Page 84 of Calico Descending

An ache throbs in my jaw, and I blink away the blur of tears. “Maybe so. But you’ve forgotten something, Doctor. I’m protected by three of the most powerful Alphas in the world.”

Grin stretched across his face, he glances over his shoulder, prompting laughter from the soldiers behind him, before returning his gaze to me. “You’re protected by nothing now.”

Slow and subtle, I nod toward Cadmus, who stands behind him in false allegiance, and in the next breath, the doctor’s arm is torn from its socket with the wet sound of meat ripping from bones. As easily as plucking the stem from a rotted piece of fruit.

On a wail of agony, the doctor’s body crumples to the ground before me, where he writhes in a pool of his own blood. His arm lies off to the side of him, mocking his futile attempt to reach out for it.

“Tell me again how weak I am.”

By the time I set my attention back on Cadmus, he’s already killed three of the five Legion soldiers--some stabbed with their spears, some whose heads lie discarded on the ground. I watch as he drives the spear up into the belly of one of the soldiers. The man stands still for a moment, teetering on his feet, before organs spill out onto the dirt below him, and he collapses.

As Cadmus approaches the last, I lurch toward them. “Wait.” Stepping over Doctor Tims, still moaning and squirming like a worm trapped beneath the hook, I pad toward the soldier. I catch the tremble of his body, and the terror in his eyes, the quick pants of breath that tell me he fears death as much as all of us. “He’ll take us to Valdys. He’ll get us inside. And if he fails, he will suffer more than anyone.”

Thoughts of Valdys, and the tortures he’ll inevitably face when he returns there, springs new tears to my eyes. A hole as vacuous as my hopes while trapped in that place burns inside my chest, as I reach down for the knife clipped to the soldier’s belt. I imagine the blades tearing into Valdys without mercy. The chains biting into his skin to hold him down.

I make my way over to where Doctor Tims crawls on one good arm, as if he has any chance of getting away. Setting my foot on his bloody stump, I watch him fall to his back, his cries bouncing through the canyons. “I remember one thing during my suffering. How the pain felt like knives digging into my stomach. It’s hard to believe Neela endured days of it. Perhaps, if you knew how it felt, you wouldn’t stand to watch it, either.”

I kneel down beside him and shove the blade into his stomach.

Another scream follows.

With a crank of my wrist, I twist the blade inside his gut, and he curls into himself, helpless to stop the pain. As helpless as Neela must’ve felt while strapped to that bed.

“I can see why you were so cruel.” My lips twitch with a tearful smile, as it occurs to me, staring down at his gaping lips and shocked expression, how one can take pleasure from watching another suffer. “I understand now.”

Chapter 35

I sit between the two Alphas, as Titus drives through the desert, along the same, familiar route we took to get to paradise. I should’ve known better. Paradise is an illusion in our world, a mirage, one in which only fools and the truly delirious trust. How ridiculous to think something so beautiful, so untouched, would be safe from the hands that seek to destroy. The same hands that tore children from mothers. Husbands from wives. Life from the living. I know now what it feels like, to fear something so much that you need to destroy it.

The truck jars us over rough terrain, and I glance toward the back, where we’ve stored the Legion soldier inside one of the silver boxes. Beside me, Cadmus rubs his knuckles, still stained in blood, as he stares out the broken window beside him.

The idea of being so close to freedom, so close to bliss, is unsettling as we drive in the opposite direction to it. Perhaps we’ve come the closest of anyone in this world. And maybe God saw fit to intervene for our sins.

I wish I could believe in something so righteous, but then I’d have to believe that the place from which we escaped was created by God’s will. That our disease-infected world is nothing more than the scope of his wrath.

And I can’t think of any reason, God, or man, that one could be so cruel and unforgiving.

I think about Valdys being sent down to those tunnels, in a barbarous attempt to punish him for escaping, and I know I would follow him. I couldn’t leave him there alone. I’d walk through hell to find him.

Dusk settles over the desert, as Titus turns the truck into the lot of a dilapidated building.

“We need to conserve some of the gas,” he says, turning the engine off. “For after.”

“And if there is no after?” I ask.

He sits thoughtful for a moment then tugs the key from the ignition. “Its an hour by foot. We’ll meet back here,” he says, ignoring my question.

The three of us climb out of the truck and open the silver cage in the back, where the soldier is still trembling. From the supply box, I nab binoculars, water, and one of the few guns we swiped from the fallen soldiers, while Titus prods the soldier out of the back of the vehicle.

With fresh provisions, we begin our trek back toward Calico.

Back to the mouth of hell.

A tall slope of a hill provides cover, as we lie in the sand, binoculars directed toward the entrance of the hospital, where soldiers bustle about in a frenzy.

I pass the binoculars to Cadmus. “What’s going on?”

There’s no sign of Valdys, and my guess is, they’ve already dragged him back inside, but the commotion of movement below suggests the soldiers are preparing for something. I turn toward the soldier, who sits tied and gagged next to Titus.

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