Herdenmord - ONC2021

Rescue

"Aaden!"

Dimi's scream ripped my heart the way it ripped her vocal chords. She lunged for the wall. Jamie intercepted her, pulling her into a hug and swinging her to face the other direction. Dimi fought like a tiger to get free, to get to Aaden, but Jamie set her face hard and didn't budge.

I couldn't move. Aaden's sudden disappearance shocked me to stillness. Quan was leaning over the wall, yelling at the horses below. He threw his shovel at them, screaming incoherently, but pulled back quickly when a second horse jumped for him, its huge teeth snapping closed in the air below his chin.

I broke from my shock and stepped to the wall, looking over. If Aaden was still alive we could...

I thought I was okay until my legs gave way and I slumped onto the ramp.

Every memory of Aaden came into focus in my mind. Aaden turning up to school on his first day, his eyes big and wary but also hopeful. The way he'd smiled when Quan asked him if he knew anyone. The way he laughed at his own jokes—a big booming noise that made you feel instantly happy. The way he jumped so high when we went jetty jumping and spun in the air like an Olympic diver. The way he'd come over every week after my parents went missing, making sure I had company. Sitting on my bed, smiling and stirring me until I got up. Aaden couldn't be gone. Nobody that vital, that joyful, could be gone.

But he was down there, in the grass, and he was more of a red smear than anything else. A wave of nausea swept over me and my stomach contracted suddenly and painfully. I vomited a watery bile to mingle with my tears on the gravel.

A shot rang out. And another. An army of camouflaged legs moved around me and someone grabbed me under my arms and pulled me up.

"Shoot it!" A female voice snapped.

A gun cracked again and I heard a heavy body thud to the earth. Soldiers. They were shooting the horses. I'd never been so happy to think of an animal dying in my life. I hoped they got them all.

"The crows are coming," one of the soldiers reported.

"Right, let's get this lot inside."

The soldier who'd picked me up slung my arm over his shoulder and half walked, half carried me to the big, rectangular opening that had appeared in the hill. Quan was staggering along ahead of me. When he looked back to check on me, he looked as sick and shocked as I felt.

Dimi was being carried through the door by two soldiers, struggling and rasping Aaden's name through her broken throat. Jamie followed, her shoulders slumped in a despair I could feel just from looking at her.

We'd made it.

But we hadn't made it, too.

The soldier dragged me through the door as a harsh cawing filled the air. The heavy door thudded closed behind me and we heard a couple of birds smash into the thick steel, unable to pull up in time.

"That was close," the soldier with me said.

"Yeah. I don't know how many more we can go out for," came a rough reply in the darkness.

A few steps later we found ourselves in a concrete corridor, lit by dim, yellow globes. The corridor sloped down into the hill at a gradual angle. My legs trembled the entire way, but the soldier held me up. The corridor ended in a big, open cavern.

There were a lot of people in the cavern. So many I couldn't make any sense of it. I stared at the crowd and they stared back at me. I had no idea who anyone was. I started to feel hot and sweaty. This felt wrong. It felt like a trap. I wanted to go back to the surface—but there was nowhere up there to go.

The soldier released me and I stood swaying in the clammy air.

"Dimi! Ruby!" A voice called. I scanned the faces, squinting, and a statuesque, brown woman pushed herself from the crowd. Aaden's mother.

I stared at her, paralysed by a terrible cowardice. I couldn't talk to her. I couldn't tell her what had happened. I couldn't do it.

She looked at my frozen expression and then at Dimi's tear wrecked face and her eyes flashed wide with fear.

"Dimi, where's Aaden? Where's my son?"

My numbed brain managed to work out that she knew Dimi before Jamie started toward her, arms outstretched, talking quietly. I couldn't hear what Jamie said over the hubbub of the crowd, but I saw the moment his mother knew he was gone.

I couldn't bear anymore. I felt myself crumple and managed to save myself, dropping into a sitting position on the hard floor. There was another surge in the crowd and Dimi's mother rushed toward her, sobbing. "Dimi! Oh Dimi, you made it!" Her eyes looked so tired and red I knew she'd already been crying. I wondered dully which members of Dimi's family were dead or missing. Which, I knew from bitter experience, was the same thing. Dimi sobbed Aaden's name as her mother pulled her into her arms.

Quan dropped down beside me, putting an arm over my shoulders. Tears were dripping from the lashes of his good eye. I hadn't seen Quan cry since his tenth birthday party when his brother smashed his cake in front of everyone and threw it on the ground. Lam had been sent to his room for the rest of the party, but it hadn't stopped Quan's tears. That felt so long ago. He never cried about anything, now. But it wasn't every day horses tore one of your best friends apart.

Well, it didn't used to be.

"Is your family here?" I asked. I had to stop thinking of Aaden. Of how he'd looked. I remembered Jamie stopping Dimi from seeing and gasped, overcome by a wave of gratitude. At least Dimi would never know what Aaden looked like...after.

Quan was watching me, his over-exposed brow creased. "I don't know. The soldiers said people have been straggling in all day. Maybe."

"You should go look for them," I said, trying to spot them in the shifting crowd. I could tell he wanted to. His eyes restlessly scanned the sea of faces.

"I'll wait 'til you can stand and we'll both look."

I nodded and leaned back into him. At least Quan was with me. At least, if the end came, we'd be together. 

(17,181 words)