Rustles

Part 20

“One of the females is gone.” Tony shouted from the front seat.

She felt freezing cold run down her back. It startled her how they didn’t even use names anymore, turning them into nothing more than test subjects. Turn something into number and everything can be done without morals intervening. 

“What happened?”

“She attacked another male. She nearly pulled his throat off before bending few bars aside and pressing herself through.” Silver brought her up to date.

“Tell me,” she felt the anger roll around in her stomach and she turned face to face with this overly exited looking soldier woman, “does it make you feel better if you don’t tell out your friend’s names before you hunt them down?”

William and Silver both stared at her in surprise. They either hadn’t expected this or felt uncomfortable. Either way, they rolled their eyes and turned away.

She felt so angry at them. They were humans, for heaven’s sake! Real people, with families waiting for them and homes to go back to! And here were their only sane friends and they didn’t even save their last dignity!

She brushed her shoulders to get some warmth back in her. At least it cured her fear for the moment, she thought. She indeed wasn’t shivering any more.

Instead she turned her attention on the screens. Something had changed. The loud peeping sound was gone and instead she saw a green screen with lots of circles and one green light blinking near the edge of the scanner.

They had been marked!

“She’s five blocks away.” Nathan broke the silence.

Like animals, they had been marked. She knew she had wished for something like this just hours before, but seeing it now made her sick both for herself and for those, who had actually done it. This wasn’t right!

“Three blocks.”

Like last time, Nathan tried to catch her and get ahead of her before letting them out and telling them about how long time they had got. It felt like a bad dream that kept repeating itself over and over again.

They were in the middle of a park with small square fountain in the middle of it. The entire place was covered with gobble stones and the water was making loud enough sound to disturb her concentration.

She walked few feet away from them and closed her eyes, pressing her hand against the clock in her pouch.

“You better have my back!” she whispered to the imaginary Kenneth she desperately would have needed here right now, by her side and helping her.

In less then a minute she felt seriously sick. Like heart itself had broken off and played tennis in her chest. There were at least twenty people around – children playing, people walking and older people gossiping on the benches on the edge of the stone garden.

“We can’t hunt her here,” she said half loud to Silver, who was closest to her.

“Nathan…”

“Nathan made a mistake! Here are too many people, we can’t hunt here.”

“Then where?” she insisted, lowering her rifle, which was like foreign object in this sunny early afternoon.

People started moving away faster, one by one noticing men with guns.

“They’ll call police!”

“Naah, they won’t!”

“I would! What makes you think they won’t? People with guns forming circle around half of the park? Of course we’ll end up with police!”