Page 99 of A Light in the Darkness
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 ringsout, 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.
