55. Claire
Chapter fifty-five
Claire
I’ve been mentally preparing myself for things to get worse. Every time I see something barbaric—being auctioned online, meeting my buyer, hearing just a portion of the cruelty that Taissa and the others faced in their captivity—I think it probably can’t get worse. And each time, I’m wrong. Because there are about twenty children here, and even though they seem unharmed and cared for, I have zero doubt in my mind that they are stolen, the way I was. Maybe they weren’t all ripped straight from the womb, but they were ripped from their homes, their families, and that somehow hurts so much worse than knowing it happened to me. I see my childhood in each one of them, and that fucking hurts.
No kid deserves to go through what I did. I didn’t deserve to go through what I did. I’m not going to let them suffer.
“Rook…” My voice shakes over his name, so I clear my throat and force my voice to stabilize. “Maybe we can… clean up this mess?”
His eyes follow mine to the mess in question. The body lying on the ground. It was a clean hit, although I’m not entirely sure whose gun it came from. They got him right between the eyes, but it has somehow not created a ton of splatter, which I am immeasurably grateful for.
Rich jumps into action, like he hadn’t even thought that the sight may be distressing to the children. He ducks into a hall, then reappears with a set of bed sheets—the first of which he throws on the body before he and Rook lift it to take him out of the room, the second which he tosses over the crimson stain on the floor .
I’m rocking back and forth, my arms full of children, but around me, there are more of them with tear-streaked faces or fear in their eyes. I catch the gaze of a girl, maybe a young teenager, and manage a smile for her.
“You look like my mom.” She says thoughtfully, as if she has to explain why she’s staring at me. “She had yellow hair, too.”
“Where is your mom?” I ask, desperately latching onto the little bit of information. I have no idea how to reunite these kids with their families, but the older ones will at least remember things about their lives—addresses, phone numbers, family names.
The girl swallows. “Dead. They killed her when they took me.”
Pain lances my chest at her words, but I try not to let it show. I’m trying to act the way an adult should— the way kids think adults feel all the time. But I’m not calm, nor am I composed. Inside of me, everything is spinning in a vortex. It’s chaos, and not the kind that I enjoy. “Who took you? That man? The woman?”
“No.” The girl shakes her head, coming closer to me. “I don’t know who they were. Dirty men. They— they stank, and they had dirt under their nails. They shot her and took me and put me back on the bus and brought me here.”
Her eyes water, but she looks like she’s trying hard not to let any emotion show as she blinks the tears away.
“A bus brought you here?”
The girl nods, as the little boy in my arms burrows deeper against me, trying to slip under the Kevlar vest Remy made me wear. I’d take it off if I didn’t have to move the children to do so.
“The bus brings new kids. That one—” She nods at the girl whose fingers are wrapped in my hair. “She just got here today.”
I swallow, the feeling of something bad percolating in my gut.
She just got here today.
“Where’s the bus? How do they bring you in here?”
“Over there.” She gestures to the expanse of wall opposite where we came in .
Rook’s gaze collides with mine, and then he turns to see the space the girl indicated. There’s nothing there… no door, no window. But then, there didn’t seem to be a door when we’d stood on the other side of it, either.
“Can you show my friends?” I ask her, indicating Rich and Rook. “We just want to get you guys back to your families, okay? Nobody here will hurt you, I promise.”
She stares at me a moment, and then nods before turning with the guys in tow. It’s almost a funny sight, such large and tattooed men following such a small girl. But there’s no humor in this situation, so I focus my attention on calming the keening wails of the children clinging to me.
“Shh.” I soothe, brushing my hands over hair and pressing kisses to little heads. My leg is losing feeling beneath the combined weight of my own body and the kids clinging to me like a life raft, but I don’t dare move.
The little girl in my arms may be the youngest of the children here—she’s barely even a kid, more of a toddler, but somehow my rocking and shooshing seem to soothe her. She’s just settled against me, her tiny fist unclenching and letting the pain in my scalp ease, when I hear the gunshot.
It's unmistakable, even though it comes from a distance. It’s muffled, but that does nothing to abate the sudden lurch in my chest. If it wasn’t for the little bodies pressed against mine, I’d think I was shot through the heart, causing it to plummet into my stomach.
Someone rushes at me, stealing the baby from my arms, and I can’t even fight them. It doesn’t occur to me to do it. Instinct guides my motions more than any sort of thought, and another older child comes to gather the others from me as I rise to my feet.
One of my legs is numb, dropping beneath me as I stand, but I catch myself and limp toward Rich and Rook, who are standing on the opposite side of the room. Pins and needles tingle along my leg as I go, feeling returning slowly. When the second shot rings out, some of the haze that’s wrapped around me disappears, and I move faster toward them as the wall begins to rise, exactly as it did the first time.
Rich and Rook push the girl behind them, give some kind of command and ready their guns as the wall rises. I realize my gun isn’t in my hands and spin, trying to be sure none of the kids grabbed it. When did I drop it?
My heart squeezes in my chest as I remember letting it fall from my hands so that I could provide comfort to the little ones. I also remember Kent’s wife falling to her knees in tears, grief-stricken. I hadn’t understood why, but I hadn’t had a chance to contemplate it.
I know in my gut that something is wrong, and my head swirls with the possibility that Libby led them straight into a trap. Why else would she take them out the way we came in if she wasn’t hiding anything? Could she really be sneaky enough to grab the gun right there in the middle of everyone?
I know the answer, of course. Everything has been chaos from the first shot that fired, taking out the man on their side. And it’s only worsened with the shot that rang out mere moments ago, the children jumping into action as if they’ve prepared for a moment like this.
I have one moment of clarity despite the fear that’s dulled my senses. “Go!” I tell the girl who opened the door, her eyes wide and her hands trembling around the tablet in her hands. As I yell again, she sets it on the countertop and repeats my order to the others.
They move quickly, running down the hall. The older ones scoop up the younger to carry them as the sound of more gunfire ricochets around the walls. Bile rises in my throat, but as the last of the kids runs into the hall, I make the choice to throw myself in front of it, splaying my arms and legs to create a barrier. I have no weapon for a shoot-out, but I can stop anyone from getting to the children .
My hands shake around the cheetah print pocketknife Remy gave me as I pull it out and switch the blade, holding it at the ready. I have no idea who is on the other side of the slowly rising wall, or how many of them there are, but I won’t let them hurt these kids. I can’t.
Rich shoots first, ducking low and slipping under the wall so that he can get out to the action. Rook follows right behind him, and as the rest of the hidden entrance retracts, the light from inside the bunker spills out into the darkness, allowing me to see little bits of what lies on the other side.
The most obvious of those things is the bus—a big tour bus, facing right into the bunker. It’s coated in dust, maybe even so much that it doesn’t run anymore. And yet, the red liquid that drips from the open doors is an ominous sight.
There’s another gunshot, a scream, and then rapid fire.
Everyone’s moving too fast for me to see any identifying features, and then someone stumbles into the kitchen, blood running down their neck. When I trail my eyes up, looking for the source, I see the space where their ear should be has been blown away. It’s none of the men I know, none of the ones I came here with.
He staggers toward me, in what I can only assume is a state of shock. He doesn’t lift his gun as he goes; he just moves toward me like he’s been compelled to, so I ready the knife, adjusting my grip. His lips move like his feet—automatically, awkwardly. No sound comes out.
I’m just about to stab him in the neck when he grips me by the vest and uses the leverage to pull himself closer, knocking me from my feet. A bullet whizzes just past my cheek and lodges itself somewhere in the man’s neck, But he doesn’t let go yet, so I drive the blade into the same spot, pull it out, and do it again and again until he goes limp, falling away from me.
Rook pulls me to my feet in the next instant, and then delivers another shot to the back of the man’s skull just in case. He certainly looked like a zombie in his final moments, so perhaps a double tap is a smart choice.
I scan the space behind him, the bodies lying on the ground before the bus. Kent’s on his knees, screaming, while Michael tries to pull him away from the body in his arms… his wife.
My eyes rove over the space, seeking out Rich or Remy. He was with the others when he left, so where is he?
I stagger past Rook, looking for either of the other two. When I step into the night, I see Rich, just as he drops to his knees on the floor of the bus. My eyes flick back to the red dripping down the steps, and understanding takes hold of me deep inside, threatening to turn me inside out.
The world tunnels around me, everything getting darker in the periphery as I run toward that bus, toward the man that I know is on it.
I think I hear someone call my name as I run past Kent, but I don’t stop, slipping in the blood that’s collected on the ground. I nearly go careening into it, but I grip the handrail, which is good because my legs give out the minute I see it… the minute I see him .
I open my mouth, and what comes out can’t even be described as a scream. It’s more of my every hope dying a violent death all at once. Rich’s eyes connect with mine, and the look there would have taken me to my knees if Rook hadn’t already grabbed me around the waist, dragging me away from the mess… from Remy, where he lies in a pool of blood.
All bets are off, then. I fight him as easily as if he were one of the attackers, throwing my elbow back to try and catch him in the face, desperately wriggling to try and free myself from his grip.
All around me, I hear voices. They tangle together, each one indistinguishable from the next.
All I know is that none of them are Remy’s, because he’s lying face down in his own blood.