by CC Solomon
“Don’t shoot!” cried a guard walking around the corner. He was a black man with long dreadlocks.
“Reggie!” I shouted.
He frowned. “Amina?” he questioned with confused eyes. “What’s going on?”
“We’re freeing those we left behind.”
He nodded, looking around. “Right.”
Charles stood next to me. “Who is this dude?” he questioned.
“He helped me escape the prison. He’s a good guy,” I explained before turning back to Reggie. “Are you going to help us?”
Reggie nodded. “Of course, I will. Whatever you need from me.”
“Good. There’s a place for you back in the government town, I’m sure of it.”
Reggie shook his head quickly. “I’ll do what I can here, but I think it’s best I just go on my own way after we get everyone safely out. I don’t need to remind these people of what they’ve been through.”
I sighed. “Are you sure I can’t change your mind on that?”
Reggie gave me a sad smile. “You’re a good person, Amina. I’m glad you got out and could help these people. The world needs more good folks like you.”
I walked over and gave him a tight hug. “If you ever need to reach me, here’s my email address,” I stated. I whispered a basic conjuring spell, and a slip of paper with my email address appeared in my hand.
Reggie looked at it with wide eyes before taking the paper and putting it in his pocket. He gave a nod and then turned to the huddled paranormals, who were looking at us with fear and confusion. “I’ll help get you guys out.”
I looked to Lisa. “Lisa, please go with them. Can you keep your protection shield up while moving?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, I’ve been practicing with my magic. I can teleport too,” she replied, before turning and beginning her teleportation of children and elderly paranormals. “Lock hands, everyone. I’ll see how many of you I can get out in one go.”
“Take the children first,” Reggie stated. “I’ll guard the others until you return.”
Lisa nodded and disappeared with a collection of children.
“Amina? Charles?” came a familiar voice.
I spun around and spotted Chelsea coming down the hall with a few other freed paranormals. I rushed over to her, and we embraced in a tight hug.
“I’m so happy you’re okay!” I cried, pulling back from the hug.
She nodded a look of relief on her face. “Did you do this? Did you bring people to help us?” Chelsea asked, tears threatening to fall down her pale cheeks.
I nodded. “Charles and I.”
Charles appeared to my right and rushed to hug Chelsea.
“I didn’t think we’d see you again,” she said in a choked voice.
“I’m so sorry we left you behind,” I said, grabbing her hand.
Chelsea quickly shook her head. Her frizzy reddish-blond curls framed her face almost like a lion’s mane. It was long and tangled, and for the first time, I noticed her clothes were dirty along with her face and hands. She looked even skinner than the last time I’d seen her. It was clear they were punishing her for our escape. Guilt stabbed me even more.
“No, I understand. You probably wouldn’t have made it out if you came looking for me. I’m just so grateful you came back. And with reinforcements. I thought when we moved, it was over for us.”
“Do you know where Jared is?” Charles asked.
Chelsea looked over to him, her eyes suddenly filled with sadness. She shook her head. “He didn’t make it. They… They killed him. When you escaped, he was murdered as punishment for trying to get out and to set an example for us to stay in line. They were saying if we escaped or tried to escape, then someone close to us and left behind would be killed.”
I put a hand to my mouth and shook my head. I felt like I was gutted. I pictured Jared’s jolly face in my head. His laughter when he told inappropriate tales of his life in the Pre-world with groupies, his scowling at the injustices around him, and most importantly, his selflessness on the day that Charles and I escaped. I would never be able to repay him now. We had to free everyone. His life would not go in vain.
“I’m sorry, Amina,” Reggie whispered. “I tried to get him to reconsider killing him.”
I shook my head. “You could only do so much without getting implicated.”
Charles closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cement wall. “Let’s end this.”
I nodded.
“Where are we going?” Felix asked. He came up beside Charles and patted him on the shoulder.
“You should go with Lisa,” I stated.
Felix narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Why? I’m not useless.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
Felix lowered his head, and his shoulders rose and lowered quickly. He looked like he was hyperventilating, only he wasn’t. I looked over to Charles, who glanced at me with a worried look.
Chelsea leaned into me. “What’s wrong with him?” she whispered.
“Good question,” I replied. “Felix, honey, we have to get moving. You can come with us. I don’t mean to make you angry.” I looked around at the others. “Is that what I did, did I make him angry?” They shrugged, and I looked over to Felix again. “We have to get going.” He didn’t acknowledge me, just kept doing that Lamaze breathing thing.
I looked to Charles, who pointed at his watch and tossed his hands outwards.
Felix suddenly looked up at Charles, and his brown eyes seemed brighter than before; the whites of his eyes were clearer. “They killed your friend as punishment. We have to stop them, and I can help with that.” His voice was deeper and stranger like there was more than one voice coming out of him. It was scary.
“The hell,” Charles said in a barely audible voice.
Felix turned and walked out of the dormitory. Charles, Chelsea, and I followed along with a couple of other soldiers.
“Where are you going?” I asked him.
“To David. I assume you want to kill him,” Felix replied in the same creepy voice.
“Does he sound like he’s possessed to you?” Charles whispered.
“That’s not his regular voice?” Chelsea whispered back. “What’s his power?”
“We don’t know what his power is,” Charles replied.
“I think we should just be quiet before he looks back at us. I’m a little nervous,” I stated.
“Should we be following him?” Chelsea asked.
“He seems to be on the way to the fighting, and the soldiers are with us, so I guess it can’t hurt,” Charles answered.
We followed Felix the rest of the way in silence. From the sound of it, the fighting was spread throughout the campus. We walked to the middle of a long, white building on our right and entered the building through double glass doors. Once inside, we faced an open space leading to an auditorium.
“Do we want to go in there and help out?” Charles asked. He pointed to the auditorium doors, a few knocked off the hinges, where lots of shouting and shooting could be heard.
It would be chaos inside. We could help.
Felix kept walking to the left of the doors down a wide, open hallway. “No,” he replied.
I looked back at the two soldiers, who looked like they were seriously considering ditching us as they stared into the auditorium beyond some open doors. It was all-out war in there. With the bodies being thrown around, it was hard to tell who the good guys were, except for the fact that Hagerstown and Silver Spring folks were wearing green bands around their arms.
The soldiers accompanying us whispered to each other but kept walking. There was something about Felix now that made us believe he knew where we could be most useful. I couldn’t explain it, he just had a new aura around him that we wanted to follow. And we had to get to David. And kill him.
We walked a few minutes more, entering a linked walkway, taking us into another building. One side of the walls were ceiling-to-floor windows. The
other side held display cases with trophies and several closed classroom doors. Felix stopped and turned in front of another set of double doors. It was the cafeteria, and I could hear a serious rumble as loud as the one in the auditorium.
“Here,” scary-voiced Felix stated before walking through the open doors.
We followed. Once inside, we were greeted to what looked like several wrestling matches happening all at once. To my left, I spotted Faith grabbing a weapon-holding capturer by the face with both hands. She kissed him. “That does not look like fighting,” I said aloud, moving out of the way of our soldier teammates, who rushed into action.
However, Faith’s make-out session was anything but that. Within moments, to my horrified eyes, the male prison guard thinned out. Fat disappeared from his body until he was only muscle; thin skin stretched tightly over muscle and skeleton, leaving an emaciated figure. His eyes bugged out, and cheeks sank inwards. His skin dried, looking as fragile as paper, and paled, taking on a grayish tint. Soon all life left his eyes, and only a frozen look of terror remained on his mummified face. This all took a matter of seconds before he died. Faith dropped the corpse, and I could see her eyes were now ruby-red circles, taking on a terrifying, otherworldly look. A wicked smile crossed her lips.
Charles leaned into me. “Remind me never to kiss her,” he stated, before bending down to grab a gun out of the hands of a deceased soldier.
“Watch out!” I screamed right before seeing a guard shoot Faith in the shoulder from behind. She bent forward and then straightened up quickly as if she had only been shoved. Milliseconds later, I saw a blur grab the guard's rifle, and he fell to the ground, grabbing his stomach, shot. Faith stood in front of him, pointing the now-smoking rifle at the guard. I hadn’t even seen her move. She wouldn’t be needing my help.
I moved my attention further into the crowd, searching for David. Instead, I caught sight of an eight-foot furry nightmare known as jackal Erik. Jackal Erik grabbed a guard who shot at him and ripped out his throat with his razor teeth, tossing the dead man to the side.
I covered my mouth and turned away. My friends were scary monsters.
I walked farther past the door and to the right, keeping my back to the titled cafeteria wall. More guards poured in from a door across the room, leading to an open outside eating area. I spotted Grace near that door, her arms open. Her eyes turned a brilliant gold, and she opened her mouth and…sang. It was something in another language and sounded like opera. Her voice was amazing, but…she was singing. The guards and unfriendly soldiers from New York battling around her stopped moving and gazed at her; swaying to the sound of her voice. It was melodic. I was tempted to walk over to her, but I held my position. She looked down at her audience, and they actually began to smile at her, hands reaching out to touch her, as if in worship.
She continued singing, reaching an impossibly high note.
Then their bodies exploded.
I let out an involuntary scream as I stared at the now-bloodied woman, looking less like a Disney princess and more like a horror movie scream queen. She was surrounded by blood, guts, and body parts. Grace gave a satisfying smile as she stepped over the mess to find new victims.
What…the…hell?
Something slammed into the wall next to me on my right. I jumped back and saw that it was a guard who had rammed his head into the wall and knocked himself out. Thick blood splattered the concrete wall, and the guard crumpled to the ground. I looked past him and saw Phillip walking towards me.
“Gotta be alert, corazon,” Phillip said, a twinkle in his eyes. I think he liked this.
I snapped to attention. “Thank you. Grace was singing.”
He nodded quickly, “Fun ability, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “We’re getting outnumbered, we must have miscalculated or underestimated their strength. I need you to do something drastic. Open up the ground.”
I frowned. “What? I can’t do that. I can shake the—”
He grabbed my arm gently. “Amina, you are stronger than you think. Crack open the ground. Now,” he said in a measured voice.
“What if good people fall in?”
“They will move. And they know the risk of this mission. We’re short on time.”
I didn’t like that answer, but I closed my eyes anyway. Splitting open the ground didn’t sound like it was in my bag of tricks, but then again, I never had occasion to do such a thing. I focused on the linoleum floor in my mind’s eye and saw it breaking apart and splitting down the length of the large cafeteria. My fingers itched, and a sharp heat raced down my arms from my shoulder. My head throbbed, and a dull pain grew in the base of my skull. My legs grew shaky. I touched the wall behind me for support, and soon after, I felt a crack under my fingers. I opened my eyes and saw the wall separating.
Screams drew my attention back to the action in the middle of the cafeteria as a large gap appeared in the center of the floor. It was like a sinkhole with depths I could not see. It grew by the second. People were running towards the walls and exits while still shooting and attacking each other. But not everyone. To my amazement, some guards were actually walking and leaping into the hole. Their faces were blank, and they walked with purpose, not even pausing at the edge of the massive hole before jumping in.
I turned to Phillip, whose gaze was fixed on the guards as he moved his fingers in the air as if swiping a touchscreen computer. I turned to my left and saw two crying women huddled in the corner under a table. They looked like support staff. Much like nurse Joanie, who helped us stay alive in between draining’s. I briefly wondered where she was now. I turned back to Phillip, who continued to swipe the air, and I had no doubt that he was controlling these guards and sending them to their probable deaths. Mind control was clearly his gift. I had way too many questions for him if we got out of this, namely why he kept his gift a secret.
I sensed movement from the corner of my eye and saw the two female support staff walking towards the hole with purposeful movement. I turned to Phillip. “Stop them!” I yelled.
He ignored me. I grabbed his arm and tried to lower it, but the women kept walking. “They are support staff, don’t kill them.”
“They are part of this,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Then we detain them. They aren’t attacking us.” The women were close to the edge now. My heart pounded loudly in my ears. Fear pricked at me, and my headache showed no signs of leaving.
“No one is going to waste resources, keeping these people alive.”
“Stop!” I screamed, yanking at his arm. The women stopped in mid-stride, each having one foot hovering in the air over the sinkhole. The pain in my skull grew; dizziness accompanying it. “Get out of here! Run!” I commanded. They turned and ran out of the backdoors, away from the fighting.
Whoa! That was new. I hated to say it, but— “Did I do that?” I asked. I controlled supernatural primitive creatures before but never humans—gifted or otherwise—not until Lisa when I pulled her out of the ground. I thought maybe it was a fluke with more to do with the supernatural ground than her. Seems I was wrong.
Phillip looked over at me, mouth open, eyes frowning.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I replied to myself.
Phillip suddenly smiled. “You’ve been holding out on me, mi corazon.” He then turned away and stood two guards to attention with his mind control.
They began to walk away from each other. One of the guards had red hair and a beard. He looked familiar. I quickly recognized him as Chelsea’s guard boyfriend, Oliver. I turned to search for her and found Chelsea across the room, backhanding a guard with her full vampire strength. I waved my arms and called to her. She eventually heard me and turned to my location, leaving her guards to bleed out and die.
Phillip clapped his hands together.
I turned to Phillip. “That guard with the red hair is my friend’s boyfriend, so stop whatever you’re going to do.”
Phillip ignored me. I turned to
see the guards raise their guns to their temples and pull the trigger.
Chelsea ran over to Oliver in lightning speed, but it was too late. The red-headed guard and his companion fell to the ground, dying instantly from the forced self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Chelsea let out a gut-wrenching scream.
I turned to Phillip and shoved him. “Why?”
Phillip looked down at me with confused eyes. “They’re the bad guys.”
I shook my head quickly. “Not everyone, Phillip. He was kind to my friend.”
I turned back to Chelsea, who was now on her knees in front of the fallen Oliver, crying. She looked up at us in rage, her hazel eyes darkening. In a swift and supernaturally easy movement, she rose and stormed over to us. “Who did this?” she shouted.
Phillip looked down at her with a cold stare. “I did,” he replied in an even tone.
“I didn’t recognize him at first, Chelsea. When I did, it was too late. He didn’t mean it,” I lied to keep the peace. We had to remain focused on the greater mission and not fight each other. And, to be honest, Oliver wasn’t totally innocent. He was part of the problem.
Chelsea looked to Phillip and considered him. He wasn’t helping his case by maintaining a cold and uncaring look. “You don’t look so sorry,” she said in a steely tone.
“I am,” Phillip said in a deadpan voice. “But he was a human, and if he were really good, he would have been the one to let you go instead of us.” He really wasn’t helping himself.
I spoke up. “Chelsea, this is the guy. He’s the one who helped me escape. He’s the reason we found you all.”
She looked back over to me, hate and tears still in her eyes. “Watch who you surround yourself with.” She turned back to Phillip. “You are lucky Amina is here, and there’s more to do. But I don’t care what you did. Don’t think this is over. The monsters aren’t just the humans, Amina.” She turned and stormed out of the chaos.
“You’d think she’d be appreciative,” Phillip stated, unfazed by Chelsea’s threat.
“Things aren’t so black and white, Phillip. What you did was wrong. Even I don’t understand,” I said, placing my hands on my head to unsuccessfully stop the pounding in my skull. I was in pain and disappointed in Phillip. He wasn’t exactly the gentleman that I saw in my dreams. Or had his seeing me imprisoned angered him enough to act so recklessly and cruel? Was I to blame for his behavior?