SYMBOLS

CHAPTER 46

Janeway searched for a possible escape route, as Chakotay led her and Tom down the long corridor inside the priory. Once they stepped outside the family quarters, they stood on the grass and stared down the hillside. A mass of civilians was being herded up the hill by a large company of guards.

"Chakotay, you might be the only one who survives this. I know you won't abandon Tayna, but don't spend the rest of your life here," Janeway said seriously.

Once the civilian horde reached the crest of the hill, some guards urged Chakotay to assist them in directing the hostages. Left with no other option, Chakotay complied and gently added his captives to the enormous gathering.

Janeway felt the pressure of being compressed by thousands of other bodies. With her elbows forced against her ribs, and her lungs restricted to taking only shallow breaths, she found she had no choice but to keep moving with the crowd. To travel in any other direction would have meant certain death - her body crushed under the feet of countless Anawin civilians.

Shoving aside the strange hand in her face, she lifted her foot from the ground to remove the heavy shoe that was standing on her toes. She tried to keep to the edge of the crowd. Briefly, she caught a glimpse of Paris before he disappeared among the masses.

Civilians were continually added to the group until the multitude ballooned beyond the controlling capacity of the guards. Only then did some of the Anawin population try to escape. They ran as fast as their legs would take them, away from the guards, back toward the city center. But the effort was useless and only seconds after chancing their freedom, almost all lay dead, or unconscious if the guard firing at them had been merciful.

Chakotay held his position at the perimeter of the mass of civilians.

Janeway noticed his disrupter was raised but, unlike most of the guards, it remained unfired in his hands. All around him, the aged and the young were attempting to flee, yet he made only token attempts at retrieving the escapees, except for the old woman who stood directly in front of him. When she started to run, he had no choice but to pursue. The old woman's fingers were knotted and she ran on frail legs. Chakotay followed her with his disrupter raised. To do otherwise would have made him stand out.

"Stop!" he shouted, but the woman kept on running. He checked the setting on his disrupter and fired. The old woman slumped to the ground. He left her where she fell, as was customary, and rejoined the other guards.

Janeway wondered if he'd be tormented by the incident. Watching the violent acts being perpetrated by Zeron's guards would probably stay with her too. It was difficult to escape the guards' wrath. Like wolves hunting lambs, they plucked out the weak and frail, often enacting atrocities she thought belonged to another era.

The landscape seemed to be filled with bright red uniforms. She concluded any escape attempt would be foolhardy, although the grassy hill, littered with bodies, suggested many had tried and failed.

The boundary wall was also splattered with the blood of desperate escapees. Madly burrowing like frightened rabbits, they had searched for the mystical breach in the solid earth. Others had tried to scale the high stone wall, although unsure of what might greet them on the other side. The majority of these individuals had fallen to their deaths.

A few guards had been assigned the role of literally ripping the clothes off the bodies on the ground and most of the individuals who lay near the wall appeared not to have the Alum bird marking. Janeway guessed these were so-called impure Anawins. Perhaps they were prisoners who'd somehow escaped the crypts, maybe individuals who had been overlooked for the ceremonial marking as children, or possibly they were like Tayna and had inherited a unique genome but been saved by Dimar protectors.