At that moment, Gabe comes around the corner. “Arena, what’s going on? There’s a man awkwardly staggering his way down the alley with his pants half-on, pissing himself,” he says with a confused look on his face. I shake my head and gesture for him to stop, because I don’t feel the need to relive the moment in front of this broken girl.
Just then, a squelching siren pierces the air, breaking up a comforting moment. “Here, take this, you may need it,” I say to the girl, handing her the pistol. “No human being is immune to sin, He will forgive us if we ask,” I say before I take off.
Gabe and I quickly leave the open area, where people are covering their ears from the hellish noise. As soon as the siren stops, everyone around us immediately notices Gabe and I covered in blood. When I draw my swords to prepare for an assault, all hell breaks loose—people scream in terror and scamper in all directions. We take off down the street back toward the hotel, hoping to find Henry and Finnegan waiting for us. Whatever is up ahead, it must be bad enough to make people desperately scramble for shelter in a panic.
We proceed with caution on the backstreets, waiting to be met by some federal assault, but I see nothing that poses a threat. Not until we reach the library do we spot a small army of officers marching in from the west in a very regimented manner. About two hundred armed soldiers, who do not look like regular federal officers, are wearing gasmasks. I wonder if they are here for us or if they are really here to exterminate the people living here. If we’re to get out of here alive, then we’re really going to need Henry and Finnegan, because I’m not going to be able to do this alone.
“Gabe, tell me you got something in that backpack that will distract these neo-Nazi gorillas,” I say.
“I do, but not enough to kill all of them. Here, hold this,” he says.
“What is this?”
“It’s called a hornet’s nest,” says Gabe.
“Let me guess, you got this idea from one of your comic books,” I say.
“Actually, I got the idea from you. Does yellow-jacket nest and McKenzie ring a bell?”
“So what the hell is it supposed to do?”
“This metal nest holds about 120 explosive bees. Each bee-like round will attach itself to whatever moves within a range I decide. It’s very precise, so we want to make sure we have a pretty good idea how far away those soldiers are. Once the range is set, the bees will respond to any movement within twenty feet.”
Gabe sites in the weapon for fifty yards, aiming and waiting for the right moment for the soldiers to march toward the dialed-in distance. “Whatever you do, stay still,” he says before he pulls the trigger.
Tiny flying metal explosives spray the sky like a swarm of bees and within seconds they swoop down with a vengeance toward the moving soldiers, just as Gabe predicted. The bees pack a punch, exploding at will, and take out most of the men. It’s like firecrackers on the Fourth of July violently popping out of control. Soldiers immediately collapse when the metal bees explode on contact, while the remaining soldiers are too disoriented to stand. Before I run in closer to take advantage of the bewildered men, I take out a smoke bomb in Gabe’s pack.
I pull the pin and toss it over to the staggering soldiers, making it even harder for them to engage. I draw my swords, slashing and dicing my way through the plume of smoke, killing anything that stands. I save my ammo until I desperately need it—I’m efficient enough to take the rest of the men out with my blades, especially with them being blind. Since I can see no more than the soldiers, I can only feel my way through the haze, carving up flesh every step I take while dodging the fallen bodies around me. As soon as the smoke clears, I brace myself for any soldiers who survived the vicious attack, but I’m the only one left standing in a pile of dismembered bodies.
There was a point in my life I would have normally felt sad, depressed, or even disgusted at the sight of this carnage, but today I feel strangely comfortable. With their souls already departed from their bodies, I feel no attachment to the flesh that lays lifeless on the ground, but there is a part of me that feels pity. Whether it’s the rush from the massacre or just pure exhaustion, my knees begin to buckle and I falter, but my swords hold me up. I look out at a crowd of people across the street and can’t help but to think that many of those people are no better or worse than the men who have just died here. I bow my head and pray over the fallen; enemies or not, I ask God for His mercy.
As I walk over to Gabe, I’m in absolute shock as to what I’m witnessing; a few thousand people are kneeling and praying. Gabe
gestures for me to put my swords away so it doesn’t look like I’m posing a threat when I walk over.
The very same people who ran screaming from me when we emerged from the alley don’t seem to be afraid anymore. “He hears you, don’t stop,” I say under my breath as I walk past the crowd.
Moments later, the earth begins to tremble, and everyone stands to their feet, bracing themselves, but the only part of the ground that fiercely shakes is in the middle of the square where the bodies lie. Right then, the earth opens up, swallowing every dead soldier and every drop of spilled blood—just another reminder that God is in control of my fate.
While I wring out the blood from my hair, a woman carefully approaches and holds out her hand to me. I grab the old woman’s hand, and she gestures me to follow her. Either she doesn’t speak English, or she is too shook up to say anything; nevertheless, I fully trust her.
She takes Gabe and me down the street to one of the clothing stores, and I feel as though I’ve known this woman my whole life. If I never knew my grandmother, I would envision her to be like this woman—frail, meek, and kind. Inside the store, an older gentleman waves us to the back. “Come, please, back here,” he says. “Sorry for the lack of communication from my wife—she’s mute.”
“It’s okay, I understood her perfectly,” I say.
“If it wasn’t for those damn officers, she would be able to speak right now,” says the old man.
“What happened to her?” Gabe asks.
“They came here a year ago threatening everyone who claimed Kerian,” he says. Kerian is a negative term that represents disloyalty or betrayal to the government. Years ago, a man named George Kerian refused to accept a new government policy that required a twenty-percent federal merchant tax to all businesses that were not already absorbed by the federal government. This ploy was to encourage small businesses to conform, but when George Kerian was caught giving his twenty percent to a small group of non-conformists who were preparing to revolt against the government, he was extradited and sent to prison for sedition.
“They came in here accusing her of treason, because she forgot to turn in her quarterly merchant tax earnings,” he continues.
“How is that reasonable for tormenting a person?” I ask.
“It isn’t. They came here to make a statement, because for years we have been refusing to accept any federal assistance that may force us to become absorbed into their system. They knew exactly what they were
doing when they forcefully pulled her away from me. When she resisted, they strapped a dog-like collar around her neck and pulled her on the floor, choking her.
“When she passed out from the strangling belt around her neck, they released her. They didn’t feel the need to arrest a dead person, so they left her there on the ground to die and just took off. She survived the anguishing nightmare, but the damage to her vocal cords was too much, and from that moment on, she has never been able to speak.
“You know, for years, I’ve always said my wife talked too much, but I would give every ounce of my life to hear that pretty songbird voice again,” he says with trembling lips.
The old woman comes from the back and hands Gabe and me a bag of clean clothes to wear. “Thank you so much. You are too kind,” I say, holding her hand with admiration. “I’m Arena.” The woman looks at me and uses sign language I can’t quite make out. She points to the sky and places her hands on her shoulders, turning them out and waving them.
“We know who you are. She says you’re an angel sent from God. News travels fast from the west. I’ve prayed every day and night that He would bring someone to deliver us from this suffering,” says the old man.
As we leave, the man grabs my arm and says, “Wait.” He tries to hold back tears from his red, irritated eyes. “If my granddaughter was still alive today, I know she would fight with you. You keep the course, you hear? God be with you both,” he says. I’m too heartbroken to know what may have happened to his granddaughter. I try to convince myself it wasn’t anything that his wife experienced.
I can barely hold back my emotions as I leave the store, but before I cross the metal threshold, I quickly surrender those feelings when I notice a video camera in the upper corner following my every step. I ask the old man if the camera belongs to them for security measures. He tells me that the camera was placed there by the federal government just like all the other cameras in the city. He looks at me, shocked, as if I should already know this. It makes me wonder how many cameras back home were secretly watching us. The camera gives me the creeps, so we quickly leave.
There is a sudden commotion gathering outside, and I hear a young girl screaming for help over by the wall next to the library. She is lying next to a woman with her arms wrapped around her, but no one can understand what she is saying.
I quickly hand Gabe the bag of clothes and tell him to meet me back at the hotel as I run over to the young girl. The woman she is embracing has a fatal headshot wound, and just then my body freezes up, leaving me a little lightheaded. At that moment, I think back to the day I held my mother’s face while she died in my arms.
I grab the girl and pull her closely to my chest; she clinches onto me, crying out in pain. After a few minutes, her hyperventilation slows down to a few bumps of breaths, and she breathes in deeper, calming down just enough to release her claws from my arms. By the time her body soothes, a few women from the crowd come over to console the young girl.
When I get up to leave, she insistently points to the back of the library, shouting, “He went that way!”
“What did he look like?” I ask.
“It was one of them,” she says, pointing toward the hole in the ground where the soldiers fell.
I run toward the side of the library and around to the back, where the streets connect to the back alley. My adrenaline is pumping too much for me to even care if this man is armed, so I race down the alley, looking around every corner. I stop for a moment when I hear a scratching sound coming from my right side.
Now is the time I could use Gabe’s eyes. The scratching gets louder and louder as I walk closer to the wall by the garbage bin. I slowly pull my dagger out, ready to strike whatever is making that sound. I wait for a few seconds before moving in on the target with my dagger. As I grip the blade tight, I rush over behind the bin and strike down with force into a rat the size of a cat gnawing on an apple core.
My heart slows back down to a normal pace as I breathe out a sigh of relief. I remove the rat from my dagger, but before I can walk away, standing before me is an officer with a loaded pistol pointing directly at my head about ten feet in front of me.
“You think you can just walk out of here alive? Killing my men like that. Well, I have a surprise for you, little girl. You are not immortal; you’re just flesh and blood like the rest of us,” he says, gawking at me with perverted eyes. “You’re a fine specimen, I admit, but can you outrun a bullet? Oh, I’m going to have my way with you whether you like it or not, you bitch,” he says, licking his lips, “and then my friends are going to take turns spoiling that young body of yours.”
My heart pumps fast and my blood boils with rage, and if I can just get him to take one step closer, I will take him down like the rest.
“If you want me that bad, then come take me,” I say.
He takes a step forward and says, “Oh, don’t you worry, I’m going to …”
I quickly block his left arm with the gun, while I pull out my scorpion dagger and thrust it into his chest, and then into his throat. I turn the knife as he falls, breaking his elbow, and pulling the gun from his stiff fingers. As he lies there gurgling on his own blood, I leave nothing left for my emotions to cling to as I stare into his dying eyes.
I walk away, burning with ferocity, but I have to stop myself for a moment, because my rage has turned to hatred. I stare out into the darkness, shaking, and wonder whether or not if my conscience has started to wither.
I race back to the hotel as fast as I can, but when I come rushing through the room, I only see Henry and Gabe. “Where’s Finnegan?” I ask in a panic.
“He said he would be back shortly. He is on the roof doing some reconnaissance,” says Henry, staring aghast at my bloody clothes. “My God, Arena, you’re soaked in blood.”
“What the hell happened to you guys when the soldiers were deployed?” I ask.
“Finnegan and I had already left for the hotel when they were coming in. We thought you would be back here by then since it was already getting late,” says Henry. “Gabe told us about the soldiers. You better know they will bring in backup after hearing what happened.”
“More than you know. Gabe and I spotted cameras monitoring all the store merchants, as well as cameras on the streets,” I say.
“Finnegan and I noticed too—that’s why he’s been on the roof watching out. We stumbled on the building that houses the security for this city, but it was too risky to proceed when the soldiers showed up,” says Henry.
“Shouldn’t be a problem now,” I say.
“Show me where this building is,” says Gabe.
“It’s just too risky right now,” Henry says.
“I don’t care; we need a link to those cameras. It might help us shed some light on this city,” Gabe insists.
“I’ll go with you,” Finnegan says as he stands by the door, listening.
“Let me get some things out of the car,” Gabe says.
I grab Gabe’s elbow and stare into his eyes for a few seconds with fear in my heart. “Don’t do anything stupid. You get in and out as quick as you can. If whatever you are trying to do doesn’t work, don’t force it, just get the hell out. You hear me? You run.”