Also by Bernard Wilkerson
The Worlds of the Dead series
Beaches of Brazil
Communion
Discovery
The Creation series
In the Beginning
The Hrwang Incursion
Earth: Book One
Episode 1: Defeat
Episode 2: Flight
Episode 3: Maneuvers
The Hrwang Incursion
Book 1
Earth
Copyright © 2015 by Bernard Wilkerson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, with the exception of short quotes used in reviews, without permission from the author.
Requests for permission should be submitted to [email protected].
For information about the author, go to
www.bernardwilkerson.com
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Cover photo courtesy of NASA.
Episode 4
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Jayla knew every inch of the hospital. It wasn’t a large place, more like an overgrown clinic with two wings attached, and she’d been through all of it except the rooms that required a key card to enter. On the stairs coming up from the basement, when she heard clipboards falling over, the alarm system she’d devised for intruders, and the voices of men swearing, she knew she could make it back to the patient wing without being seen.
If she ran now.
She tried quietly setting down the food she carried, but ended up dropping things and finally letting go of all of it. Her heart pounded so loudly, the blood rushing to her head, that she didn’t know how much noise she made or if anyone outside of the stairwell could hear her.
She knew she had to run. She didn’t know who had entered the hospital, but the very real chance existed it was the old man from the mountain who followed her. It sounded like he had brought accomplices. When, after a day or two, he hadn’t shown up, when no one had shown up, she had figured she was safe. She had thought no one knew where she was.
How had he found her?
She didn’t like the sound of the voices she heard swearing and shoving hospital beds around. They sounded angry, harsh, mean. Even if it wasn’t the old man who had kidnapped her sister, had tied her up, and had done terrible things to her, making a mess out of her mind, Jayla didn’t want to deal with any other men who might be like him. She didn’t know what men like that could do and didn’t even want to try to imagine it.
She realized that if she could hear men in the emergency room as clearly as she could, they could probably hear her just the same.
Had someone already heard her?
She had to run.
She almost turned and ran back down the stairs. She could hide in the kitchen. There were spots. In the cabinets, under the sink, even in the unpowered freezer drawer with the melted ice cream.
But a man would find Jada.
She didn’t know what to do, but a bed shoved into a wall sounded closer and she knew she had to do something.
She had to run.
Fear grabbed a part of her like it had never done before and she almost cried when she felt warm liquid seep down the leg of her jeans. Why? Why did life have to be like this? Why couldn’t everyone just leave her and her sister alone?
Voices moved even closer. Once the owners of those voices left the corridor, they’d see her running past and would know where she had gone. And there was nowhere to hide in a patient’s room. She had to go now, had to get Jada out before anyone else saw her head that way. There were emergency exits around the hospital, all locked but openable from the inside. They set off alarms, but without electricity there’d be no noise. Jayla took a precious half second to figure out where the closest one was to their room.
She’d have to exit the patient wing, go down past admitting, and out a side door. That would only work if whoever was in the corridor now, making their way through the obstacles she had placed, went left instead of right, went and explored the labs and outpatient rooms. Or even better, if they went downstairs to the kitchen. Then she could get out unseen without any problems.
If only she could get her legs to run.
She tried again and her legs attempted to carry her back down the stairs, away from danger, but away from safety. And away from her sister. What would happen if someone found Jada? Her Daddy’s face appeared in her mental vision and she knew she couldn’t abandon her sister. She had to save her.
She finally took a step up the stairs, then another, and a final one. She peeked through the glass in the door and didn’t see anyone, so she opened the door slowly, poked her head out, heard shouting and cursing, stepped out, and ran.
Now danger lay behind her, the patient wing in a direction away from it, and her feet carried her without qualm. Grateful for tennis shoes she had found, she tried not to squeak when she ran around a corner. Finally out of sight of the emergency room corridor exit, she could run comfortably, thinking.
Her heart still pounded, her wet jeans clung uncomfortably to her leg, but she focused and plotted out the quickest way to an exit. She tried to remember if Jada was already in her wheelchair or still in bed. Hopefully in the wheelchair. That would save a precious few seconds.
She ran straight to the room, ignoring the mess she’d made in the nurse’s station, the full garbage cans everywhere, and the evidence that warm bodies occupied this hospital. She hoped to be out of it and on the run long before anyone came down this wing.
Jada lay in her bed.
Jayla didn’t even stop to think. She shoved the wheelchair next to the bed, grabbed her sister, still wearing a hospital gown, and pulled her into the chair. She partly missed, Jada’s foot slamming into the floor. Her sister let out a squeal and Jayla immediately clamped her hand over Jada’s mouth. The first time she reacts to something and it has to be now?
She had no time to grab anything, not even the shotgun. She knew she couldn’t use it anyway. She hadn’t fired at the robe in the bathroom when she thought it was a man, and she didn’t think she’d be able to fire it now. She was already out of the patient room before she finished processing all those thoughts anyway, and it was too late. She ran to the end of the patient wing and heard the sound she didn’t want to hear. The voices were heading her direction.
She had investigated the hospital thoroughly, and at the end of the patient wing was a place she thought she could hide. She stopped the wheelchair at the janitor’s closet and opened the door. She hoisted Jada out of the wheelchair, kicked it gently away so it wouldn’t cause a ruckus, but wouldn’t be sitting immediately outside her door, and pulled her sister into the tiny room. She shut the door and felt for a lock. It had a little one. She locked it.
In the dark, she felt behind her for the other door she knew was there. She found the handle.
“Look at all this!” she heard a man yell. There were more voices now and someone tried the door to the closet. When it didn’t open, they moved on.
She turned the handle of the inside door as slowly as she could, pushing the heavy metal door softly, holding Jada with one arm. Her heart raced, blood pounded in her ears, and her hands shook.
“Shotgun! Mine!” yelled a voice.
She pulled Jada into the dark room behind the janitor’s closet. She closed the door softly and hope
d it too locked.
It did.
She locked it.
She had inspected the room once and had seen the standing electrical something or anothers. She thought she recognized a couple of hot water heaters, but they were large, much larger than the one in her basement at home. Probably for all the showers in the patient wing. She pulled Jada along behind her in the dark and found her way behind something that would hide her from sight should anyone come through the door.
Pulling her sister down next to her, Jayla held her close and began to cry.
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