by Rod Porter
“He can’t,” Mickey said from the top bunk. He hated to see his friends fighting. “If you go back, they’ll kill her.”
“What did you say?” Troy walked over to Mickey’s bunk in a hurry. “What did you say?” Troy grabbed Mickey, and pulled him down off of the bunk. Tommy and Jackson had to rip the teenager from Troy’s grasp.
“What he means, is that they might know you’re in her cage,” Jackson said. “I got you in the first time, but if you go back a second, there’s a chance they’ll know, and there’s no telling what they’ll do.”
“Are you saying that you gave me my last visit with my wife? Are you trying to tell me that when we escape, I have to leave her here?”
“’Course not, mate,” Tommy chimed in. “Jacks and the gang are busting out as many people as possible. You don’t think they’d just concern themselves with the men, do you? Ain’t that right, Jackson?”
“That’s right,” came the response.
“Have you seen where they keep the women?” Troy asked. “Do you have any idea how many cages there are? How many prisoners there are?” He paused. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands. There must be three times as many of us. There’s no way you’re going to get them all out.”
Now Jackson had hit a wall. He knew that was partly true.
“If I’m in Kara’s cell, I can make sure that you find us.”
“How?” Jackson asked.
“I’ll think of something.”
Jackson thought for a moment. “Here’s what we can do. They’re coming for us in three days. I’ll get you back in there, but I’ll do it as close to the breakout as possible. That way you’ll only be in there for a short time. We should be inside the holding area to get both of you before they even know you’re there.”
“The smart thing to do would be to just wait,” Mickey said. He was totally heartbroken that he had upset Troy. He only wanted to help.
“Who asked you?” Troy spewed at him.
Tommy stepped in front of his little friend. “You’re gonna have to stop talking to the kid like that.”
“Or what?”
Jackson knew he had to diffuse the hostility. “Troy, I’ll get you back in. I’ll make it as close to the breakout time as possible, so you should be fine. But I have to warn you. These roaches may kill us on the outside, but in here they have only one motivation and that is to make us suffer; they’re cruel. If they know you are in your wife’s hold and they get there before we do, there’s no telling what they’ll do or how they’ll go about doing it.”
Troy was prepared for that. “It’s a risk I’ll have to take,” he said, walking over to his bunk.
Mickey came over and handed Troy a whistle. “You can use this when they come. It was my mother’s.”
Troy appreciated the weight of the gesture and wanted to apologize, but he was still too upset. He accepted the gift and turned over on his bunk.
TURNING POINT
True to his word, Jackson put Troy back in Kara’s cell in three days’ time. But when Troy awoke in his wife’s cage, he was horrified to find that she was in labor. She had been for hours, she told him. The fear in Kara’s eyes strengthened his resolve and sharpened his focus until there was only one objective in both their minds: the safe delivery of their child.
“Okay, baby. Push!” he intoned from the foot of the bed. He had cut the restraint around her waist with a crude makeshift shank he had constructed out of mud from the work pits and the plastic utensils of the cafeteria. With the freedom to finally bend and elevate her legs, Kara could relax more and concentrate on the delivery. Troy had also stacked her blanket behind her head to prop it up. There were too many worries sweeping through his head for Troy to count, but one that was paramount.
The area was completely silent save for Kara’s screams. The other prisoners were in their induced sleep, unaware or simply too exhausted to care about the wailings. After all, they heard them all the time.
Kara was in agony. All of her muscles burned and twitched. She wanted the baby out. Her stomach was full and it hurt. She wanted the baby out! She wanted drugs! The pain and the contractions worked together. Each push was filled with a dreadful rush of pain. With encouragement from her husband, she had been trying to control her breathing, but it felt like a lost cause. She had to bite her lip from the pain; she could not stop crying. The look of sudden concern on Troy’s face alarmed her. It was different from the one he had been showing up until this point.
He was not sure exactly what he was supposed to be looking for, but from his point of view, what was going on between Kara’s legs was not as it should be. There was a lot of fluid, which he had expected, but there seemed to be an excessive amount of blood. “Honey, how do you feel?”
Kara answered with two screams. “I don’t know. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong, Troy. Ahhhhhhhh!” This particular contraction hit her hard. “How does it look?”
“It looks fine,” Troy lied. “But you’ve got to be quieter. I know it hurts.”
It would do no good to excite her. He ripped a piece of blanket that was behind her head and wrapped it around the shank. Kara bit down thankfully when he put it in her mouth and looked up into his eyes. The look scared the life out of Troy. It was as if she was saying goodbye with her eyes, and that she loved him so dearly.
He would have none of it. He leaned in and took advantage of the silence. “You are going to be fine. The baby is almost here, and they’ll be coming for us. We’re almost there. Just hold-”
Suddenly Kara erupted in pain. Troy ran back around to the foot of the bed only to see a flood of hot red blood gushing from her groin. Now he was certain that there was some type of a complication. Then, the room’s lights flashed on and off and he heard the opening of the flood doors accompanied by screeches of what had to be sentinels. It was no comfort when, instead of sentinels, he saw that three soldier aliens were scuttling down the corridor. Encased in their bio-suits, the spiderlike creatures came to a halt outside the cage. He knew that he had no choice but to ask for help. If he didn’t, his wife and baby were going to die.
“Help us,” he begged the roaches through the steel cage. “Please. She is giving birth and there is some kind of complication. You have to let me take her to the cell blocks. Adam Terringer in cell eight five was a doctor. He can help her do this right.” The only answer was his own reflection on the aliens’ suit visors. But he was fully confident that they understood the situation when they turned inquisitively to face one another. They communicated through their system of visor flashes, in obvious deliberation that made Troy very hopeful. A new life is a new slave, he rationalized. Of course they’ll preserve his child...and his wife. Then they cast their shielded faces back on Troy.
To his horror, they turned and headed back for the blast doors. They were leaving as if nothing was going on! He turned back to his wife, whose face was beyond despair. Her eyes were bugged out with fear. Running back to the foot of the bed, he urged her on.
“Push Kara. Push!” When the head broke through Troy’s heart gave an indescribable jolt. “I can see the head,” he exclaimed. “I can see the head!” Kara was relieved, but she screamed with another contraction and gave another agonizing push. The baby was halfway out now. Troy held what was there in his hands, until the end of it squeezed out into his arms. Kara’s screams were now replaced by the crying of her newborn child. Her body gave out and slumped back down into the bed.
Troy held up the baby. “It’s a boy.” The baby was crying uncontrollably, but it was a crying that made Troy feel like he was on top of the world. He was hesitant about using the dirty shank to cut the umbilical cord, but he had no choice.
He took off his shirt, wrapped the baby in it, and handed the infant to Kara. She smiled when Troy rested their son on her chest. Her ordeal was finally over. “Hi,” Kara exhaled weakly. “I’m your mama.” When the baby grabbed her index finger in his hand, she smiled a smile that quickly faded.
She
looked up at Troy. “I love you,” he said through tears. He could tell she was fading. Her eyes were closing and her breathing was getting slower.
“Baby, don’t go,” he begged her. He grabbed her by the arms and shook her softly. “Please, don’t leave me.”
“I have to,” she gasped weakly.
“No. I’m going to get help.” There was no way he was going to let her die. Then his heart began to pound with a new anxiety as he saw that his son was coughing and wheezing. The infant’s breathing was irregular, and his little lungs were trying to compensate. Kara’s eyes were now shut and her breathing, just like her son’s, had stopped completely. Troy threw himself against the gate. “Help us!” he yelled. He shook the cage, screaming for help at the top of his lungs, but no help came.
No help came.
ESCAPE
Jackson and his two cellmates were getting restless. They knew that it was close to the breakout time, yet they had no way of being sure. It was easy for Jackson to wait. He had developed a discipline for patience that came with being an elite soldier. Reconnaissance missions were vital in the mostly guerrilla-style war that the Unconformed waged. He had once spent seven hours prone in the snow alongside two companions, observing a way station that provided munitions for the plague’s weapons and fuel for their sentinels.
Tommy was preparing himself for the worst. Ever the pessimist, he was souring the mood with his thoughts about how the soldiers had been captured or had lost their coordinates or had aborted the rescue operation for some unanticipated problem. “I’ve never heard of anyone busting anyone out of the roaches’ prison camps. Never even heard of them successfully assaulting one of their compounds or killing one of them for that matter.”
This negative, albeit logical, thinking was beginning to discourage Mickey. For many hours he had been sitting on the edge of his bunk, rocking back and forth, driving the other two crazy with questions about how the resistance was still coming for them, or how they wouldn’t leave one of their own behind. “Can you please stop it, Tommy? You never have anything positive to say. It’s hard enough living like we do without your constant negativity.”
“I’ll talk how I want,” Tommy replied. “There’s nothing wrong with being realistic, kid. How do you think I survived out there in the wastes? I took care of myself ‘cause it was either that, starve, or get killed by rival camps, slavers, or alien patrols. I didn’t live in some colony where my alcoholic mother got people to feel sorry for me and provide me with food.”
“You shut up about my mother.” Tommy’s comments had struck a chord. “At least I had a family, people that cared about me. I wasn’t some bareback inbred nomad who was so scarred up and ugly, no girls would kiss him.” Tears of frustrated anger were forming in his eyes. “Whose mother had been nothing but a cheap whore, selling herself to the other men so you could eat as a child.” He was now sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m sick of this place. I’m sick of this building. I’m sick of having nothing. I’m sick of these aliens. And I’m sick of both of you!”
Tommy got up off his bunk and stood menacingly facing Mickey. “You take that back right now. My mother wasn’t no whore. You take that back or I’ll—”
“Shhh.” They had forgotten that Jackson was in the room. He was kneeling down, looking intently through the cell bars. “They’re here.”
Jackson’s warning of silence was followed by a series of deafening explosions. Rubble and brick came crashing down from the levels above, and fell harmlessly down the void that was the center of the oval shaped cell blocks. Several dozens upon dozens of figures rappelled down into view, coming to land on the many decks of the cell blocks.
Five such figures rappelled down onto the platform right outside of Jackson, Tommy, and Mickey’s cell. The individuals attached small devices on the four corners of the cell bars. They stood tall and proud. There was a dignified reverence to them, and to Mickey and Tommy they looked like gods. Everything about their appearance was militant. They wore black boots laced tight with black shoe laces. Long black pants with cargo pockets on each side ran down their legs, the ends tied off at their boots. Their gloved hands expertly gripped their carbon assault rifles. Black vests shielded their torsos. Small pockets on the front of the vests held the ammunition clips for their rifles. Long sleeves covered their arms. A large knife was sheathed and clipped upside down on each of their right arms. Their heads were covered by ski masks, except that there were no eye holes, nor openings for the mouth, revealing no details whatsoever of their faces. Thick plastic collars were wrapped about their necks. Two small disc-shaped pieces of the collar pressed against each throat. A spiraled radio cord started at the collar and ran down to a button that was attached to the left side of the vest.
When the devices finished their mysterious work on the bars, the soldiers stepped forward and pulled the cell bars off. One of them stepped inside the cell and saluted Jackson.
“Let’s move, sir.”
Jackson’s personality changed the minute the soldier tossed him a pistol. He was still cool and calm, but there was a new element to it, as if his best qualities were now upgraded somehow. He slid the ammunition clip out of the gun and made sure it was full. Ramming it back in, he pulled the slide and cocked it shut. “How many teams got through?” he asked the soldier.
“All. Bravo, Delta, Charlie, Echo all reported. We’re all inside.”
Loud pulsating flashes of light suddenly lit up the entire holding area.
Tommy offered his trademark cynicism. “So much for a smooth getaway.”
Jackson and his two cellmates sprang out of the small confined area that had been their source of pain and misery for so long a time. Being able to leave a room of their own free will strengthened their already intense commitment to escape and live free again. They matched stride with their rescuers, running down the corridor at breakneck speed. The cell blocks were filled with noise, and not just from the alarms. There were hundreds of cells and hundreds of prisoners. They were all yelling in despair. They knew that the majority of them were not going to be freed. Some pressed up against their bars, calling out in anguish.
Mickey was having trouble keeping pace. He began to lose his breath, but adrenaline kept him going until a group of prisoners reached out through the bars of a cell he was running past. Their hands yanked the frail boy forward and smashed his head against the cell bars. Tommy doubled back and ripped Mickey free of the desperate prisoners’ grasp, but the boy became light-headed from his fresh head injury and began to fade.
Tommy had to act quickly. He looked back over his shoulder to see that Jackson and the soldiers were gone. They had escaped the cell blocks through the blast doors at the end of the platform. If he ran now he could catch up with them. He had no chance escaping without them.
“Hold on, Mick,” he said, picking the dreary boy up and slinging him over his shoulder. Tommy ran for the exit like he had never run in his life. The doors began to close, but he kept running. He was too slow, and the doors closed shut. They were locked down in the cell blocks and were not going to escape. They had been left behind.
Back in the women’s holding area, Troy was no better off. He was sitting with his back against the cage. It was nearly impossible for him to comprehend the sight before him. Kara was gone. She had passed on at a moment that was supposed to be the happiest of their lives, and that source of happiness was resting on her chest in a deep sleep of his own. Troy had tried everything to revive the child, but without success. The baby boy had died just minutes after his mother. Troy had been unwilling to put his son down, but he eventually poised his family in a reverent posture: mother and child gone to rest in peace. The sounds of the alarm he had been dying to hear meant that the resistance was coming for him, but only him. Troy felt he was no longer Troy. He wanted to die right there in the cell, among those he loved.
The feelings of loss and despair transformed with the flashings of the prison camp alarm. Now there was only hatred and anger. Th
ese aliens-these things-had come to his world. They had taken everything he had ever known. His home, father, mother, brother, sisters, his freedom, his planet. Now they had struck their final blow: his wife and child, the only compensation that had made his losses bearable. As he heard wails of desperation from the caged women, he knew that the Unconformed had arrived, and then everything became clear.
There was now only one purpose in his life. He would fight these aliens. He would refuse to be what they wanted him to be. And he would kill as many of them as he could. As of this moment, he was a soldier in the resistance. This new attitude and creed was his sole reason for pulling out the whistle Mickey had given him and blowing it with all the air his lungs could muster.
The black figures arrived at his cage in a matter of minutes, using their mystery devices to breach it. “Time to move,” one said to him.
“Okay,” Troy said as he walked over to Kara’s bedside. “Just help me with her body.”
The soldier came inside and looked down through his hood at Kara and the baby. “They’re dead,” he said. “Leave them.”
“What?” Troy was in disbelief. “I’ll carry her.”
“She’ll slow us down. Leave her.”
Troy would not be deterred. “That’s my wife, and I’m not leaving her or my son’s body behind to rot in this place.”
The soldier grabbed Troy by the arm. “I have strict orders to extract you.”