Wartorn

Chapter 5

Picture of Brooke to the side >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A wave of grief passes over me. My best friend was in there. Gwen was killed. Why? What do they gain from killing innocent children? None of us are old enough to be recruited, and the days of child soldiers are long over. It would have been years before any one of us would have set foot on the battlefield. Yet now we find ourselves in the middle of the wreckage, a battlefield in its own right. What they are doing is sick and twisted, yet they do not seem to care. They’ll kill as they wish, maim anything in their way, and all for naught.

Nothing ever came from war but grief and loss, everything that I’m experiencing right now. I sit down amidst the dust and ash, and let the tears fall down my cheeks. I don’t care that both boys are watching. Mother always said that crying never helps, but it does. It helps me to deal with the heartache, to dull the pain. It helps me to cope. Dante tentatively reaches out a hand and places it on my shoulder, but I turn away from the gesture. Some things you just have to deal with on your own.

Grief touches people in many ways. Some, like Dante, ignore the trauma and hope it just ebbs away. Others, like my mother, seem to be in another world, sort of like an emotional escape. And then there’s me, who’s always had to take responsibility during times of sorrow. Grief makes me stronger, gives me the will to carry on. Makes me vow that whoever died will not die in vain. I will not let Gwen die in vain. All these lives lost will not be for nothing. Somehow, I will make their deaths count. I will make a difference in this war, even if it means dying a martyr. This war must be stopped, before it wipes our existence off the face of the Earth, as if we never really existed.

I stand and turn to the boys. They are trying to find a way out of the fence. Boys. So primitive at times.

“Boys! You do realise the gate was guarded at all times?” I yell.

“Point?” Dante yells back.

“The gate was never locked.”

Dante’s face lights up as he gets my gist, and he runs over to the gate, opening the gate with a simple push. During his happy dance, he trips over the fallen body of the guard. My initial amusement at his idiotic behaviour is replaced with dread. No one escaped death. The body… wait. There’s something that just doesn’t fit. Dante is talking to me, but I tune it out. Then it hits me. Everything around here is charred and blackened from being burned by the bombs. But the body of this guard is still completely intact, and strangely uncharred. Dante is looking at me with concern.

“Are you alright, Sonya?”

I look up and survey my surroundings. Debris litters everywhere. Nothing was bomb-proof, except the shipping container. I notice a trap door lying open.

“Dante, was there by any chance a bomb shelter?” I ask, pieces of this puzzle already starting to fall into place.

“Yes. Very sophisticated technology, but it was poor planning on our part. The entrance was outside, so you couldn’t get to it during a raid without dying from exposure to the bombs. Why do you ask?” he replies. I don’t respond. I’ve formed a theory that the guards were in the shelter, perfectly safe from the bombs, yet they’ve come out for some reason. Something is eluding me though. I just can’t figure out what it is.

“Sonya! Earth to Sonya!”

“Will you just shut up a moment? I’m thinking,” I snap, and the tone of my voice combined with my facial expression scares him silent. I examine the body from afar, not wanting to disturb the corpse. Logan wanders up to the corpse and pulls up its shirt.

“Logan!” I scold.

“Look! He’s got a second belly button!” he exclaims excitedly. I take a look, and in a way, he’s right. There’s a bullet hole right though the stomach of the dead guard. I’d be quick to blame it on passing soldiers, if it weren’t for the empty single shot pistol lying on the ground beside the body. Something happened that this guy was happy to shoot himself in the stomach. I cover Logan’s ears.

“That guy killed himself,” I say, motioning to the gun. “I want to know why.”

“I’ll take Logan, you search the corpse. Not something you want Logan to see, right?” he says, and I nod, handing Logan over to him.

“Let’s play a game,” Dante says, and Logan is immediately enthusiastic. Dante leads Logan away from me. Perfect. I make my way over to the trap door. I descend the ladder carefully, but, being the clumsy person I am, I slip on the last step. Smooth, Sonya.

The small room doesn’t look like it was built for many people. Another bad case of planning on the safehouse’s part. Everything is plain. Only one thing grabs my attention- a letter sitting on the small round table. I scoop it up and read it. My suspicions are confirmed. The guards weren’t there to keep soldiers out- they were there to keep us in, like mice in a cage. When the time was right, they were to hide in the shelter, and survive the bombings. But you can’t have that many men escape and not raise suspicion- so they were told to kill themselves to add to the believability of the whole escapade. But they were only to kill themselves after they made sure every single person was dead. That means that of the thousands of children seeking refuge in that house, only three of us have made it out alive. All because of some government hoax to blame the deaths of the children on the enemy.

I begin to make my way up the ladder, when a small, insignificant red light lights up in the corner of the room. A camera. I smirk.

They’re watching.