Marked

Chaos.

It was the only way to describe what happened after the universal call was shut off. People swarmed by the doors to Abby’s office and banged on the glass and wailed for Abby’s blood to spill. They slammed their fists and cried out in pain for those that had been sent to the slaughter.

Others called for the execution of Rachel and her group, still unwilling to believe the truth that lay right in front of them.

“You look surprised.” Abby taunted in a sickly sweet voice. “What else were you expecting after turning their lives upside down?”

“Shut up.” Juan told her.

“What do we do?” Rachel asked as Yalina, Juan and her gathered near Michael to confer. Rachel tore a piece of cloth from Michael’s shirt and used it to apply a steady pressure to his wound. As the blood gradually staunched, she wrapped the fabric around his wrist twice and looked up to meet his eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I get it.” He replied. “You were just doing what you had to do.”

“You didn’t deserve it.”

“Like you said. No one is innocent. Especially not me.”

Satisfied with the way her bandage had come out, she wiped her hands and turned to her friends. “What do we do now?”

“I say we let them have her. Let them have their revenge so we don’t have to.” Juan offered.

“We can’t let them kill her. That’s not who we are.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Ray, some of the bunker people want us dead too. This way, we let her take responsibility for her actions and their anger dies down.”

“Rachel is right. We can’t just go around deciding who gets to live and who doesn’t, Juan.” Yalina replied.

“Alright, let’s do it the sensitive way, then.” He shrugged his shoulder. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t care either way, what you do with her. All I’m interested in is getting information on what happened to my brother after this bitch abandoned him.” He finished with a jerk of his finger towards Abby.

Yalina’s eyes flashed with guilt as if she had momentarily forgotten about him. It must be nice, to be able to forget, Rachel thought.

“If we let them have her we might never find out what really happened to Hector.” Rachel had to force herself to say his name. Up until then, she had been suppressing his absence, willing herself to not break down until it was all over. Get through today, break down tomorrow. That had become her mantra.

But saying his name aloud made him real again and knocked the breath out of her lungs as if someone had punched her in the gut.

“Lowell!” Abby suddenly gasped. They all turned to where Abby was looking and saw a kid, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, cheek pressed up against the glass and eyes full of panic.

It wasn’t until she noticed the gun pointed at his head that Rachel realized what was happening. The bunker people had lost it. A man was even willing to execute a thirteen-year-old boy to exact revenge on his mother.

“You can’t let them kill my son!” Abby cried. “Let them have me instead!”

“What the hell is going on with these people?” Juan groaned. “Were we ever this crazy back at the compound?”

“We have to do something.” Rachel looked between Juan and Yalina and then back towards the young boy.

“I told you. We gotta let them have her, it’s the only way they’ll be satisfied.”

She quickly grew dizzy, her head dashing madly between Abby and Lowell.

“I hate to admit it but he’s right. They’ll kill her sons if they can’t get to her. They’re not responsible in any way for the things she has done. We gotta let them have her, Rachel.”

“But what about Hector?” She said to them.

“Well, the way I see it, Abby has some motivation to tell us what happened to him now more than ever. If not, she’ll watch her kid die.” Juan said, spinning on his heal to unleash the full force of his outrage on Abby. “So tell us. What did you do with my brother?”

“I don’t know what the hell happened to your brother!”

“Really? Because you abandoned him in the capital with a fake mark and I bet you were hoping they’d kill him so you wouldn’t have to deal with him. So where the hell is he now?”

“I told you,” Abby replied. She was no longer trying to keep up the façade of nonchalance. Her entire frame quivered, desperate to release herself in order to save her son. Though Rachel hated her for what she had done to Hector, she didn’t feel even an ounce of happiness at her suffering. “All I know is that when they caught his false mark—”

“A fake mark you gave him!” Juan roared.

“All I know,” She repeated, her voice shaking with nervousness. “Is that a fight ensued between his group and the poachers. From then on I don’t know what happened! Nobody told me!”

“I find it really hard to believe that you didn’t call your capital buddy to ask him questions.” Yalina spat.

“Mom!” Lowell’s cry was muffled by the glass but nothing could obscure the blood that erupted from his lip when the man with the gun struck him.

“Give us Abby or we’ll kill her son like she killed ours!” The man shouted.

“Looks like you’re running out of time.” Yalina said to Abby.

“I don’t know anything!”

“Fuck! Then think harder!” Juan yelled.

“Please,” Michael whispered as he met Rachel’s eyes. “If anyone here is innocent, it’s Lowell. He’s just a kid, please.”

“Damn it!” Rachel tore her eyes away from his and dove for the gun they’d taken from him when they’d tied him up. She spun and pointed it towards the glass doors.

“This is not how we do things.” She said to her friends as she approached the entrance, slamming her hand down onto the scanner so that it would read her print.

“Rachel, what are you doing!?” Juan shouted.

“I’m doing what’s right.” She dug her heels in and steeled herself for the onslaught of people that was sure to come. As soon as the doors flung open she shot at the floor, a quick and efficient round of gunshots that made everyone freeze mid-step.

A myriad of emotions flitted from person to person as she scanned the crowd. Some held anger in their eyes, others shock, while others still held disbelief.

“Anyone who steps through this door is going to get shot in the leg.” For emphasis she shot the ground one more time. “What the hell is wrong with all of you?” She pointed her gun towards the man holding Lowell “You, threatening to kill an innocent kid. That’s not going to bring your son back. It’ll only make you as much of a monster as Abby.”

“And the rest of you! Act now, think later, right? Exact revenge no matter who it hurts. Just like the damn people who hunt us!”

“She told me my husband died protecting his family when in reality she just sent him to be marked! All this time I thought he was dead! She deserves no mercy!” A woman from among the crowd shouted.

That was all it took to get the crowd back into another frenzy. Rachel recognized the big-bellied man from the previous night. He came barreling towards her and though her weapon was loaded and pointed at him, she couldn’t shoot him. He slammed into her and like a damn breakimg open, the entire crowd rushed forward.

Rachel tried to maneuver her way out of the big-bellied man’s path but he anticipated it and gripped her gun, trying to tear it from her grasp.

“You did this! You fabricated all these lies.” While he entertained his delusions, Rachel caught sight of the crowd reaching Abby. They tore the bindings from her wrists, leaving raw and bloody gashes across her palms and dragged her across the crowd.

Rachel butted big-belly in the face with the back of her gun. He groaned as blood erupted from his nose and he lost his footing, sending him catapulting into the vicious crowd which quickly swallowed him up in their quest to reach their former leader.

Rachel’s eyes scanned the room, trying to find a way to diffuse the situation. That’s when she caught sight of the control panel, but she wasn’t anywhere near it.

“Simone!” She shouted over the crowd. It took a few moments, but she was finally able to pull her best friend out of her trance. Simone looked up, disoriented for a moment, as if she had not noticed that a stampeding bunch had entered the room.

“Go to the panel!” Rachel pointed to the panel on Abby’s desk then motioned to the walls while making a flashing sign with her hands. It wasn’t much of a message, but she hoped Simone was smart enough to catch on.

A moment later, Simone began skirting her way towards the desk, though it earned her a few shoves in the process. In all the madness, she had lost sight of Abby but she could see her bob of silver hair thrashing wildly from one pair of hands to the next.

She tried to squeeze through the crowd, tried to pry her weapon loose from the bodies packed around her but she knew shooting her gun would not work this time. No one believed she would really hurt them. She had showed as much when she’d failed to shoot the big-bellied man.

A blinding light engulfed the room, the full force of a faux sunrise piercing the room like flying knives.

Most people, including Rachel, threw their arms over their faces. She used that moment of distraction to pull herself onto a chair and unload her weapon into the glass door entrance.

The shattering of the glass seem to quiet the bunch, with only a few moans of discomfort at the blinding light remaining.

“Stop it! All of you! While you stand here and fight one another the capital continues to grow stronger! You can kill each other if you want but that only benefits the people who have forced us to live this life of terror!”

Rachel shot the panel emitting the most light, making the room return to its former dimness. Breathing heavy, she scanned the crowd, making sure to make eye contact with as many of them as she could.

Some dipped their heads low, ashamed. Others stood unabashed, ready to continue their beating on Abby. The woman lay on the ground, curled up into the fetal position, her clothing torn and bloody. Still, Rachel felt no satisfaction.

“You can sit here and argue about who is wrong and who is right meanwhile the capital continues to capture and mark our people. We are slaves to our own fear!” Her throat was beginning to go raw due to her shouts but she pressed on, unwilling to lose their attention now that she had it.

“But there’s gotta be more out there than just being afraid.” She said more gently this time. “We don’t fight back because we are afraid we are not strong enough to defeat them. We’re in a military bunker for crying out loud! There’s gotta be something in here we can use against them!”

Some mumbled their agreement, others scoffed at her like she was crazy.

“I don’t know about you but I’m tired of hiding, waiting for them to pick us off one by one. I say we take the fight to them and end this once and for all and if we lose then at least we died trying.”

“We can’t take on an entire nation. Look at us. There are a couple hundred of us at the most and thousands of them.” A voice emitted from the crowd.

“Sure, but you bring down the foundation, and the whole structure is bound to falter. We can’t be the only ones out there living like this. We need to try—for our children, for our families, for our future. Once the last of us is gone, in what type of world will the next generation live in?”

“Even if we go on this suicide mission there is no guarantee we will even make it out alive. Either way my kids lives will be shitty.” A man harrumphed.

“But if we succeed...they could grow up in a better world than this.” Another woman offered.

“And how do you plan on doing that, huh?”

“Missiles.” Michael groaned. He was no longer tied down but he seemed barely able to hold himself up. Most of the crowd seemed to not hear him so he repeated himself. “Missiles.”

“Here?” Rachel asked.

“No, not here. But I know where we can get some.”

***

“It’s fifty miles driving down this way,” Michael traced a line from their location toward a grove of mountains drawn on the map. The haphazard bandage Rachel had put on his wrists had been replaced by clean, sterile ones and he was no longer dressed in bloody clothing, instead clad in a simple blue t-shirt and jeans.

“How do you know there are missiles in there?” Juan asked skeptically, arms crossed over his chest.

“My dad. He used to work there. And it’s not just missiles,” Michael replied. “But weapons-guns, grenades, everything that we’ll need to strike back against the capital.”

“This sounds great and all,” Yalina began. “But what guarantee do we have that the capital doesn’t already know about this place? If your mom knows about it, then so do they.”

“No,” he shook his head. “I never told mom. Only dad and I knew. He went to great lengths to make sure no one knew of this place, not even his wife. He told me about it before he died, told me to never stop fighting back. I was there a few days ago and everything is still intact.”

“Then let’s do it. Let’s take back our lives; what are we waiting for?” A nurse Rachel recognized from when she’d been sick with E-91 said as she pulled her two little boys in for a tight hug. Their bobs of blonde hair tickled her cheeks.

“We need a plan,” Michael told her gently.

The entire bunker population crammed into the dining room, the tightly packed bodies causing everyone to sweat profusely, pickling the room with the scent of body odor.

For some reason, the crowd was looking at Rachel and her group for all the answers, as if they had a clue what in the world they were doing.

Meanwhile, Abby and her younger son were being held in one of the simulation rooms from which there were no exits. A few guards stayed behind to make sure she didn’t try anything suspicious and to keep Abby’s sympathizers at bay and locked in their own cells, big-bellied man among them.

Across the room, faces of the people who had been lost to the capital stared back solemnly from the board they were pinned to as if begging to be avenged. Rachel found Hector’s face among them, her gut twisting with a sort of nausea that couldn’t be chased away by anything.

How she longed to hear his voice just one more time. He would have been such a help in their current situation. He was a leader, he had authority and he was so smart. What masterful plan would he have come up with now?

She racked her brain, trying to put herself in his mind as the others discussed different approaches and strategies. Everyone seemed to be in favor of using brute force but it just wasn’t feasible—for brute force you needed to have more people than your enemy and that wasn’t the case here.

“We could try to cut off their food and water supply. Let them break down from the inside out and then attack.” A man offered.

“That’s too lengthy. It gives them time to strike back with all the technology they have within. Our best weapon is that we have surprise on our side.” Yalina replied.

“We’ll then let’s use the missiles the boy talked about and blow the damn city up.”

“We’d all love that, now wouldn’t we? But let’s not forget that some of our people are still there, undercover. They’ve no idea what’s happened here. We obliterate the entire city and we kill some of our own people too.” Dr. Everest’s voice was calm and collected as he spoke. His salt and pepper hair shone under the fluorescent lighting, the half-moons under his eyes more pronounced that ever.

“Doc’s right,” Juan replied. “The compound kids are there somewhere, hundreds of innocent, unmarked children and who knows how many more?”

“Well there’s gotta be another way.”

“I say we go in there and bring the fight to them. Michael says there are a bunch of weapons out on that mountain. Let’s get our hands on them and let’s fight back!”

“There’s not enough of us, Ninh. Just getting into the city alone would be a suicide mission. Have you not seen their electrical field?”

“That’s it.” Rachel whispered. “That’s it!” She exclaimed louder.

Her friends turned to look at her and a few other curious gazes too. “What is it, Ray?” Simone asked. She had been rubbing her arms obsessively so that the skin on her shoulders was no longer olive but instead raw and red. She stopped when Rachel spoke.

“The poachers are so dependent on their technology to survive that they’d be lost without it. Their thermal readers, their electric fences, their radars, none of that would work without electricity. Think about it: if we cut the power to the city, we even the playing field.”

Michael nodded his head eagerly as everyone else struggled to take in what she had said but he seemed be forming a plan already, the wheels quickly spinning behind his eyes. Unfurling the map further, he slammed his pointer finger excitedly against the map and glanced around the crowd.

“We strike the wind turbines and take out their solar generators. They’re here and here; about an hour away from the capital. Most of their power comes from there. We shut these off and its goodnight capital.”

“How many people guard the generators?” Rachel asked.

“Let me through; I’ve been there before,” A woman said, squeezing through the crowd to take a closer look at the map. “There’s a guardhouse with a few dozen poachers. They’re all armed but I think we can easily take them on if all of us go.”

“Okay—okay, that’s perfect.” Yalina nodded her head excitedly. “Once we take the guards out we’ll shut down the generators. Take the lights out and then we go into the city. We’ll attack CN headquarters first—that’s where their leaders will be, that’s where those bastards always lounge, smoking their pipes and downing their whiskey.” Her face twisted with disgust. Rachel sometimes forgot that the bunker people had been in the capital before.

Of course, back then, they had thought they were undercover and on a mission. In reality, the capital had been laughing in their faces and looking the other way, pretending they were oblivious while they watched their ant farm of soldiers grow each and every day.

Despite being lied to, one good thing had come out of all of it. They knew what horrors awaited them there. To Rachel, ignorance was not bliss. She desperately wanted to know what awaited her too.

“Now that we have a plan, when do we start?” A man asked from among the crowd.

Michael straightened and looked around the crowd slowly. “It has to be tonight. I know it’s short notice and I know that we haven’t had a chance to plan everything out but we’ve been training for this our whole lives, damn it. If anyone can do it, it’s us! And it’s the only chance we’ve got before they realize that mom--“He cleared his throat,--“I mean, Abby, isn’t reporting back to them. As soon as that happens they will know something is up and make no mistake, they will shut this place down faster than we can blink.”

“Then let’s do it. We have no other choice.”

The room filled with a chorus of ‘yeahs’.

“It’s going to be chaos in there.” Michael’s voice pulled everyone out of their frenzy. He spoke slowly so that no one would miss a single word. “It’s going to be chaos and it will get bloody but we need to take the fight to them, surprise them, before they beat us to it and take us all captive. We need to go in there knowing that we will be vastly outnumbered but that failure is not an option.”

“Those weapons you told us about up on that mountain,” Juan interrupted. “You got any bombs up there?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because I think I’ve got a plan on how to lessen their numbers.”