The Force (Fighting Freedom Book 1)

by Paige Clendenin

  “So, what’s the plan?” Mar asks.

  Jake kneels down and pulls out a small handgun from his backpack and hands it to Mar, then he grabs another and gives it to Eli.

  “The trucks are about thirty feet apart,” Jake notes. “When the last one is about to pass through the base of the hills, you two shoot the back tire out, but only one. They will have a spare, but no more than one.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Mar smiles. “Then, when they get out to change the tire we….” she pauses.

  “We attack.” I say, with a grin.

  “What about the other trucks?” my brother asks.

  “They will keep going. It is Force protocol to keep on task,” says Jake.

  “And leave their men behind?” Mar asks, in disbelief.

  “Yeah,” Jake answers. “That is one of the things I hated most about The Force. They thought it was better to be for the whole instead of the individual, and because of that, you never felt like one… But enough talking, we need to act now if we are going to do this.”

  Without asking any more questions, Mar and Eli run to the other side of the road and position themselves somewhere that even I can’t see them.

  The trucks are getting closer, and with every turn of the tire, my stomach does the same. I am having flashbacks of how it ended up the last time Eli and I encountered one of these vehicles and the people inside of them.

  The first truck passes without seeing us, and I allow myself a small sigh of relief. The second and third sluggishly roll by without seeing us or Mar and Eli on the other side. As the fourth truck drives on, I can see Mar coming into the open slightly, and I think it might be her getting ready to shoot, but that’s not it at all. I can tell that she is waving her hands at us and shaking her head no.

  The fifth truck passes, and now I can tell that the sixth truck has stopped further back on the road. Mar is now motioning us to come to her.

  “What should we do?” I ask.

  “We should go over,” Jake replies.

  Slowly and carefully, we cross the road, making sure the sixth truck has not started moving again and the fifth truck is far enough ahead. When we reach Mar, she motions us to come with her into their little hiding place where Eli is still crouching, but he’s not alone.

  “Morimoto,” I gasp.

  Morimoto Chi is tied to a tree just on the other side of the road. He has gashes on his face and blood all over what used to be a nice suit.

  “If Morimoto is here,” I say, “then where is Samantha?”

  And it’s then that the gun fire starts.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  A gun sounds seven times, but then the noise stops, and all movement is halted.

  I analyze my own body as I notice everyone else doing the same. We all seem to be unharmed, but all of us seem hyper aware that we are separated from the rest of our group, and maybe those shots were meant for them... But no, it couldn’t have been them because the sounds were far too close to where we are.

  “Maybe they found Samantha,” Eli guesses.

  “You might be right,” Jake says as he edges his way out of hiding and towards the direction of the sixth truck. “Watch him. Don’t let him get away again.” Jake points at Morimoto. “Eli, you come with me.”

  Mar trains her little 22mm handgun on Morimoto’s head for good measure as I and my AK-47 take a look out position from a vantage point. I can see movement around the truck, maybe three figures, but it is still too far down the road for me to see what they look like. I, however, can’t see Jake or Eli anymore.

  The figures enter the truck, and it begins to lurch forward towards the hills.

  “Should we keep with the plan?” I ask Mar.

  “I don’t know, Jake told us to stay with Morimoto.

  “You’re right,” I say. “But this might be our only chance for a while to get a truck, but we will stay here. It’s probably better since there are only two of us anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Mar sighs, still holding her gun at Chi.

  The truck is about to pass us, and something gives me the sinking feeling that this might be our only chance to get our hands on one, but having our bargaining chip back may just be more important than having transportation. I peer around the bushes to watch the truck pass through the mouth of the hills, but it doesn’t.

  “It stopped,” I whisper to Mar as I sneak back around to her.

  “Do you think they saw us?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I hope not.”

  We sit quietly with Morimoto bound between us, but where is a gag when you need one? We both keep our guns locked on his head, hoping that the threat of being shot will keep him quiet.

  We can hear the doors of the truck slam and footsteps approaching. We sit even more still, but we cannot guarantee our prisoner will keep quiet. Now the footsteps are only a few feet from rounding the edge of the bushes where we hide.

  I turn my gun on the approaching shadows, ready to fire at any second, finger on the trigger, and eye to the scope. The shadows turn to figures that are coming into view… My finger holds firm to the trigger ready to pull at any second.

  I raise the gun to place the scope to the head of one of the newcomers for a more accurate kill. I might only be able to shoot one of them, but one would maybe buy Mar time to shoot at another. Just as I am about to shoot the first figure…

  “Whoa, Liz. It’s me,” Jake says.

  I am still vigilantly frozen in place, although the shock of almost shooting Jake courses through me. “Easy, killer,” Eli says, as he pushes the barrel of my gun to face the ground. “You too, hot stuff,” he says, looking at Mar who is still holding her gun high in the air.

  Samantha then rounds the corner, and my AK-47 automatically goes right back up into position, this time pointing at someone I know, on purpose.

  “Hold it, Liz,” she says, throwing her hands in the air.

  “Hold nothing!” I yell. “What are you doing with her?” I ask Jake rather hotly.

  Mar joins me at my side, her own gun in the air. “I don’t trust her,” she says.

  “Me either,” I agree.

  “Give her a chance to explain,” Jake says.

  “Okay,” I say, gun still high in the air. “Explain away.”

  She tells us how she and Derik had fallen asleep on their watch. I can’t condemn them for that because Jake and I did the same thing. Supposedly, she got woken up by a rustle from behind her. She went to wake Derik up to go check out the noise with her, but he was not beside her. He was gone.

  It was then that she noticed that Chi too was gone, no longer tied to his tree. She snuck around the truck to see if he had gone towards the camp, but after a few minutes of seeing him nowhere, Samantha decided to go for help. She was heading into the camp to get Jake and me when she heard Derik scream from behind her. She turned to see Morimoto thrust Derik’s own knife into his shoulder.

  Derik fell backwards and hit his head on a boulder.

  “I ducked behind a rock and watched him throw Derik’s lifeless body into the back of the truck,” she said. “After that, he started heading towards the woods, and so I went after him. I hollered for help a few times, but I guess no one heard me.”

  I lower my gun a little. “How did you end up here, then?” I ask, still not sure I should believe the whole story.

  “I followed him for miles before I got close enough to attack,” she said. “When I got to him, we fought a bit, but in the end, I overpowered him. I was bringing him back to camp when I saw the trucks and thought it might be easier by vehicle to get back to you… Plus I knew we needed transportation anyway.”

  “Okay,” Mar says, as she lowers her gun. “If that’s the case, then what was all that every man for themselves stuff you were talking about?”

  “I don’t know, sometimes I wonder why I am even in this mess, and then I remember that we are going to try to get your sisters, and it makes me mad… But then, I remember the war plans in my pocket, and it makes m
e want to help you for other reasons.”

  “And what might those reasons be?” my brother asks.

  “It’s simple,” she says. “I want to see the peace that R. J. Timothy talked about.”

  “Me too,” I say, as I let my gun fall to my side. “So, what were all those gun shots?”

  “It was me,” Samantha says. “There were seven members in the truck… Some members from The Force… Some from Elected.”

  “They were together?” Mar asks.

  “Yeah,” says Samantha. “They were.”

  I look at my watch and feel way too exhausted to confront her any longer. I make a mental note not to fully trust Samantha. I’m not sure if she is quite stable enough to be on our side entirely.

  We all climb into the truck, forcing Morimoto in the back and locking the double doors behind him. This gives me some kind of sick satisfaction because this is exactly what was done to me. If I can make him for one minute feel the panic I felt on that day, oh what a great feeling.

  We drive back to where our friends are waiting and they hop in with hope that the vehicle gives us a new advantage.

  Now with all the members of our group settled in the utility vehicle, easily three times larger than the pickup truck, it is now time for us to find our way to The Elected Headquarters.

  A way to finding our life… Syl and Shae… Or our death.

  Chapter Forty

  I feel like Elious and I are back at the beginning. We began this journey in a utility vehicle heading towards The Force. At that time, we thought that Maria, Isaac, and ShaeLei were safe behind us.

  Now Eli and I are in a utility vehicle, heading towards The Elected.

  And now my thoughts turn to Mom and Lydia. What would our mother think of my dad, Robert Towers? His name goes through me. Reading his name on that letter was like a blow to the heart. Finding out that your dead father is in fact alive, but a bad guy…

  Jake takes my hand as he drives towards our first checkpoint. We are heading towards danger. Like Magi has already said… “We are only getting closer to danger, not farther away from it.”

  “Together?” Jake asks, with a small sideways smile.

  “Together,” I say.

  He pulls my hand up to his lips and kisses them so softly.

  I don’t know if I would have been able to survive without him.

  From behind me, I can hear Mar and Eli talking. They have gotten so close. I know that they both liked each other before we came to The Force, but until recently, it was just like. Now, it is love. Like Jake and I, I feel like they need each other to live.

  I see my brother in a whole new light than I did before; he is a beautiful person with a caring soul. The way he talks to Zac, the way he is still looking out for me even though he knows I am safe with Jake, and the way he looks at Mar, are all signs that he has grown up.

  Mar too. She has grown from being a small, shy girl who wouldn’t even touch a gun, let alone know how to shoot one, but just moments ago, she had hers held high right beside me. As a tear trails down my cheek, I am remembering us as children, her being different and me being different, yet we were the same.

  As much as we were friends then, we are that much more now.

  “Hey Shawn,” I say. “I’m glad you’re my brother.”

  “Me too,” Eli agrees.

  Morimoto Chi is tied to the back corner of the truck. I hate that man more than I know I have ever hated anyone. I have wanted to kill him on multiple occasions and now with him being the one who killed Derik, I know Leah’s feelings are the same. The only reason he is even still alive is because we may need him.

  “Someday, I hope that we can all be free,” Mar says, as she sits up straight.

  “Someday, we will be,” I say as I look at Jake. “Someday, I want to see the peace.”

  “I promise you will see that day,” Jake whispers to me.

  This man that loves me even though I have no reason to be loved, holds my hand in his, and is promising the world. I do not deserve him even though fate has crossed our paths. Both of our fathers have deceived us, and both of us have lost in our life, but despite that, we can be who we are together.

  One day life might allow us to happily grow up and grow old, but today is not that day. For now, that is because we are in the middle of a war, but we will fight the war and what lay ahead until the very end. And even though we feel so broken, and even though we feel so all alone, we are not those things as long as we stay together.

  Because together we will not be defeated, together we can overcome, and together, we are Strong.

  Find out what happens to Liz and her loved ones in The Elected-Book 2 of The United Trilogy!

  Coming March 2019

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