The Enemy

[8] Sleeping Beauty

Chapter song// Bruno Mars - It Will Rain

"'Cause there'll be no sunlight, If I lose you, baby, there'll be no clear skies If I lose you, baby"
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We didn't stop for one second. It seemed like hours we've been here, trapped in the isolated train car, sharpening the ends of belt buckles and chipping of bits of wood from the floor boards. Even though my hands kept me busy, my head didn't stop spinning, drowning with the amount of thoughts. How did I get here? From living on rations in a small apartment, to on the verge of death. One person turned my life upside down. One stranger that we let in and offered safety. We shouldn't have let him in.

Heads shot up as distant voices could be distinguished through the thin metal.

"Go for their eyes first," Rick announced, "then their throats." I firmly wrapped the sharpened belt around my wrist and settled the buckle in between my fingers, taking position beside Rick.

Our scheme didn't go to plan. Everything was a blur. Sunlight streamed in from above us, taking us by surprise as tear gas was thrown in. It infected my body and got stuck in my lungs as I inhaled it. My eyesight blurred and black spots concealed my vision as I clawed my throat trying to breathe, before I collapsed to the ground. Black figures stormed forward wearing riot gear and gas masks, the shouting around me got fainter and fainter before it disappeared completely-along with my sight.

+
"Wake up, princess," a gruff voice sounded beside me, pulling me from the darkness. As I opened my eyes, I saw my face reflected in the silver of what looked like a large animal trough. I had been placed on my knees and bent over the edge as I was passed out. I flipped my head trying to move my hair away from my face. As I straightened up, I noticed that I was knelt beside the archer who was called Daryl and a man I didn't recognise, all of us bound at the hands and feet. "Sleeping beauty's finally awake," Daryl mocked from beside me, I caught his glance and grimaced at the sheer hatred that he glared at me with. I wasn't in the right state of mind for one of my snarky comebacks, my head felt light and dizzy and a sharp pain shot through my left temple.

"W-what's happening?" I could hear the imaginary birds tweeting as they flew around my head, beckoning me back to my dreamland.

"Jules, are you alright? You're bleeding." Glenn worried from beside Daryl.

My first instinct was to touch my head-find out where the blood was coming from, but the restrains restricted me from doing that.

"I'm fine," I lied.

"You're anything but fine, girlie," two men came into view, wearing plastic aprons, one held a baseball bat, the other held a knife. They started at the far end of the trough, with a blonde haired boy a little younger than me whose eye was black and bruised. My mouth fell open as they hit his head with the steel bat and wasted no time slitting his throat. His blood spurted out and stained the stainless steel trough before streaming from his neck and along the bottom of it, gathering around the plug hole.

One by one, the line of victims got shorter and shorter, before they finally reached our group–before they reached Me. My breathing escalated as the bat got strung up high, about to kill me. I clamped my eyes shut and waited for the impact to kill me.

"Hey, what were your shot counts?" A lanky male holding a clipboard entered the room, not even looking up from his clipboard. Not even looking me in the eyes. This must be an everyday thing for these people. A normal day.

"Crap, man, I'm sorry," the man with the bat, lowered his weapon and I released the breath I didn't realise I was holding. "It was my first roundup."