My dreams are violent and full of blood. I can’t remember them in any detail but they leave me feeling drained and sad when I wake in the morning.
The light is switched back on. I look around at the faces of my three friends and see the same weary look on each of them. They appear to have slept as much as I have. We’re hardly battle ready.
We barely have any time to wake up before the door is swung open with such force it bangs on the wall and bounces off again. I’m really getting sick and tired of seeing Callum’s angry face staring at us.
“Stand against the wall. All of you,” he barks. When we don’t move fast enough, he adds, “Now! Move! Move! Move!”
We line up before another four people rush into the room. The men each have a length of rope and order us to produce our wrists for them. They tie our hands together in front of us. My wrists are still sore from the rope yesterday. The new bindings bite into my raw skin.
“Where are you taking us?” Garlind asks. He receives no response. “What are you going to do with us? I need some answers before we go anywhere with you.”
“You don’t deserve a thing,” the man finally replies.
“Yes, we do,” Garlind argues. “I want to speak with Philip. Bring him here before you take us anywhere. I demand to have some answers.”
If I didn’t know Garlind so well, I wouldn’t be able to hear the fear in his strained voice. To everyone else he would sound assertive and strong. But I can hear the doubt in his tone and it scares the living daylights out of me. Nothing usually affects him like this.
“Walk,” Callum grunts.
We all hesitate just that second too long. The man behind Garlind kicks the back of his knees so his legs buckle. He grabs onto the side of the wall to steady himself, just managing to regain his balance so he doesn’t fall flat on his face.
Our plans all revolved around us getting out of the cell before we made our move. I calm myself down by reassuring myself that this is what we wanted. We had to get through our cell door in order to escape. This is just step one.
We hadn’t planned on being tied up when we did it, though. The bindings are going to slow us down but they’ve left our feet free and they are the main thing we need to escape. We can still do this.
We can.
The four of us are marched through the corridors for a long time. We go up some stairs but not nearly as many as we came down yesterday. They can’t be taking us up to the surface. That probably means they aren’t letting us go.
Noise from the chatter of lots of people filter in from farther down the corridor. It gets louder as we approach an archway carved into the stone. We are pushed through it onto a ledge. Down below, there has to be at least a hundred people all staring up at us from a very large cavern.
Philip stands at the end of our ledge, holding his arms up to quiet his rowdy audience. A really bad feeling creeps over me. We’re tied up and paraded in front of his people. Nothing good can possibly come from this.
Nothing.
“Good people of Raleigh,” Philip starts. He doesn’t have to speak too loudly for the sound to echo into everyone’s ears. The acoustics here are fantastic—which is probably something I don’t need to know right now.
The people hush in reverence to their leader. He continues. “Yesterday we caught these four intruders at our border above. They claim to be travelers on their way through North Carolina. After interrogating them, I have decreed them to be a threat to our community. And what do we do with threats?”
Everyone erupts with cheers as they egg him on. These people love him, despite the fact he is so, so wrong. We aren’t a threat. How could he possibly have come to that conclusion? Three teenagers and one child, yeah we’re really a scary group.
Unfortunately, logic seems to have disappeared right now. Philip nods to Callum and our four guards. They leave the ledge before returning. They wheel out four very terrifying contraptions.
They place a hangman’s galley in front of each of us. The nooses swing from the movement.
Chapter 13
I’ve experienced some pretty scary moments since I left the safety of my bunker. I’ve encounter wild animals, aliens, and people that wanted to hurt me. Yet all of that pales into comparison when I see the noose knotted and ready to strangle me to my death.
“Today, I protect each and every one of you,” Philip says. “We will always triumph over our enemies. We will never be hurt!”
The crowd soak it up as they whistle and yell their encouragement to their leader. I’m too high up to see individual faces but the sound alone tells me they are very keen to see us executed.
With so little people left on earth, I think that every life is precious. They should be helping us so we can help them. We should all be one united community—the human race. Instead, we’re letting the aliens win by fighting each other and not them.
This isn’t right.
My parents would be angry with me if they were here. They’d ask me how I got myself into this situation and then chastise me for not being more careful. I hope they can’t see me from the hereafter. I don’t want to have disappointed them.
We’re pushed forward to stand in place below the contraptions. There is a platform we must stand upon to get the rope wrapped around our necks. I guess they then pull away the platform and we are left to hang until we are dead.
I have never known true fear until this very moment.
The world is a hard place and not easy to survive in, but I still have so much living left to do. I can’t have my time here cut short like this. I have to raise an army, I have to know what it’s like to kiss Garlind, I have to farm food and make a home. I’m not ready to die yet.
“I will always protect my own!” Philip yells. The crowd hit a crescendo and they cheer for their leader. Or are they cheering for our death? It’s difficult to tell.
My legs are wobbly and tears prick my eyes. I can’t believe this is how it ends. When I first saw the aliens, I thought they would be my death. I never thought it would be at the hands of a fellow human when we have such an infallible enemy.
I tear my gaze from the gallows in front of me and look at the faces of my friends. Rhys has been so strong in his recovery from the gun shot. Sarah is the bravest person I know and has grown up so much in the few months that I’ve known her.
And Garlind…
There are so many words I want to say to him. So many feelings I wish I could express with just one look across the platform. We’re both going to die without knowing how the other feels about them. I yearn for one final hug, one final reassuring gaze to know everything in his heart.
This man and his people are taking away our future. All the good that we could still do in this world. All the people we could help with our stupid, ambitious plan to take back our planet.
All gone in the flicker of a second.
“Prisoners, step up to your platforms,” Philip orders.
Panic and fear overwhelm me as my guard pushes me forward. I have nowhere else to go except up onto the platform. The rope is so close that it’s going to brush against my head when I get up there. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
“Get up!” my guard says with a growl.
He whacks me on the back and I stumble forward, almost falling over the structure. I have to pause for a moment to stop myself hitting the floor and taking out some teeth.
As soon as I can, I take the step up. There is so little room up here it’s impossible not to stand on the trap door. There is no way to save myself once they hit the switch and the floor falls away. My death will soon follow.
The seconds tick by with my pounding heart. Everything seems to slow down around me so I can see things in minute detail. Philip has sweat on his brow as he continues to rile up the crowd and take the acclaim for this horrendous act. My guard stares at me, waiting for the moment when he can take my life.
The cavern would be beautiful if it wasn’t a pit of death. It must have taken
decades to carve it out of the stone and dirt. Why did they originally build it? Who were they that thought this was worthy of their time?
I wonder if I’ll see my parents when I’m dead. They were scientists, they didn’t believe in a life after death. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. They could have been wrong.
I hope they were wrong.
They might welcome me with open arms. Nothing will hurt anymore, Heaven has to be a much nicer place than here. Perhaps death is a sweet release and not something we should spend so much time trying to avoid.
Even as I say these things to myself, I know this is not what I want. Life is worth the world and everything beyond. It shouldn’t be something to give away so easily. We should fight, we should rebel, we should do everything we can to fight for the right to live.
But there is little more I can do now. This decision is far beyond my control and nothing I can do will change that. Philip has made up his mind. He will never change it or he’ll appear weak in front of his group. He must maintain control at all times and there is nothing more powerful that holding someone’s life in his hands.
My guard steps up to pull the rope down slightly and slip it over my head. It’s a thick rope, far sturdier than any rope I’ve used since leaving the bunker. It has to be thick so the audience can see it from below.
This is it.
This is the end.
Chapter 14
“Wait!” Garlind yells. His voice carries even over the yelling from the crowd gathered.
Every part of me freezes as I wait to see what he is doing. My heart lifts just that little bit.
Garlind’s guard slaps him on the side of his head to rebuke him for the outburst. He winces but never flinches. He is remaining strong, even to the end.
“I said wait!” he repeats, louder.
Philip motions for his people to hush. “I am not an unmerciful man. I will hear the prisoner speak. But make it quick.”
A pin could drop now and it would be heard.
Garlind turns on his platform to face Philip so it is clear he is addressing him and only him. “I wish to say goodbye to my friends. Please grant us a few final moments alone. I promise we will not be long so we can face our punishment.”
Philip stares at him long and hard. He’s probably doing what the rest of us are doing—trying to figure out Garlind’s angle. Is he up to something, or is he just keen to say some final words to us? I have no idea what he’s doing but I will back him one hundred percent.
I think my heart stops until he answers.
Finally, he does. “I will grant you five minutes. And then there will be no more delays. We all have things we have to do today and pandering to you is not one of them.” He turns his attention to our guards. “Take them back and time five minutes. Not a second more.”
The crowd doesn’t dare to make a sound. I doubt Philip could do or say anything wrong in their eyes. He does seem very wise and charismatic but it’s only on the surface. I remember the conversation I had with him in that little room, I saw through his façade at times.
Our guards aren’t as easily placatable. I’m pulled from the platform and pushed the entire way to the small room we’d been left to wait in earlier. All four of us are shoved inside and the door closes with a slam that bounces off the walls.
The second the door is closed, Garlind takes action. “Loosen each other’s ropes as quickly as you can but don’t remove them completely. We need them to think we’re still bound.”
Garlind immediately pulls at the rope around my wrists and starts to work on the knots. They are pulled tight and his hands are bound so it takes him a while to get them loose enough for me to be able to shake them off—but I don’t.
“Now you,” I tell him.
He holds out his wrists for me to do the same to him. I glance over quickly to see Rhys and Sarah doing the same thing. They switch over so they’re keeping up with us. Five minutes isn’t long for this intricate work.
“I hope you have a plan for when we get back out there,” I whisper to Garlind as I fiddle with his knots. Having longer fingernails would come in handy right now.
“I was hoping you’d have one,” he replies with a cheeky smile. How can he be so blasé at a time like this? It’s infuriating and charming at the same time. I want to kiss him and slap him simultaneously.
My hands slip from the knot again. “I can barely think right now. I hope you’re not really waiting on me to come up with something brilliant. That’s your department, Garlind Donovan.”
He moves his hands to take mine in his. The shaking in my fingers still as they feel his warmth. “We’re going to get through this. I’m not going to let them kill us out there. Just focus on the ropes right now.”
He releases me and I take a calming breath—if that’s possible right now. I nod and keep playing back his wise words. Garlind won’t let anything happen to us. It’s his superpower or something. We’re under his protection, nothing can hurt us.
I try his knot again and force my fingers to work out the rope. It weakens and then slips undone. I fix it so that it appears to be done up as usual. “Done.”
The door opens a split second later.
The four of us spring apart. I’m sure the guilt of our plan is written across my face in big letters. Surely, they will know something is up. It will only take one piece of rope around our wrists to dangle the wrong way for them to know.
Any second now, they’ll catch our handiwork. Every step they force me to take back to the gallows is a chance for them to see we’ve undone our ropes.
Any. Second. Now.
“Now, no further delays,” Philip yells.
The chant from the people below starts up again. They are greedy with bloodlust and won’t be sated until they see our dead bodies hanging from the platforms. Surely, they couldn’t have been like this before the world ended?
We step up onto the wooden structure and there is no avoiding the trap door again.
I watch Garlind the whole time, waiting for some kind of a signal. We should have spent some of those five minutes figuring out a plan but we just didn’t have time to do both. It’s all up to him now, he must have something in mind.
He gives me a small smile.
He spins around quickly to headbutt his guard. “Run!” he yells.
His diversion gives me a few seconds to act. I pivot and kick my guard in the family jewels. He falls backward off the platform with a million swear words spitting from his mouth. I jump down and pull the rope off my wrists.
One sweep of the plateau tells me Rhys and Sarah have also taken advantage of the surprise attack and have disabled their guards. More make a start toward us but we have a few seconds before they’ll reach us.
I know we’re in trouble when we have to count everything by the seconds and not the minutes.
Garlind leads us back into the room where we were held. It’s the only room up here and it’s far too high to jump in the opposite direction. Plus, I doubt the crowd would be any more forgiving than the guards.
The four of us meet in the small room and slam the door behind us. There is no lock from this side so we don’t have a way to slow them down.
Garlind grabs the single door that leads out of the room but it doesn’t budge. He puts his shoulder into it and it bounces slightly. We waste precious seconds as Rhys steps up and adds his weight to the process.
The door gives.
With a loud bang, it flings open and crashes against its hinges. If we had done that earlier, the guards would have easily heard it outside and we wouldn’t have had our five minutes to untie our wrist bindings.
And we really need our hands to be free right now.
We run blindly along the corridors searching for an exit. I wish I had a map or been able to establish the layout of this place in my mind earlier. All the doors and walls look the same.
Heavy footsteps start to pound on the ground behind us. The guards are too close for comfort. I expect the
m to grab any of us at any moment.
I’ve never run this fast in my life, even when we were chased by the bear. All those weeks of walking for hundreds of miles is paying off. Still, my lungs and legs are burning for some respite that will have to wait. I will push myself to the limits if it means we get to live another day.
I’m turned around several times over. Every single one of these corridors looks like the last one. Where are the neon green Exit signs? In the world before they were mandatory. Surely, they have to be here somewhere.
Have we been down this corridor before?
We take the left when we come to a fork and hope it’s the right decision. There is no going back if it isn’t. We’re either going to find safety or we’ll be trapped.
I’m sure this is the same corridor we’ve already been down.
Dirt floors, stone walls, and little lighting. How on earth do these people find their way around? Are they issued with a map? Surely some signs couldn’t have hurt.
We turn another corner and come to an abrupt halt.
Our way is block by a woman that stands in front of the only door. We can’t backtrack because the guards are behind us, just one corner away from catching up.
We come to a complete standstill as the woman looks us over. She seems familiar. It takes a few seconds for her face to register but I remember she is the same woman I met in the bathroom yesterday. The only person who seemed nice in this entire place.
I push my way to the front. “Please, you have to let us through,” I plead.
It seems like she takes forever. Everything stops except the pounding of my thundering heart. It smashes out a constant beat that is far faster than it should be.
Finally, she nods. “Hurry. There is an exit this way.”
She opens the door and lets us through. Maybe it’s a trap and she’s actually leading us back to the cavern but it’s a risk we have to take. Going back is certain death—this way could be slightly better.
Once we’re through, she steps in and closes the door behind us all. There is an audible click when she turns a lock. I want to hug her for delaying the guards and helping us but we don’t have time to dwell.
After The End Page 34