CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE - DISASTER
Sammy pulled the warm jersey over his head and checked his belt to ascertain that his weapons were ready, just in case they ran into any trouble while on the surface. Darren was very suspicious and paranoid. Sammy could hardly blame him. He had tried so hard to take care of his base and make it impenetrable, but now someone had slipped through those defences.
He slowly sat down and ran a clammy hand through his hair. He wanted to sleep, his eyes were growing heavier and heavier. He felt raw and cold inside, completely drained after the last few days.
But there was no time to rest, he had a brother to find.
“Where are you going?” a soft voice asked suddenly.
Sammy turned and then smiled weakly, despite his eyes feeling red and bloated with fat tears that betrayed his current despair-filled situation. He slowly stood up and held his hands out towards Lori, his fiancée, gazing into her blue eyes. “I’m going on a search party to help find B.”
She made no reply as he leant gently forwards to give her a kiss on the cheek before wrapping his arms about her. She was all he seemed to have left lately. The Gerai had taken everything else loveable away.
“I thought you might be,” she said finally. “I heard Darren was sending more people out.” Still her eyes refused to meet his own and Sammy ran a hand softly through her blonde hair before tilting his head to stare at her.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered.
She stared down at their clasped hands and then gripped them tighter before looking at him. “Why do you have to go? It’s dangerous out there and I thought you would be sitting with your father.”
“He’s my brother and he’s just still so… young. I have to find him. You know that,” he said softly. “I can’t just forget and hope for the best. I have to find him.”
“He chose to go, he told you he would be okay,” Lori replied.
Hurt, Sammy pulled away from her for a moment. “I can’t leave him out there alone! He’s upset and he ran away because he thinks this is all his fault and it’s not! It was all a misunderstanding! He shouldn’t be lost!”
“What if the Gerai have taken him? What are the chances of you finding him?”
Sammy turned away from her for a moment, stinging inside at her words. Why was she suddenly so negative about everything? He knew that the Gerai had probably taken him, the abandoned back had proved that, but they couldn’t have been gone long. They had to still be in the local area still…
“Sam, I’m worried about you,” she whispered. “All of this is making you ill and I’m scared of what will happen to you.”
Sammy’s eyes flickered closed. “And I’m worried about what will happen to B.” And of course there was the worry of the virus if the Gerai ever managed to clasp it within their evil clutches. He could not tell her that though, he did not want to frighten her as much as the whole subject frightened him.
“I know you are, but there’s nothing you an do. You’re acting like he’s still a tiny kid.”
“He is a kid!” Sammy returned as he spun to face her. “He’s so young and innocent! He’s never been able to grow up or live without fear and it shows! He’s just a kid and he doesn’t know how to take care of himself yet!”
Lori shook her head, her eyes almost tearful. “I don’t want you to go! It’s way too dangerous! You’ll never catch them and they’ll never give B up! You don’t even know that they have him, he could be perfectly safe somewhere else!”
Sammy could feel tears, hot and stinging as they assaulted his eyes. “How can you say that?” he snapped. “He’s my brother!”
“Your brother, he’s not your son! You treat him like he’s your own child!”
But B did belong to Sammy. Sammy had raised him, loved him, done everything that a parent should have been. “What else am I supposed to treat him like? He never had a parent past the age of five and someone had to look after him! I raised him and I love him! I will not turn away from that now!”
“And what about me?” Lori shot back. “Don’t you love me?”
Sammy backed further away from her, suddenly feeling as if Lori had transformed completely into another person. She had always said she understood the bond between B and Sammy. She had always said that she understood why Sammy always had to consider his brother all the time, but now that understanding seemed to have evaporated completely.
“Are you asking me to choose?” he whispered harshly, his eyes narrowing. It was unfair… Sammy could never turn his back on his family, especially when he loved them all. He felt his heart burning suddenly as he realised what he was about to lose. He turned away from Lori, suddenly unable to look at her anymore. She was beautiful, there was no denying that and he had always thought that beneath that she was beautiful in spirit as well.
“No, but you need to let me in! I’ve hardly seen you recently with your family and everything!” she cried, close to tears.
“My father is dying and my brother is missing!” Sammy screamed, turning back with tears running down his cheeks. “I am sorry if that makes you feel left out but I didn’t choose for that to happen to them!”
Lori’s own eyes were beginning to leak water onto her face. “I just want to help…”
“By stopping me look for B? He’s probably out there scared half to death and wondering what’s going to happen to him and I cannot bear that thought!” He wiped his eyes for a moment, his chest feeling tight and constricted which made it hard to breathe. “I thought you understood,” he whispered.
“I do!” Lori wailed. “It’s just - ”
Sammy shook his head, his stomach creasing inside of him. “No you don’t. You don’t understand that I raised B and that he is like my own kid in a way! I can’t just abandon him or forget about him for a minute. He’s still young and he needs me more than ever now our father is in a coma. You have to understand that b ahs to come first! He’s my responsibility, my little brother!” Sammy slung his bag over his shoulder and then grabbed a final laser from a drawer.
Lori was silently crying, her pretty cheeks stained red. Sammy stared at her and felt his heart jerking slightly in response.
“Where are you going?” she whispered as she carefully wiped her tears away.
“To find B,” Sammy said as he strode towards the door. He stopped for a moment beside her. “If you want, we’ll talk when I get back,” he murmured. It had been a long week for everyone and the tension was pressing heavily down upon everyone’s chests to suffocate them in smog and raised tempers. He wiped his eyes again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I love him and I have no choice in that.”
She nodded. “Me too.”
Sammy could say nothing else. The second he walked out of the door he realised it would probably be over between them. Lori did not understand as much as he thought she had. Of course she must have felt pushed out but he had tried so hard to balance everything out but Lori wanted more on her behalf. He could not give that, not until B was settled and happy.
“I’ll see you when I get back,” he whispered not daring to place hope within his voice.
She said nothing and Sammy allowed his eyes to sweep over her in one last gaze of longing before he forced himself to look away.
**************************
A cold winning was blowing fiercely through the hatch as Kevin pushed it open with his strong arms. Sammy found himself instinctively hunching himself against the cold and hiding his face in the neck of his jersey as it rubbed his already sore eyes raw.
There was four of them in the search party; Kevin, AJ, Carl and Sammy himself. Darren had decided to keep the groups small and strong so that they were less susceptible to a Gerai attack if they was any soldier about the hills.
“We’re going to head north,” Kevin informed Sammy. “Darren’s already sent teams in the other directions, okay?”
AJ frowned slightly. “Shouldn’t we be heading to that underground Gerai base? That’s where they will be taking him.”
Sammy shook his head. “No, there’s already people heading that direction and besides, we don’t know if they did catch B. He may have fought back.”
“Sammy,” AJ said gently. “B was sick, we’d all noticed that flu of his and he probably wouldn’t have been able to fight back.” His voice was soft, trying to be as kind as he could with the cruel words he was dealing.
Sammy refused to look at AJ and meet that realisation. He knew B had been ill, he knew better than anybody but he also knew that if the Gerai were going to catch B, then it would as he kicked and screamed insults at them. B would never let them take him without a fight, even if he was ill. “He’s strong,” Sammy whispered.
“And we’ll find him,” Kevin reassured him. “We’ll have him home and safe before Bri wakes up and starts to worry.”
Sammy smiled thankfully at Kevin. That was one of his main worried, Brian. He would be… distraught, destroyed if he found that B had run away because of him. What would it be like to fight through the deadly coma to wake up into another nightmare where B had deserted him over a misunderstanding? Sammy wanted Brian to wake up and find B sitting beside him, just as B had done before he had run away. “I hope so,” he whispered.
Kevin nodded and then turned to gaze about them, shielding his eyes under the harsh glare of the sun’s sickly light that filtered like cold blood over the evening landscape. “This way,” he said beginning to lead them up a bumpy slope.
Sammy tried not to think of Lori as he carefully concentrated on not tripping over humps of grass and lumpy earth. He could still see her tears in his mind and he knew that he had caused them, but she in turn had made him cry even more. He had wanted her support, not her complaints about how time consuming his family was. It had never been easy for him and he owed Brian more than Lori or anyone could imagine. Brian had taken Sammy into his home out of the goodness of his heart and saved his life at the cost of missing out on B’s. Sammy had to repay him for that.
His chest was burning inside of him with the cold of loneliness and the betrayal that clung and consumed him. He had needed her more than ever now and she had decided that she couldn’t stand by him.
He shook his head slightly as he turned his attention back to the burnt and ruined land before him. He had to remain focused in case there was any trouble, but he was not sure how much more his soul could take. Brian was fighting to cling onto life while B and Lori had abandoned him. There was a permanent aching hole inside of his heart and now he doubted if it would ever heal.
He groaned slightly as he felt his foot catch and he stumbled forward a few steps before AJ caught him and prevented him from hitting the ground.
“Uh, thanks,” he said gratefully as he massaged his ankle.
“All right there Sammy?” Kevin said from behind them.
Sammy nodded, ignoring the slight streaks of burning heat that were suddenly streaking along his leg. He carefully placed it down and pressed his weight against it, gritting his teeth as another shot of pain seemed to sear through his flesh towards his thigh. He smiled at Kevin and the others and began to walk again, fighting the urge to limp.
“You okay?” AJ whispered.
He nodded. “Just glad to be doing something.” He had hated just sitting and waiting beside Brian’s bedside. He felt so useless when he could reach nobody or offer any help. Now he felt more positive. He was taking action.
“Is Lori okay?” AJ asked.
Sammy’s eyes closed and he could see those tears again. He could feel cracks in his own heart as she had basically given him the choice, her or B. How could he react? How could he have made anything other than the decision he had made?
“We had a fight,” he said quietly, not wanting Kevin and Carl to overhear as the older man talked of the landscape. “She didn’t want me to come and look for B. she thought it was too dangerous.”
AJ sighed slightly. “Don’t be too hard on her, she’s upset over B but she’s worried about you. We all are. You haven’t been yourself, for obvious reasons I know, and I think she’s worried it’s all getting too much.”
“Maybe it is,” Sammy whispered. “I don’t know how much longer I can fight all this…” He felt like crying as he felt the stones crushing him increase so dramatically. He could not breathe. All he could think of was the three people he loved.
“It’ll work out,” AJ said as he draped an arm across Sammy’s shoulders. “You’ll see.”
Suddenly piercing the air came a whining of laser light, searing red like the blood of the sunset behind them. He found himself flinging his body instinctively to the ground and he hissed in pain as his bad ankle connected with a rock. His hand was at his belt in a minute, pulling the laser out and his eyes scanned the flat landscape about them, searching for their attackers. They had seen no one on reaching the top of slope and still he could nothing, until he saw another beam of laser light screeching out of a cluster of trees ahead.
His heart was suddenly hammering so hard that it hurt. Huge, irregular beats thumping his skin as cold adrenaline rushed to his stomach. What was going on? His head spun in bewilderment at the attack and then suddenly his eyes were closed and he groaned. Gerai.
“Damn it, we’re sitting ducks!” AJ said from beside Sammy. “There’s nowhere to hide!”
“Rocks,” Kevin said from behind them both. “To the right! If we can make it, we can hide!”
Sammy nodded and slowly craned his head above the level of the grassy stems until he could see the grey boulders looming to his side. How the hell were they supposed to make it that far without being hit? It wouldn’t take the Gerai many minutes to clamber out of those trees and come after them! He tilted his head towards the trees and almost immediately a shot of laser light was flashed a few metres to his right.
“Sammy, you blonde idiot! Head down! You’re like a light bulb!” AJ hissed.
“Sorry! They’re in the trees ahead and…” he paused for a moment as he raised his head a tiny bit more and then quickly pressed it down again. “They’re coming!”
“Run for it!” Kevin yelled.
Sammy was scrabbling to his feet with AJ and then both of them were dashing towards the rocks with Kevin close on their heels. Sammy half ducked as laser fire was spurted towards the but it fell short by several metres. Were they even trying to hit them? He charged his own laser and aimed it clumsily while running to return fire before he was leaping over the stones and pressing his back to them. AJ gasped as he fell beside them and then Kevin was with them panting.
“Where’s Carl?” Sammy asked, seeing the redhead nowhere in sight.
“He’s dead,” Kevin said as he loaded his own gun. “He was shot in the head with the first round of fire.” He avoided their gazes as he spoke and leaned over the rocks to fire at the Gerai.
Sammy could feel his face had turned pale and he felt sick. Imagine just walking and then suddenly feeling the exploding pain which suddenly swallowed you to pull you into oblivion. That had always scared him, being killed so suddenly before you even had time to realise what had happened.
He shook his head and shuddered before leaning above the grey pinnacle to fire. He gasped slightly as another jet of light seared over his head and hid himself again. “Kevin, there’s at least ten of them there! We can’t hold them off!”
Kevin ducked back around the rock as the air began to fill more heavily with red and orange beams of vicious and destructive light that hammered upon the rock, pinning them where they were. “We’re trapped,” Kevin said. “Damn!”
“We’re dead,” AJ muttered.
Sammy’s brow creased and he carefully peered about the rock, watching as a laser beam was fired directly over his head. “They’re not trying to hit us,” he said as he pulled back. They could have easily have killed all of us while we were running.”
“They killed Carl,” AJ pointed out. “Shot in the head? That’s a pretty good hit!”
“But I don’t think they want to kill all of us,” Kevin agreed. “Sammy’s right, they could have blasted all three of us while we were running.”
Sammy carefully raised his laser above the rock and began to fire madly. “AJ, get moving! There’s some rocks over there behind us and if you run me and Kev might just be able to hold them off in time for you to get there! Get back to the base and tell Darren what’s happened!”
“But - ” AJ tried to protest.
“AJ, move!” Kevin hissed, following Sammy’s lead and beginning to fire back.
AJ stared at them all one last time bore Sammy turned away, concentrating upon firing at the Gerai. He heard AJ’s running footsteps and turned to see him half running and half crawling to remain hidden from the Gerai as he dashed to another group of rocks. ‘Please make it,’ he thought. AJ had to make it home. He had a little daughter to take care of and he would be the only one who could tell Darren what had happened.
Sammy exchanged a look with Kevin, both knowing that if they all ran for it that the Gerai would figure it out and soon be upon them again. AJ had to be the one to go. He had to return home to his little girl.
Sammy raised his laser once again but gave a cry as a laser blast suddenly knocked it from his hands. He cried out in pain and clasped his burning hand to his chest, the heat pumping through him.
Kevin continued to fire until the Gerai were suddenly upon them. Men were leaping over the rocks and Sammy tried to pull another gun from his belt but someone heavy was suddenly atop him and pinning him down. He felt his head crack against the ground and then everything spun wildly as his face was pressed into the dirt. He tried to struggle, but the one atop him was firmly holding his arms behind his back while someone else was holding his legs. He heard grunting and a few punches from above him and then he heard Kevin cry out before there was a heavy thump beside him.
“Where’s the third?” a voice hissed against Sammy’s ear. “They were three of you!”
“Let him go!” a female voice replied. “We have these two and…”
Sammy felt rope pressing into the skin of his wrists and he bit down on his lip as his hands were roughly tied together and then he was being hauled to his feet. He stared about him in a daze, his mind still being unable to comprehend the sudden attack. Kevin was lying on the floor, restrained by three men who were trying to tie him up.
A hand was suddenly gripping Sammy’s face and his eyes were drawn forward to the woman in front of him. She would have been pretty if it were not for the grey, Gerai uniform that showed what kind of person she was. They were all the same, heartless and emotionless. It was rare though to see a woman in command of a Gerai group. The Gerai were often highly condescending of women and their abilities.
Her thin lips curled into a smile as her hand traced his face. “We have exactly what we wanted. My my, I am glad I ordered them not to kill all of you… Sammy.”
Sammy frowned slightly but declined from giving her the satisfaction by asking how she knew his name. All the Gerai knew B and Brian so it logically that they should know him.
“We have you now,” she hissed. “You are now our prisoners.”
Sammy ceased his struggles against the binding rope and hung his head dismally as her high laugh cut right through him. There was nothing he could do now.
*******************
AJ gasped as he pressed his back to the rocks, not daring to move in case the Gerai saw him. He could hardly believe that he had made it without being shot like Carl. He grimaced in pain and pulled his leg to him. As he had jumped over the rocks to hide, he had felt the snap of the bone in his ankle as he landed and now furious and hot pain was scorching him, almost blinding him. He lie motionless in the grass as the light began to fade from the sky. He wanted to scream in agony as the pain continued. Eventually he risked moving his head above the small boulder, barely large enough to conceal him, and his eyes widened as he saw the Gerai dragging both Sammy and Kevin back towards the tress. Well, at least they were alive.
But AJ was not sure if he could make it back to the base to tell the others that. The skin was flaming in a rage of agony about his ankle and when eh tried to move he had to bite down on his tongue to prevent himself from screaming. He light was fading further from the sky and AJ slumped onto the grass as the cold wind blew. Hot pain was beginning to turn into blissful unconsciousness.