Head Full of Ghosts

Chapter 26 - The Resistance

"What the hell was that?"

Jay was shocked so dumb by what he had just seen that he still hadn't moved. He sat there, completely still, hands propping him up behind him, and staring at the spot where Amber had been standing only a moment before.

"Was that... was that Amber?"

Saying the name seemed to finally wake him from his stupor, and he spun around, looking for Eli. He clambered up to his feet and burst into a run in the other man's direction. With hardly a pause he reached down, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him to his feet.

"Did you know?" he shouted, then shook Eli and repeated the question. "Did you know?"

More explosions went off somewhere in the distance as Eli gave a single, slow nod of his head.

"Why the hell didn't you tell us?"

Eli didn't have an answer for that. He simply dropped his head and stared at the ground.

In the distance there was shouting and yelling, the sound of fighting, distant but ever present, but nobody in the little group paid it any attention. Right then their focus was on one thing.

Jay pushed Eli back into a wall and then wrapped his hands around the other man's throat. "You son of a bitch! I should kill you! I'm going to kill you! You couldn't tell us what happened to her? And after you lied to us about having a plan! You son of a bitch! You had a plan all along. You had a plan all along!"

Eli's face began to turn visibly red, even in the dim light, but he didn't struggle. Suddenly Gabriel and Aaliyah were there, grabbing Jay' s hands and prying them free of their grip. They held tight to his arms and pulled him away from Eli, who, now freed, doubled over coughing and gasping for air.

"You can kill him later!" said Gabriel. "Right now he's our best chance of getting out of here. We need him alive."

"We didn't know..." Eli started to say, but was wracked by another coughing fit and had to spend another minute after that gasping for air. "You've been in here for months," he tried instead. "We didn't know what had happened to you in that time."

"Yeah, and whose fault is that?" demanded Jay.

"I know!" Eli hissed, standing upright. "I know it's my fault. I bet it all and all of you lost, especially Amber, all because of me. You think I'm not beating myself up over this every waking moment already? That's the whole reason I agreed to this insane plan in the first place. I'm trying to make this up to you."

"You can't ever make up for the hell you put us through," spat Jay.

"I realize that," Eli admitted, "but I'm trying."

"Why did you lie about having a plan?" Gabriel asked.

"Because, like I said, we didn't know if we could trust you. I agreed to the plan to help you guys, but I didn't know if you were even here. The plan was never about helping you three. It was about getting everyone out of the camp. We couldn't risk everyone on a moment of weakness just because you all did happen to be here. If one of you went to the vampires, all would be lost."

"You really didn't know we were here?" Jay asked, clearly not believing it.

Eli shook his head. "I suspected, but I couldn't know for sure. I wasn't even supposed to be the one in here. I messed up. I messed up a lot of things. After I killed the vampire queen, or who I thought was the queen, I was found by a group of people living in a military bunker. I was nearly dead and they took me in, nursed me back to health. One of the people there, they found out about this place and everyone wanted to immediately come and attack it. To free everyone. But I ended up being the one to talk them out of it, because of the danger. Because of the vampires.