Chapter 38 A Hard Choice
THIRTY-EIGHT
A HARD CHOICE
Julia
The ground shakes around us. I stop where I’m pacing around Graft’s room, and glance at Olivia and the others. They’re sitting upright or standing, peering around as the walls shudder and the cleaning robot’s metal clacks against the floor.
We’ve been down here an hour, but besides a few refugee stragglers that wandered in shortly after we did, no one else has come from above.
The noise worsens and the trembling grows more violent until it all stops. One of the spaceships, a large one, must have taken off. There is nothing else that can make the ground quake like that. But ships weren’t allowed to leave without Graft’s approval… except with Graft dead…
“One of us should go up and take a look around,” Benjamin suggests. “Maybe ask around?”
Already planning on doing that, I lift my hand. “I will.”
He spins to face me from where he’s sitting in a rolling chair at the main desk. “I had a feeling you would say that.”
I shrug and shake out my shoulders, walking to the door and peering down the hallway. It’s been so quiet up until the ship. My instincts are twinging: something big has changed.
I scan the shadows down the hall and the blown-out opening.
I can just glimpse a couple of the rusting cars beyond.
Not hearing anything, not even low chatter, I wonder where the other refugees that came fleeing down here went.
“I’ve been sneaking around the encampment every chance I’ve gotten. I know my way around at this point.”
“I wasn’t going to stop you,” Benjamin says, swiveling back around.
I turn and cock a brow at him. “Good.” Facing the hallway once more, I check the other direction before squinting back at the cars. “You guys wait here.”
“Just take a look and come back fast, okay?” Quinton interjects. “If the fighting has stopped, I’m sure you’ll know quickly. You don’t need to put yourself at risk. At least don’t put yourself at additional risk.”
“Be careful,” Olivia adds. She’s sitting on the ground by the front corner, her back against the wall with her arms draped over her bent legs. There’s a half-eaten military ration in her hand.
I give her a tight smile. “I will.” Though I can’t promise them I won’t put myself at risk. Not that long ago, it was my job to do just that.
Stepping out of the room and heading towards the cars, I search for signs of soldiers or other refugees amongst the thick shadows and the spaced out spotlights that are making them.
Once I move into the larger area with the cars, I spot a dozen or so people hiding and lingering between them, quietly waiting things out like we have been deeper inside.
“Do any of you guys know what’s happening?” I ask, whispering loudly from right outside the blown-out wall.
Several people glance at me and shake their heads while an older, middle-aged woman with cuffed hair and a teenage boy huddled at her side meets my eyes. “Someone killed Commander Graft.”
“I know.” I take a step toward her. “But about the gunfire since? Do you know anything about that?”
A man in the back speaks up. “It’s all happening at the entrance to the camp. The soldiers are shooting each other.”
Pacing further out, I peer in the direction of the tunnel.
With only a single spotlight between me and the bend towards the exit, it’s too dim to glean any more information.
Re-facing the refugees huddling between the cars, I address them once more.
“You guys should go deeper. There are rooms with furniture and beds and doors to barricade yourself behind. There’s food—military rations.
My friends are down there, and it’ll be safer for you if someone comes down here firing a gun. ”
Some of them shuffle around but I don’t wait to see if they listen to me, already turning for the tunnel and creeping ahead.
As I get closer to the entrance, I hear distant shouting coming from outside, then different voices quickly closing on me.
I dodge to the side as two refugees abruptly appear.
We all freeze with short-lived panic before releasing a collective breath.
“There are others down below. Go,” I tell them, waving them on.
They start to rush past me when we hear another shout in the distance, and I grab one of the refugee’s arms—a middle-aged man with shaggy brown hair and a beard. “Do you know what’s happening?”
“A group of soldiers started killing some others. Commander Graft is dead. A bunch of soldiers left on their ship and there has only been intermittent gunfire since. The infirmaries are full of people who’ve been shot.”
“Has anyone taken over command?” I ask, releasing him.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Those that are left are still at the entrance or the infirmaries.”
“Thank you. Tell the others down below what you’ve told me,” I say before turning away and carefully walking up the stairway out. Taking in the long shadows cast by the tent and the crates, I realize it’s going to be night soon.
“I—I will,” the man calls out behind me.
Bending low, I venture outside. More shouting comes from the direction of the entrance. Seeing another straggler, an elderly man looking around like he doesn’t know where to go, I indicate the tunnel behind me and tell him to follow it until he finds the others.
Why is there still shooting?
Slowly, and pausing to inform other refugees I find about the tunnel, I work my way to the middle of the encampment, past the soldier’s barracks. As I go, I see fewer people aimlessly running around searching for shelter.
Turning for the encampment’s entrance, I see faint smoke drift through the gate and soldiers manning the two lookouts on either side. One raises a rifle and gunfire goes off in my ears.
I edge closer to get a better look when several people run by me. They head to my right in the direction of the soldier’s infirmary pavilion, where there’s a group of soldiers and people arguing out front.
“There are nagas at the gate! We need back up!” someone else shouts from behind me. I twist around as a soldier runs past towards the entrance.
Nagas?
Krellix?
If he’s here… at the gate? I can barely finish the thought.
But why would he be? He wouldn’t attack the camp…
Rushing after the soldier, I jog down the path, quickening my steps as I pass several dead bodies lined up on the ground, covered in sheets.
My jog turns into a run when I hear a shriek outside the barricade.
A slew of gunfire goes off and my heart skyrockets into my throat as I sprint the rest of the way.
“There’s several more coming!” someone yells from the lookout tower to the gate’s right.
I glance around wildly, unable to see clearly through the smoke billowing across the camp’s entrance.
Hearing hissing, I stop where I’m standing, searching for movement between the soldiers running back into the camp from beyond.
Smoke drifts in after them as their coughing fills my ears.
It smells like the exhaust of a spaceship.
“You need to close the gate!” I shout.
“We can’t!” someone from the top shouts back.
Several soldiers shoot at something outside from the two lookout points.
Needing a better view, I start to climb the ladder of the one closest to me.
Reaching the room at the top, I make sure not to disturb the soldiers and peer into the smoke for Krellix.
When I don’t immediately see anything out in the murky field, I search around for a weapon and find a pistol on a small table.
I grab it, turning the safety off and checking it for bullets.
Now armed, I move to the soldier’s sides as one of them begins shooting at something within the smoke.
“Straight ahead!”
I scan the field for movement, wondering why nagas are attacking. There are a few women in the camp, but not many. Did the gunfire draw them?
I check the lumber machines to my left, which are all stalled out. The smoke drifts over them, coming from a fire farther beyond, where the majority of the landed spaceships are. The most recent take-off has left the earth scorched, the ground around gone up in blue flames.
Something moves through the smoke in the corner of my eye and the soldiers beside me open fire. “The right!” one shouts.
I spot the end of a tail but it vanishes into the haze. I try to discern the naga and some of its features in the darkening twilight, but am unable to do so. I only know it can’t be Krellix. It isn’t big enough.
My eyes catch more movement coming from the treeline as several nagas make a sudden rush for the camp. Right then, the soldiers gun down the naga that’s now directly below me and I spot several naga bodies within the smoke as the just-killed naga topples.
My stomach twists at the strange blanched-out coloring of all the corpses.
It can’t be…
“Either help or get the fuck out of here!” the soldier to my left yells as she loads another clip into her gun. “Fuck,” she curses when she turns back, aims, and shoots.
“Aim for the head,” I tell them. “Their bodies can endure far more than we can, but the head will stop them.” I raise my pistol at the closest naga, following its amorphous shape as it stays low to the ground within the smoke.
Just as it’s about to lurch for the entrance, I shoot it between the eyes.
It stops dead and falls to the ground, but three more nagas appear in its wake and one makes it past us, into the encampment.
“Where are the fucking drones?” I shout, wondering why there isn’t more back up from the machines. Nothing should be able to make it past the machines. “And why can’t we close the gate?”
Spinning around and leaning over the wooden rail, I fire the rest of my bullets into the naga’s back. The soldier beside me twists around just in time to blow the naga’s head off with her rifle. I toss my empty pistol on the table when I don’t find any magazines to reload it with.
“The traitors turned off the server output controlling the drones when they took off with the main spaceship.” The other soldier wipes his face on his sleeve as he answers me. “Lieutenant Nat, Graft’s second in command, did it. He and a bunch of others fled on it after killing Graft.”
“Fuck!” I curse.
“Fuck is right,” he says, aiming at another naga speeding toward us. “The gates can’t close for the same reason. The mechanism is controlled at the server level. Someone needs to hack them but there hasn’t been time for that. These fuckers arrived shortly after Graft’s death.”
Without a gun, and with no new back-up since I arrived and the sun swiftly setting, I realize that the longer I stall, the more likely someone is going to die. One naga can do damage, but five? Ten? More?
How long can we hold them off with just us? I don’t even have a weapon.
“Who’s in charge?” I ask the soldier, scanning his name tag at the same time. Austin Molin.
“Who fucking knows?”
“More are coming from the right!” someone from the other side shouts.
I quickly climb down the ladder and sprint back into the encampment, shouting as I go.
“Everybody! We need to get underground!” I run to the small group standing outside the soldier’s infirmary still working on those who have sustained wounds.
“You guys can’t stay here. The camp is being attacked.
We need to get everyone underground. Now! Follow me!”
They barely look at me as I run past them, while every gun shot I hear in the distance makes my body jerk.
If the nagas make it past the soldiers at the gate and into the encampment, I have no idea what will happen.
The nagas attacking are not like the nagas I’ve known.
The nagas I’ve known were tactical. Logical.
My thoughts drift to Krellix and my heart fills with pain.
He can’t help here. He’s gone.
Did he encounter the awoken nagas on his way back?
The thought suddenly fills my head and the pain grows spikes of worry.
Cursing, I push it aside and dash to the refugee infirmary, shouting for people to move—now—and follow me deeper into the encampment.
Because if we can’t get out… we can at least barricade ourselves in.
My eyes flick to the darkening sky. It won’t be much longer until it’s dark everywhere, not just below. I pray the soldiers at the entrance can hold the gate long enough for me to convince everyone else to follow me.
Because if they can’t…
We’ve all lost too much already. And this loss, this loss… is my fault.