The Uprising (The Julianna Rae Chronicles)

by Aral Bereux

  But you’ll be safe. My family will see to that. You’re one of us.

  ‘And you’re fucking dead as a doornail.’

  Daniel followed her bike. It was enough to make her turn back and trace his stare to the same shadows, making their way quickly in their direction. Daniel met her terrified eyes.

  They’d been found.

  He pulled alongside her. The girl he had rescued was a far cry from the scared little girl he had found. Katherine had been cradling her in her arms, hidden in the back streets of his home, in the alleyway behind the Gatehouse.

  Little Sarah, he had called her. Now they called her Devo.

  Yet, her words stung. He revved his bike down the road in their camp’s direction, knowing he’d listen to them bounce around in his head, until they returned.

  He glanced over his shoulder, she was falling behind him, with the crowds of nocturno left in their shadows, standing in the middle of the town’s main road, staring at them, but keeping their distance.

  Still, once they arrived, he could relax again. Caden would doctor his sister, and he could slink off somewhere to the trees, or the cave chasms, for some alone time. Yes, he thought, as he readied his gun to his side to cover the girl who now sped in front of him, weaving along the middle line painted through the belly of the road.

  Just a trip away for some vacation time. Then I’ll return, no one will miss me, and hopefully kid sister will be well enough to travel again.

  CHAPTER 4

  3rd May, 2018, 0145 hours.

  The Caves of Devils Canyon.

  The dogs bayed in a distance, howling at the moon and calling to each other.

  Julianna rested in Caden’s arms, listening to him read gently as she dozed against his chest. The waterfalls they sat beside, offered a fine spray that covered her body in a dewy film of relief. The move closer to the water helped. Its fine mist stopped the burning sensation that crawled through her body, stopping the delirium.

  Caden read in his low tone. The only book saved from the camp was his copy of the scriptures, and he gently read the rules which governed a watcher, to Julianna, in an attempt to keep her awake.

  ‘They sound close.’ The whisper between her dry lips was barely heard, but Caden and Bas raised their heads when the dogs made their call again.

  ‘Devo & Danny will be back soon. When they are, we’ll lock this place down, conceal the cave. With the three of us we should manage for the night, keep ourselves hidden.’

  Bas looked over his shoulder. ‘She’s right. They sound close.’

  Caden turned the page but gave it up. He shivered from the spray of water blowing over him from the storm’s anger outside. He caught her stare. The fever was settling at last. She was gaining her senses and the last thing he wanted was to move her away from the only thing keeping her lucid.

  Placing the old leather bound pages beside them; Caden lifted the bottle of water to put it to her lips.

  She refused.

  ‘You need to drink.’ Caden said.

  He tipped the bottle to her mouth and she took a small sip.

  ‘They will corner you.’

  Caden glanced at the noc.

  ‘You can’t out run the Militia, master watcher. You do not have the strength they have.’

  Caden rested the bottle beside the book to return his arms around Julianna’s listless body. He swapped looks with his brother; Bas didn’t say a word. He didn’t need too; Caden read his every thought as though they were his own.

  Bas nodded, and lifted his rifle instead. The sights were raised and pointed past the waterfall where the water didn’t reach. Slowly the landscape was scanned, right to left, under the light of the full moon.

  Caden noticed the noc watching Bas.

  ‘We need to be ready for an attack,’ Bas said.

  Caden acknowledged his brother’s restlessness with silence. The night ahead, the dangers he felt lurking ahead of them made him anxious for the others to return as much as Bastiaan. He knew the distant baying. He’d heard it during his time with the Militia. They weren’t wolves hunting for their dinner.

  The noc smiled his yellow smile. Caden shivered again as another spray of water blew across his arms, landing where the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to meet with his elbows.

  Caden raised the bottle again, and again Julianna struggled to drink. He massaged her back, coaxing her, leading her mind to swallow the water, encouraging her to stay with them, to stay awake.

  ‘They have the dogs searching,’ the noc smiled. ‘No one out runs them dogs.’ His yellow-stained teeth pointed over his curling lips. ‘They’ll rip you apart. Before the drones have a chance to trace you, nothing will be left, but for your cold blood being lapped up by their thirsty tongues.’

  ‘Not if we feed them first,’ Caden teased quietly. ‘Bastiaan put that rifle to good use, will you?’

  The noc’s stretched skin split beneath his eye to his cheek. An utter of disdain left as he fell against his side, his staring eyes departing for a darker world. Bas lowered the rifle stock.

  ‘He talks to freakin’ much,’ Caden muttered.

  The dogs howling below carried across the wind. Each dog overlapped the other’s song, calling to each brother as they hunted.

  ‘They’re here,’ Julianna whispered.

  Bas raised his rifle scope to his eye, taking the landscape into its cross hairs.

  ‘See anything?’ Caden rose to his feet. The restlessness was contagious, and Julianna’s tone chilled him. He needed to search for himself.

  ‘Nope, not yet. Not in the distance,’ Bas said. ‘You?’

  Caden pulled Bas away from the edge slowly. ‘Down there.’

  They peered over the ledge. ‘Security Division K-9 unit.’ Bas said quietly. ‘They have trackers on their collars, the drones won’t be far. We need to distract the dogs.’

  Julianna stood on unsteady feet with her knife in her hand. ‘If more join with their pack, we’re screwed.’

  ‘We may need you, yet. But you wait for my order,’ Caden said.

  He peered over the ledge with Bas. The dogs flicked their heads and bared their teeth under a guttural growl, calling for their comrades to join them. Caden felt himself change. The threat hanging over them was enough that he felt himself become the creature he hid from Julianna. It took a physical shake of his head before he returned to observe the blue halo of light radiating from each dog’s harness.

  ‘They’ll rip us apart,’ Caden paced. ‘But if we throw them a feed…’ he stopped in front of the noc. ‘It’ll be enough of a distraction.’

  ‘No!’ Julianna stumbled forward.

  You wait for my order, Julianna Rae!

  He glared at her, making sure she heard every emphasis of every word in her mind. He furrowed his brow, she lowered her knife. He dared her to move. She didn’t.

  Caden grabbed the noc’s injured shoulder and between him and Bas they prepared to swing the lifeless lump over the ledge.

  ‘Ignore her,’ Caden said. ‘Fever’s making her delusional again. On three: One. Two—’

  Caden slammed against the cave wall into the sharp rock behind him. The noc slumped into an unconscious heap beside his feet and Caden stood frozen, motionless with Julianna’s knife blade pointed against his throat.

  ‘No! More! Killing!’

  Her other hand clutched at his shirt, bunching its open collar in a grasp, and he felt her fever burn once more, away from the water.

  You’re not well, girl. Let it go. He frowned down at her small stature.

  ‘He has information we can use. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. He has something we need, something important. I can sense it just like your damn whisper inside my head.’

  ‘You mind taking that blade from my neck, Miss Rae,’ he said. ‘Before I ram it down your throat.’

  You stupid bitch, trying to get us all killed again.

  She dropped her knife.

  ‘Where the hell is Bastiaan in all of thi
s?’

  He tiptoed over the ledge. Bas was climbing down the last of the ledges with his own knife in hand.

  He returned to Julianna. ‘What is wrong with you?’ he snapped.

  A dog yelped before everything else in the night turned eerily quiet. The blood curdling yelps from the grounds below – Bas taking care of the situation – was sending her grey.

  ‘Fuck this,’ he said.

  Caden snatched the knife from her hand and folded it into his pocket, confiscating it as a parent would a favorite toy from their child. She lowered her head in obedience and sickness, away from his continuing glare.

  It angered him more. His frustrations surfaced. The only way he could control them was to push his thoughts into her mind instead. For if he spoke them aloud; it would end with his fists emphasizing each and every word.

  Look at me!

  She obeyed him and he studied her for any trace of being a defector. Her eyes were held wide as he encroached on her mind, and he sensed her terror of his aftermath, if she didn’t submit to his silent interrogation. His ability to read her every thought sent her mind into a spin. The tangle of her fevered psyche was difficult to trace, or maybe her mind raced at this speed normally. He’d met plenty like her, and knew their demise usually ended in insanity, and turning wild.

  She collapsed at his feet. He crouched for a better bond between them. Disloyalty wasn’t his concern. He felt his guilt creep in as he permitted her to lower her head away from his stare.

  ‘Why do you do shit like this, Julianna? Why?’ It was the one answer her mind wouldn’t grant him.

  He stepped back to the ledge where the water sprayed over him. The yelp of a final dog echoed into the night and Bas shouted out orders.

  Danny and Devo attacked the dogs with Bas, but it was her speeding mind that held his attention.

  Just like her brother.

  He looked at Juliana with knees drawn to her chest like a scared, little child.

  Daddy dearest has a lot to answer for. He’s left her alone for too long – too long without initiation.

  He pursed his lips to scowl her more and stopped when Bas scaled along the ledge to stand beside him.

  ‘Well, that was stupid,’ Caden said to him.

  ‘Solved the problem didn’t it?’ Bas wiped his blood-marked hands against his pants, missing some of the stain between his fingers.

  Bas glanced in Julianna’s direction. She shuddered and lowered her face into her hands, burying herself away.

  Caden understood her reluctance. Bas’s eyes were still dark from his quick transformation, and the sweat beading over his brow gave away his true instincts. Bas had enjoyed his hunt. Julianna could see his excitement and adrenaline.

  ‘They’re moving the collars away from here.’ Bas wiped his hands again and reached the leftover blood with a lick of his tongue.

  Caden shook his head. Change back asshole, you’re freaking her out.

  Caden turned out to search for the others instead, silent for a moment to listen for any other betrayal below. For now, they were safe. Julianna, on the other hand was looking grey.

  ‘You’re fever’s raging again, girl.’ Bas sat her near the spray of the mist, crouching to catch the crashing water inside his cupped hands, to splash it against her hot skin. ‘Stay where you are. Danny said they found what we need.’

  ‘We need to close this place down, conceal it before anyone else finds us.’

  Bas looked up. ‘Calm down baby brother. When they come back we will. What’d you do to her anyway? She’s stunned.’

  ‘I had to be sure she wasn’t turning against us.’

  ‘You read her?’ Bas splashed more water over her arms and face. ‘Shit Cade, you read her with a fever, like she can deal with that right now? C’mon man, she’s sick.’

  ‘I don’t care. She did the wrong thing, again! Fuck with me one more time over your prisoner, Julianna Elizbeth Rae, and I’ll initiate you right here, just to teach you a lesson!’

  Caden stopped to swipe the bottle of water for himself. He gulped half of it down before handing it to Bas, who swallowed what was left.

  Before him, Julianna sat cross legged with her damp hair hanging around her face, waiting for more of his sharp words. He sensed her vulnerability and that she didn’t begrudge him. Rather than deliver words, he put the bottle to her lips after refilling it under the pouring water, and pushed away the hair clinging to her wet skin.

  ‘Stupid girl, you just wasted any energy you had left, fighting me for a low-life noc.’

  The sound of the last dog yelping carried on the night air.

  ‘Stop trying to hurt him,’ she whispered. ‘He can’t help what he is.’

  She looked up at them. A look of pain crossed her face while she met Caden’s worried expression.

  Devo scrambled over the ledge with the help of Bas lifting her arm until she was safely in. She threw the heavy duffle bag to Caden.

  Daniel struggled over the ledge and stared at Julianna burying her head in her knees, hiding from Caden.

  ‘Danny, we’re concealing this place, need your help,’ Bas said.

  Caden stole a glimpse at Daniel’s barely healed arm, and listened to him pray to a God that didn’t exist under his own belief, for one last surge of energy to help them.

  His thinly veiled disgust drew Daniel’s attention from Julianna to his place beside Bastiaan.

  The men stood at the edge, with their hands up and their heads bowed low. They whispered a chant indiscernible to Julianna’s and Devo’s ears. Over and over again, they repeated the same words. Whispering, chanting, and echoing. The cave grew dark, and the water crashing over the rocks slowly disappeared. They were hidden in their own world of pitch-black darkness.

  The chanting slowed to a low whisper, and a thick silence encompassed them. Dripping water falling softly into a puddle in the chasms of the grotto echoed, and the energy surrounding the area, penetrated Julianna’s inner core to her very depths. She understood. For one single moment she understood everything in life, and feared nothing.

  Caden raised his head to her clarity. The answers were in front of her, and only just out of reach. He marveled at her sudden stillness and eagerness to learn and how she clawed for the truth. He watched, and listened in stealth. To interrupt this one true moment was not his intention.

  He waited.

  Julianna was grateful for the darkness encompassing her, hiding her from the others. Caden knew she was unaware of his ability to see clearly in his own cast darkness. She didn’t want them to see the expression on her face and he permitted her the satisfaction for a moment longer. He listened to her breathing, and felt her uncontrollable shake, but not from the fever. Caden’s mind intrusion still lingered, she could still feel his reach swirling inside her head, searching to grasp onto any answer her soul was willing to betray, but it gave her that single moment of clarity too, and she wondered if this was how the man saw the world every day.

  She closed her eyes against the thickness, even though in her mind, it seemed darker, but closing them for a moment helped align her thoughts.

  Caden smiled a smile he knew she still didn’t see.

  When she opened them again, the cave was basked in an orange glow that danced everyone’s shadows against the walls. The fire jumped from inside its ring of stone they had made earlier, to cast comforting warmth.

  The clarity was enlightening for them both.

  Julianna glanced around.

  Bastiaan stood beside the fire watching her. Caden knew his brother had sensed the change within her, too. Everyone else had their objective to complete.

  ‘Here,’ Daniel said.

  Caden caught the vials tossed to him. It brought him back to their quiet world and away from her mind. He scrutinized the labels before mixing the stagnant formula with a quick shake.

  ‘Syringes? Tell me you got them too?’ Caden stated coolly.

  ‘In the bag.’ Daniel rested quietly beside the fire. ‘He h
as the road blocked to the west. Heading to the sectors isn’t going to be easy.’

  Caden took a syringe from Devo, free from its wrapping.

  ‘And I don’t like being cornered, Danny. You know that. Providing this stuff is still active, Julianna should be feeling a damn sight better in the morning. If she does, then we’re moving west.’ Caden used the light of the fire to draw the thick liquid into the syringe, checking and rechecking it until he was satisfied. ‘By all means if you feel you can’t join us, please don’t.’

  ‘You need me old boy,’ Daniel teased. ‘I’ll be seeing this one through.’

  ‘That’ll be a first for you,’ Caden said. ‘My, my, Daddy will be impressed when I tell him, won’t he?’

  Daniel got to his feet and Caden stood tall as he stepped into Daniel’s space.

  ‘Not this bullshit again.’ Julianna staggered between them. She addressed Caden. ‘You’ve done nothing but fight. We have enough problems without this crap.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Caden said and sharply turned her around to the fire. He edged her pants down. ‘Small prick.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Guys!’ she snapped. The needle tip slipped into her skin. Caden pressed the mixture into her rear. ‘Ow, fuck!’

  ‘That’s what all the girls say.’ Caden teased. He looked past her shoulder towards Daniel, receiving a glaring stare. He removed the injection and capped it for another use. ‘We should sleep while we can.’

  ‘Shall I take first watch?’ Daniel quizzed. He stood with his rifle pointing subtly in Caden’s direction.

  ‘Thanks Danny. You can handle something this simple, yourself?’

  ‘Cade, stop scratching for a fight,’ Bas scowled.

  ‘I can handle you can’t I?’ Daniel stood and Caden moved past Julianna to meet him toe-to-toe. ‘Done it before, will do it again.’

  Bas separated them. ‘You’re tired man, they got us what we needed, Danny took out the mutts, let him be, yeah?’

  Caden threw his hands in defeat. His eyes snapped in Devo’s direction, double-taking the ripped uniform over her arm. He glared past Bastiaan and then to Devo again.