Kingdom Of Heavens - The 100 [1]

Chapter 7

I woke up late the next morning, my head still pounding slightly from the dehydrated state that my tears had left me in from the night before. I hadn't eaten or drinken since the culling, and I was surprised I was even able to sleep for as long as I did. The clock wall displayed the time 12:04pm, and I nearly jumped when I sat up and saw my father sitting at our small table. Usually he left by seven in the morning for his council duties. Next to him was just the bottle of scotch he kept around but almost never touched. The glasses for it were still on the silver tray where the bottle normally resided, and the bottle itself, as large as it was, was already half emptied. I could have sworn it was full the night before.

I froze for a bit. I had never seen my father drink this much before, and I only knew of angry and dangerous drunks from stories John used to tell me of his mother. I didn't know if my father was one of these kind of drunks, and I also didn't want to find out. I had planned on laying back down, and pretend to still be sleeping until he left, no matter how long that would be when he spoke up without turning around to look at me.

"They're alive." His voice sounded foreign to me, it lacked the hardness it had adopted in the recent years. I didn't know what he meant, and my silence must have communicated this to him. "The 100, they're alive. We got a radio transmission this morning."

A smile quickly danced across my face. Alive. John Murphy was alive. And better yet, we had radio communication with the 100. After all this time, I would finally be able to talk to him. Without a second thought, my feet quickly carried themselves out of the room without a second glance at my father.

I was about half way to the control room when I passed by the station where the culling had happened. Out of curiosity, I poked my head in. There were so many people there, all mourning the loss of their loved ones. At the back of the room was a table set up with many objects on it, including my grandmother's tree. My eyes searched the crowd in search of her, but all I could see were the faces of those whose families had been lost that dreadful night. My own joy was quickly forgotten as I walked down the stairs into the center of the room.

As I walked, I noticed some eyes following me but didn't quite know why. There was an accusing feeling in the air around me, and I all of a sudden felt very uncomfortable there. I kept my eyes down, not wanting to make eye contact with any of them. What was I doing here?

"Venus?" I looked up and my grandmother was standing right in front of me. Her face looked so sad and mournful, and I could see that we shared the same sadness for the souls lost the previous night. Tears threatened to leap from my eyes as my brain put pieces together. 320 of our own people were killed and for what? The ground was survivable, the 100 were still alive. We wasted 320 lives for nothing. "Oh baby." My grandmother wrapped her arms around me, and I allowed the tears to slip from my eyes and roll down my cheeks.

We stood there, rocking slightly until I felt a small hand on my back. I wiped away the tears from my eyes and turned to look at the hand's owner. Gracie, the girl who had been suffering from chronic oxygen deprivation. The girl whose father was the first to volunteer for the culling. I could tell she was trying to be brave, but her red eyes gave away the fact that she had recently been crying. I knelt down so I'd be at eye level with the young girl. She didn't speak, but just stood there staring at me.

"Your father-" I choked for a second on my own tears that I was trying to hold back for her. "Your father was a very brave man. And he loved you very much." She just kept staring at me, and I began to wonder how many times she had already heard that very generalized statement. Suddenly, and without warning, the young girl wrapped her arms around me and cried into my shirt. I was never too comfortable with kids, or with people crying, but it was almost like an instinct that my arms wrapped themselves around her and rubbed her back. My own tears came back out as I thought about what this girl must be going through, and there was nothing I could say to make it better. Her father, and everyone else in the culling, had died for nothing.