by E S Richards
Zahyra regarded Cain in front of her and rose to her feet anyway, ignoring the irritated look on his face. She contemplated him for a moment, taking in his resolute stance and the determination in his eyes. After a while she sighed and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around Cain and planting a chaste kiss on his lips. It took Cain by surprise but he kissed her back immediately, raising his eyebrows when she pulled away after a couple of seconds.
“If you don’t come back I’ll kill you,” she smiled at him, but apprehension was thick in her voice.
“Don’t worry,” Cain returned her smile, cupping her cheeks in his hands. “I’ll be back before you know it. Keep hidden okay? I’ll knock on the door three times when the coast is clear.”
“Okay,” Zahyra replied quietly, “be careful.” She opened her mouth to say something else and then stopped herself, knowing it wasn’t the right time or place for the words she desperately wanted to speak. When they were free of the safe haven she would tell him, for now she just needed Cain to return to her.
Cain paused for another second and then smiled down at Asher, giving him a little wave and preparing himself to walk through the door.
“Wait,” Zahyra said behind him at the last moment. “Take this.”
Cain spun around to see Zahyra handing out her gun to him.
“I can’t take that,” he argued, “what if you need it?”
“You can,” she insisted, shaking the gun in his face. “If I need anything it’ll be you, so just take this and make sure you come back.”
Cain sighed with a smile and took Zahyra’s gun from her, holding it in his hand while his own remained in his secret pocket. He shrugged off the rucksack and left it on the floor beside Asher. Emerson’s gun was in there anyway, so hopefully Zahyra would remember that if she did get into any trouble.
Then with a deep breath Cain pulled on the door in front of him and ran through, ducking down behind an old trunk as shouts resonated through the vehicle bay, alerting everyone to his presence. When he was sure his whole body was hidden he relaxed himself and started taking long, deep breaths. He let his grip loosen on his mutation and felt his mind relax as he allowed himself to concentrate less, letting his mutation begin to break free.
Calls from the soldiers continued to sound around the vehicle bay but Cain couldn’t make out the actual words. Instead he could feel himself becoming less of the man he was used to being and more of the mutant he constantly tried to resist. He closed his eyes and let the process completely wash over him, filling his body with rage, hatred and anger. Then, when he finally opened his eyes he saw nothing but red.
Target located… Run… Jump… Contact… Crack.
The sound of a neck being broken rang out in Cain’s ears and he grinned, spinning around to find the next soldier who was pointing a rifle at him. Cain had guns too he remembered and the grin widened manically over his face.
One man… One woman… Bang. Bang.
He spun around, finding more targets for his weapons. Bang. Bang. Bang. Shots rang off over and over, most from Cain’s gun as the soldiers watched on in disbelief. Many of them fired back but Cain was too quick, jumping around over the obstacles in the vehicle bay, soaring through the air gracefully and avoiding the tiny metal bullets.
Click. One gun was empty and Cain roared at the device, throwing it wildly across the room at another woman. She crumpled to the ground as the gun hit her square on the forehead, immediately knocking her unconscious. Cain smiled. He liked that. He threw the other gun as well, even though it still had a few bullets left and watched as another soldier tumbled to the ground. He roared in delight.
Next target… Run… Jump… Grab… Crunch… Crack…
Cain swung his fists at two soldiers standing back to back. He punched and kicked at them, beating the two men until they were in a heap on the ground, their arms clutching their heads as they screamed and begged for Cain to stop.
Snap. Snap.
The two men fell silent. Who’s next?
Cain panted as he turned around in slow circles, standing plainly in the middle of the vehicle bay. He didn’t hide behind any cover, unthreatened by the weak and useless soldiers who fought him. The earlier bullet wound in his arm had reopened, and there was a graze on his left thigh from another errant bullet, but neither of them attracted any attention from Cain. His mind was completely focused elsewhere. Where were the rest of them? His ears pricked as he heard a scrambling noise from behind one of then SUVs and he let out another ear-splitting roar as he ran towards the noise.
Run… Find… Kill.
Four soldiers who were struggling to hide inside one of the SUVs took their last breaths as Cain threw one of them against the wall, killing them with blunt force trauma to the head and then picked up the dead man’s weapon. He aimed it at the other three and fired three quick shots. Catching each one of them right between the eyes.
Cain let out a throaty laugh. This was fun. Who else?
A woman running… Chase… Catch… Kill.
Cain felt the woman’s warm blood oozing from the wound he had inflicted in her chest. A knife still gripped cheerfully in his hand. He watched her face as she stared up at him, waiting for the life to leave her eyes.
Finished?
Cain slowed his breathing as he looked around the room once more. He rose to his feet and walked around, jumping over boxes and bodies and searching for anyone who was still left alive. He peered through the windows of the SUVs and begged to find just one more soldier to kill. Just one more…
As he searched he let out a low growl under his breath, warning anyone who remained that he was coming for them. Then he heard another sound in the room. Someone was still breathing. He moved towards the sound and then jumped around the corner of another vehicle, stopping face to face with another soldier in a matching grey uniform.
The soldier raised his hands in front of his head and took a step back, starting to speak to Cain. Cain cocked his head to one side and tried to listen, the words still not completely making sense to him. He thought he recognised the soldier though and narrowed his eyes at him, trying to figure out what the man was saying.
“Cain… doing this? …Repo… what’s wrong? …The commander… coming… Cain?”
Cain let a smile creep over his face as he remembered where he recognised the soldier from. He wasn’t a soldier at all: he was a mutant. Cain roared. He hated mutants. They were cruel. They hurt him and his friends. He roared again and took a step towards Repo, the mutant’s eyes filled with fear as he continued to beg Cain to stop, trying anything to reason with him.
Cain’s pupils dilated as he kept walking towards Repo, pushing him back into a corner. He walked past a rifle and Cain bent down to pick it up, still not breaking eye contact with Repo. He let out a long laugh again as the mutant’s back pressed up against the wall. Cain held the rifle out in front of him and whispered Repo’s name under his breath. Then he pulled the trigger, watching the mutant collapse in front of him, blood slowly trickling out of the side of his mouth as the bullet lodged somewhere in his brain and he lost consciousness.
Cain’s eyes searched the room again. It was over. Everyone was gone. He grinned and moved over to one of the boxes, righting it from it’s overturned position. Sitting down on the floor and leaning back against he box he breathed heavily. He was tired and he felt his eyes droop. Good work, he thought to himself. Quick rest. Good work.
Three knocks finally sounded on the door. Zahyra had stayed true to herself and not watched what Cain had done in the vehicle bay. She had heard the noises though. Gun fire and screaming; belonging to both Cain and the soldiers. Then there was silence. Silence that had lasted almost two hours. Still she hadn’t looked. She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t moved. Terrified of what she would find on the other side of the door; either a sea of bodies in grey uniforms or just one. She hadn’t let herself think about it. Instead she just held her little brother as he slept beside her and waited, waited for the three kno
cks that would tell her everything was okay.
When they came she let out a huge sigh and rose to her feet. Jumping up slightly so she could see through the small window in the door she saw Cain standing there, a nervous smile on his face. Landing on her feet and smiling to herself she pulled on the heavy door, using all her strength to open it and then flung her arms around Cain. She held him for a moment and then stepped back, assessing him and the rest of the vehicle bay.
“Where is everyone?” Zahyra asked after a moment, unable to find any bodies belonging to anyone from the safe haven.
“I moved them,” Cain replied rubbing the spot on his arm where he’d been shot earlier. “You don’t need to see them.”
Zahyra looked up at Cain and smiled. That action alone told Zahyra what she already knew: Cain wasn’t really a mutant. He had moved the bodies to help Zahyra and Asher avoid any pain when seeing them – for that she was eternally grateful.
“How’s your arm?”
“It’s fine,” Cain stopped rubbing it at Zahyra’s question. “No further damage done.” He lied slightly, knowing the wound in his thigh wasn’t sincere enough to cause Zahyra to worry about.
Zahyra couldn’t help but be impressed. She knew it should worry her how powerful Cain’s mutation was but as she stood beside him she felt proud and protected. She felt safe around him and she knew she could never lose that feeling. Asher yawned again by her side, having risen from the floor and joined them. It was three twenty-six by her timekeep and Zahyra felt the tug of sleep pulling at her from the inside.
“Let’s get out of here,” she sighed, taking Asher’s hand in hers and following Cain as he moved towards an SUV.
He chose a specific one, walking past two others before opening the back door of one of them. He then stepped over to Zahyra and picked Asher up from beside her, placing him across the back seats and allowing him to lie down. He was asleep before Cain had even closed the door, his breathing becoming heavy. Cain smiled as he looked to Zahyra.
“Poor kid, you must be tired too?”
Zahyra nodded and walked around the other side of the vehicle, climbing into the passenger seat whilst Cain got behind the wheel.
“Do you know how to drive?” She asked as she slipped her seatbelt on, realising it was never something that had been discussed.
Cain let out a short laugh. “Of course.” He put the SUV into gear and slowly drove forward to the retractable wall on one side of the vehicle bay, putting the SUV into neutral while he got out and searched his pockets for the card Emerson had carried.
“You ready to get out of here?”
“You bet,” Zahyra replied from inside the vehicle and smiled as she heard the familiar click of a panel unlocking and the mechanics starting to rumble as the wall slid away to one side.
The desert was extremely dark outside and Cain paused for a moment, flicking switches in front of him until the headlights illuminated his path. He looked over to Zahyra for a quick second and grinned before starting to drive out of the vehicle bay, out into the freedom of the desert.
They made it about one hundred meters before another alarm sounded behind them and bullets started ricocheting off the side of their moving vehicle.
Chapter 28
“What was that?”
Asher bolted awake in the backseat, his eyes wide and bleary. Zahyra grabbed the door handle beside her and clung on for dear life as Cain started weaving the vehicle along the dirt track road, desperately trying to avoid the onslaught of bullets.
Zahyra peered through the rear view mirror that hung just above her head. “They haven’t started following us yet,” she spoke quickly, “if we hurry we can get out of range of their guns.”
Cain put his foot further down on the gas pedal in reply and the SUV lurched forward heavily. Zahyra spun around to see Asher fastening his seatbelt, the need for it disregarded earlier when he was sleeping soundly. The tension in the vehicle was palpable as Cain drove and all three of them breathed a huge sigh of relief when the bullets finally stopped coming.
“They’ll be coming after us,” Cain spoke without moving his eyes off the road. Dawn was fast approaching but the visibility was still very poor and he had to concentrate seriously to see where he was heading. “We should probably ditch the vehicle somewhere and continue on foot.”
“But that’ll slow us down?” Zahyra questioned frantically. She didn’t like the idea of being captured on foot in the desert; at least the SUV offered them some protection from the outside world.
“They might be tracking the SUV,” Cain replied and Zahyra took an intake at breath at Cain’s statement. Of course he was right: if the safe haven could track the vehicle then they had no hope of ever escaping.
“Okay,” she replied, “do you know anywhere around here that would be a good place to start?”
“Well, you won’t like this,” Cain began taking a quick cursory glance at Zahyra. “But the safest option might be to go into the city. If we draw the safe haven there they could get in a bust up with the other mutants, and there’s loads of places where we could hide out.”
Zahyra contemplated Cain’s suggestion for a moment, a list of pros and cons reeling through her head. The thought of going back into the city terrified her, especially with Asher to protect as well. For a moment a thought crossed her mind of taking Asher to the playground she had found there, but she quickly expelled it, unwilling to put him in anymore unnecessary danger.
Her previous worry of Cain losing control of his mutation if they returned there was lessened now due to his controlled outburst just hours ago, but she knew it was still a risk. However, what Cain said about luring the safe haven into the city was a good idea and she was fully aware of the countless buildings they could hole up in for a few hours. Maybe even for a few days.
“Alright,” she replied after a while. “Get us there quick and get us as close to the centre as possible. It’ll be easier to hide in the middle, we just have to be careful to avoid the mutants.”
“Hopefully I can get us there before most of them wake up,” Cain replied. “And don’t worry – I know a few buildings they deliberately don’t use. We should be safe in one of them.”
Zahyra nodded, slightly cautious about Cain’s choice of buildings. If the mutants didn’t use them there must be a reason for that; a reason she prayed wouldn’t become apparent during their short time there.
“What city are we going to?” Asher piped up from the backseat. He had spent most of their journey so far watching out of the back window, keeping a keen eye out for anyone who started pursuing them.
“It used to be called Vegas I think,” Cain replied, his eyes still firmly on the road as he veered a sharp left. “We travelled through it on the way to the camp you were taken to. It’s got some places we can hide in.”
“But you said there are mutants there?”
“Yeah there are bud,” Zahyra took over the conversation, turning around in her seat to look at Asher. “So we’ll have to be super sneaky when we get there, but Cain knows how to avoid them. Don’t worry we shouldn’t come across any of them.”
Asher mumbled in agreement from the backseat and turned back around to watch the desert behind them.
“There’s still no one following us,” he remarked loudly.
“Well let’s hope it stays that way,” Cain grumbled. “We’re about half an hour out from the city.”
The rest of their journey continued in silence. Asher kept a look out for any sign of the safe haven, Cain concentrated on his driving and so Zahyra was left to gaze out of the window, watching the sunrise over the surrounding desert. During her time in the safe haven she had missed the outside world greatly. The simple pleasure of a sunrise, or just feeling a breeze on her face through the open window brought a smile to her face. People weren’t meant to live underground, or inside a mountain, it wasn’t right. Even though she knew they didn’t really have a destination she was happy to just watch the world pass her by, knowing
at least she had the whole world to find a new home in.
Cain cut the engine as he pulled up inside a small alleyway, completely blocking the entrance from one end. He leapt out of the drivers seat and opened Asher’s door as he walked around the SUV to the trunk. Yanking it open Zahyra’s eyes widened as he revealed a smorgasbord of guns and weapons. He must have cleared them from the soldiers he fought while she and Asher waited for the all clear. She grinned at him, knowing this put them at a slight advantage and started grabbing supplies from the vehicle. Once the three of them had all they could carry Cain locked the SUV and hid the keys under a nearby pile of rubble.
“Doubt we’ll use it again,” he shrugged, “but you never know.”
Zahyra shrugged back at him and readjusted the straps of the two rifles she wore criss-crossed over her back. It was uncomfortable, but it would have to do. Then she nodded to Cain and he started leading their little group down the alleyway, heading back into the city where she had first discovered the truth about his mutation.
The sun was now rising higher in the sky, lighting up the incredible buildings that surrounded them in the city. Zahyra marvelled at the structures, each one taking her breath away despite having seen most of them before. She watched Asher as he dragged his feet in front of her; awestruck by the city they walked through.
Cain seemed to be picking his path precisely, taking deliberate turns and moving quicker down certain roads. Zahyra was thankful that they didn’t cross paths with any mutants and even more so when Cain drew to a halt in front of a specific building, indicating for them to move inside. Now that it was daylight Zahyra wanted to be hidden out of view from whatever was going to be searching for them. Advanced mutant or safe haven soldier.
The building they entered – through a broken window on the ground floor – was more dilapidated and ruined than many others. Zahyra wondered whether that was why the mutants in the city didn’t use it, it’s structural integrity ruined after years of abandonment. She was slightly surprised when Cain led them towards a grand staircase in the middle of the large, open foyer and started climbing it.