Nobles

Ch. 1: Is everyone ok?

Everything ached.

She could barely breathe; the burlap sack over her head held in place with a rope tied so tight around her head and through her mouth, gagging her efficiently, gnawed into the corners of her mouth and scratched the skin on her face. Her wrists were tied tightly behind her back and her ankles were bound thoroughly too.

They were tied to the point where she felt circulation was cut off, her hands were going numb. She was lying on her side and tried to writhe a little to see how much flexibility she had, but her body was aching too much for any movements.

The smell was horrible.

Dank and earthy, faint urine smells and sweat. She was not sure if the smell was the burlap sack or the truck she was bouncing around in the back of; somehow, she did not want to know. She could hear muffled sounds as the truck bumped on the road and she figured more people were in the truck, hopefully all of them.

She had never been that scared in her life. She knew she had been unconscious, because she had no recollection of how she ended up bound and gagged in the truck. All she remembered was their camp site being overrun by masked soldiers with automatic weapons, people screaming and yelling in a foreign language before everything went black.

Time had no meaning while she laid there. She could not tell if they drove for ten minutes or an hour, all she knew was how her joints hurt a little bit more with every bump in the road. She willed herself not to cry, crying would block her nose and with her mouth gagged breathing could become critically difficult.

She had given up on staying clearheaded, her mind was racing in all directions, the only thing she allowed herself to focus on was not crying. Whether she was going to die, get hurt, or dumped in a ditch she did not know. She entertained all the possibilities in her turmoil of thoughts, but nothing made sense, and she needed to focus on something; not crying seemed the right choice.

Finally, the truck stopped. She could hear a lot of people outside yelling in that foreign language again. The door to the truck was slammed open, she heard sounds of people being dragged out, and she waited her turn, it had to come. Still, she let out a yelp in surprise and pain when she was unceremoniously grabbed by rough hands and dragged to the end of the truck, where she was lifted up and carried outside.

It must still have been night because no light came through the burlap sack. She was placed on her knees on the cold ground and she felt somebody beside her. Her first thought was that it was an execution line. A single shot to the head and it would all be over, but if that was the objective of it, they could have shot them all at the camp site. She heard muffled crying beside her, the sounds were female, and she tried to guess who it was, but she had no idea.

After what seemed like an eternity, she was pulled up by the arms and more or less dragged across the ground and thrown into some house or shelter. She had no energy left and was aching so bad she just slumped on the ground, trying to find a position that would relieve some of her discomfort. She heard the others being thrown in too and then men talking together over their heads.

"Listen!" a male voice proclaimed in English with a strong accent. "We will untie you, stay quiet, and do not try anything or we will not hesitate to shoot you."

In a sense she was uplifted by the thought of being untied which she found strange; she had no intentions of being grateful to her captors in any way. But when the ropes were untied and she could move her legs and arms again, and she felt circulation return to her extremities, she was grateful, not as much as when the rope around her head and the burlap sack was removed.