She levels her gun at his head.
“Who are you?” the CO asks, Maia’s gun still tight against his head.
“We’ll be asking the questions here,” Anna says, keeping one eye on the CO and another on her pile of soldiers. “First one: do you want to die?”
“No, of course not,” the CO grunts. “But in about two seconds, when I’m supposed to check in and I don’t, there will be dozens of soldiers swarming this place, so I suggest you—”
BOOM! The bullet rips into the CO’s thigh, just above the knee. He cries out in pain, topples over, clutches his leg.
Maia stares at Anna, her gun limp at her side. “You—you shot him,” she says.
“He was lying to me,” Anna says, her voice sounding strange and guttural even to her own ears. “I—I had to show him who’s in charge here.” The red-hot anger she felt a moment earlier is ebbing, being replaced by a degree of remorse, something she always feels after inflicting pain on another, even an enemy; it’s something she can’t afford right now. Action is the only remedy.
She thrusts a foot at already-injured soldier two, who tries to block it by throwing his hands over his head. Instead of going high, she stomps on his stomach, earning another groan and the move of his arms from his head to his gut. Lashing out again, this time at his head, she feels the satisfying—and somewhat sickening—thud of her boot off his skull. His head snaps back, cracks into the jaw of soldier number three, who lets out a bloodcurdling howl, and then lolls to the side, his eyes rolling back into their sockets.
Soldier three is clutching his mouth, blood pouring out from between his fingers, his face all scrunched up. “War is hell,” Anna says, bringing her gun down on the crown of his head. He slumps over, unconscious.
Turning to face Maia, her body hot with violence, she says, “Knock him out.”
Maia looks at the CO, back to Anna, says, “Can’t we just tie him up, gag him?”
“He’ll get loose and then he’ll try to kill us. We don’t have time for prisoners, and I don’t believe in killing defenseless soldiers, even ones like these.”
The CO rolls over in the fetal position, his face a shattered mess of pain, his pant leg a darker red than the rest of his uniform. “You already shot me,” he spits out. “Just finish the job.”
“I’m not letting you off that easy,” Anna says. “You’ll pay for your crimes before a war tribunal. Maia?”
Maia takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for just a moment, and then swings her gun like a hammer, whacking the CO sharply across the temple. His writhing stops, his body still with unnatural sleep.
Letting out a deep breath, Maia looks at Anna. “That was horrible,” she says.
“Violence always is,” Anna says.
“You made it look so easy, almost like you enjoyed it.”
Anna cringes. That’s the problem. She was so full of anger at these horrible men that she did sort of enjoy it. She knows she’s flirting with a dangerous line between fighting against evil and joining them. It’s a line she has vowed never to cross.
“She did it for us.” Anna and Maia both jerk to the side, spot the woman, the man’s wife, on her knees, her hands clasped together as if in prayer. “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so much.”
Her husband stirs, sits up, rubs his head as if clearing his mind from a bad dream. He truly is a giant, with rock-like fists, a chest the size of a beer barrel, and a head twice the circumference of most adult humans. His lip is swollen and fat, one of his eyes bloodshot, painted with black and blue beneath it. But he’s smiling. Smiling at his wife, who’s smiling back at him.
“Oh, Barry!” she cries, clambering to her feet and launching herself at him. She lands on him so hard that, if not for their significant size difference, she might have flattened him.
Maia watches the heartfelt reunion with moist eyes, while Anna watches Maia. She’s so young, full of courage, unmarked by the horrors of life. She silently hopes the war will be over quickly and in their favor, so the innocence and naivety of this girl can persevere for years to come.
She thinks of Adele again, in the belly of the beast, having already endured so much emotional and physical pain, forced to endure more. She hopes her youth hasn’t passed her by these last seven months, when everything changed.
Chapter Twelve
She leaves the rescued moon dweller couple in what she hopes is a safe place—a hidden bomb shelter beneath the floorboards of a shed. It’s a neighbor’s, who had invited Bear and his wife to stay there with them, but they opted instead to remain in their own cellar. A bad choice. But now the kind neighbor welcomes them with open arms and a warm drink, as Anna and Maia seal the trapdoor behind them.
“I’m so glad we got there when we did,” Maia says. “That was amazing seeing their eyes light up when they hugged each other.”
Anna tries to smile, but only manages a thin line. It was a fulfilling rescue, yes, but only a small victory against an enemy set on digging out the city’s residents. With the army barricaded underground, there’s no one to oppose them.
“We have to get to the base,” Anna says.
“It’s not far,” Maia says.
“The way this place is swarming with cockroaches, it’s far enough.”
“We’ll make it.” Now who’s the optimist?
Anna really smiles this time, not hugely, but sincerely. A little shot of hope is just what she needs. “You’re right. We’ll make it.”
They exit the shed, running low to the ground, keeping their heads below walls and crumbling houses. Less than two blocks away is the old church with the underground caverns, where the temporary army base was set up. The once-high steeple no longer stands tall and beckoning. Now fallen, it is but a reminder of what the church used to stand for. From behind a wall, Anna can see that the main church structure—in which stands the primary entrance to the underground tunnels—has imploded upon itself, and now looks more like a raw granite stockyard than a place of worship.
The secondary, hidden entrance to the tunnels was, of course, the one from which Anna and Maia exited, and was destroyed just as they escaped its bounds. She knows her stalwart men and women soldiers will try to dig their way out, perhaps even use small explosives to blast through the blockades, but it will take time. Perhaps if they remove some of the larger blocks from the other end, it will give them a chance to break free. Then the battle will truly begin.
Anna clings to this faint and distant torch of hope as she hops the wall, sprints across a back patio, and ducks behind the next wall. Using this method, the women erase one block from the distance between them and the church. One block to go.
Voices shout through the thick and dusty air, but she’s unable to ascertain their direction or distance. When they fade and don’t return, she leads Maia across the next block, sticking to the shadows and narrow side and rear laneways. Every once and a while she stops to listen for the enemy, tilting her ears in each direction like an animal.
In this manner, they reach the church unseen. Ducking behind a boulder the size of a truck, she surveys the destruction zone.
“Which entrance should we try?” Maia asks.
Given the entire topside of the church collapsed on the primary entrance, the amount of heavy rock and cement is an impenetrable fortress, one made dangerous by shifting rubble and unexpected pockets of empty air. It could take days to dig them out that way.
“Secondary entrance. We’ll be more exposed, but there’s much less blockage.”
Maia nods. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“I’ll go out first,” Anna says. “Just in case someone’s watching the area.” She starts to move out, but Maia puts a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.