Waiting for Amber Skyy

Chapter 15

Everything was blissful, but only for the moment.

A bullet whistled past me, just barely missing me by inches. I let out a squeal as more bullets shot towards me, and I couldn't move quick enough. One went through the white clothes I wore, missing my skin. Another grazed my side, making me wince and falter in my flight. I fell a little bit but flared my wings and caught myself last minute. A bullet seared through a part of my wings and I screamed. I tumbled through the air, and noticed my body aiming towards the barbed wire on the fence. I grabbed my head and hugged my wings close to me as I scraped through it. The barbs tore at my skin, making my cries louder than ever as I crashed against the fence and felt the fire surge through me again. I couldn't scream. I tried to but the pain was too much.

My body slammed against the earth and I moaned in pain. I rolled over and tried to push myself up, but stopped when I heard their shouts close by. I was dead. I was over. There's no escaping now.

But something was different. Overlapping wires that hummed were blocking their path. That only meant one thing.

I was free.

But, I also ripped through an electric, barb-wire fence with just a thin piece of cloth they call clothes. So pain was the main thing I was registering for the moment.

I grunted and turned my face towards their voices. My vision was blurry but I could make out the group of wolves running off... away from me. What the hell? I pushed myself up on my arms and took in shuddering gasps of air. I had cuts everywhere; but not a lot of them were deep. Some were just scratches. The ones on my legs and sides were the worst, making my white skin red.

I have to get out of here. I hugged my sides as I shakily stood, trying not to keel over from the pain. I felt a surge of fire from the collar again, but it was minimal, almost as if the electric fence overpowered it. I gasped as it shocked me again, falling to my knees and coughing up something metallic: blood. Oh great, now how am I going to get it off? I need to think these things through more.

Suddenly, a klaxon started blaring and I covered my ears in pain. I could barely hear their shouts over the wailing, and I knew I had to get going. But where? I can't fly, nor can I really run!

"Send out your best men! Go! Go!" I heard somebody shout and I felt a bullet graze my hair. I let out a soft shriek and clapped my mouth.

No, I have to get going!

I let out a shuddering breath, feeling another surge erupt from the collar, but I attempted to dismiss it. I had to get out of there. After glancing around at the nearly empty, brown landscape, I started running.

There were no trees for me to hide in, only a few cacti here and there. There were rolling hills just like I've seen in movies, but they were brown and mottled in desert green. I was in the desert. The desert. I had no chance of hiding from them. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears, but I kept going. No way was I going to stop.

After a couple miles, my legs started to burn and I couldn't feel the blood drip down my legs. My feet scratched against the earth, which wasn't smooth I tell you. I'm pretty sure I ran over millions of those mini cacti already, but I kept urging myself to keep running. The sky was fading to night, the horizon purple as the stars started to twinkle into vision. Maybe they won't catch me in the dark?

Suddenly a beam of light shone a few miles ahead of me, making me freeze in place, and I could hear the distinct sound of a helicopter. The light grazed over the ground, looking for movement, before the helicopter started moving again. I glanced around, hearing for any other helicopters, but thankfully it was just the one. Oh thank god. If they had more than one, I was pretty sure I'd be wolf meat.

I began to run again, in the opposite direction of the helicopter towards the east. I squinted and tried to dodge the cacti and other prickly plants on the ground, but it was tough. Once the wings started developing, my eyes became better. I could see further and clearer, just like a bird's. I stepped sideways at the last minute to barely scrape by a cactus, stepping on something hard and limping a bit. Seething, I continued to run, hurt foot or not. I had to get out of here... but... where am I? I thought of the states and where a desert would be, and all I could think of was the Southwest. Arizona, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico... I started to name off the states in my head when I felt a shooting pain in my chest.

No!

The pain turned to gasps and I felt my chest tighten instantly. I couldn't breathe. I collapsed onto the dirt, gripping the cloth and tried to calm my breathing. But it wasn't helping. My gasps turned into wheezing, like the wind was knocked out of me. The pain was unbearable, like an elephant was on top of me and was using me as a bed. Nothing, I couldn't get any air in. I wheezed, noticing the sky getting even darker around the edges of my vision. No! I must... fight... I grabbed the nearest thing, which of course was dirt, and closed my eyes to focus on my breathing. Those freaks never supplied me with an inhaler of some sort, they just let me suffer with no oxygen until I calmed down. I could feel the electrodes tear against my skin as they monitored me in this state. I thrashed around, wheezing at them to help me. Their cold, dead eyes watched me writhe on the ground, with no care in the world. They knew it was a flaw, and they had no intent of fixing it. They would just throw me out and use another mutant, since I was just an experiment. A lab rat. I was nothing.

I opened my eyes only to see a small section of stars, the blackness swallowing up my vision. My heart was pounding in my ears so loud, I couldn't hear anything. My wheezing turned into a faint whistle, and I knew that I was done for now. The tightness was getting worse, making my body shiver from lack of oxygen. My heart kept trying to work, but there was no way I was getting out of this one. I was dead for sure, no matter what. Even when I tried to control my breathing, nothing was going to work. They were going to find my body there, in the middle of the desert, or wolves were going to eat me. I was done for; I was over. I felt my head lull back, but I was already gone before I hit the ground.