Chained - Everything you know is a lie...

by Susanne Valenti

Chapter Thirteen

  We took the path the fighters had come down, reasoning that it should be empty now. We walked in silence, taking turns to check around corners and keep an eye out behind us. I had the feeling that we were being watched but no matter how much I looked there was no one in sight.

  After about fifteen minutes of wandering in silence, we turned into a narrow trench. The sun had started to move across the sky and clouds had closed in to further obscure the light.

  It was dark inside the trench, the ground was shrouded in gloom but we could make out shapes in the mud hidden beneath the shadows. I moved forward tentatively and nudged the nearest shape with the toe of my boot.

  Something gave way under my foot and an arm flopped forward and hit my leg. I squealed in shock and jumped backwards, colliding with Taylor who slapped his hand over my mouth.

  "Are you insane?" he breathed in my ear before releasing me.

  "Sorry." Funnily enough I wasn't used to touching parts of a corpse. I bent to examine the body, a woman in the colours of our unit. I stepped over her carefully and checked the next prone form. It was another member of our unit and as we moved down the trench I counted more and more of our dead.

  "Ambush?" I asked the others.

  "Must have been," Taylor replied.

  "Do you think we're losing the battle?" Evan asked after we passed the twelfth body.

  There was a long silence while we all thought about what that might mean. If we couldn't get back out of here we could be slaughtered as the rival army chased down the last of the opposition. We were wearing the wrong colours, which marked us as the enemy, messengers or not.

  "We need to take a look at what's going on," Evan finally spoke, breaking the silence that had trapped us.

  "How?" Taylor asked.

  "We'll have to risk getting up high, but if we can work out where we are, we might be able to find our way to Laurie," Evan replied, looking up at the edges of the trench high above our heads.

  "Let's move along until we can find an easier way up," I suggested and we pressed on.

  The ground started to squelch under our feet and the mud was sticking to our boots. It didn't help with being stealthy but at least the sound would let us know if anyone else was sneaking about. A shudder ran down my spine, I still couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched.

  Eventually the trench opened up and we entered an area with a low stone building in the centre. We stopped and surveyed it warily.

  "What do you think?" Taylor asked.

  "That if someone was lying in wait in there we would be dead already," Evan replied.

  "Do you think we can use the roof of the building to get up onto the bank behind it?" I asked, looking at the way the sloping roof reached up until it was level with the high ground above us.

  Evan nodded.

  "Let's get on with it then." Taylor moved towards the building and we fell in behind him.

  There was an open doorway in the brick front and no obvious way to climb up from the outside. The roof was made with thick red tiles that had broken away on one side, leaving a pile of smashed rubble on the ground.

  We spread out to check the other sides of the building but there weren't even windows for us to use to climb up and the roof was out of reach.

  "Maybe there's a way up inside?" Evan suggested. He moved forward cautiously, Taylor and I followed close behind him.

  The interior of the building was dark. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I suppressed a shiver as I stepped over the threshold. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me not to go inside but I ignored it and continued forwards.

  The squelching of our feet was cut off as soon as we set foot on the stone floor. It was eerily quiet in the little building. The space was split into several small rooms and we were standing in a tiny entrance hall.

  We carefully began to move forward into the nearest room. I glanced about anxiously. A huge, muddy footprint stained the floor next to my boot, far too big to be Taylor's or Evan's.

  My head snapped up and my hand flew to my pistol, just in time for me to jump back as Grey charged at me.

  A gun went off and the noise echoed so loudly in the confined space that it made my vision blur. My jump had propelled me backwards into Taylor and we both fell to the floor in a heap of limbs. My pistol was flung from my grasp and skittered noisily across the floor into the darkness.

  Grey had run straight into the wall when he missed me and he staggered as he regained his balance. He turned around to face me as I got to my feet.

  Grey roared angrily and charged me again. He caught me around the throat and lifted me into the air. I was slammed against the cold, concrete wall and I kicked uselessly as the pressure on my windpipe increased.

  I scratched at his hands, chunks of skin coming away under my fingernails, but it was no use.

  I reached towards my belt and felt the cool, metal hilt of a knife skim my fingertips. He was choking me, sparks bloomed before my eyes and I felt something pop inside my neck.

  I strained my arm as far as it would go and managed to hook a knife into my grasp. I plunged it into the thick muscle of Grey's bicep. He yelled in surprise and released me. I tumbled to the floor and coughed as air found its way back into my lungs.

  Taylor aimed his rifle and fired. The shot resounded around the room and I saw blood fly from a wound on Grey's leg. He rounded on Taylor, who was still laying on the ground, and kicked him in the face. Blood poured from his nose and Taylor clutched at it.

  I threw my weight to the side and rolled over, coming up into a crouch and grabbing the shotgun from my back as I did so. I managed to get one leg up so that I was on one knee and braced myself as best I could. Grey charged at me like a bull, roaring with rage, as I swung the shotgun up between us.

  I couldn't remember squeezing the trigger, but the force of the kick against my ribs slid me back across the floor on my left knee. My foot hit the wall behind me as I skidded to a halt, managing to stay balanced through some miracle.

  The power of the kick was nothing compared to the power of the shot which Grey had taken to his large stomach. He was thrown backwards and smashed into the wall behind him, collapsing in a heap on the ground. Several heartbeats passed but he didn't move.

  My hands started to shake and the gun began rattling in my grasp. Strong hands closed around mine and Taylor was staring into my eyes, pushing the shotgun down. Blood ran down his face but he ignored it.

  "He was going to kill you, and he was going to enjoy it," he said calmly, not breaking eye contact with me. I stared back and took a deep breath.

  He was right. I couldn't let what I had done get to me. I nodded and fought to calm my shaky breathing.

  Taylor released the shotgun and I stowed it in place on my back.

  "Where's Evan?" I asked.

  He'd been in front of us but now there was no sign of him. I moved into the corner where my pistol had disappeared and felt around until I found it.

  "Evan?" I called out. There was no reply.

  Taylor wiped at his face so that most of the blood was removed.

  We moved through the doorway into the second room, stepping over Grey's legs which were splayed at strange angles.

  The first thing I saw was Dolly, with her freakish half head of red hair and grotesque disfigured face, laying opposite the doorway. There was a knife protruding from her chest and a pistol still clutched in her hand. Her dead eyes were staring straight at me.

  Evan was to the left of the doorway with no obvious signs of injury, his eyes closed.

  I dropped to his side, putting my hand to his cheek. It was warm.

  "Evan?" I whispered, but I remembered that gunshot ringing out too loudly in the close space and making me dizzy. A tear ran down my cheek. "Evan? Please, wake up." I placed my other hand on his chest, it felt warm and wet.

  I leant down, pressing my forehead against Evan's, trying to will him back to life as I felt hi
s blood seeping through the knees of my trousers.

  Eventually Taylor pulled me to my feet. He wrapped his arms around me and I buried my face in his chest and sobbed.

  "He didn't deserve to be here, we weren't supposed to be at risk," I cried. Taylor ran a hand through my hair.

  "We need to move on," he whispered.

  If the pain hadn't been written clearly across his face too I wouldn't have listened but he was right, we were still lost, still unsure about what was going on with the battle.

  In the far corner of the room, the roof had collapsed making it possible for us to climb out.

  We clambered up onto the pitched roof, slipping on the red tiles and crossed over towards the muddy bank. There was a gap nearly two meters wide between the roof and the bank so we moved back to get a run up.

  "I'll go first." Taylor took three bounding steps and leapt across the gap. He rolled as he hit the ground on the far side before climbing back to his feet. He beckoned for me to follow. "Come on."

  I wiped my hand over my face, smearing my tears with Evan's blood, took a deep breath and ran to the edge.

  At the last second, my foot slipped on one of the loose tiles and my jump half turned into a fall. I landed on the edge of the bank and started to slide back down. I clawed my fingernails into the dirt and kicked to push myself up.

  Taylor's hand closed around my wrist and he wrenched me over the edge.

  The wind was stronger on the higher ground and it whipped my hair back as we looked over the maze that was the battlefield. It was hard to see very far but it was clear that there were far more enemy fighters than friends left out there.

  "I think we lost already," Taylor said quietly.

  I nodded in agreement.

  There was no clear path back to the starting zone. We needed to find Laurie. I looked around and realised, thankfully, that we had managed to head east for the most part on our journey. From our vantage point, it was easy to see where the Wardens were patrolling the perimeter near to the contaminated land.

  We put the setting sun to our backs and moved forward.

  The patrolling Wardens were further away than they had looked and we had to navigate our way over trenches which crisscrossed our path. Sometimes we could jump them otherwise we had to find a way around which could take a long time. All the while we were painfully aware of how exposed we were to anyone who might look up.

  We fell into a routine of jumping, scanning the surrounding trenches for danger and moving along the banks as stealthily as possible. It was hard going, my muscles protested and I felt mentally exhausted. I'd never had such a long day in all my life.

  Finally we got near enough to the Wardens to make out details about them. The first we came across was a large man who stared at us suspiciously as we turned away and headed towards the next.

  We dismissed eight Wardens in all before the figure we were looking for became clear on the horizon.

  Laurie was posted at the furthest point along the patrol, far enough away from the previous Warden that he was hard to pinpoint when we looked back. The wind picked up and whipped around us, throwing dust up into my face. I blinked furiously to clear my vision and saw a figure, clad in black, moving in the trench below us.

  I rubbed my eyes to clear them and stepped forward, peering down.

  "Did you see someone down there?" I asked.

  "No." Taylor shook his head and started to walk away.

  I searched the shadows below us one last time before turning to follow.