the first time he was facing them.

But it was still not fast enough for someone like Jamal. the latter jumped and threw an upward kick on the chin of the one ahead, and he was falling to the ground he bumped into the second guy behind him making him lose balance and tumble down on the ground too. Jamal didn't waste that occasion, he jumped, did a flip, and landed heavily on the face of the second maggot.

This time they were definitely out cold as they didn't move anymore.

Seeing that the two muggers were K.O on the floor, the little boy who was staying behind Jamal, hiding in a corner, during the whole fight ran toward the crying girl while crying her name, " Karen? Are you okay? "

The girl was obviously still shocked and scared but tried to not show signs of weakness as she wanted to play it bravely. " Yeah... they wanted to bring me with them... fortunately Jamal came on time...  " said Karen while she was trying to catch her breath while the man was helping her get down the staircase.

" Yes I know, I am the one who called him, " replied the boy.

" What are you even doing here?! I told you that you have to be more careful, people out there are getting more and more aggressive, " Jamal scolded them while pointing at a specific side of the city, he suddenly calmed down and looked down at the two unconscious guys, before he sighed and said, " I will bring these two with me and go make sure they will not disturb anyone anymore ".

" Thank you so much, Jamal, we don't know what we will do without you in this town, " Karen and the boy replied at the same time

" You are welcome, it is my job to protect all of you, it is the least I can do considering the situation we are all in, " said Jamal with a sad look, " Sam, bring Karen into your home and make sure you don't come out anymore until 1 p.m when I finish my work- "

" Yeah we know " cut Karen, " that it is only after you finish your job we can walk on the street in all security," she repeated the rule Jamal didn't stop telling them, she lowered her face and said, " We just thought we could go in the dojo without no one seeing us ".

" It is true, we thought it will be nice if we get extra time to practice... sorry we messed up your orders, " added Sam.

Jamal sighed " I told you earlier that 2 hours is enough for me to train all of you, if you wanted to practice more just stay at home and do some of the exercises I gave you, to enhance your muscles ".

Indeed, Jamal was in charge of many tasks in the town and one of them was teaching martial arts to the youngsters and but one of his most important jobs was guarding the city against any threat.

Since the last tragedy, criminality has increased dramatically and there were no police officers who were working against it, rather most of the police officers became themselves some of the most dangerous criminals. Therefore, Jamal decided that it was his duty to protect the innocent people from these guys, so since one and a half years ago, every morning he would wake up early and go out chasing after the ones who decided to become threats to and protecting the innocent people who didn't have the power to defend themselves.

The solution they found to protect the city the most effective was to divide the city into two sides.

For months he devoted his time filtering the population, removing as discreetly as possible the innocent people from bad ones in a part of the city and confined the bad and potentially dangerous people in the other part. Although it was not an easy job, Jamal managed to isolate them before they realized it.

He set a barrier between the two parts of the city to mark the separation, with the help of his friends, and every morning he would pay a visit to the barrier to inspect it and to seek out whether there were some clues of any maggot who would have crossed the barrier or not.

When he was lucky, it could pass one entire week without any problem but sometimes huge groups could break it down and enter in, and it might take a long time before he neutralized them all. That was why he set a sort of curfew and ordered everyone to respect it. The rule was that people had to wait until 1 p.m to come out of their homes and start their daily activities so that he would have the time to make the streets safer before anyone got hurt.

Jamal tied the two guys down while the two youngsters were heading back into their homes.   He carried them and brought them away to an abandoned factory where he lay them down, and proceeded to finish the task.

He took his knife from its case which he inherited from his older sister and used it to kill those two guys. He thrust slowly the knife into their chests where their hearts were situated and, after he made sure they were dead, he threw their bodies in the habitual place and burned their corpses.

Since he was assuming the role of the " sheriff " of the city, he along with the mayor were the ones who made the laws and they were different regarding the people.

For the people from the good side of the city, the laws used were the common laws that were used before, even though they committed crimes very rarely almost never.

However, for the people from the bad side of the city, the rules were considerably different when someone crossed the barrier to come to attack women or children, the punishment when they got caught was death without any judgment, and Jamal was entrusted to pass the judgment.

Most of the time it was some attempts of rape or murder, that's why he chose that penalty. When someone is tempted to steal something and got caught, they would become a captive with chores and community duties to do for a little while and after that Jamal and the mayor would decide whether this person could stay or not in this part of the city depending on the latter's behavior.

Jamal knew that, generally, people chose the wrong path because they lost their hope in life, and decided to let go of their humanity, but there was still a small part of people who were only desperate and were only seeking a way for themselves to survive. For Jamal, there was always a way of redemption for this kind of people.

He went out of the factory after he finished his gloomy task and then headed to the barrier in order to make his daily patrol. While he was looking for signs of other people who might have crossed it, he was wondering why he chose to take this role of the sheriff, [ It's not about whether I love or hate this role of mine. It's just that someone had to do it. Someone has to get their hands dirty for the sake of everyone, " he thought to himself.

He finished his round when the sun was high in the sky, the two men from the morning were the only ones who crossed the barrier that day though. Jamal headed straight to the dojo, where he was teaching the youngsters of the city how to defend themselves, in case some troubles were to happen.

Since he began this program just 8 months ago, he didn't expect them to be experienced enough to go protecting the city with him, but just strong enough to avoid getting hurt by anyone. That was, by the way, the reason why Karen has been able to resist the other two men who were trying to kidnap her, long enough for Jamal to come and save her.

When he arrived at the dojo, he noticed that everybody was already there while there still was one hour before the training official started. He was in charge of all the youngsters left in the city, precisely fifty children, 37 teenagers, and other few young adults close to his age. A big number of adults disappeared in the catastrophe so most of them were now either motherless or fatherless or even totally orphans.

The dojo was not so far from his home, at the core of the city, it was also quite bigger, two times his apartment and very well equipped, due to the previous tragedy which caused all the other sports gyms to get closed suddenly. Jamal had collected all their equipment and transferred them to this dojo which was the largest sports complex in the whole town. Thus, his students had all the devices they needed to be well trained.

" Why are you all here already, there is some more time before the training? " Jamal couldn't help but ask.

The crowd was quiet. A young woman who was one of the oldest of the group moved forward and said " Yesterday, we all decided to come a bit early- "

" So it's your fault if Karen got almost kidnapped this morning? " Jamal immediately snapped, with a bit of an angry tone in his voice.

Natasha showed a shocked face, she turned her head toward Karen and shouted " Someone tried to kidnap you?! Why did you even move outside of your home in the morning? I told you to wait until 1 p.m when Jamal had almost finished his round! "

" No... it's just... we thought that..." stuttered Karen as she tried to find her words.

" It is not the problem, the main problem is that you become more and more careless! " shouted Jamal, he pointed toward the groups of teenagers and young adults, " You lot should be the ones who should teach the younger ones to be more careful, but yet you do the opposite! I don't stop repeating to you that you may have become stronger than before but you are not strong enough to walk on the streets freely yet ".

" But we just wanted to improve quicker, so we could come and help you as soon as possible, " Replied Natasha making the people behind him nod in agreement.

" I... I already know that " Jamal said, his tone being much lower as he was trying to sound as comprehensive as he could, " but keep in your mind if I really needed help I would have told you anyway, just... don't put yourself in danger uselessly ".

The dojo remained silent a little while before another teen from the crowd stepped forward to suggest " So... hum ... since we are all here, we can start the training now ".

Some whisperings were raised from the crowd showing that they were agreeing with the proposition, Jamal finally sighed, he put his hands on his hips and he said " Okay... we can start now, the first group on the right and the rest of you on the left just like yesterday ".

" Yeaaaah! " shouted the entire crowd in one voice.