by Aaron Hubble
Who was this man and where had he come from?
Noise from the black-visored helmet that sat on the desk brought Calier back to the present. It seemed to be speaking and he realized there was a communication unit in the helmet.
They needed to leave before the man woke or his friends came looking for him. Reaching back under the desk, Calier pulled the woman to her feet. She was crying now and seemed a bit more coherent; her eyes didn't have the faraway, glassy look they had before. Now she looked like someone who had just awakened from a nightmare only to find that the nightmare hadn't ended when she opened her eyes.
Reaching up he gently held her face in his hand, one hand on either cheek, and whispered, "We have to leave here and find a place to hide. Then I can help you with your wounds."
Her hand went to the side of her face and she nodded weakly, her eyes darting around the ruined lobby.
"Let's go. We need to move fast."
They quickly crossed the wrecked reception area, trying to keep their eyes off the ripped and torn bodies. The woman gasped, seeing the carnage for the first time.
Calier turned left when his feet touched the sidewalk and with his arm looped around the woman’s waist began jogging toward the wooded park that dominated the city's northern edge. He thought about hiding among the trees, but then remembered the amphitheater. He had gone there quite often to watch plays and concerts during the warm summer months. Behind the stage there were several rooms that they could hide in. That would allow him some time to think of their next move.
Shouting and gunfire interrupted his thoughts. A man was leaning out of a second-floor hospital window, his weapon trained in their direction. The muzzle lit up and splintered wood flew through the air as a tree just ahead of Calier was torn by a bullet. He ducked and picked up the pace, practically dragging the woman along with him.
More gunfire and more splintered trees. He knew he needed to put distance and some thick cover between them and the hospital. Fortunately, the park provided ample cover in the form of bushes and trees. Moving sharply to the right, they crashed through thick brush just as a tree behind them exploded. Calier heard more loud voices and then the gunfire stopped.
He slowed his pace for fear the woman would not be able to continue. The increased cover made him feel no better, so he pressed on deeper into the park. After fifteen minutes of jogging through the trees, Calier caught sight of the amphitheater.
His hands ached, and he hoped there were no broken bones. In his mind he saw the soldier lying on the floor of the hospital, blood trickling out of his nose, several cuts on his cheeks.
Calier shuddered. Perhaps it was true that evil and violence lurked in the hearts of all Am'Segid, needing only the right circumstances to come out. It troubled him.
What troubled him even more was that to survive, the Am'Segid would need to embrace that violent heart and set it free. The All-Knowing One help them if it should consume them.
CHAPTER SIX
Calier began to clean the woman's wound, wiping away the layer of ash and dirt that clung to her face, giving her a ghostly pallor. She still wasn't talking. She made no sound nor gave any indication that she was aware of what was happening. Calier soaked a piece of gauze in antiseptic and told her, "This is probably going to sting." He applied the antiseptic to the wound and the woman closed her eyes, but made no sound. Tough girl, thought Calier.
He picked up the adhesive. "Okay, I’m going to try and close your wound with this stuff. Apparently it's idiot-proof because they’re letting me try." There was no reaction from the woman. "Not even a smile for that self-deprecating comment?" Still she said nothing.
She was quite a bit younger than he, probably in her early thirties, and very attractive. As he closed the wound, he knew that she would always bear the mark of this terrible day on the side of her face. Her mangled ear and the scar that would be left on her cheek would serve as a constant reminder of what she had lost this day. At least you can live with a scar, he observed; too many other people hadn’t had that choice today.
After closing the wound he applied the green salve that he knew was made of the leaves of a native Aerean plant and covered the cut and the woman's ear with bandages. He sat for a moment and remained still, conscious of how strange it seemed to be sitting in the amphitheater as his city burned from an enemy attack, but exhaustion was catching up to him. He was mentally and physically worn out. It felt like he had run ten races in a row while writing an academic paper about complex mathematics.
They sat out of sight toward the back of the amphitheater, shaded by overhanging trees. Even in the low light he could see that the bandages around his hands were filthy. Unwinding the bandages, he inspected the cuts he'd received on the METS car window and pulled out several small slivers of glass. He began cleaning out the wounds on his palms and the cuts he’d inflicted on himself while he was hitting the soldier. The disinfectant stung, making him wince. The woman hadn't winced as much as he had, which garnered her a little more of his respect. Every movement reminded him that there was also something wrong with his ribs and he didn’t know what to do with them. Perhaps he would be able to find something at the university to bind them with. He would need to keep his eyes open.
The woman lay curled up on the floor. She was softly whimpering, her eyes closed, arms wrapped around her knees. What was he going to do with her? Leaving her at the hospital hadn’t worked out. He couldn't leave her here, and she obviously needed someone to watch over her until she came out of her shock or whatever else had locked her in her head. He reached over and brushed a lock of dirty, sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes. The woman flinched. Like it or not, he was now her caretaker and she would go wherever he went.
Calier sighed, then smiled as he looked at the young woman. He’d never thought that today would be the day that he took on the role of a protective father.
Mulling over his options, he realized that their surroundings were oddly silent; no new explosions shook the city. Perhaps the attack was over. He was unsure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Did it mean that something else was coming? As if to answer his questions, black aircraft moved slowly over the city from the east. He noticed these craft were much different from the ships he saw earlier. Those had been sleek and wedge-shaped, made for speed and maneuverability. These new craft were oblong and moved more slowly, possibly built to carry cargo...or soldiers.
Calier knew, in that instant, where the men at the hospital had come from. In any assault on a city that he had studied, the siege was used to soften the city and weaken its defenses; then the ground troops were sent in to mop up. This invasion was just beginning, and the occupying force had arrived.
Several minutes later he heard a loud explosion and saw a towering plume of smoke erupting from behind a stand of trees. There was only one building in that direction, that close to the amphitheater.
The hospital. They’d blown up the hospital.
Anger raged in Calier's mind. They weren't satisfied with murdering the people in the hospital in cold blood. They had destroyed a place that was a symbol of healing. It was becoming clear to him that Gadol City, his home, was lost. The promise he’d made Dotha, the elderly woman on the sidewalk, came back to him. Survive and rebuild, she had told him. The only way to fulfill that promise was to leave the city, and all that he loved, behind him. With enemy soldiers in the city bent on killing everyone they saw, he knew he would be unable to make his way through the streets to the opposite side of Gadol City, where his brother lived. Swallowing a lump in his throat, he had to face the thought that even if he was able to make it safely to his brother’s home, he didn’t know what he would find.
Was he just going to abandon his family? He thought of Yamil, his brother, ten years younger than Calier and a builder in this city. The faces of Yamil’s four kids flashed through Calier’s mind, the oldest ready to head to the university, and the youngest a beautiful, silver-haired four year old.
Tears escaped fro
m his eyes.
The conflict inside him threatened to tear down the walls he had built up around his grief. If that happened he would be useless and would stand no chance of making it out of the city alive. He steeled himself against the onslaught of emotions and rebuilt the walls with the cold, hard facts of logic.
There was no way to know if his brother and his family had survived the initial attack. Trying to make his way across a city that had been reduced to rubble and was now infested with enemy soldiers was tantamount to suicide. That wasn’t what his brother would want. Yamil would want him to survive and help whomever he could. If Yamil was still alive, he was more than capable of taking care of himself and his family.
That brought him back to escaping the city and if they successfully escaped the city, then what? They needed a place that was secluded and tucked into some far corner where the invaders would be unlikely to look. A place where they could regroup, maybe join up with other survivors along the way and start to figure out what was next. There was a cave at the foot of the mountains that divided the Aerean continent; Calier had found it during his expedition to find the Ma’Ha’Nae this past summer. In its own right it had been an intriguing find. He thought it might have been a refuge of some sort for the ancient peoples. There was a water source and it fit the bill of being out of the way and secluded. It could work.
The journey would be long and arduous. A grassland and the vast expanse of Sho’el Forest separated them from the mountains. The thought of Sho’el Forest brought a feeling of dread to Calier. Dark and mysterious, Sho’el was home to real-life nightmares and living legends. Very few Am’Segid ventured too far into the forest because of the deadly creatures. Night stalkers roamed the air, silently taking prey from the forest floor. Large packs of overgrown wolves hunted the interior. Who knew what else they might run into. There was a safe zone that was patrolled by the continental conservation group, but that only accounted for the very edge of the forest.
Calier didn’t think there was another way. Going around the forest would take too long and would leave them exposed to discovery.
They would need supplies. Food, tools, navigation units, and extra clothes if he could find them. The best and closest source of those items would be the university. The antiquities department kept that sort of equipment on hand for the faculty archaeological expeditions. There was a high probability that the buildings had been destroyed, but it was the best chance he had to find what he needed.
Wiping away tears he had shed for his brother’s family, Calier set his mind to the tasks at hand. He stood and gently pulled the woman to her feet, supporting her weight. She was small and would not have been much of a burden, but his ribs protested by sending sharp needles of pain into his side. He gritted his teeth through the pain and guided her toward a small room that the actors used to change and stash props when they were not being used. Gently guiding the woman into the room, he sat down on the floor with her. Her raven hair hung in her face. He pushed it to the side and stared into her golden eyes.
Was it even worth talking to her and trying to make her understand what he was going to do? How would she react to being left alone?
"I don't know what you know or understand, but our city has been attacked and we need to leave.” He searched her eyes and thought he saw a glimmer of understanding. “I’m going to make a quick trip in to the closest shops and the university and see if I can find anything useful. It will be quicker if I go alone. I need you to stay here, hidden and safe. When I find what we need, I’ll come back and get you. After that we’ll rest until dark and try to make it across the bridge, out of the city, when it’s dark."
The woman looked at Calier and nodded slowly, but said nothing.
Well, that’s progress, he thought. "Okay. I'm off. You’ll be safe if you stay hidden in here." Looking around, he found a cloth backdrop and wrapped it around the woman.
He left the door open a crack and walked down the amphitheater stage. He wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing by leaving her alone, but what choice did he have?
Being in the amphitheater reminded him of all the plays he had watched at this venue. One play in particular always stuck in his mind. The young actor had given a rather stirring performance as a man who had lost his family and all that he had in a tragic fire. The bulk of the play was about his struggles to come to grips with what he had lost and how he had risen from the ashes of that tragedy to become a man of great character and resolve.
Calier silently prayed. God, we need that kind of resolve right now. We don't have time for our resolve to be strengthened over time. The fate of their entire race hung on how those who had survived reacted to the events of this day.
Would the Am'Segid rise from the ashes or would they choose to lie in them and become but a footnote in the history this world? That would be one academic study Calier, the historian, did not care to undertake.
****
Calier stayed in the cover of the trees, keeping as low a profile as he could. He stayed a good distance from the hospital, but still took a path that would allow him a good view of what had happened.
The front of the hospital was gone, totally destroyed by whatever had hit it. One wing had collapsed, while another remained mostly intact but heavily damaged. Everything in him wanted to run to the hospital and see if he could rescue any survivors or help those who had made it out, but he knew it was too dangerous.
The same black-uniformed men who had been in the hospital were now stepping through the debris. They were the ground force sent in to besiege the city and mop up those who were left. It was as if the studies Calier had done of Aerean military history were coming to life in front of him.
Crouching behind a tree he watched one man climb up onto a piece of jagged rock and nudge something with the toe of his boot. He could see an arm rise in the air toward the man in an obvious plea for help. The soldier raised something to his shoulder and Calier saw a puff of white smoke issue from what he now realized was a weapon, then heard the report.
The hand fell limply back to the rock and moved no more.
Calier dropped his head and closed his eyes. He had seen more death today than he had in his entire life, and it was tearing his heart to pieces. As if his little journey wasn't risky enough, now he needed to contend with soldiers who apparently were out to seek and destroy what was left of the city’s inhabitants.
Calier took several deep breaths in a vain attempt to calm his frayed nerves and then cautiously looked in the direction of the hospital. Several soldiers were picking through the debris, but their backs were turned to him. He identified the next stand of trees, noting that he would be exposed for about a twenty-yard run, but he saw no other way.
Before he could change his mind he dashed out of the trees, his feet churning over the grass, desperate to reach the cover of the trees. He slid behind the trees moments later, grimacing against the pain in his side. He held his breath, expecting to hear the sound of heavily-booted footsteps advancing in his direction.
There was nothing.
He risked peeking his head from behind the massive, mottled brown-and-green trunk of a tree. His line of sight had changed now and most of the view of the rubble that had been the hospital was hidden from him, but there were no pursuers charging in his direction. He called that a win.
Looking in the direction of the city he saw that he had one more exposed run to make before he would be able to move through a heavily-wooded stretch that eventually ended at a city street. He knew there were several small shops along the street that ran next to the park. They sold fresh food to the visitors and, if they were still standing, would be a good place to grab some of the food that he and the woman were going to need as they made their escape from the city. Then it was onto the university that lay on the other side of the shops.
He leaned against the tree, trying to ignore the pain in his ribs. The park seemed relatively untouched by the bombardment. His office had always afforded him a nice view
of this place, so meticulously maintained by the volunteers who were passionate about the beauty of their city. Generations ago, this park had been the military training academy. Calier had seen pictures of its drab gray buildings. Very little grass or trees had grown here, just acres of concrete and the men of the city drilling to become the most efficient killing machine on the planet. With the advent of the Great Peace, the military academy had been shut down, unneeded, and the grounds were turned into the park that now grew out of the reclaimed soil. Calier dismissed the thought sadly. The city could have used a little military know-how today.
Looking around, he saw no one and willed himself to make the dash across the open ground and into the heavily wooded area that served as the border between the city streets and the park. Calier cautiously walked a short distance into the trees and crouched, surveying the street beyond.
Large craters marred the once-smooth, ancient stone streets. Calier’s hopes fell as he saw the state of the shops. Most had been completely crushed by the falling rock and steel of the taller buildings. At first he saw no way into the shops, but then noticed that one appeared passable. The little shop’s brightly-colored awning hung tattered from its moorings on the side of the building. The marquee had once proudly announced to the city the wide variety of locally-grown foods available inside. Wrought-iron tables and chairs were scattered around the outside of the shop, also crushed by the falling debris. Calier had often sat in those very chairs. A large stone column from the elevated walkway had crashed to the street below and now lay at a precarious angle, one end propped against the store front. Calier was shocked that the little shop had withstood the column's impact and was somehow continuing to support the enormous weight.