War For The World

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The next few moments of Joans life consisted primarily of kicking and grabbing.

Dropped into a flurry of screaming, Joan focused on staying afloat. It was difficult, and she was at times forced to fight for her place at the top. Terrified faces flashed by as arms clawed at Joan, vying to pull her down to their own doomed level.

Joan kicked and squirmed atop the sea of bodies. At one point, someone below her managed to grab hold of her ankle and she sank somewhat down. Joan gritted her teeth, and after a few good kicks down into the depths she felt the hand let go and she was once more pulling herself back to the surface.

She considered for a brief moment crying out for Alex. Doing so however proved to be a strain on her vocal chords and her voice was quickly lost amongst the wailing of the damned.

Joan was beginning to panic. Panicking of course had not been part of the plan, the two spending a whole afternoon around making sure neither would crack under the terrific pressure. Nevertheless, Joan was scared.

The claustrophobic nature of the Martian net was getting to her and she was finding it more and more challenging to breathe, which is why when she finally spotted Alex amongst the sea of limbs and screams her heart leapt and her fire returned.

Alex seemed to be similarly struggling. His nose was bleeding profusely from the impact and people beneath looked to have grabbed hold of his backpack.

The two locked eyes for a brief moment and Alex nodded. Despite the bleeding, his eyes seemed stern. Focused.

Now came the part Joan was dreading, the waiting.

She tried to stay focused on staying afloat. There was nothing else she could do at that point. Sooner or later their suicide mission would bare its teeth, but for now she simply had to survive.

Her time spent stuck in the large net was horrific. Joan couldn't bear the thought of her own son locked up in this hell hole. HE was so young, barely capable of fending for himself. Joan began to work herself into an emotional frenzy as she imagined her boy scared and alone surrounded by all these people.

She caught a glimpse of down below as she continue to straddle herself above the pile of people. She gaged, immediately righting herself and her vision in an attempt to see as less as possible.

Countless bodies lay buried at the bottom of the net. They were undoubtedly dead, entire people squeezed and smooshed as if they were a disregarded piece of gum on the sidewalk. The further down you got the more people seemed covered in dried blood, the more desperate they seemed to reach the top in order to not meet the same grizzly fate.

A noise from above came in to break Joan from her terrified trance. Alex noticed the same sound, and the two stared up tentatively for what they knew would almost certainly proceed.

Thankfully just as they'd predicted in the planning stage, a large metal pole began to lower itself down into the net.

The screams increased and people became more frantic. Joan could feel the squirming and writhing underneath her increase tenfold and she almost lost her balance, mere inches away from tumbling down into the sea of screams.

Instead, she managed to right herself at the last second. No matter what lay ahead of her, Joan was willing to trade being up there to being in here.

At the bottom of the pole sat a rather small claw. It was metallic and smooth, a simple C shape end that seemed to scan the people, swivelling around as it eyed up its targets.

Now was their moment. Joan began to do what could only be described as crowd surfing, swimming overtop the people in a mad dash flurry to reach the pole. Her actions were contradictory to the majority of the net, and she found herself having to fight against the waves of people beneath her determined to avoid the claws grip.