Lying in Frankie’s bed, I rolled over onto my side and shut my eyes. I moved the pillow, adjusting it beneath my head. When I was comfortable, I snuggled under the blanket as a gust of wind whipped through my hair.
The wind continued blowing and I picked up my head as the cool breeze washed over my face. When you didn’t have the wind anymore, you forgot how good it could feel when it tousled your hair on a humid summer day. I took the wind for granted.
Something else I didn’t appreciate while I had it. I was always complaining about the forceful gusts. “It blew my skirt up, messed up my hair,” were most of my common complaints.
But I didn’t have the wind anymore….
It never whipped through the halls of our underground world. So how was it that it was blowing now?
My eyes flew open and I bolted from Frankie’s bed. I stood at the edge of the hall, staring up at the entrance/exit to my home.
Another gust of wind carried down the hall and blew my hair into my face. I pushed my hair away from my face, opened my mouth and let out the loudest, piercing scream I had ever let out in my life.
One-by-one, colonists rushed out of their quarters, stopping right behind me, frozen in fear as six hungry cannibals breached the safety of our underground world and started descending down the rope ladder.
Chapter 23: Shattered
Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!
Five-year-old Ruby Martin, Colin’s kid sister waddled up next to me. Her bottom lip was quivering and then she started wailing. Annie, her mother, sprinted forward, scooping Ruby up into her arms and ran to the back of the hall. Frankie woke up, peeked out from our room and ran down the hall to our mother.
My father, the council members, and boys old enough to fight charged forward as the first cannibal hit the ground. The cannibal hissed, twirling a makeshift machete made from aluminum scraps. The cannibals had weapons, dangerous weapons. We were unarmed and I feared that none of the men in the colony would leave this battle alive.
All of the women and children had retreated to the mess hall. I faced my father, watching in horror as he stormed toward a second cannibal, carrying only a large wooden pole. “No, Dad!” I screamed and rushed toward him. The cannibal had a baseball bat with nails sticking out of it and he brought the bat down as my father dodged it.
My father locked eyes with me for a split second. The sound of battle and the people screaming drowned out the sound of his voice. “Get out of here!” he yelled as the cannibal lifted the bat again.
“What?
“Get out!” The bat came down again, blasting my father’s foot.
I bent down reaching for his foot as tears swelled up in my eyes. “No, Dad! You’re hurt!”
He grimaced and twisted himself around, swatting at me. “Get out of here! Now!” he screamed. “I can’t fight if I’m too worried about you. Go find your mother!”
I was distracting him. I wouldn’t be any use to anybody if I was just standing out there screaming.
Bolting down the hall, I winced at the sound of one of the men screaming, one of the most gut-wrenching screams I had ever heard in my life. Tears brimmed in my eyes. I couldn’t look back to see who it was. If it was my father, I would have turned around, ran straight for the cannibal who hurt him and got myself killed.
No, I had to push forward, because I had bigger plans in store for the people of this colony.
In that moment, I knew that I could save everyone. I still had my secret place. The one place I vowed to never tell anybody about. I kept it a secret for my own selfish reasons. And now was not the time for me to be selfish. We were on the verge of losing everything, our loved ones, our home, and most of all, our lives.
I skidded to a stop in the mess hall as my mother came to my side and wrapped me in one arm, Frankie in the other. “My babies,” she sniffled, trying to suck back the tears. “I love you so much.”
Looking around the room, I noticed all the women were just sitting there, hugging their children while the men from our colony were out front, fighting, maybe even dying. That’s when I decided to take charge. “Guys!” I shouted. “Everybody listen up!” Every eye in the room was on me. “I have a place where we will all be safe.”
My mother furrowed her eyebrows. “What?”
“Mom, now isn’t the time for all the questions!” I snapped. “You have to trust me!” Facing all of the women, I cupped my hands around my mouth. “I need all the mothers to go back to their quarters and bring anything they can grab! Get the food, blankets pillows, clothes, and meet me in the Baker’s old quarters!” I glanced at May, who was next to my mother, holding on to a frightened Grace. “Can you bring some medical supplies just in case?” May nodded in reply. “Ladies, whatever you do, do not look at the end of the hall.” I knew what would happen if they did. One look at their husbands, or sons and they would fall apart. That couldn’t happen right now. We needed to be strong. We needed to be organized or none of this would work. “The children need to come with me.”
Frankie clutched on to my arm. “I’m so scared, Georgie,” she whispered, in between sobs.
“Frankie, I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear.”The children filed into a line as the mothers took off. I guided them through the mess hall doors, telling them, “Look at the walls,” as we passed our fathers and brothers fighting. The sounds of clinking metal and distorted grunts hung in the air and it took every ounce of courage inside of me for me to stay calm and focused.
In the Baker’s chambers, I led the children through the closet, up the hidden ramps, up the metal ladder, and finally through the hatch doors. Once I made sure that everyone was safe and accounted for, I grabbed Grace by the arm. “Make sure they all stay here,” I commanded. “Leave the hatch open and only close if I tell you to.”
Grace’s eyes were filled with panic. “Where are you going?”
“To get our mothers.”
I slid down the ladder, raced down the ramps, and arrived to a room full of mothers. Most of them were out of breath and hysterical, but they had all done what I asked, carrying armfuls of food, blanket clothing, etc. “Follow me!”
During my second trip I was starting to get winded. I sucked in more air and breathed harder, trying to push through. At the end of the metal ladder, I helped each woman climb up until I came to last one: May. Panicked, I spun around in a circle. My mother wasn’t there. “May!” I shouted as she was halfway up the ladder. “Where’s my Mom?”
May looked over her shoulder. “She was right behind me, I swear.”
I took off running and shouted over my shoulder, “I’ll be right back. Leave the hatch open!”
When I reached the Baker’s quarters my mother was nowhere to be found. “Mom!” I shrieked. “Mom!” No answer. She wasn’t anywhere close to me or she would have heard me.
Sprinting out of the room, I charged down the hall, not focusing on anyone who was fighting, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed bodies on the floor. I couldn’t tell whether they were cannibals or the men from the colony and I couldn’t make myself look. “Mom!” I screamed. “Mom!”
Finally, I told myself that I had to look. She might have been an accidental casualty and I had to know for sure. A million questions were running through my mind as I prepared myself for the worst. What would I tell Frankie? She was already so scared. How could I go back to her and tell her that something bad happened? That’s when I came to halt. That’s when I stopped breathing. That’s when I saw my mother, clutching my father’s lifeless body, sobbing uncontrollably. And that was when I saw the cannibal with the makeshift machete, hovering over her, preparing to decapitate her.