A Partisan's Fight - COMPLETED!

Chapter Four

Aldrik didn't say a word. He just drove. There was too much going through his head to speak. He wasn't going to draw attention to their vehicle until he was well away from the containment camp. He white knuckled the steering wheel. His nostrils were flared. And his brows were knit together. He was the perfect example of disappointment, anger, and betrayal.

As soon as they were out of view, he slammed his fist against the steering wheel. "What the hell, Mina! I told you to stay in the truck!" He yelled at her. He'd never raised his voice to her. Never swore with her around either. Her choices had quickly changed both things.

"You disobeyed me!" He glanced over at her, noticing her staring out the front window, still horrified from what she'd seen. Good! She needed to see the reality of all of this. Was all he could think about. "Do you not grasp how bad this was, Mina? You could have been killed! I should have slapped you back there to show them who was in charge. You will not come with me anymore."

"They just shot her. She... she couldn't carry everything." Mina mumbled, completely oblivious to what he was saying. "She was just trying to pick up the boxes that she had dropped."

Glancing over at her, Aldrik swallowed hard. He sighed. "At least they killed her. It could have been so much worse."

"Worse?" Mina finally looked at him. "They shot her! She is dead, Aldrik!"

"I know." He nodded, thinking of the worse horrors he'd seen. "Last week, they beat someone to death because they were too exhausted to carry a bucket of water."

"What?" Mina stared wide-eyed at him. He could see her turn her face away from him. Her voice held a level of judgmental disgust. "And you did nothing."

"What was I supposed to do, Mina? They would kill me. You do not go against orders." He understood why she was so shell-shocked from the situation, but she needed to know the devastating truth of what happened if you stood up against rules. Laws that were set in place to make a more pure country. A country that he wasn't sure he wanted to be a part of. What good was making a country more pure if there were no morals?

He could see her fighting with what to say. He couldn't say he disagreed with her there. It was hard to know exactly what the right thing to do was. Risking your life for someone seemed heroic and the right thing to do, but with the current situation they were in risking one life to save only one life seemed like a waste. There were thousands of lives to save. He couldn't waste his one life so simply. Even that sounded wrong though.

Slowly straightening in her seat, Mina's red-rimmed eyes met his briefly. "It is disgusting! Why... Why would they do that, Aldrik? I do not understand. That little boy they slapped was just a little boy. Why would we want to hurt innocent people? What makes us better?"

He didn't know. He honestly did not know the answer to her question. Shaking his head, he glanced over at her. "I do not know, Mina. I do not know why we are considered better. I do not know why things are happening the way that they are."

He couldn't read her expression. She looked blank, like she wasn't sure how to respond to him. He wanted to be angry with her. To yell at her so she knew that what she did wasn't okay. But somehow, someway, none of that seemed to be an appropriate response any longer. The way she was reacting to all of this was not how he completely expected her to. It caught him off guard.

"We have to do something, Aldrik." She stared out the window. Her voice was much quieter than usual.

"Mina, we cannot. Not if we want to live. We have to survive." He shook his head in response. She was crazy if she thought she could do something to change what was happening. This wasn't something that could be changed with just two people. They'd need an army at the very least. Even then he wasn't sure if they'd be able to stop all of this.