Trail of Tears (4 page)

She tried to stop someone but they pulled
from her grasp and hurried on leaving her like flotsam in a deluge.
She was pulled along the corridor with the groups of people but the
press of bodies terrified her. If she fell, no one would hear her.
Would they stop anyway? There was an air of near terror surrounding
the people. They were not yet a panicked mob but it would not take
much to send them over the edge. She had to get away from them. She
continued to be led but began to push her way to the left. The
corridor split ahead, and the main route continued to the right.
There was a smaller corridor that led to a covered course toward
some of the sleeping quarters. If the mob continued on the main
route, which made sense, then she might be able to force her way
into the smaller tributary and allow them to pass.

She could see the split ahead. It was coming
up so quickly and she was still only in the middle of the throng.
She began to fight her way through the mob but they were too strong
for her. The smaller corridor was only twenty feet ahead now. Her
heart beat faster; she opened her mouth, trying desperately to
utter a sound but her chords were long dead, not even capable of
uttering a desperate sob. The image of a dream came to her again as
she was carried helplessly along.

Ten feet.

She wasn’t going to make it. She just wasn’t
strong enough. Her feet were suddenly lifted from the ground and
she lost all purchase on the ground and was carried past the
corridor. She threw her hands desperately towards the safety of the
small inlet as though she could fly or carve a path to safety. Her
heart hammered in her small chest, her mind filled with panic as
the corridor passed by. Suddenly, something gripped her arm. The
grip was so strong that she tried to wrench herself free but she
couldn’t pull loose. She also couldn’t see who had a hold of her,
but she put everything into trying to free herself. She clawed at
the arm with her free hand, feeling her nails bite into the hand
that held her. The grip never loosened. She felt herself being
pulled relentlessly to the right against the flow of people. She
was struck a number of times by elbows and feet but the grip on her
arm never relented and slowly she was pulled towards the inlet. She
finally stopped struggling once she realised what was happening.
Someone was pulling her to safety.

* * *

The three shadows slipped through the ruins
unseen. The main force was still successfully distracting the
humans and it was easy to slip around their defences. From his
vantage the thing that had once been Justin Stewart smiled, though
there was no humour in the action. In the five years since he had
made his choice and joined the thralls his humanity had eroded away
completely. Not that he had ever shown much humanity during his
life. Life hadn’t exactly been kind to him either, so he didn’t
think he owed it anything. He had been born to a drug-addicted
mother and his first month of life had been spent screaming as he
had been weaned off the drugs his mother had pumped into him from
her body.

His mother had died shortly after his birth
and the system had taken control of his fate. He had passed through
a number of families but had never settled. His propensity for
addiction had never left him. He had craved attention, food
anything to try and fill the hole. He had never understood exactly
what it was but nothing seemed to satisfy him. As he grew so too
did his gnawing hunger. He was cruel, dominating, and never spent
long enough in one place to address the pain that existed within
him. Instead he fed the pain with excess and finally with the very
drugs that had killed his mother.

When the vampires had come he had been in
prison screaming as his system was, once again, being weaned from
drugs. It was like he was being reborn. The vampires had offered
him everything society had denied him and he had embraced it body
and soul.

He watched the families run from the dance
floor, women and teenage boys leading children into the lighted
entrance to their homes while others, women and men, picked up
their weapons and headed towards the fighting.

He signalled for his men to follow and he
left the shadows and made his way towards the entrance. They had
been searching a long time for this group of humans. His mouth
began to salivate at the thought of the rewards they would receive
for discovering the humans that had caused so much trouble for his
masters. He did not feel any compunction about what he was about to
do. He no longer considered himself to be human so why should he
care what happened to them.

He looked down the lit corridor and saw the
mass of frightened humans as they struggled to get to safety.
Stewart pulled a grenade from his belt and held two fingers up to
his men. They pulled their own grenades from their belts, pulled
the pins, and threw them far into the lit corridor. They moved to
the side and waited for the explosions. The ground shook and the
screams began. Stewart moved into the corridor and made his way
through the carnage firing calmly at anything that moved.

* * *

Something was wrong. April felt the floor
shudder and people’s faces shifted in an instant from concern to
panic. She was almost at the inlet but the crowd surged against her
and threatened to wrench her from her rescuer’s grasp. She looked
around and could see people screaming, their silent terror-filled
faces made more poignant by her ignorance of what was happening.
She fought against the tide of people but the flow was too strong.
She felt her grip on her rescuer loosen and then a second hand
clamped on her arm and she was wrenched violently against the flow
of people. Despite the crowd, she felt herself being hauled towards
the inlet. She was helpless to do anything and forced herself to
ignore the pain as people kicked and punched at her in their
panic.

She felt her face raked by someone’s nail;
she thought that her arm would be pulled from its socket… and then,
suddenly, she was free. Arms enveloped her. For a moment the hug
was everything to her. It had been so long since she had felt real
human contact. She was an outsider, someone who was different. Oh,
there were a few who treated her well, Harris and Sandra really
listened to what she had to say now that she had proven herself on
the last mission, but she longed for something more. She didn’t
want to be the poor little deaf girl; she wanted contact,
companionship. She felt the arms around her loosen and she
considered wrapping her arms more tightly around her rescuer, but
she knew she could not. Something was happening.

When her rescuer came into view she was
shocked. Robert Seager’s face was scratched and his hands were torn
badly where she had fought against him. She was about to apologise
when she saw the urgency in his face. She hadn’t had much contact
with Seager before; he had always been aloof, and she assumed that
he was a typical idiot who thought anyone not normal was beneath
their attention. She had been wrong.

Seager over a foot taller than her. His
clothes were soaked from the rain and his hair was plastered to his
skull giving him a more angular, almost hawkish look. His shoulders
were broad and his arms were muscular. She immediately remembered
their strength as they had held her and she felt her face grow hot.
Her attention was distracted when he began to sign to her and she
suddenly realised that she had been staring at him. His hands were
smeared red from the deep scratches along his arms. The words were
garbled and inaccurate in his haste but the fact that he knew any
sign hit her like a slap.
Where did he learn that
? She felt
a warmth rush through her as she looked into this boy’s eyes and
saw something there she had missed before. How had she missed that?
She noticed everything; she had to in order to survive in her
silent world. She brought her hands up to cover his gently,
stopping his signing. She signalled for him to talk and she would
read his lips. She could see the relief in his face as the words
tumbled from his mouth. Her face went pale as she learned of the
attack, the explosion… Seager’s face snapped to the side suddenly
as he looked out into the milling mass of people that still
streamed past. She caught the words that fell from his lips and a
cold hand gripped her heart.

‘Gunfire. They’re coming’.

* * *

Conor Ricks heard an explosion. At first he
thought it was a dream. Consciousness had been swimming in and out
over the last few days. He had heard Sarah Warkowski tell the other
nurses to pump him full of drugs to keep him still. At least the
pain had disappeared but he didn’t like the constant feeling of
floating. He also wasn’t sure what was real and what was imagined.
He was pretty sure he had seen Emma come to see him, but then again
he was also convinced his mother had come as well and she was dead.
Wasn’t she?

He tried to concentrate, to clear the
mugginess from his head. Had he heard gunfire or had he imagined
it? He strained his ears but heard nothing further. And then he
heard a popping, like popcorn, and he expected to smell the
distinctive smell of cooking corn but none came. The popping
continued and it was getting louder. And were those screams? His
head still swam and he tried to lull himself back to sleep but
something deep down wouldn’t let it go and continued to nag at him.
Something was wrong, he could feel it. He tried to pull himself up
and pain flooded through his body. His shoulder was on fire and his
side flared in agony but he persisted. One good thing about the
pain was that it cleared his head. For the first time in ages he
could concentrate and think properly. He gritted his teeth and rode
the aches as he forced himself upright. The popping was getting
louder but he took it slowly, he couldn’t afford to pass out. Now
that his mind was clear he was fairly certain that the base was
under attack. How and by whom would have to wait, for now he had to
get himself up or risk being shot while helpless in bed.

The room was stark—a bed, a chair, and a
tangle of wires that flowed into a big, softly beeping machine to
his left. The wires terminated in his arm and he pulled them out
carefully, wincing as the sharp beeping grew louder and filled the
room and drove into his head like a knife. He ignored the noise.
Someone was likely to hear it but by now he could hear screams and
the popping was louder again. People were dying out in the
corridors of his home, but he had to take his time or he would be
no good to anyone. Thoughts of Emma raced through his mind; he knew
for certain she would be in the thick of the fighting, if she was
still alive. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and paused
as his head swam dangerously. He felt himself falling forward and
grabbed at the machine beside him to steady himself. The machine
tipped over and, a moment before he hit the floor, he heard a
crash. The alarm was cut off in mid squeal just before darkness
swept over him.

* * *

April saw crowds of people sweep past her in
panic. Bodies were falling beneath trampling feet; some were dead
before they slipped beneath the throng. She saw bullets strike
their bodies, slamming into their flesh. She saw the blood arc high
from the wounds and splatter others. The eyes of those still alive
showed only madness and fear as they pressed further into the
complex.

She held Seager’s hand tightly as bodies
fell into their small alcove but, mercifully, the crowd was too
intent on fleeing the bullets that no one noticed their small
island of safety. The last of the crowd began to rush past and she
cried as she saw the number of bodies left in their wake. One small
girl, she couldn’t have been more than nine, lay mere feet from
her, her small arm outstretched as if pleading to be saved. She
knelt beside the girl probing her body to see if she still lived.
The child’s glazed eyes told her everything she needed to know.
There were three ugly blood-soaked marks across her back, the flesh
torn by the high calibre bullets and April placed her hands on the
wounds as if her touch could heal. Tears ran down her cheeks. She
looked out at the corridor mere feet away and saw a trail of
bodies. Suddenly, the walls in front of her erupted and masonry
exploded outwards. She looked curiously at them for a moment until
it hit her. They’re coming.

April felt anger deep in her stomach. She
launched to her feet and moved to Robert indicating the corridor
behind him, but he shook his head sadly and shrugged. She looked
past him and saw that the alcove ended abruptly just behind him.
Two doors on either side of the narrow corridor had small signs
indicating electrical equipment on one and storage on the other.
She flew past him and pulled at the doors frantically, her bloodied
hands slipping on the handles. They were locked. They had nowhere
to go. She looked to Seager but his face showed nothing but
resignation.

She looked around, determined not to allow
the bastards who had killed that girl to kill her too. She looked
for a weapon, anything to fight back with. Her hand grazed the wall
and left a smear of red and she stopped suddenly and took a closer
look. She felt Seager put his hand on her shoulder and she whirled
so quickly he jumped back. She dropped to the little girl’s body
again and rubbed her hands along the wounds getting blood all over
her. She quickly smeared the blood on her own clothes and face and
urged him to do the same. He knelt beside her quickly and within
seconds they were both covered in blood. She saw Seager’s head snap
towards the corridor and he motioned for her to get down. They both
dropped flat just as she saw a shadow appear at the opening.

She squeezed her eyes closed and tried not
to breath. Her heart thumped in her chest like a piston and she was
certain they would hear her. She dared not open her eyes, but she
couldn’t hear whether the killers were coming towards her or
passing by. Her hand lay close to Seager’s, and she could just feel
his finger touching hers. April’s whole world was concentrated on
that single touch of skin. She longed to reach out and grab his
hand in hers and squeeze, to feel
something
in the void she
was in. At least Seager would know if their attackers were coming;
the first she would know would be a bullet or a hand gripping her
hair. She braced her body for the impact and lay there for what
seemed like hours.