The Sun Dwellers (40 page)

She steps over the arm, takes aim, and puts a bullet into the back of the guy’s—who’s still clutching the steps like a lifeline—head.

It’s not anger or revenge or even her survival instincts that prompts her actions—no, that’s not it at all. She does it to end his suffering.

Chapter Ten

T
hree dead, one unconscious. It could have been worse. It could have been them.

Although Anna was initially concerned about Maia—her face was ghost-pale and her fingers trembling as she helped tie up the unconscious guy—she seems okay as she ascends the steps at Anna’s side. Even so, better to check.

“You okay?” Anna says.

“My ankle’s feeling a bit better, I should be fine,” Maia says, glancing down.

“I don’t mean your ankle.”

Maia looks up, makes eye contact for a second, but then returns her gaze to her feet. “Oh.”

“Look, I know that was…
violent
back—”

“I’ve seen plenty of violence in my life,” Maia interjects. “It isn’t that. You did what you had to do. It’s just…”

Anna stops near the top of the steps, watching the entrance to the cellar carefully for any more unwanted visitors. “It’s just what, Maia?”

“I froze,” Maia says. “I couldn’t have done what you did. I was scared and I just froze up. I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not. What you did, it was incredible.”

“Violence is never incredible,” Anna says, cocking her head to the side when a shot from a rifle cracks in the distance. “But it’s sometimes necessary. No one’s ever ready for it when it comes.”

“Then how do you act when the time comes?” Maia’s question is a simple one, but something tells Anna the answer is vital to the girl’s chances of getting through the next few hours alive.

“Everyone’s different, but what I do is think of all the people who are counting on me to come through for them, the people I want to see again, and I do everything for them. When I threw that grenade I was thinking of how brave Adele is, going to the Sun Realm. When I attacked that guy, Elsey was in my head, how if I didn’t knock him out I might never see her sweet face again.” In any other circumstance, tears might fill Anna’s eyes, but at this time, in this place, Anna’s eyes are dry, so dry they sting a little. She knows that tears are a luxury she can’t afford during war.

“But…I don’t have anyone,” Maia says.

“You have me,” Anna says. “Never forget that.”

She climbs the last two steps, gun drawn, her finger tight on the trigger. Adele and Elsey, and now Maia, swim through her thoughts as she prepares for war.

Chapter Eleven

E
ach footstep coincides with the slam of her heart against the inside of her chest.

Being outside the cellar again feels strange. She was so certain its four walls were the last she’d ever see, but now, by a stroke of luck or pure will—or fate perhaps—she has a second chance to make her daughters proud.

To her left she spots a threesome of hunting sun dweller soldiers; in their crimson uniforms they look like three smudges of blood on a backdrop of smoky gray. She ducks behind a crumbled wall before they turn her way. Beside her, Maia says, “They’re everywhere. How will we get past them all?”

“We will,” Anna says, fierce determination pulsing through her like an electric charge. “They’re spread out and they don’t expect much resistance.”
And little do they know: there’s a few thousand moon dweller soldiers trapped underground, if we can just get them out…

She skates along the wall, the barrel of her gun seeing everything her eyes do, her head on a swivel, her anger rising with each piece of rubble she steps over. Any fear she felt upon ascending from the hell of the cellar is gone, wiped clean inadvertently by the bloody rags of a warring and oppressive government.

Leaving the cover of the wall, she cuts between a pair of crumbling houses, darts across what used to be a residential street, and slips behind another house; this one is still standing, save for its roof, which looks as if it’s been pummeled a dozen times by a wrecking ball. She hears voices nearby.

After glancing at Maia, who seems calmer since leaving the cellar, she heads toward the sound, hopping a wall and galloping across another rubble-strewn backyard. At the next wall she pauses, and then, upon hearing voices, motions toward the other side of the wall:
soldiers beyond
, her finger says.

She creeps along the wall, moving in between two houses, then hops the wall, immediately flattening herself on the stone sidewalk next to the neighboring house. Maia land softly behind her. The sounds are close—just behind the house.

They tiptoe along the house, until they’re close enough to make out what the voices are saying.

“On your knees!” a deep voice bellows.

“This is our house. You have no right to do this!” a man says.

“Please, Bear, do what they say,” a woman pleads.

“You should listen to your wife,” the deep voice—a sun dweller soldier most likely—advises.

“Marley, these people, they think they can push us around because we let them. Well, no more. I won’t get on my knees. I won’t!”

Thud!
A groan of pain. A woman’s scream. “No, no, no! Leave him alone!”
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
“Stop it! Stop kicking him!”

The sun dweller soldiers are distracted by the beating they’re giving some poor moon dweller. Anna sneaks a peek, sees four red coats, three of which are relentlessly kicking someone on the ground. Big: not the soldiers, the guy getting kicked. Probably why his wife called him Bear—a nickname, most likely.

The fourth soldier stands nearby, supervising. The commanding officer. He’s smiling. Someone needs to change that.

Anna motions to Maia to split up, to circle around to the left while she goes right. Maia’s eyes are wide, but Anna notices that the steeliness has returned. Good timing.

Seeing Maia nod in understanding, she darts out from cover, veers to the right—the distraction. Before anyone sees her, she’s upon the first kicking soldier, pistol whipping him in the back of his head with her gun. The next red-clad bully is too busy stomping on the helpless innocent to notice his buddy’s fall. The CO, however, does notice and starts to say something, “Watch ou—” but is cut off when Maia sticks the cold steel of her gun to his temple. “Don’t move,” she says.

Anna, still moving, kicks high and hard, catching the second soldier in the neck, rocking him to the side and into soldier number three, who is turning, finally realizing something is happening. They go down in a tangled pile, the blood from a wicked gash on soldier two’s forehead streaming down his nose, lips, and neck, mixing with the red of his uniform. He’s clutching his head, his face pale, his mouth contorted in a silent groan of agony.

She levels her gun at his head.

“Who are you?” the CO asks, Maia’s gun still tight against his head.

“We’ll be asking the questions here,” Anna says, keeping one eye on the CO and another on her pile of soldiers. “First one: do you want to die?”

“No, of course not,” the CO grunts. “But in about two seconds, when I’m supposed to check in and I don’t, there will be dozens of soldiers swarming this place, so I suggest you—”

BOOM!
The bullet rips into the CO’s thigh, just above the knee. He cries out in pain, topples over, clutches his leg.

Maia stares at Anna, her gun limp at her side. “You—you shot him,” she says.

“He was lying to me,” Anna says, her voice sounding strange and guttural even to her own ears. “I—I had to show him who’s in charge here.” The red-hot anger she felt a moment earlier is ebbing, being replaced by a degree of remorse, something she always feels after inflicting pain on another, even an enemy; it’s something she can’t afford right now. Action is the only remedy.

She thrusts a foot at already-injured soldier two, who tries to block it by throwing his hands over his head. Instead of going high, she stomps on his stomach, earning another groan and the move of his arms from his head to his gut. Lashing out again, this time at his head, she feels the satisfying—and somewhat sickening—thud of her boot off his skull. His head snaps back, cracks into the jaw of soldier number three, who lets out a bloodcurdling howl, and then lolls to the side, his eyes rolling back into their sockets.

Soldier three is clutching his mouth, blood pouring out from between his fingers, his face all scrunched up. “War is hell,” Anna says, bringing her gun down on the crown of his head. He slumps over, unconscious.

Turning to face Maia, her body hot with violence, she says, “Knock him out.”

Maia looks at the CO, back to Anna, says, “Can’t we just tie him up, gag him?”

“He’ll get loose and then he’ll try to kill us. We don’t have time for prisoners, and I don’t believe in killing defenseless soldiers, even ones like these.”

The CO rolls over in the fetal position, his face a shattered mess of pain, his pant leg a darker red than the rest of his uniform. “You already shot me,” he spits out. “Just finish the job.”

“I’m not letting you off that easy,” Anna says. “You’ll pay for your crimes before a war tribunal. Maia?”

Maia takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for just a moment, and then swings her gun like a hammer, whacking the CO sharply across the temple. His writhing stops, his body still with unnatural sleep.

Letting out a deep breath, Maia looks at Anna. “That was horrible,” she says.

“Violence always is,” Anna says.

“You made it look so easy, almost like you enjoyed it.”

Anna cringes. That’s the problem. She was so full of anger at these horrible men that she did sort of enjoy it. She knows she’s flirting with a dangerous line between fighting against evil and joining them. It’s a line she has vowed never to cross.

“She did it for us.” Anna and Maia both jerk to the side, spot the woman, the man’s wife, on her knees, her hands clasped together as if in prayer. “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so much.”

Her husband stirs, sits up, rubs his head as if clearing his mind from a bad dream. He truly is a giant, with rock-like fists, a chest the size of a beer barrel, and a head twice the circumference of most adult humans. His lip is swollen and fat, one of his eyes bloodshot, painted with black and blue beneath it. But he’s smiling. Smiling at his wife, who’s smiling back at him.

“Oh, Barry!” she cries, clambering to her feet and launching herself at him. She lands on him so hard that, if not for their significant size difference, she might have flattened him.

Maia watches the heartfelt reunion with moist eyes, while Anna watches Maia. She’s so young, full of courage, unmarked by the horrors of life. She silently hopes the war will be over quickly and in their favor, so the innocence and naivety of this girl can persevere for years to come.

She thinks of Adele again, in the belly of the beast, having already endured so much emotional and physical pain, forced to endure more. She hopes her youth hasn’t passed her by these last seven months, when everything changed.

Chapter Twelve

S
he leaves the rescued moon dweller couple in what she hopes is a safe place—a hidden bomb shelter beneath the floorboards of a shed. It’s a neighbor’s, who had invited Bear and his wife to stay there with them, but they opted instead to remain in their own cellar. A bad choice. But now the kind neighbor welcomes them with open arms and a warm drink, as Anna and Maia seal the trapdoor behind them.

“I’m so glad we got there when we did,” Maia says. “That was amazing seeing their eyes light up when they hugged each other.”

Anna tries to smile, but only manages a thin line. It was a fulfilling rescue, yes, but only a small victory against an enemy set on digging out the city’s residents. With the army barricaded underground, there’s no one to oppose them.

“We have to get to the base,” Anna says.

“It’s not far,” Maia says.

“The way this place is swarming with cockroaches, it’s far enough.”

“We’ll make it.” Now who’s the optimist?

Anna really smiles this time, not hugely, but sincerely. A little shot of hope is just what she needs. “You’re right. We’ll make it.”

They exit the shed, running low to the ground, keeping their heads below walls and crumbling houses. Less than two blocks away is the old church with the underground caverns, where the temporary army base was set up. The once-high steeple no longer stands tall and beckoning. Now fallen, it is but a reminder of what the church used to stand for. From behind a wall, Anna can see that the main church structure—in which stands the primary entrance to the underground tunnels—has imploded upon itself, and now looks more like a raw granite stockyard than a place of worship.

The secondary, hidden entrance to the tunnels was, of course, the one from which Anna and Maia exited, and was destroyed just as they escaped its bounds. She knows her stalwart men and women soldiers will try to dig their way out, perhaps even use small explosives to blast through the blockades, but it will take time. Perhaps if they remove some of the larger blocks from the other end, it will give them a chance to break free. Then the battle will truly begin.