The Monsters in The Shadows

ONE

I LAID MY HEAD BACK ON THE seat, cringing as the stupid plastic band tightened around my wrist, digging into the skin there.

My arms felt as though they might pop out of their sockets.

The PSFs had tied my arms behind my back with the band, and trying to stretch it just made the plastic tighter.

There were about a hundred of us kids packed tightly together on that bus, about four kids each in a seat.

The windows were foggy due to extreme body heat, but you could still see a bit of the outside.

The bus was silent, other than the quiet sniffles from the kids in the back.

A girl around my age with long, messy dark hair and pretty green eyes sat the closest to the window.

The girl was still in her pajamas, and her feet were bare.

They were streaked with mud.

I stared at my own feet, grateful that they were covered by comfortable sneakers.

Not having food for hours was starting to get to me. My head felt like it was stuffed with cottonballs.

The other kids on the bus looked like zombies; they obviously got way less sleep than I had.

The bus vibrated, snapping me out of my daze.

The Psi Special Forces men and women stared out the window, at something we couldn't see.

The dark-haired girl gasped slightly as she looked out the window, and I leaned over the brunette next to me to take a look.

That's when I saw the glowing silver fence.

It towered over the bus, it's size so frightening that I had to look away.

More men and women dressed in black jogged on either side of the bus as the gates opened.

When the bus stopped, everyone froze as the gates closed, flinching as they locked with a loud crack.

I closed my eyes, slowly breathing in and out as I tried to calm myself.

"You will stand and exit in an orderly fashion!"

My eyes snapped open.

A tall man wearing a black poncho stood in the front of the bus. The hood of the poncho was pulled over his face.

"You will be divided into groups of ten, and you will be brought in for testing. Do not try to run. Do not speak. Do not do anything other than what is asked of you. Failure to follow these instructions will be met with punishment."

Punishment?

I glanced at the dark-haired girl, and she stared back at me with the same look of confusion.

"Go screw yourself!" a boy from the back yelled.

Everyone turned around with wide eyes.

A PSF with fire red hair slammed the butt of her gun into the teenager's mouth. I gasped as blood sprayed from his mouth, dripping onto his white hoodie.

If his hands weren't tied behind his back, he would have been able to block the hit. But he couldn't.

The dark-haired girl and I continued to watch him, even though the PSFs were taking kids off the bus, four at a time.

Then the boy looked up at us.

I swallowed hard.

The boy nodded at the dark-haired girl, and then smiled at her. And then at me.

I felt my blood turn cold.

Next thing I knew, I was trying not to fall down the slippery bus steps as I was escorted off the bus. It was pouring outside. The dark-haired girl fell onto her knees as she exited the bus.

I wanted to wrap my arms around myself, but the plastic band stayed locked in place. I wish I had a coat. I thought.

The dark-haired girl shivered as she looked up to the clouds.

The boy with the bloody mouth was the last one off the bus, right behind a teen girl with blond hair. I turned my back to the boy, not wanting to see his face.

"Stop!" A PSF barked suddenly.

The blond girl was running toward the gates.

I wasn't surprised that someone would have the courage to try to run, but it all happened too fast. I turned to see what made her run.

The same PSF that broke the boy's face was helping him off the bus. I saw him say something to her. His face was strangely calm.

I wasn't prepared for what happened next.

The woman let go of the boy's arm, took her gun out of its holster, stuck the barrel in her mouth, and pulled the trigger.

She didn't even blink.

An explosion of blood, hair, and what looked like brains splattered onto the bus.

Everyone screamed, including me.

The runaway blond girl was tackled to the ground.

The woman fell to ground.

I resisted the urge to faint.

"Run! What are you doing? Run--run!" The boy with the broken face yelled.

But I couldn't run.

I just stood there, screaming.

My clothes clung to me, soaked from the rain.

One of the PSFs told us to sit on the ground and stay down.

"Orange!" Someone yelled. "We have a situation at the main gate. I need restraints for an Orange--"

Orange? I didn't understand what the PSF meant, but by the sound of it, he definitely didn't mean the fruit.

I wondered if the boy made the woman kill herself somehow, but I pushed that thought aside.

There's no way to prove that...right?

When I looked up, I saw a soldier paint an enormous X on the back of the boy's shirt with orange spray paint.

There was a strange black mask covering the boy's mouth, preventing him from speaking.

It looked sort of like a muzzle you put on a dog.

--------------

The soldiers dragged us through the the camp, toward a building with a paper sign labeled INFIRMARY.

I remember seeing rows of wooden cabins. I remember how each cabin looked like someone threw them up in two seconds.

There were more kids there, each kid wearing a white uniform. On the back of each uniform was a different colored X written in either green, blue, yellow, red, or orange.

The kids with the yellow, red, or orange Xs had metal cuffs around their feet and hands.

The Oranges had the muzzles on their faces.

When we got into the building, they cut the plastic bands off our hands. There were doctors and nurses walking up and down the freezing hallways.

The smell of rubbing alcohol burned my nose.

Half of us kids were sent down the right end of the hallway, while the other half was sent to the left of the hall.

Absolute terror shot through me.
Were are we going? What's going on?

I silently prayed for nothing bad to happen, when I was pushed into a one of them rooms in the hallway.

Panicking, I looked back swiftly to see who pushed me.

Instead, I saw the dark-haired girl holding hands with another young girl with blond hair.

I turned back to observe my new surroundings as the doors behind me closed.