I glanced over at Carana, who seemed fine, sleeping across David’s lap.
“I healed it,” Lara said, as if reading my mind.
“I love you,” I told her, placing a kiss on her lips.
“Me too. Now get some sleep,” she told me, returning the good-night kiss.
We hadn’t slept long, however, when the silence in the den was broken by Rashellia’s loud cries.
“What in the hell is that?” someone muttered angrily, followed by a wave of groans from the others.
I gave Lara a shake. Rashellia was having a fit.
“Shut that baby up!” someone yelled at us.
Lara took off her shirt to feed Rashellia, out of sight of the others. “Hush, hush,” Lara coaxed Rashellia as she quieted down and began to feed.
“It’s four fifteen in the morning,” someone grumbled.
There was another barrage of insults, but then people started to settle down.
“Do you need help?” I asked Lara drowsily, sitting up beside her.
“Yeah, get out a cloth and wipe the milk from her face, please,” Lara instructed me.
I pulled a white cloth from the baby bag we had hastily packed and then started cleaning up Rashellia, humming “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” to her as I did. Rashellia stopped sucking on Lara’s breast and lay back in her arms, contentedly. Lara handed Rashellia to me, giving me a kiss. She laughed at me as I held her nervously. “She’s not a bomb. Relax,” Lara giggled, readjusting Rashellia in my arms.
“Here—you take her,” I told Lara when the baby began to cry again.
Lara let out a frustrated sigh but took her back and rocked her to sleep. I knew she was mad at me, but she tried to hide it with a faint smile. “It’s okay. You’ll get the hang of it,” she told me, placing Rashellia down beside us as we settled down to go to sleep.
“Is she a half-human, half-fiend?” I asked cautiously, wrapping the blanket around the small, curled-up body of Rashellia.
Lara nodded sleepily, rubbing her eyes.
“How can you tell?” I asked
“Well, yesterday she had fiend eyes. Plus, fiends don’t grow human skin. We’re shape-shifters. We have to first acquire a taste of the species we desire to be before we can transform into it. As you can see, she already has her full set of skin.”
“Aren’t you scared about how we’re going to raise her? Teach her right from wrong? How to use her powers for good, not evil? She’s going to be different from the others,” I whispered nervously.
“Yes,” Lara admitted, “but I know we can handle anything.” She kissed me goodnight.
I reluctantly decided to drop the subject, returning the kiss and lying back, allowing sleep to overtake me. Little did I know, deep inside our little girl were powers begging to be unleashed that could one day change the tide of the war.
Chapter 17
We huddled in the den the next morning, eating what was left of the resistance fighters’ rations, when a sudden crack of a gunshot rang outside. We all looked at each other in shock, and then all hell broke loose. A heavy firefight erupted outside, and the two sentries came under fire.
The resistance fighters all scrambled to their knees, loading their weapons, sending food flying everywhere. Then they raced outside to assist their comrades. I peeked out the den and saw that there were sixty to a hundred fiends, all firing at the logs, trees, and boulders that the PLF were taking shelter behind. “We’re going to be overrun. Take Rashellia to Brawklin,” I ordered Lara.
She slipped the diamond wedding ring I had given her into Rashellia’s jumpsuit, preparing to transform. “I can try to carry you and her!” Lara pleaded, grabbing my hand.
I grabbed my sniper and shook my head, knowing that she was too weak from giving birth. Silently, I handed Lara and Carana the bags we had packed full of food and water. “You and I both know you can’t carry me in your state,” I told her.
“I can! Please don’t stay! You’ll die, just like the rest!” Lara begged. “I want our daughter to grow up to know her father, Lance.” Her voice quivered through a sea of tears.
“I want to see her grow too, but these heartless monsters are going to destroy Brawklin after this. If I can kill at least one of them, then that’s one less that you and Carana will have to deal with,” I told her, trying to force myself to be brave.
“You will die,” Lara sniffled, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“You all will die,” Carana muttered from the corner of the den.
Carana’s face was drenched with tears, which shocked me—she never really was an emotional fiend. There was nothing I could say. I unclipped the heart pendant necklace that my sister had given me and clipped it around Rashellia’s neck before kissing Lara and whispering good-bye. “We will meet you in Brawklin,” I told them, slinging the sniper rifle around my shoulder. I tapped the map in the pocket over my heart.
David whispered something in Carana’s ear while cocking his assault rifle. She sniffled, nodding and wiping away a tear. She hugged him tightly as they both kissed.
“David?” I asked him, nodding toward the door.
“Let’s do it,” he said fearlessly.
The door slammed behind us as we plunged straight into the war we thought we had left so long ago. It felt so unfamiliar to me as I lay against the log, listening to the thwock, thwock, thwock of the bullets ricocheting off the side of it. My heart was racing and my hands were shaking as I cowered in fright, praying that I wouldn’t be struck by one of the rounds.
Before, I hadn’t really had a reason to live; now that I had Lara and Rashellia in my life, I was almost too scared to even peek over the log. We were in the kill zone of the fiends, with no escape, as they fired down on us from their vantage point up on the hilltop.
There were already two dead PLF fighters slumped against a tree stump, just in front of the log where I was taking cover. The air erupted with the familiar sounds of triumphant, lion-like roars, as Lara and Carana burst through the den, shooting up into sky and letting out another magnificent roar. Lara quickly made her escape, vanishing into the fog.
I perched my sniper against the log and shot down two fiends who attempted to pursue her. Carana stuck around, plunging twice to the ground and killing five or six fiends before yelping as a bullet ripped through her thigh. She let out an enraged roar, glancing over at David and me apologetically. Then she took off into the distance, killing a fiend who had flown up to kill her.
I shot one sniper perched in a tree. He fell to the ground with a loud thud. After that, I began to pick off fiends as they poked their heads over the ridge.
A resistance fighter set up a general-purpose machine gun on the rock to my left, lighting up the ridge by spraying bullets at anything that moved. We continued to fight but about fifteen minutes later, it was clear that we were going to lose the battle in no time. We only had five guys left; the rest were scattered along the ground, either dead, wounded, or playing dead.
“Our right flank!” I yelled to the guy on the machine gun, and then I realized that he was dead, lying against the rock with his finger on the trigger. “Grant!” I yelled, pointing to the unmanned machine gun.
Grant ran over to the rock and pushed aside the dead fighter. He aimed the machine gun back up at the ridge, while I picked off the fiends trying to flank us. “Hey, you! Call in artillery on that ridge!” David yelled at a kid who was trembling beside the PLF’s radio.
The kid was about fifteen years old, curled up in fright, and shaking all over. “Ye … ye … yes, sir,” the young boy stuttered, picking up the radio to transmit the message.
We were rewarded by the sound of artillery hitting its mark a moment later. It shook the ground, making us duck as shrapnel tore through the air in our direction. The fiends were only about thirty-five meters away from us now
.
The young boy just looked at me in fright, calling in a suicide mission right on top of us, nodding his head toward me, and accepting his fate. Fully transformed fiends began flying at us, trying to dive-bomb us but to no avail—we shot them down. Others jumped over the logs, overrunning us.
Daid and I escaped to Grant’s position. He was firing the machine gun at the log that David and I had taken shelter behind only seconds ago. As fiends jumped over the log, their dead bodies landed on the other side. “Run!” I yelled to David and Grant.
The three of us turned on our heels, sprinting away as artillery began to rain all around us. The deep winter snow bogged us down, making our escape impossible. The artillery pounded the area, and trees splintered as the ground shook. We were mowed down by debris. I fell to the ground, waiting for the artillery to finish me off—and was surprised when the barrage ended and I was still alive. An eerie silence was broken only by the chilling cries of the wounded, screaming for help. I felt my side, which was numb with pain, and gasped at the three-foot piece of wood lodged in my right side.
I shook my legs, realizing, to my relief, that I wasn’t paralyzed.
“I … got hit,” David and Grant both moaned simultaneously. Then David spotted me lying twenty feet or so from them. “Oh shit, Lance!” he gasped.
“I’m fine; it didn’t hit anything major,” I called out to them, holding up a hand.
Blood trickled from David’s forehead, where a piece of debris—most likely a rock—had smacked him. Grant was lying about ten feet from us, covered in dirt, with a piece of wood through his left leg and right shoulder. We helped each other up, slowly making our way back to the den. As we stepped over the dead bodies of fiends and humans, we left behind a fresh trail of blood.
“Look for survivors,” I told them through clenched teeth as I flopped onto the ground to catch my breath. I held on to the piece of wood that was lodged in my stomach so it wouldn’t move and paralyze me. Grant limped over and sat down beside me, cringing in pain.
“So did you miss this shit at all while you were on vacation?” Grant muttered as we watched David flipping over the dead bodies of PLF fighters, checking for survivors.
“Not really,” I shot back, flinching as a wave of pain shot through my body.
“Hey, the officer is alive!” David called to us, dragging Philip over.
Philip was worse than we were. He had three bullet wounds, and half his body was brutally peppered with shrapnel wounds. We all piled into the den, each taking care of our own wounds the best that we could. I couldn’t help letting out a scream in pain as I pulled out the piece of wood. Blood squirted all over the place. I quickly took another piece of wood. Lighting it on fire, I shoved it into my wound, screaming as it burned the wound and stopped the bleeding. Gently, I sprinkled salt into the wound and cleaned it out with snow. I hoped I’d stopped it from getting infected.
I grabbed the first-aid kit from David, who had just finished bandaging his wound on his head. I took out the gauze and wrapped an entire roll around my stomach. My chest was still heaving from exhaustion after inflicting so much pain on myself. David and Grant had fixed their own wounds and were now operating on Philip, trying desperately to save his life.
I tossed over the first-aid kit to them with a defeated sigh, slumping to the ground and passing out a few moments later. I was the first to wake up the next morning. I looked at Philip’s still body and thought at first that he’d died, but to my relief, I soon realized he was still breathing.
“Get up, guys,” I said, prodding each of them separately with the butt of my weapon.
“Are we going to Brawklin?” Grant asked with a yawn, wiping the sleep from his eyes as he sat up.
I nodded, gathering two cans of tuna, three bags of bread, and fruit that was scattered around the floor of the den into a bag. Lara and Carana had left it behind in their hasty escape. I pulled out some machine gun and M4 ammunition from the bag, tossing it over to Grant and David.
“Just leave me behind,” Philip muttered, opening up an eye. “I’m not going to make it.”
“No, we will use that blanket as a stretcher and bring you with us, sir!” Grant objected instantly.
David and I nodded in agreement, even though we knew the officer was right. I attached a silencer to my sniper, and they slung their rifles over their shoulders. We picked up opposite ends of the blanket where Philip was lying and slowly made our treacherous journey to Brawklin City. It had snowed the night before, but the sky had cleared a little, allowing sunshine to peek through the dense pine canopy of the trees.
The snow was extremely deep, and it was difficult for us to wade through it, especially with our wounds. As we stopped to take breaks, David would backtrack to a random point off the track that led to a dead end in hopes of slowing down any fiends who might have picked up on our trail. Over the next week and a half, we didn’t see many fiends or any sign of life, for that matter.
It seemed like we were stuck in a sick nightmare, going around in circles. The harsh winter environment seemed as if it would keep us trapped in the forest forever. The odd patrol of fiends would go by as we lay silently in the snow, praying for them not to spot us. I picked off about five stragglers throughout the week, as well as collecting rations and gear as our supplies became scarce.
A cold front came in that night, adding to our misery. My wounds had become infected, and I lost my gloves when I ducked in the middle of a contact between a lost fiend patrol and an NWO platoon the night before. I looked down at my hands, which were purplish-blue and so numb I could barely even feel them anymore. “This looks like a good place to set up camp,” I told them as night soon enveloped us.
“Thank God,” I heard Grant and David moan. They dropped Philip quickly to the ground, collapsing from exhaustion beside him.
We all began to succumb to our wounds as the days dragged on. David was starting to lose it, mentally—I think he had a concussion or something. Two nights ago, I woke up and saw him talking to a tree, debating whether to have eggs or bacon for breakfast.
Grant was holding up pretty well. He was limping a lot more now, though, and his leg was swollen from infection. Philip couldn’t stop coughing, and he would go into occasional convulsions. I found that I was starting to become a lot sleepier. It was getting harder and harder for me to breathe as the days went on.
The other night, I had woken up gasping for air, and Grant had to literally pound on my chest so I could spit out the blood and mucus that had built up in my lungs while I slept. I was getting nosebleeds too. Now, I placed my hands in my armpits, trying to warm them up, as David re-bandaged Philip’s crippled body.
Grant attempted to make a small campfire in the snow. I began to drift off, but suddenly I felt a warm surge of energy fill me—this wasn’t the first time it had happened.
“Lara?” I asked hopefully in my mind, but my voice just echoed back, as if there was a sound barrier between us. I could soon hear the sounds of Grant’s snoring. He had fallen asleep on the pile of wood he was using to make the failed fire. Philip and David exchanged a few words, and then David settled down by a tree to go to sleep.
A strong wind blew over us, causing me to shiver again. I felt the wave of energy slowly dissolving from me, letting me slip back into reality.
David came over to sit beside me. He looked exhausted. “Do you feel these surges of energy rush through you whenever you feel like fainting?” he whispered, laying his M4 up against the tree. When I said that I did too, he said, “The angels must be looking after us or something.”
“It’s definitely something,” I agreed, settling into the snow. Sleep overtook me as thoughts of Lara and my daughter began to flow through my head.
“It’s so cold. We’re going to freeze,” David muttered. His morale seemed to drop as quickly as the night’s temperature.
&
nbsp; “Let’s huddle together,” I suggested.
He wrapped his arm around me in agreement. “Fine, but no homo.”
We both laughed and then fell asleep almost instantly, comforted by our body heat. I had a dream—I was on a playground, pushing Rashellia on the swing. Lara was on a rock, reading a book and sprawled out in the summer sun. Rashellia got off the swing and enthusiastically ran to Lara, jumping into her arms. At that exact moment, Rashellia transformed into a baby in Lara’s arms.
Lara suddenly was standing on the walls of a castle overlooking the forest as snow gently fell, covering her long blonde hair. “Keep going, Lance,” she whispered into the wind as a single tear slipped down her cheek. She then vanished into the darkness.
I opened my eyes and stared up into the gray sky. There was a light drizzle pattering down on us. I rolled free from David, going into a coughing fit and spitting out a mouthful of blood, followed by my morning puke. Once I regained control of myself, I got up, slinging the sniper around my shoulder.
Philip was awake, staring at the sky.
“What’s up, man?” I asked him. He didn’t reply. “Philip?” I asked timidly, walking over to his still body.
He was dead, frozen to the blanket, with an awed expression plastered to his face. I put another blanket on top of his body and lay his pistol on his chest. I held back tears, knowing this was going to be our fate. I quickly woke up the other two before slumping to the ground and putting my head in my arms, defeated.
They both just stared solemnly at the blanket. “Philip’s gone,” I told them, dully confirming their thoughts. We just instinctively got up and left without saying another word.
David began marching around, singing as if reliving his boot-camp days, while waving to trees and calling up to squirrels and birds.
I was starting to realize that I wasn’t going to make it. Every day, I felt my energy fading more and more, to the point that I was starting to cough up blood as I walked, every ten or fifteen minutes.
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