Delusional Page 19

  “I’ve got a plan!” I shouted in a panic, slamming the door shut to the cell. Everyone stared at me with wide eyes, dilated with shock and terror, but there was a bubble of hope at the center. “Ethan, Antonio, stand on either side of the door and disarm two of the soldiers once they come in, and I will shoot the middle one once he steps through the door!”

  They both glanced at each other worriedly, but there was no time to think of another plan.

  My mind barely had enough time to register the chaos around me, never mind feel any sort of emotions before the soldiers burst through the door with solemn expressions on their faces. Without hesitation, I shot the middle one before he even raised his gun to shoot. Blood spewed out of his head, and his body fell in a thud to the floor.

  I heard the ring of the shot first, and then the ear-splitting scream of Antonio next. I turned my head towards him where he clutched his ankle that blood gushed from madly.

  Dammit! Another shot rung in my head, shaking my ear drums, as Ethan disarmed the other soldier and shot him in the head. Antonio fell to the floor, the pain blinding him, and the soldier stood above him, ready to deliver one more bullet that would paralyze Antonio permanently. My heart thumped in my throat, sweat running down the sides of my face, as my thoughts raced in my brain wildly, threatening to collide in a deadly crash.

  I raised my gun, and inhaled sharply as I aimed the gun, and exhaled perfectly in time with the departure of the bullet from the barrel of the gun. But just as I fired the shot, aimed directly at the head of the soldier, the soldier released the bullet upon Antonio, who laid below him with his eyes closed screaming for him to end it.

  The soldier fell to the ground, as yet another bullet grazed the shoulder blade of Antonio.

  “Fuck!” Antonio winced clutching his shoulder that dyed his shirt a dark red. Blood escaped his ankles profusely, dripping out onto to the floor to form a puddle with the pools of blood surrounding the three other dead bodies.

  A dark red filled my eyes, full of terror, regret, and anger, and the stench of death swarmed my nose and traveled to my brain. We just killed five men. I coughed choking on the thought in disgust. We just killed five human beings.

  “Second unit backup is almost there.” The message between the soldiers appeared on my ICL.

  “We are gonna try and corner them.” Said another soldier.

  “These fuckers are dead!”

  My eyes instantly filled with terror, “Guys,” I gulped, “Let’s go now we don’t got any time.”

  “Give us a minute.” Ethan barked, taking off his shirt to tie around Antonio’s ankle. Antonio then took his shirt off and Ethan tied it around his armpit and shoulder blade.

  “Think you can walk?” Ethan picked up the two guns next to the soldiers’ bodies and tossed one to Dulce, while keeping one for himself.

  “Yeah,” Antonio grimaced as Ethan helped him up, “I think I’ll be fine. I don’t even feel the pain.”

  Not questioning how that was even possible after being shot twice, we all dashed out of the cell, besides Antonio who hobbled in a way that was even painful just to watch.

  “Where are we going?” Dulce asked, looking behind us at the second row of soldiers a couple hundred yards down the hallway sprinting toward us.

  “Follow me.” I commanded trying to sound confident, but in reality, I had no idea if we would all even live just for one more minute.

  We all began to run as best we could in the opposite direction of the soldiers barreling towards us, Ethan taking up the rear to make sure Antonio kept up. I frantically looked over the map on the ICL finding what appeared to be the only exit from the compound that was not for helicopters at the opposite end of the floor we were on.

  “Let’s keep moving!” I shouted, my legs practically incapacitated under the pressure. My muscles burned like hell, and with every breath it felt like there was a sultry liquid around my lungs.

  I looked back, watching as Ethan blindly fired several shots back at the oncoming soldiers, all of them missing. The soldiers began to fire a flurry of shots upon us as they entered within firing range.

  “Left!” I screamed, turning sharply.

  You can do this. I gritted my teeth, trying to stifle the immense pain that made my brain and body feel numb. I looked back, Antonio was struggling to keep up, his body violently limping for its life. Ethan continued firing bullets behind him, only one of them connecting with one of the soldiers, but there were still four more that powered on growing ever closer to us.

  Shit! My heart began to beat even faster as another row of soldiers appeared from in front of us, effectively trapping us in.

  “What do we do?” Dulce screamed, shooting a string of bullets ahead of her at the soldiers who charged forward.

  “Shoot and run!” I screamed, firing my gun ahead.

  “Shoot and run? That’s your plan?” Dulce yelled above the gun fire that scraped against the walls, leaving dozens of pieces of chipped concrete on the floor.

  “Unless you got any better ideas?” I took a sharp breath and shot one of the soldiers in the foot.

  To that, Dulce didn’t respond, and we all continued to sprint for our lives down the long corridor that either lead to our death, or our momentarily survival. We were all sandwiched in between the crossfire of the two oncoming rows of soldiers, and it was only a matter of time until the two iron fists collided and crushed us. Bullets surrounded us on all sides, and we were at the center of the mosh pit of death.

  “How much farther?” Antonio gasped, his body about to cave in under the pain.

  “Two more turns!” I shouted back, the adrenaline numbing my mind from experiencing any of the physical pain my body was experiencing.

  One of Dulce’s shots managed to connect with the head of one of the soldiers up ahead, but it didn’t matter. There was no way in hell we were going to shoot our way out of it. There was no way we could stop them. We had to run.

  “There’s a turn just up ahead, c’mon!” I shouted, shooting forward, hoping that an invisible force would will one of the bullets to connect.

  My legs kicked in to a new gear, survival instinct completely taking over. The bullets screamed by perilously close to my skin, as the soldiers closed in on either side, slowly strangling the life out of us.

  “Left!” I screamed, bullets chipping the concrete off the walls as we made a hard left down another identical hallway.

  I heard the curses and screams of the soldiers behind us, and across my ICL a message flashed, “Shoot and kill. All resources initiate active pursuit of targets. Shoot and kill.”

  Chills were sent spiraling down my spine, causing a paralyzing fear to crash over me. We are dead. I screamed, looking behind at the horde of stampeding soldiers. They aren’t going to let us escape this time.

  “I can’t make it much farther!” Antonio groaned, his body about to keel over in pain.

  “Just a little more!” I screamed.

  “C’mon, Antonio,” Ethan gritted his teeth firing more bullets back at the soldiers, “You can do it. Just push through it.”

  Sweat streamed down my face in buckets, and my heart thumped faster and faster on the verge of imploding. The bullets whizzed by, as the sound of the footsteps grew closer. The soldiers charged onward behind us with crazed looks on their faces, and sedated, zombie-like expressions in their eyes.

  “Right!” I yelled as we made the final turn to our escape just about a hundred yards away.

  “Yes!” I screamed aloud, letting myself believe that we might survive.

  I shot a few more bullets behind me, but when I tried to reload, no bullets clicked into the chamber. “I’m out!” I hollered in a panic, running faster than ever ahead.

  “Me too!” Dulce yelled.

  “I’m good,” Ethan grunted shooting another round of bullets behind him.

  Keep going. I told myself, looking back in a panic at the soldiers, who were now just a stone throw, or gun shot, away from us.


  “It’s just up ahead!” I screamed the excitement bubbling out of me. I opened the door with my ICL, and part of the wall lifted into the ceiling, giving way to a pitch-black tunnel.

  I dashed through the opening in the wall and stopped dead in my tracks. Is this a dead end? Is this just another trap? The bullets fired in rapid succession, the soldiers trying to shoot us before we receded into the darkness. My ears ringed with the cacophonous sounds, my eyes filled with chaos, and I closed the door to the compound leaving us in a suffocating darkness.

  I stood facing towards the door in shock, waiting for the guards to open the door and come barreling through. Suddenly, the sounds of the gunfire stopped, and a sliver of light escaped into the darkness. I gulped the ominous silence haunting me. I began preparing to die as the door started to open, but only to shut in a loud bang seconds later.

  Then my heart stopped, and my mind froze in shock. A message from President Ash appeared across my eyes, “Let them go. Let them die. I will get my revenge. Their time will come.”

  Chapter 14

  I took the ICLs out of my eyes and chucked them on the ground in disgust. The cold air penetrated through my skin and filled my heart and bones with a deadly chill. There was no noise but the sounds of people heavily breathing, and the dull throbbing in my head.

  I can’t tell them. Fear suddenly coursed through me instead of relief. They can’t know that we have no hope. They can’t know that he is going to win.

  I sighed and looked ahead at the little flicker of light that shined down at the end of the dark ominous tunnel. I wonder if we are dead. I sighed, staring around at the cold blackness enveloping us. Maybe that’s the light at the end of the tunnel.

  The hard rock pressed up against my heels causing a sharp pain to echo through my legs with every step. The air was cold, freezing cold in fact, but the fear still caused beads of sweat to trickle down my face.

  We made it. A wave of excitement and paranoia overcame me. But only for now.

  My body shuddered impulsively, maybe due to the cold or the striking realization that came to my head. He wants us dead. He wants his revenge. I won’t let him get it.

  My legs powered forward as we grew closer to the dim light that called to me. I coughed, the pain stored up inside me begging to be released.

  “We did it.” Ethan said, a look of euphoria across his face. “Natalie, you actually got us out.”

  “Yeah,” My voice was low and hoarse from all the yelling, “We made it, we made it for sure.”

  “That place was hell.” Dulce said, a sharpness in her voice.

  “No kidding,” Antonio shifted his left hand to his shoulder that was soaked in blood. “That’s a nice word for it.”

  Silence resided over us once again, accompanied by an overwhelming sense of uncertainty and fear. The light was now just yards away, but I could feel the darkness pulling me backward, dragging me underneath the jagged rock below.

  Finally, we stepped out into the dim light of night, and a new wave of bitter coldness hit me immediately. The air was fresh and pristine, but the smell of death still tainted my nostrils. I looked straight up and at the gray rock face that towered above.

  The government compound was in a mountain. I shivered, watching as I exhaled, and my breath turned to frost. A cold mountain.

  The rock shut in a thud behind us, leaving us alone with the stars. We came out of the mountain just where the tree line began, sloping down steeply to a lake below. Up above the stars glowed brightly, emanating a mystifying light that illuminated the mountain range around us and steep valley full of deciduous trees below. The milky way itself seemed to be visible in clusters of millions of flashes of purple, blue, red, and even green.

  I took a sharp inhale and sighed one long rectifying breath. The insane amounts of adrenaline were starting to subside, giving way to the throbbing pain in my legs and head.

  Darkness blanketed the earth, blanketed the trees, and it even blanketed my heart, but millions of miles away, shining down from the night sky there was hope. And even as faint as it was it glistened off the snowy peaks of the mountains and reflected off my eyes in its glory.

  “I don’t know if I’m more thirsty or tired.” Dulce sighed, glancing out over the lake thousands of feet below that reflected the millions of stars in their colorful bands like a mirror.

  “Let’s rest.” Antonio groaned. His limping was even painful for me to watch as he laid his back against the almost vertical sheet of rock behind him.

  “We can’t rest,” Ethan said, a worried, terrified look in his eyes. “We need to get you help. If we don’t get moving, they’ll catch up to us, they’ll take us back in.”

  “He’s got a point,” Dulce said, “what if they just come bursting out of that rock door and take us back in again.”

  “First off, please tell me where I can get help in the middle of nowhere?” Antonio yelled so that his voice could echo of the sheets of rock unanswered. “It’s fine, it hurts like freaking hell, but the bleeding is mainly stopped cause of the knot you tied around it and I will just make sure it doesn’t get infected. I will just deal with it. And as for the government, we won’t be able to stop em’ anyways. We can’t outrun the government if they want us, they will find us.”

  Ethan shook his head, “So you’re saying that they won’t even try to come after us, you just think we are okay if we stay here and do nothing?”

  “No,” Antonio shifted his feet in the dirt that was mixed with sparse patches of grass, “I don’t think it matters. Whatever they want, we won’t be able to stop em’, eventually we will just have to give in.”

  “I agree,” I spoke up, “It doesn’t matter. We should just get some sleep and hope for our lives that they don’t come after us, but if they do, right now, we won’t be able to stop them.”

  “Ugh,” Ethan sighed kicking the dirt. I could tell that the fear inside of him was beginning to drive him mad, “We should at least move away from the very mountain that the government base is in. That’s practically asking them to come out and get us.”

  “So, let em’,” Antonio responded with a cold glare in his eyes. “We can’t stop them. President Ash has thousands of helicopter and planes, and over two million troops in his control. If he wants to find us, he will. No matter where we are.”

  “Ethan,” I put a hand on his shoulder, “You’re tired, I’m tired, we’re all tired. Antonio can barely walk, and we are all hungry and thirsty. The least we can do is get some rest.”

  “Fine,” Ethan exhaled and sat down in a patch of grass staring up at the stars as if searching for answers. But besides the countless number of stars there was nothing but the indecipherable blackness that blanketed the sky.

  “Goodnight,” Dulce said laying down next to Antonio up against the rock wall. Our clothes were in tatters, our skin was falling off our bare bones, and our faces and hair were covered in sweat, oil, and dirt. Even Ethan’s perfectly slick hair was in a messy pile on the top of his head.

  “Goodnight,” I responded curling up in a patch of rough, cold dirt that somehow felt comfortable compared to the floor in the cell. I stared up at the stars above, looking for a sense of security, and warmth in the coldness that numbed my conscious. The stars twinkled brightly, the light radiating off them like sparks dancing in the night sky. There was a beautiful stillness to everything that calmed my mind.

  I took a deep breath, and closed my eyes trying to shut my body down and get some sleep, but my brain was full of thoughts dashing wildly. I shifted on the dry earth and tried to let the quietness soothe my brain to sleep, but it was too late. I was wired. My muscles ached, and my body desperately wanted to escape, but my mind was blustering with a war of emotions taking place inside me.

  It kind of felt like when you feel a laugh coming on at an inappropriate time, or tears threatening to escape your eyes in front of someone who you don’t want to see. The emotions pressed up against the inner half of my brain. The dam I had constructed
in my brain to block out all the emotions, to block out reality, was on the verge of exploding behind the immense pressure that the emotions forced upon me. And I had to press back.

  It was an endless war, a bloody battle at that, and both sides fought tirelessly making no progress through the wee hours of the night. I peered out at the flashes of bright oranges, and deep reds beginning to penetrate through the darkness without having even gotten a wink of sleep.

  My body rose off the cold, frozen ground, multiple cracks reverberating in my joints, and a dull pain pressing up on my heels. The flashes of bright colors mixed in the sky and reflected off the clouds, dying them different shades of translucent reds and oranges.

  I looked down at the shimmering water that seemed so impossibly far away, but close enough to taste on my lips at the same time.

  My whole body ached, and the hunger returned in my empty stomach.

  I looked around, everyone was beginning to rise with the sun in a mindless state. I winced watching Antonio get up, almost falling even with the support of the rock wall.

  I need water. My eyes lit up just glancing at the crystal blue water with its rocky shore. My legs were cramped, and my muscles were practically caving in due to the exertion from last night following three weeks of virtually no movement, but one last burst of adrenaline would have to carry me down the mountain.

  I gulped, my mouth almost too dry for there to be any spit to swallow. It was an almost vertical decline of thousands of feet just to get to the lake below, meanwhile my legs felt weak just with me standing.

  Survival. The word echoed in my head, but it was beginning to lose meaning. Survival for what? If it was just to experience more pain and more hardship without hope in sight, then is it worth it? Is this really that better than the alternative?

  I coughed, an ugly hack that hurt my chest. My eyes turned toward Ethan who was already beginning to make his way down to the water.

  “You guys comin’?” He called, “If you don’t get there soon I might just drink the whole lake on you guys.”