Page 7 of Marked for Extinction
I made my way back to the southwestern corner of the cavern, passed my sister’s place to my own. Our homes were crudely constructed two to three partition roomed shacks with curtains for doors.
Sitting on my cot, I stared at my walls as my hand fingered my necklace. The only thing I had left from our parents was a locket with a picture I had drawn in it. It took years of accumulating natural ingredients to make the paint. Lydia told me I was crazy when I first started the project, but little did she know it was one of the things that kept me sane when I was trying to wrap my mind around the fact that we had become orphans after the battle with Clan Corrus.
Both our parents were part of the resistance, both of them casualties on the same fateful day. I opened up the locket and stared at their smiling faces. It was a crude drawing, far from doing them justice but with enough similarities that caused me mixed emotions—Sadness that they were no longer with us and a bittersweet happiness because of the time we had spent together, learning survival skills.
My vision blurred again and it pissed me off. I wiped the tears away with the back of my hand before they could fall.
“Get a hold of yourself, Inés,” I told myself.
This was not the time for tears. We were in the middle of a war. I would let myself fully grieve for all that was lost when it was over.
“WouldMama y Papabe proud of me right now?” I asked myself under my breath. I felt guilty for living my life day to day without a purpose. I mean, I couldn’t even accept a spouse to help make babies, for crying out loud.
I humorlessly laughed and got back to my feet, snapping the locket closed and hiding it beneath my shirt.
I couldn’t stay here. I needed to occupy my time, take my mind off things. Silently, I made my way through the north tunnels to the cave that housed our reservoir from the melting ice from the mountaintops. It was cooler here as the water continuously ran through another man made trench that led to the oceans in the east.
The roughly made water turbines churned with a hum as I stared. It was what initially led me to the north east exit the first time. My curiosity over the origins of our water gave me courage to leave Black Hollow and explore.
I smiled thinking of the peaceful scenery. But my quiet sanctuary was quickly ended when other residents made their way into the room from the adjoining communicable baths and laundry area. Most of the residents were women and I was reminded of my yearning for a better purpose in this life.
I wasn’t made to be satisfied just waiting for the men to come home. I needed to do something more.
With spontaneity, I quickly turned and made my way out the eastern tunnels with a determination to make my needs known in the strategy room.
ChapterThree
Vik
The fires burned upwardtoward the sky, smoke billowing in its wake.
We couldn’t leave dead bodies about, the scent of blood was too strong and would lead our enemies to us. Burying the dead beneath the ground didn’t always work either, though some still chose to see their loved ones peacefully toward the afterlife in that way.
For Carlos? He deserved a warrior’s burial beneath the embers. The men and I quietly stood around the pyre. Carlo’s oldest and only son stood in front of us, his head held high as we all watched one of the main topside guards light the branches. It quickly caught and soon roared, crackling as branches broke and became consumed.
We made sure to burn the body a few miles away from the huts, in case a gust of wind came through, spreading it faster than we could control. It wouldn’t do to char our topside huts down all for the sake of a single burial.
Each hand made hut on top of the ground was made with wood and each crack had been filled with pitch to prevent water seepage. The roofs were all made with vines and were pretty water tight except for in a torrential downpour which almost never happened here.
Emmanuel quietly sniffed as he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and continued to look forward, making sure his father’s body was completely charred to the bone.
When the pyre began to crumble, I watched as one of the guys leaned down and whispered something to the kid. He nodded his head and was led back toward the entrance to Black Hollow located deep within the woods.
The setup of the Black Hollow was pretty complex. After the hole that led us to the underground caverns, we discovered it connected to a southern exit point that was once an old bunker created out of steel and cement. An old engraving of the wordhopesat above the latch of the door. I rubbed the depression of the letters every time I entered with hope that one day this war would be over for good.
Guards constantly patrolled the outskirts of the area with guns and ammo in shifts of teams of two. Six men in total overlooked the topside in various locations throughout the day and switched out a couple of hours before sunset.
If our first line of defense were to slowly fall, we created two more exits for the guards to make their way underground and set off the bell warning system below. Each exit provided us enough time to migrate the community or run to get weapons and prepare for intrusion if our first line of defense was breached.
As I made my way to the southern entrance in the woods, I reminded myself that each community member had had at least one to two trainings on how to operate a weapon, be it a gun or blade. Children as young as ten, like Emmanual, knew how to defend themselves long enough for help to arrive.
“Carlos was a good guy,” Amir said under his breath behind me.
“I know.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
My shoulders tensed up. “The hell it was. It always is. It’s my job to keep people alive, yet it seems all I ever do is lose ‘em.”
