The End of Her World

Chapter Sixeen- A Killer in the Hold

Jason stepped off the chopper, his legs wobbling from grief. His rifle was leaden in his arms. The door on the far side of the bunker banged open and Michelle stormed in, flanked by two masked soldiers. “Where’s the children?” she demanded.

“Gone, ma’am. We failed,” answered the sergeant behind Jason.

“Fool!” Michelle took a step forward and smacked him across the face. Blood dripped down the sergeant’s face and he charged her, eyes blitzing with yellow fury. Horrified, Jason readied his weapon. The two soldiers at Michelle’s side fired two quick pops. The sergeant fell without a sound. Michelle dusted her hands off, joy radiating from her.

“Well done,” she informed Jason, her voice as cold and sharp as a razor blade. “You killed the children, I presume?”

“No, the guards did,” growled Jason. Anger bubbled in his stomach.

Michelle frowned. “Those children are a threat to the government of the United States. They are terrorists. You should have been the one to pull the trigger.”

“You’re telling me that you are still with the US government and given the chance you would have killed your own son and my daughters?”

Michelle nodded, pleased. “That is correct. If you weren’t such a piece of white shit, you would have realized that already, stupid ass cracker. Our whole mission was not to help those raggedy children, but to kill them.”

A redc wave of anger surged behind Jason’s eyes. An unrefined shout tore from his lips and he hurled himself forward, and struck Michelle thunderously across the face. She tumbled backward, and Jason leveled his gun at her face, prepared to kill. Instead, from the hem of her dress, a metal glinted a gun was produced from nowhere. There was a bvang, and a blast of pain sent Jason to the floor, a rapidly increasing pool of blood collecting underneath him. His whole vision flickered. Pain seared as darkness in his chest, an icy coldness began to spread through him. Michelle was long gone, he lay alone, bleeding his life off on the freezing ground of a hanger.

Sarah. Katrina. Jennifer. The three names bounced around inside his agony weary skull. He remembered bright dresses, the glitter of the ring on Jennifer’s finger, the ecstasy he felt as she accepted his offer to marry him. He recalled cradling Katrina’s newborn body in his strong arms, still in his military fatigues from his tour in Iraq a day before she had been born.

Sarah was the last set of images that fluttered hesitantly through his mind. There was blood everywhere as Jennifer pleaded for something to stop the pain. Sarah laying in one corner, crying as Jason held Jennifer as the life bled out of her. He still remembered the smell of blood clinging to his clothes.

A single silver tear traced down Jason’s face, and he gave up the fight and fell into the endless mansion of unconsciousness. He was gone.