Forever Captive

Chapter 13

They closed the flap on the door, too, so I spend an unknown amount of time mumbling to myself in my assistant's voice to make sure I remember it while I painstakingly work on whatever extravagant and clumsy knot they thought would hold me. 

I finally feel it come loose enough to slip my hands through without moving the tent's support and lean my head back against the cold metal with a satisfied smile. Good. Part one is done.

I wait silently for what feels like an eternity until I hear the breathing and occasional shuffling footsteps outside of my door fade away. I stand up quickly, ignoring the searing pain from my bullet wounds in my abdomen as I bend it, many of the metal bits still lodged in my skin. Lovely. I can't heal if they're not out, not unless I want to wait something like a week for the flesh to push it all out on its own. 

I can worry about that later. I silently stand up as I notice the darts and guns lined up in a neat row, plenty to shoot each and every man if I don't miss more than... four. I know there shouldn't be more than fifty, since there weren't that many to begin with. The dart gun is fairly silent, but it has to be reloaded every two shots. I also don't know if I have a way to carry them, and I'm truly a horrible shot on a good day. Hopefully this will be easier than I'm planning. That's how people make their decisions, right? Plan for harder things so easier ones are easier to manage?

"Fucking hell, if they wanted me as a soldier, they'd have trained me as one. I'm just a shield for more important people." I whisper aggravatedly under my breath, quietly loading two of the guns before I find a bag and haphazardly gather and dump the darts into them. They're capped, so all I should need to do is hit the men in a place it's hard for them to reach. They're all just wearing standard t-shirts or tank tops. It shouldn't be that hard to hit the middle of their back. With as strong as the sedatives likely are, even a quarter of the dose should put them to sleep. I'd prefer if they had enough to die, though. I'm getting very tired of humankind, and the last thing I need is for them to ever wake up again... my previous statement to my assistant be damned.

They pissed me off.

I have two handgun-like guns that don't kick too much. This should work. I just need to get to the radio with about twenty seconds spare to get my message across.

I take a deep breath in and hold the guns up as I stare expectantly at the tent flap. Every time somebody moves away, somebody else comes back. Half of the times, they'll look in to see if I'm still there. That also includes them occasionally hitting me or some variety of pain. 

So far, there's been four of them. Evidently, their leader thinks that one of them alone is enough, or maybe he can't spare that much manpower. If my internal clock is about right, they change every hour.

This will make the fifth, which means there's a fifty-fifty chance that he will also look in. I'd love if he did.

To my surprise, he doesn't. If they change every hour, then that means it's been long enough that they're probably getting their servings of their rations. He's muttering to himself but I have no desire to listen and discover what he's saying, not when part of the tent is pulled taunt against his back because he sat down. He's muttering, though. I have to hope he's alone and there's nobody else nearby. 

I let a very slow breath out as I crouch down to his level and hold the gun about an inch away from the middle of his back. If it hurts, which it most likely will, he'll pull forward. I have no idea how long it will take to affect a regular human, but I also don't know if he will know what happened, considering that I'm shooting him from the inside. 

I begrudgingly sit down and slowly press myself against the support of the tent that I am supposed to be tied against, hiding my bag and the rope both from the sight of the door as I place my left hand behind me in an effort to look restrained as I aim my right hand from my new position. 

It hits him just below where my eyes were, but— to my surprise— he doesn't lurch forward at all. Is he distracted? What is he doing where he wouldn't feel a needle dipping into his skin, shot from a gun less than a foot away from him?

I frown as the shape against the tent continues to move for a while, but it pulls away just enough for the needle to fall into the sand next to me. His breathing is slow. He sagged forward, then? He's out. 

Now's my chance.

I quietly grab another dart from the bag and load it into the weapon, cocking it back. When I run out of darts in one of the guns, I'll just have to drop it so I can continue to reload the weapon in the other hand. 

I slowly slink out of the tent. It's deserted. At the very least, there's nobody directly nearby. There's light from a fire not that far from here and I can hear rowdy voices, but that isn't the direction I need to go in. This may be easier than I thought.

God, I fucking hope so.

I absentmindedly check the pulse of the man once I realize he's not breathing. To my relief, the dart worked rather quickly. Twenty minutes? Twenty minutes to kill a man, at least. That gives me about forty more if nobody else walks by here. I've got four shots. He's got a gun next to him and a now spilled metal tray of their provided MREs that was in his hands. He was distracted because he was eating? He must've been hungry. I wonder if they're already lower on rations than they should be. Or maybe he was just walking around too much. I'm getting sidetracked. 

I slide his rifle away from where it was resting on the ground next to him, haphazardly sliding it onto my back. If it comes to it, I'll just start shooting. I absolutely despise guns, but I'd also rather prefer that innocent, clueless men didn't die in a war over my useless ass.

They were running out of things to use me for, anyway. Knowing the government I grew up with, though, they'll go to war just because something was stolen from them. I'd rather just pretend that I'm dead and float onto shore of some random place. At least I could claim amnesia, maybe. I like that idea more than a cage, as much as I like a cage more than what I'm currently doing.

I try to step in the coarse, still hot sand as quietly as I can while I walk behind the tents that hide me from the view of the occasional soldiers eating near their cots. I manage to make it to the large, green tent that I need to be at, but I'm on the outside. 

It also doesn't help that a very familiar voice is talking to the radio. Of course he'd get in the way. What are the chances that I have to subdue the leader when I'm just trying... Yeah, I guess that's pretty good chances. Fuck.