Another trespasser barreled inside. I fired once. The bullet hit the man’s arm. He dropped his gun and looked up from his wound to find all of us staring at him. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled something out.
“It’s a fucking grenade!” I yelled, pulling the trigger of my rifle. It clicked pointlessly. I was out of bullets too. The man pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it mercilessly in our direction.
Suddenly, Jacob was at my side. “Georgie,” he said, his eyes dark with an unreadable emotion. “Please. For me. Save Pippa.” And then he leapt over the barrier of cots and flattened himself out over the live grenade.
“No!”
The grenade exploded. It took out half the med bay, showering us with debris. I ran to Pippa and covered both her and the baby with as much of my own body as I could. Tears threatened to fall over the edge of my lashes, but I kept them at bay. Jacob was gone, but there was no time to mourn the loss. The grenade had blown a hole in the side of the med bay, and some of the invaders had noticed our hiding place. We were exposed. We couldn’t stay here anymore.
“Out the back!” Nita shouted, shoving aside the cots to make an escape route. “Go, go, go!”
I heaved Pippa up from the floor and shoved her in front of me. We ran single file down the hallway and through the back door. When we burst outside, I turned around to count heads. Eirian was directly behind us. Nita was missing.
“Nita,” I gasped, still holding Pippa upright. “Where’s Nita?”
Eirian shifted aside, clearing the view of the hallway behind him. Nita lay across the floor, open eyes staring blankly, her med coat perforated with bullet holes.
“We have to keep moving,” Eirian said as the man who was responsible for Nita’s death appeared in my line of sight. “Georgie, let’s go.”
I listened to him, but not before I picked a handgun off another body outside and fired at the man in the med bay. He dropped to the floor, cradling his throat as blood gushed out of his carotid artery. Eirian pushed me and Pippa through the camp, using his keen instinct to keep us out of the line of fire. We sprinted in short bursts toward the hole in the wall on the north side of camp, taking cover when we needed to. Once we cleared the rubble and escaped into the woods, the trees muffled the sounds of terror at Camp Haven. Eirian kept us moving, until the leaves overhead were so thick that the gray sky above was no longer visible. When we finally slowed, Pippa’s legs gave out, and she began to fall over.
“Whoa,” I said, catching the girl beneath her arms and lowering her slowly to lean against a tree trunk. I knelt in front of her, but she stared past me, unseeing. “Pippa? Hey, are you all right?”
“She’s in shock,” Eirian said, scouting the woods for signs of movement. “Check on Athena.”
I pulled the makeshift sling aside to look at the baby. She slept peacefully against Pippa’s chest, completely unaware of the mayhem that she had just survived.
“God, I wish I was that age again,” I mumbled.
Eirian remained standing, facing Camp Haven. Smoke spiraled through the forest, while the orange glow of the fires burned on. Not many people would survive the raid.
“I can’t believe it,” Eirian said. “Dead. They’re all going to be dead.”
“And so are you.”
We whirled around. An entire truckload of Camp Havoc members had snuck up on us. They were covered in mud and dirt. They must have been camouflaged on the ground, waiting for us to come closer. It was fifteen against three. We didn’t stand a chance.
“Run!” Eirian shouted.
I heaved Pippa up and followed his lead, but Eirian’s legs were longer than mine. I lost him in the trees as the invaders ran after me and Pippa. Half of the group split off to follow Eirian. Pippa tripped over a rock and tumbled toward the ground, tucking herself around Athena to protect her from harm. I skidded to a stop, turned back, and tried to pull her to her feet, but the Camp Havoc intruders had caught up with us. I fought them over Pippa, punching noses and pinching pressure points as hands closed in around us. I wrapped my fingers in Pippa’s coat, but the intruders ripped us apart, the fabric tearing away as we were separated. I fought against my captors as they dragged me from Jacob’s little sister.
“Stop!” I yelled, kicking my feet to get them off of me. Pippa was hardly visible through the trespassers who tried to subdue her. “She has a baby! Leave her alone!”
“Shut up!”
Someone aimed a kick to the side of my head. A boot connected with my temple, knocking the world out of place. My vision blacked out for a few seconds. The returning image was blurry and dense, as if I was staring at the scene from underwater. Eirian and Pippa were nowhere to be found. The woods were thick with the stench of Camp Havoc’s men.
“What are you doing?” one of them asked. “Kill them.”
“No,” a second voice said. “I recognize this one from last time. She runs the radios. We could use her. And that other girl has a kid. We can’t kill a baby.”
“So kill the girl.”
“And do what with the baby?”
“Good point. Did you find the guy?”
“Alan’s got him,” the second voice confirmed. “They’re taking him back to camp. He’s in good shape. We can use him for labor.”
“Have you heard from anyone else?”
“Logan’s just got here from the attack,” the voice said. “We completely trampled the place. Barely any survivors. We got what we needed. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m starving.”
Someone took hold of my coat and began dragging me across the ground. Sticks and rocks ripped through my clothes, scraping against my skin.
“Why?” I forced out.
“Hey, boss. She just said something.”
One of the intruders leaned over me. A black scarf protected his nose and mouth from the cold, but his black eyes were shrewd and calculating. “What do you want?”
“Why?” I said again, the words rasping against my windpipe. “You have your own camp. Why would you trash ours?”
The man’s scarf lifted upward, as if he were grinning beneath it. “I don’t know what hippie dippie shit you were practicing at your little kumbaya compound back there, but I can assure you that it won’t fly at Base One.”
“Base One?”
“Yeah,” he went on. “We got different rules, little girl. It’s every man for himself out there, or in this case, every base for itself. We take what we need, and we don’t feel guilty about it. Your camp was a threat to ours. You were using up the resources in the area. We have more people to take care of. We need those resources.”
“You killed them all.”
“Let bygones be bygones,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you a cozy bed at Base One. I’m sure there’s an old bunker we can lock you up in.”
His buddies laughed and thumped him on the back as he stood up, but their camaraderie was short-lived. Out of nowhere, a crossbow bolt whizzed through the air and thunked straight into the heart of the raid party’s leader. He looked down at the bolt sticking out of his chest.
“Shit,” he said and fell to the ground.
The rest of them panicked. They cocked their guns, aiming wildly into the forest.
“What do we do? What do we do?”
“Where did it come from?”
Another bolt found its home, taking down another trespasser. There were three left.
“Run!”
The trio scattered, taking off in different directions. Only one of them was lucky enough to make it far enough to escape the bow’s deadly force. The other two were hit in the back. When the forest was clear of enemies, I lay still, hoping that the owner of the bow was finished firing, or if he wasn’t, that I looked dead enough not to be considered a threat. Footsteps neared my position. I felt them rather than heard them. These feet were trained not to make a noise in the woods. This person knew where to step to avoid cracking branches. An immense shadow came over me. I slowed my breathing
. I was dead. Dead.
The person nudged my side. “Up you get, George. We got work to do.”
My eyes flew open at the familiar voice, a voice that I had not heard in over nine years.
“Dad?”
THANK you so much for taking the time to read my story!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Blackout Book 1
Copyright
Prequel- Blackout Book 0
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
Blackout: A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World- Book 1 Page 16