Time seemed to slow down as the male rounded the corner and sprinted down the alley; Katya’s knuckles had become white with the tension she held her ulak with. A blur of Oliver moved past, followed by the vicious snarling Hiko. A couple of heartbeats passed before the Nerushi came into her line of sight. When it did, however, time seemed to skip. Before she knew it, she had lunged forward and slashed the back of the knee as the tall monster moved to pounce.
With a clatter, the Nerushi’s leg gave out and caused the giant to tumble to the ground in an ungraceful manner. The red-head had no time to be distracted by how Leonora might be handling the Hiko, instead, all she could do was move to place a knee heavily on the Nerushi’s back and plunge the curved ulak smoothly into the weakness in the neck. The body shuddered slightly beneath her, but there was no fight as the life left it immediately. Katya’s hands trembled a little as she pushed herself to her feet and glanced up the alley to make sure Leonora and Zen had brought the Hiko down as well.
She didn’t think she would ever get used to this feeling of ending something’s life. Even though she knew she was saving herself and her friends, she really didn’t feel comfortable knowing she had killed with her own hands.
“Are you guys ok?” She called with her chest rising and falling heavily to keep her body calm.
“All good. You were right about the back of the neck, but bloody hell these things are scary up close” Leonora chuckled.
“Nice deduction Sherlock, you try having that chase you while snapping at your butt” Oliver panted softly as he rested himself against the wall, his right foot kicking lightly at the jaw of the Hiko on the floor. “Though, they didn’t hear me when I yelled at them for their attention…”
“Did you actually yell, or chicken out?” Katya teased softly causing a small pout to form on her best friends strong-jawed face.
“I didn’t chicken out. I full on yelled out, I thought it would allow me to get a bigger head start. But they didn’t hear me, so I had to go closer to get their attention” Oliver explained “I’ll try again this time but I’m not sure they can hear, you know”
That would make sense. There had been many times where someone had made more noise than should normally be problematic and yet the aliens had not turned their way and were more interested in something they were looking at.
“Definitely test that out… that could be so useful…” Katya half mumbled, her mind falling into her mind map of how these creates worked anatomically. No mouth and no hearing. It was certainly an interesting combination. If it was true, then they could also use that to their advantage; so long as they didn’t have any other insane senses that made up for the lack of hearing.
After a couple of minutes of calming himself, Oliver set off again while the other three cleared the alley, dragging the bodies away from the route the dark-haired male would take so as not to cause any distractions.
The second time and the third time, the plan went smoothly; all the aliens being taken out, Leonora showing exactly how good her aim was even if she was solely an engineer in the army. The confidence that it provided, knowing that they were going into one of these factories with someone that was actually trained and not just self-taught on the go was incredibly soothing.
“Before we go in, we should have a small snack… especially you Olli after all that running” Katya commented as they reached the buildings in front of the ominous black factory “If there was that many outside, there will probably be more inside, and we can’t exactly lure them out”
“That’s true, plus if there are as many in there as you say; we will need as much energy as we can get” Leonora piped up as she leant herself against the kitchen side in the building they had paused in. Leaning down she pulled up the right leg of her baggy combat trousers to reveal a mechanical leg designed beautifully to work and represent all the bones, joints, and stretch of a normal leg. “Plus, it gives me time to oil this knee” she chuckled a little as she pulled out a small bottle of oil with a fine point application tip.
Between them asking about her workmanship and Katya explaining the general structure of the factory interior and carefully guiding the plan to have all three of them go upstairs while she scouted downstairs, the snacks they had were gone and the time passed to avoid stitches.
Time to go.
Chapter 8
The interior of these places was slowly becoming unsurprising to Katya, Oliver and Zen. Leonora, however, had the same unsettled expression move over her features as soon as they entered. It was like the creaks of metal and the sickening yellow hue of the lighting was able to sink into the very pit of your stomach and make it turn. It wasn’t that it lessened over time; it was more like an ache that you just got used to functioning with – always there putting you a little off balance and ready for something to go wrong.
Katya’s back and shoulders certainly tensed every time she was inside these places; she was still scared to know what else she might find, still sick to the stomach at the tanks in the downstairs room which she knew fed the humans as well that were held captive. She had seen quite a few of them now and she had seen various stuff in them. Parts of animals, whole humans, parts of humans; old and young of anything that had a spine seemed to go in there.
She had emptied her stomach in those rooms many times already, and this time was no different as she saw a crushed body of a young boy in there being corroded away.
There was no way she was letting anyone else scout out this room. They couldn’t know this horror. It was bad enough that she knew about it, but she had managed to time every trip and thus every emptying of her stomach to be many hours after taking her medication.
She could handle this.
Leaving that room, she came face to face with a patrolling Hiko which immediately snarled and snapped, wasting no time in launching itself forward with the full intent to kill. Her body responded a little too slow, the claws of the feline-like creature digging into her thigh as she turned to dodge. As she began to fall, her left hand plunged the dagger into the back of the monster’s neck.
With a loud groan, Katya’s back hit the floor while the Hiko collapsed with her leg trapped beneath with the claws still lodged into the muscle. It wasn’t that deep, but she knew as soon as she moved to try and push the creature from her it would just rip deeper.
“Kat? Oh hell. Wait there!” Ah, of course, Oliver would be tuned it enough to hear the groan she had let out. Without hesitation, he had hopped over the side of the stairwell and jogged over to Katya with concern on his face. “Alright drama queen, I got you” his comment got a small glare from Katya as she stuck out her tongue at her best friend.
Gritting her teeth as Oliver pushed the body up a little so he could pull the paw from Katya to stop any more damage. Once her thigh was free she shuffled herself backwards from under the creature before glancing to her thigh to inspect the damage.
“Damn. That’s going to sting” She mumbled to herself as she pulled her backpack in front of her and dug through it for alcohol wipes and bandages.
“Here, gimme that” Taking the bandages from the red-head, Oliver pulled out his knife to cut through the legging material to remove it from the wound.
“Well this is a fashion statement and a half” Katya laughed a little as she looked down at her one bare leg and her one covered leg.
“You can pull it off darling, don’t you worry” Oliver chortled back as he cleaned the wound, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Katya, making sure it was completely clean before beginning to dress the wound tight. “It didn’t seem too deep; will you be alright to walk?”
“Yeah, I should be alright… give me a hand up” As she got to her feet there was a moment of cautious testing out whether that injury was going to cause an issue for her. But she could hold her weight and she could move – that was all she needed. “I’ll be fine, maybe a little slow. Let’s go”
Heading upstairs with Oliver walking behind her as though afraid she might fall b
ack down them, Katya noticed that the three others had taken out four beings on the higher floor. As she approached them, she was faced with a look of concern from both, which she waved off with a sheepish smile.
“Hiko got me, but I’m all good – everywhere else clear?” She chimed before anyone could say anything further.
“All but the machine room, we didn’t want to check that til everyone was here to help” Zen explained.
“Cool, well as you’ll all be quicker than me, I’ll open the door and then get any in to follow me down the corridor for you to take out?”
“Risky, but we’ll be just outside so sure thing. More effective than taking them head on it would seem” Leonora’s brown eyes flicked down to the bandaged leg but made no further comment on it. Perhaps having lost her own leg, she knew how much someone could be stubborn enough to put up with.
Luckily for her, the room was empty of both Nerushi and Hiko. With a sigh, she lowered her ulak and signalled that it was safe to the rest. With Oliver standing guard at the door just in case another came into the factory, the other three removed the six people from machines and patched them up; while she was no army medic, it turned out that Leonora was quite adept with a first aid kit.
“Kat, while we were scouting, we noticed there is another door by the room where they usually have the children” Zen commented as they were patching up the last person.
“What? Did you go in?”
“No, we wanted to wait for you. You are the unspoken leader, after all,” The older male smirked a little at her expression that seemed a little like a defeated pout.
“Ok, we’ll check that room out first, so we don’t have to while trying to get a bunch of people out of here. Leonora, can you stay in here and look after these six while we go make sure it’s not filled with aliens that want to farm us?” The red-head turned her blue eyes onto their newest, and probably temporary, member who gave a confirmation nod.
“Sure thing. If you need back up just yell for me” she replied as she scanned the room for the safest place for the civilians to huddle where she could protect them.
The fifth and usually absent room was withheld behind an unusual door. It wasn’t trigger activated like the other but made of thin metal strips that could be pushed through with a small effort from human arms. The aliens must have just been able to walk through them like it was water. Already with blades in hand, Zen, Oliver, and Katya made their way inside with cautious glances around just to make sure they weren’t walking into serious trouble.
Instead, they found themselves in what looked like a warehouse. Tankards around the size of beer kegs were stacked on top of each other in four sections, each section having a different coloured metal ring at the top of each tankard. It wasn’t the kind of colouring that humans would choose, the primary colours plus another. No, these were strange hues that seemed randomly mixed on a paint pallet; a murky pink colour, a blood red, blue like the colour of the alien’s blood and then a strange mix of amber and silver which didn’t seem real.
“Well, looks like they can see colours…” Katya mumbled.
“Yeah, looks like colour coding.” Zen agreed.
“Colour coding what though?” Oliver queried as he approached the section silver/amber rings tankards were.
Katya walked over to him, placing her ulak back into its holder while pulling out the flip knife from her pocket. “Only one way to find out” and with that she made effort to pry her way into the closest tankard to see what was inside.
It took a few minutes of straining to finally get the metal apart and pulled away from the top enough to see and reach inside. Thankfully, the others had followed her lead and started on other tankards in other sections. It didn’t take long for them to have opened them all and looked inside. They were all filled with liquids that didn’t look like anything any of them knew. Well, except that pink liquid that they all recognised as what the aliens had fed the humans on and what they used for their own energy resources.
The other three were complete mysteries to them, however…
“That must be what they have been harvesting from humans; men, women and children” Zen commented finally as he glanced from section to section. “It would make sense why they kept us separated.”
“Yeah, but what liquid is inside us to that quantity?!” Oliver sounded a little horrified at the thought; but they had seen people further along the harvesting line and realised that the longer they were on those machines, the more of their body was absorbed. It was only a matter of time before they found one who wouldn’t be able to be saved through removal.
“Maybe it’s not… maybe it’s all the liquid brought from the other factories around here. That could be why we haven’t seen this room before?” Katya interjected as she leaned over to sniff at the slightly discoloured liquid of one tankard.
“Like a storage hub before they are moved to where they need to be?”
“Exactly!” Katya nodded as she looked around the room, it wasn’t full, yet which meant that they had probably been expecting more before they moved it on further.
“We should destroy it” Oliver suggested quickly, though he was met with a very quick shake of Katya’s head.
“That would take too long, we could only just about pry through these ones by finding that one little weakness near the rings; trying to destroy them on a large scale would be too difficult.” She commented with a small tone of defeat; she would like to have destroyed all the work that the aliens had done, but it just wasn’t viable right now. “Besides, we’ve got to get people out of here… they should be the priority.”
“Katya’s right, come on.” Zen agreed with a nod of his head as he headed back to the strange metal flap door to glance outside to make sure the coast was clear.
Leonora had fished out clothes for the six people from the large backpack they had brought with them. They weren’t exactly the right size, but they were better than nothing to get them to the safe bunker.
“We’ll do the usual set up, but instead of me keeping guard, Oliver will have to. It’s too risky for me on this leg. So, Leonora can come with me and do the explaining, then Zen can organise the pairing up of an adult to a child” Katya instructed, glancing to Oliver to confirm that her idea was ok. He was the last person she wanted in danger, but also the person she trusted the most.
There was no argument from any of them, and Oliver gave the red-head a squeeze on her shoulder as he passed. “Don’t worry, doll. I got this, don’t you strain that leg” with a kiss to her forehead he moved to the downstairs level to watch the main door.
“Right, now this may be a little grim to see. Hordes of people are just kept in singular rooms, and they are only fed on some weird pink liquid.” Katya explained to Leonora, just to make sure everything had been covered. “We just have to get them to calm down and stop any chaos… but you’ve probably got more experience in chaos than we do”
Leonora chuckled and nodded softly “I have had my experiences, yes. I’ll step up this time if anyone tries to barge they would take you out on that leg” she motioned down to the wound which was holding well beneath the quick bandage job.
“Thanks” Katya smiled lightly at the ashen-haired female while reaching out to press the door switch.
As the door opened though, they weren’t met with the panic that Katya had grown to expect, but a deathly silence as eyes all focused on the females now in the doorway.
“Leo! Oh, bloody heck, what you doing here?” The sound broke the silence as a smooth deep voice washed over them. Both sets of eyes flicked to the man who had spoken, not that he was difficult to pick out of the line-up. A tall man with broad shoulders and well-built muscles strode out with a grin adding charm to his facial features. Even in the shadow of the room, his dark skin seemed rich while his grey coloured eyes sparkled with a surprising about of wit and hope. Extending his hand, he clapped it onto Leonora’s shoulder before pulling her into a gruff, typically manly hug. “Glad you’re ali
ve!”
“Damn, Axel! You too! I take it you are the reason for the extra beasts that were outside here?” Leonora laughed in a friendly fashion as she pulled back and glanced around, greeting a few more people with a hearty handshake. “I hope you lot put up a hell of a protest.”
“Every damn time they’ve opened that door!” Axel chimed proudly, though a moment later he seemed to catch something in the corner of his eye, a frown forming on his face “Though we haven’t managed to take any of them out, and we’ve suffered for it”
Leonora and Katya turned to the corner where Axel had glanced, a man stood apart from the others, as though avoided by all the other men in the place. Like Axel, the man was tall and built strong, unlike Axel though, this man looked intimidating with narrowed dark eyes and dark hair that flopped messily over his sharply shaped face.
Silence of the Apocalypse- Journey Home Page 7