05-12-2014, 02:42 PM
Fear glazed Ekene's expression unresponsive. The whites of his eyes were glistening bright, his irises dilated wide and black; he stared right through her. Bloody fingerprints marked where he'd pressed his hands to his face, run through by the track of tears. When she let go of his cheeks he wavered like his legs wouldn't support him, and clawed the fingers of his good hand in her hem of her shirt. Frustration simmered in the place of maternal instinct, and Natalie glanced at the door warily. Her mind ticked the options. She was not going to die here.
The shots in the corridor beyond rang loud, an endless drill punctuated by shouts and screams that crawled ice under her skin, though she feared guns less than the flames.The room's window was jammed on a safety latch, too small for any but Ekene to climb through. Curling strands of light wrapped the frame as she cupped her hands and peered through the stylised privacy-glass, trying to ascertain their placement. The blurred shape of vehicles abandoned at odd angles obscured her view, but she could see what she presumed to be people also. From the muffled noise outside, she could only assume the worst.
As she drew back she considered pushing Ekene out there whether he wanted to leave her or not. A bid for freedom would be better than burning to death, and he was small and quick and agile. But he'd doggedly shadowed her as she crossed the room to the window, fearful of the abandonment. Whatever fierceness he'd possessed but hours ago had run utterly dry, and the shock held him rigid. If she forced him through the gap only for him to freeze once he dropped to the ground, there was precious little she could do to aid him further.
That only left the way they had come. And the terrible noises beyond.
Men were blockading a door at the far end of the corridor when they emerged; her gaze briefly touched the insignias of their uniform, but she was already dragging Ekene away. Her best guess was that Mende and Temne dissatisfaction had finally come to a head; what she didn't understand was why they'd attacked a hospital filled with civilians. Injured, unarmed civilians. She hardened her mind to it; to the whimpers and cries piercing the chaos, among them the distressing pleas of the bedridden. Every voice sounded magnified; the arguing, begging, screaming. It built a cacophony in her head, curling like hooks under her skin, but she didn't know how to deadened the sudden sharpness of her senses.
Ekene's footsteps slowed, and he suddenly resisted the draw of her grip urging him onwards. His black eyes stared at the guns, and he swallowed, but it was the chaos of the wards and patients that lured his attention.
"K-Kofi?"
His mouth set into a flat little line, the desperation stark in his face.
A grim smile lifted the outer edges of Natalie's lips, then fell away. She'd intended him to suffer the consequences of what he'd done while his friend bled out on the front seat of the car. Ten years old or not, she'd wanted the horror to bury into his psyche; then to forge something fresh from the ashes. No sin was irredeemable. A poor twist on her manipulation of fate that the very sense of responsibility she had wished to foster cost them valuable seconds now. "We can't do anything for him if we die here,"
she said. The ghost of a lie tasted bitter. Chances were, there was nothing they could do for Kofi at all. "The faster we move, the sooner we can get help for these people."
Bullets rained through the defense; it was failing. Something lodged in the back of a fleeing doctor not three feet ahead of the path they took, and sat curling ominous tendrils of smoke in the corpse. She pulled Ekene on urgently, the grip of her fingers around his wrist blanching her knuckles. A few more feet forward and the walls around them vibrated, like a slumbering beast clawed at the foundations of the building. Then the lights died. Ekene stumbled into the back of her legs. Natalie braced her hand against the wall in the second of pitch darkness, heart shuddering in her chest. "Natalie?"
Ekene's whisper buried into her side as the hum of emergency lighting washed a sick pallor over everything, and shadows hung to the burgeoning horror.
All the machinery had stopped. How many died in that second?
There was a moment of silence. But panic quickly caught up with those who had staunchly held their ground until now, tinged with the desperation of having left it too late to flee. The Temne soldiers had broken through the doors, and they cut people down indiscriminately in the choked haze. She saw the blaze of blood-lust flared in wide eyes. The white snarl of bared teeth.
Smoke curled about blood christened machetes. Bullets dug into quickly dead flesh.
She pushed Ekene behind her; they should be running, praying to whatever god cared to listen. But the carnage lit fury in her chest, and she railed at the impotence of her position. Whatever the unchosen circumstances that had led her here, tethering her to hopelessly noble causes; and whatever cynicism underscored the ethos that ruled her life, you did not abandon those who needed you. She was unarmed. And she knew there was nothing she could do to protect these people. Fear tingled her skin with the urgent need to run, and she warred with the weakness; dared herself to walk through the fire.
Would she die to prove a point?
Ekene shifted behind her. It was when she felt the touch of his small hand that the light began to rage and burn under her skin; she gasped at the sensation, at the power that coursed in unbidden deluge, too much to hope to control as it spun out from her body. She tried to warn the boy to run, but her concentration wouldn't split to the task. Driven by instinct, threads that shone and glimmered snaked out and entwined a glistening web, imprinting their pattern over the terror. Vaguely, she could hear Ekene speaking. He tugged her hand. Something frayed, then snapped.
White light; bright, agonizing. It seared right through her, and her head bashed against the wall at the impact. She crumpled like the strings cut on a puppet, crushing Ekene; then felt her grip on consciousness loosen and desperately fought it. Impossible to tell if she'd blacked out, but when she forced her aching body up their end of the corridor was eerie quiet. She wasn't hurt, didn't think so anyway, apart from the hollow buzzing in her head. The light seemed dimmer, but perhaps only because of the thickening smoke.
Ekene coughed, and she gathered him up, dragged them both to their feet.
Around them, bodies were strewn carelessly as dolls, limbs bent at unnatural angles. Furniture and equipment had spun wildly, like a giant had picked up and shaken the room, but nothing touched within a foot of where Natalie and Ekene had been. At the end of the corridor, the black maw of the ruined doors gaped empty while Temne soldiers took cover from the unexpected explosion.
Amidst the destruction, the grenade still sat harmlessly in its sheathe of flesh. Natalie swallowed back her conclusion as sounds of movement stirred in the debris, then pushed Ekene forward by the shoulder. "Run.
I'll be right behind you."
--*--
They spilled into sunlight. Fatigue bound Natalie's limbs, disproportionate to the expenditure, and her head roared a dizzy amount of pain. The streets were swamped, balanced on the edge of chaos and bloated with violence that had yet to fully break, though she doubted the only fighting was in the building behind her. Ekene was ahead of her, and she wove her way after him. A few hands brushed her shoulders - was she hurt? What was happening? But Natalie never paused. "Go home,"
she snapped, the best advice she could offer.
And then she lost him in the crowd. "Ekene?"
Natalie spun, promptly regretting the movement when it swarmed her vision with sparks of light. She was desperate to take a second to sit, catch her breath, calm the throbbing of her skull, but it seemed unwise. The city was teetering. Smoke from the hospital blackened the sky. Many young hands glinted with weapons, waiting for the barest excuse to slip into the madness of hate, and though Natalie had travelled to the city a handful of times, she did not know it. Neither did Ekene. But she'd told him to run, and she'd told him look for the Red Cross building; she hoped that was what he was doing. How could I have lost him?
She stumbled, stopped from falling by a hand gripping the top of her arm, though one knee hit the dirt. A machete hung from the young man's belt, gleaming dully two inches from her face. But clean. Her spine steeled when he pulled her up, blanketing the emotion from her face. She'd be foolish not to feel fear; she'd be even more foolish to show it. Her pale gaze traversed his face; young, black hair shorn close to his scalp. Most probably Temne. Instinct reached internally for the light, but she found nothing. A pang flashed in her head instead, like she'd smashed it against the wall again; the pain rippled against her expression.
He flapped the front of her shirt, flattening out the scarlet cross. The flicker of a smile pulled his lips, but she could not interpret the meaning; she pulled her arm back, intending to disarm the moment peacefully, though her eyes never took a blink from his.
The shots in the corridor beyond rang loud, an endless drill punctuated by shouts and screams that crawled ice under her skin, though she feared guns less than the flames.The room's window was jammed on a safety latch, too small for any but Ekene to climb through. Curling strands of light wrapped the frame as she cupped her hands and peered through the stylised privacy-glass, trying to ascertain their placement. The blurred shape of vehicles abandoned at odd angles obscured her view, but she could see what she presumed to be people also. From the muffled noise outside, she could only assume the worst.
As she drew back she considered pushing Ekene out there whether he wanted to leave her or not. A bid for freedom would be better than burning to death, and he was small and quick and agile. But he'd doggedly shadowed her as she crossed the room to the window, fearful of the abandonment. Whatever fierceness he'd possessed but hours ago had run utterly dry, and the shock held him rigid. If she forced him through the gap only for him to freeze once he dropped to the ground, there was precious little she could do to aid him further.
That only left the way they had come. And the terrible noises beyond.
Men were blockading a door at the far end of the corridor when they emerged; her gaze briefly touched the insignias of their uniform, but she was already dragging Ekene away. Her best guess was that Mende and Temne dissatisfaction had finally come to a head; what she didn't understand was why they'd attacked a hospital filled with civilians. Injured, unarmed civilians. She hardened her mind to it; to the whimpers and cries piercing the chaos, among them the distressing pleas of the bedridden. Every voice sounded magnified; the arguing, begging, screaming. It built a cacophony in her head, curling like hooks under her skin, but she didn't know how to deadened the sudden sharpness of her senses.
Ekene's footsteps slowed, and he suddenly resisted the draw of her grip urging him onwards. His black eyes stared at the guns, and he swallowed, but it was the chaos of the wards and patients that lured his attention.
"K-Kofi?"
His mouth set into a flat little line, the desperation stark in his face.
A grim smile lifted the outer edges of Natalie's lips, then fell away. She'd intended him to suffer the consequences of what he'd done while his friend bled out on the front seat of the car. Ten years old or not, she'd wanted the horror to bury into his psyche; then to forge something fresh from the ashes. No sin was irredeemable. A poor twist on her manipulation of fate that the very sense of responsibility she had wished to foster cost them valuable seconds now. "We can't do anything for him if we die here,"
she said. The ghost of a lie tasted bitter. Chances were, there was nothing they could do for Kofi at all. "The faster we move, the sooner we can get help for these people."
Bullets rained through the defense; it was failing. Something lodged in the back of a fleeing doctor not three feet ahead of the path they took, and sat curling ominous tendrils of smoke in the corpse. She pulled Ekene on urgently, the grip of her fingers around his wrist blanching her knuckles. A few more feet forward and the walls around them vibrated, like a slumbering beast clawed at the foundations of the building. Then the lights died. Ekene stumbled into the back of her legs. Natalie braced her hand against the wall in the second of pitch darkness, heart shuddering in her chest. "Natalie?"
Ekene's whisper buried into her side as the hum of emergency lighting washed a sick pallor over everything, and shadows hung to the burgeoning horror.
All the machinery had stopped. How many died in that second?
There was a moment of silence. But panic quickly caught up with those who had staunchly held their ground until now, tinged with the desperation of having left it too late to flee. The Temne soldiers had broken through the doors, and they cut people down indiscriminately in the choked haze. She saw the blaze of blood-lust flared in wide eyes. The white snarl of bared teeth.
Smoke curled about blood christened machetes. Bullets dug into quickly dead flesh.
She pushed Ekene behind her; they should be running, praying to whatever god cared to listen. But the carnage lit fury in her chest, and she railed at the impotence of her position. Whatever the unchosen circumstances that had led her here, tethering her to hopelessly noble causes; and whatever cynicism underscored the ethos that ruled her life, you did not abandon those who needed you. She was unarmed. And she knew there was nothing she could do to protect these people. Fear tingled her skin with the urgent need to run, and she warred with the weakness; dared herself to walk through the fire.
Would she die to prove a point?
Ekene shifted behind her. It was when she felt the touch of his small hand that the light began to rage and burn under her skin; she gasped at the sensation, at the power that coursed in unbidden deluge, too much to hope to control as it spun out from her body. She tried to warn the boy to run, but her concentration wouldn't split to the task. Driven by instinct, threads that shone and glimmered snaked out and entwined a glistening web, imprinting their pattern over the terror. Vaguely, she could hear Ekene speaking. He tugged her hand. Something frayed, then snapped.
White light; bright, agonizing. It seared right through her, and her head bashed against the wall at the impact. She crumpled like the strings cut on a puppet, crushing Ekene; then felt her grip on consciousness loosen and desperately fought it. Impossible to tell if she'd blacked out, but when she forced her aching body up their end of the corridor was eerie quiet. She wasn't hurt, didn't think so anyway, apart from the hollow buzzing in her head. The light seemed dimmer, but perhaps only because of the thickening smoke.
Ekene coughed, and she gathered him up, dragged them both to their feet.
Around them, bodies were strewn carelessly as dolls, limbs bent at unnatural angles. Furniture and equipment had spun wildly, like a giant had picked up and shaken the room, but nothing touched within a foot of where Natalie and Ekene had been. At the end of the corridor, the black maw of the ruined doors gaped empty while Temne soldiers took cover from the unexpected explosion.
Amidst the destruction, the grenade still sat harmlessly in its sheathe of flesh. Natalie swallowed back her conclusion as sounds of movement stirred in the debris, then pushed Ekene forward by the shoulder. "Run.
I'll be right behind you."
--*--
They spilled into sunlight. Fatigue bound Natalie's limbs, disproportionate to the expenditure, and her head roared a dizzy amount of pain. The streets were swamped, balanced on the edge of chaos and bloated with violence that had yet to fully break, though she doubted the only fighting was in the building behind her. Ekene was ahead of her, and she wove her way after him. A few hands brushed her shoulders - was she hurt? What was happening? But Natalie never paused. "Go home,"
she snapped, the best advice she could offer.
And then she lost him in the crowd. "Ekene?"
Natalie spun, promptly regretting the movement when it swarmed her vision with sparks of light. She was desperate to take a second to sit, catch her breath, calm the throbbing of her skull, but it seemed unwise. The city was teetering. Smoke from the hospital blackened the sky. Many young hands glinted with weapons, waiting for the barest excuse to slip into the madness of hate, and though Natalie had travelled to the city a handful of times, she did not know it. Neither did Ekene. But she'd told him to run, and she'd told him look for the Red Cross building; she hoped that was what he was doing. How could I have lost him?
She stumbled, stopped from falling by a hand gripping the top of her arm, though one knee hit the dirt. A machete hung from the young man's belt, gleaming dully two inches from her face. But clean. Her spine steeled when he pulled her up, blanketing the emotion from her face. She'd be foolish not to feel fear; she'd be even more foolish to show it. Her pale gaze traversed his face; young, black hair shorn close to his scalp. Most probably Temne. Instinct reached internally for the light, but she found nothing. A pang flashed in her head instead, like she'd smashed it against the wall again; the pain rippled against her expression.
He flapped the front of her shirt, flattening out the scarlet cross. The flicker of a smile pulled his lips, but she could not interpret the meaning; she pulled her arm back, intending to disarm the moment peacefully, though her eyes never took a blink from his.