Night of the Alphas

Chapter 8

We left early the next morning. I was 99% sure that we would make it out alive. I had my gun, Zane had his blade, Miranda had her beer bottle, and Charity had armed herself with her heaviest medical textbook. We were invincible.

"So, what's the plan?" Zane asked once we got close to the wall.

"Bold of you to assume I have one," I responded.

"What?! What are we supposed to do then?" Miranda said uneasily.

"Better question: Why are we taking orders from a 13-year-old?" Charity said.

"I don't know. But that's a problem for later. Come on, let's go," I whisper-shouted.

We came out of our hiding place and searched for a weak spot in the wall. It took us hours, but eventually we did find one. We slipped over one at a time, trying to be as quiet as possible.

When I fell to the ground on the other side of the wall, what I saw made me stop in my tracks. The whole city was in ruins. Barricades lined the streets, all of the buildings were covered in graffiti, and homeless families sat on almost every street corner. And that was just the beginning. The more we walked through Charlotte, the more extreme the abnormalities got.

We were going to take a shortcut through the hood, but once we saw all of the messed up garbage happening there, we decided it would be better to take the long way around. For starters, there was a full out AFM shooting going on. Barricades had been set up in the middle of the road, and some police officers were hiding behind it, reloading their guns. A few civilians were firing at the Alpha Freedom soldiers as well, but they were losing. The four of us sprinted away from the scene and ducked behind a dumpster

"We have to help them!" I panted.

"We can't," Charity said. "They'll kill us the second we step foot on the battleground."

"How do you know?"

Miranda grabbed my arm. "Adrian, I trained in AFM for three weeks. That's one of the first things they taught us. If somebody steps on the playing field, they're part of the battle, too."

"Our best bet is to run," Zane said. "Run and don't look back."

I wiped a tear out of my eye. "Okay."

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Zane said. "Don't cry."

"I'm trying not to," I said, sniffling. I couldn't stop thinking about my dad. It could've been him out there. The more I thought about it, the more the tears kept flowing.

"Do you need a hug?" Miranda asked.

I collapsed into her arms and sobbed. I didn't care that Charity and Zane were watching. I wiped my tears on her shirt. She patted me on the back, trying to comfort me. "It's okay. I know you want to help. But your place just isn't here. We came to help Zaria, remember? As long as we make it out of here with her, we'll be fine. We can do it."

I looked up at her. "You think so?"

"I know so."

I backed up a little bit and wiped my nose. "Sorry about your shirt," I said, looking at the tear stains.

She chuckled. "I don't care. It's just an AFM shirt."

Charity smiled. "Come on, let's get out of here."

We continued through the city, looking at all of the chaos happening around us. We tried our best to stay under the radar of AFM, but they weren't making it easy. They had put guards on every street corner. They even took it to the next level by setting up checkpoints at various parts of the city (which we avoided like the plague). After what seemed like forever, I saw the entrance to Miranda and Zaria's neighborhood.