You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive

Part 10

Friday and Saturday were the longest days of my life. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I could only think. I thought about all the ways the plan could fail. I could get shot breaking into the generator room. I could fail to get the damned Shield to go down. Someone could get the Shield back up before the buses crossed the threshold. The Battle Pods would be manned by Harlanites loyal to the city, and would thus gun down the buses. My old friends wouldn't be able take control of the buses and get them out of Harlan, or worse, they wouldn't be able to get everyone on the buses.

The thought that haunted me the most, however, was that twenty-three Baytonians, including all of the children, hadn't been found, and would therefore be left behind in Harlan. It was nearly a quarter of the whole village. My plan meant leaving them behind. I would never be able to forgive myself for that, and I doubted that anyone else would be able to forgive me either. Nicole would have to live without Summer for the rest of her life, knowing that Summer was alive in the evil city and had no memory of her at all. Emma and Dean would lose three children – Madison, Danny and Lucy. Their lives would never be the same again. I'd broken up their family. Everyone looked up to old Hank, the oldest and wisest man in the village. Katelyn's emerald green eyes were the envy of Bayton. Little Eleanor was the sweetest girl imaginable. But no one would ever see them again because I'd given up trying to find them.

I cursed myself. I no longer believed I was rescuing anyone for the right reasons. It seemed to me more and more like I was just trying to end my own misery. I won't have to suffer the scorn and hatred of the people I love the most once they are safely back in Bayton and I'm all alone in the wilderness without them. I prayed that once they were safely out of Harlan and out of sight, they'd be safely out of my mind too.

*

It was eleven o'clock. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get into the generator dressed in the red uniform of a Battle Pod pilot, I would need a yellow engineer's uniform. I went to the locker room adjacent to the steaming room. The steaming room was a place where workers went to sit in a room full of steam to refresh themselves. I couldn't understand how sitting in steam would be refreshing, but it was very popular with the Harlanites. There were steaming rooms all over the city.

I had struck gold. There was a chief engineer in the steaming room. I put his uniform on. It was a little too large for me, but I was beyond caring about small things like that. I could now walk right into the generator room without anyone taking a second glance. The problem I had was knowing what I needed to do once I had gotten in there. I didn't know how the generator worked, so therefore I wouldn't know how to turn it off.

While making my way to the generator room, I noticed an alarm point. I set the alarm off. A loud klaxon began blaring out its angry tones for the whole Station to hear. I ran towards the generator room.

I found a guard running in the opposite direction and stopped him. "I need your gun," I said to him.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I am not allowed to hand it over..."

"Damn it, I am your superior officer. Give me your gun," I yelled at the unsuspecting guard. He hesitated, but much to my surprise he gave me his weapon. I was lucky, he was not. I fired at him.

I was a liar, a cheater, and now I was a killer too. I said when I arrived in Harlan that I'd do whatever it takes to get my friends out of this evil city. I never expected that killing would be involved. But killing was just one of the things I'd have to do today.

I continued my journey to the generator room, setting off a few more alarm points. I figured that the more alarms I set off, the more guards that would be sent to those positions, the fewer there would be to deal with at the generator room. It seemed like a calculated risk.