My Kingdom Come Book 1: The Saints We See (Complete)

Chapter 20: Call

661 standard years after the signing of the Alliance treaty

Hathu crept slowly through the dark streets behind Walesa. He could hear Jaidev and Bakresh, moving quietly behind him.

There had been hours of debate on how they could get an emergency call through to the army. They talked about which gatehouse they should try to get to, and then how they could get into the gatehouse without the insurgents stopping them. They couldn't come up with a plan that guaranteed them a call from the army. They came up with a harebrained scheme that had a fifty percent chance of working, on a good day.

Then Walesa had nearly handcuffed Hathu to the desk in the principle's office when he had insisted that he would be on the team that went out to the guard house. He needed to know that the call had been made for himself.

Amid the uproar that ensued Arvah had stood up and screamed for them all to shut up. Everyone went quiet, Arvah never raised his voice. He usually just walked away from conflict. Arvah quickly wilted with everyone's eyes on him. He sat down, his head bowed and his shoulders hunched and mumbled, 'is it really necessary to hit one of the red emergency buttons'? It turned out Janish, the grocer, had kept an old communicator in his store that he used to contact suppliers so that he could put his orders in.

Tonight Hathu and the three others were going to find out if the communicator had been destroyed or not. If it still worked, they would make the call to the army.

They had to cross several streets that ran straight up to the end of town, giving them a view of the front of the prison all lit up in the night. They would pause in the shadows on one side of the street, peer up and down the street for any insurgents, then scurry to the other side.

Hathu stared at the prison waiting to cross one of the streets. His whole family was on the other side of those walls. He swallowed wondering how Deetha and her children were doing. He wondered how Gemma was.

He'd gone looking for Gemma, but she was gone along with the rest of his family when he had checked his house. Deetha's house had been abandoned too. The most important things packed up and gone. Seeing her house half empty like that had made Hathu feel a deep sense of loss. As if Deetha had died rather than moved half a mile away.

They continued on in the snow, watching the shadows for enemies, passing dead bodies in the streets. They finally came to the store. The door was already broken. They had wrapped a wire around the door handle and then around a nail pounded into the doorframe. During the first few days after the prison break, Hathu had sent teams to break in and empty the store before the supplies were taken or destroyed by his father. The shelves were mostly bare now.

Hathu unwound the wire and opened the door. Walesa stepped in and checked to make sure no one else was inside.

"It's clear." She called softly.

Everyone else scurried inside. Hathu pulled the door shut and went to the back of the store where Walesa and Bakresh were trying the handle to Janish's little office. Jaidev stayed in the front room watching for any unwelcome guests.

The office door was locked. Hathu's heart lifted. Hopefully that meant the communicator hadn't been detsroyed. He pulled out his electric light and switched it on.

Walesa smashed the door knob with the butt of her rifle and kicked the door open. Hathu stepped in, holding the electric light high. There on the desk was the communicator, in perfect condition. There was a collective breath of relief.

Bakresh shrugged the bag off his back and pulled out the portable battery they had brought to power the communicator. He plugged the communicator into the battery. Walesa sat at the desk and leaned her rifle against the wall.