Night of the Alphas

Chapter 41

I stood out, overlooking the militia camp. Two weeks had passed since Akiran's death. Two hectic weeks that seemed to go by in the blink of an eye.

Adrian was in the medical center for a few days, until they discharged her. She was hobbling around on crutches, with a bandaged up leg. Every time I saw her, I wanted to apologize for dragging her into that whole situation. I was grateful for her, of course. Without her, I would have surely died. But I still couldn't help thinking that bringing more people, or just not going at all would have spared her the pain of a broken leg. But every time I brought it up to her, she silenced me. She kept on insisting that it was the most action she'd gotten in years.

Her parents, though, seemed infinitely more upset than Adrian. Mrs. Taylor was so scared for her daughter that she took it out on me, by yelling. Mr. Taylor didn't let her be alone with me. Although reasonable, the punishment still stung. And as for Amanda... Well, she wouldn't let me out of her sight. She clung to me like we were glued together.

Our friends, although they were upset at us not bringing them along, were impressed to say the least. Jay insisted on hearing the story so many times that he knew it by heart. But he still regularly asked Adrian to describe the look on Akiran's face when he fell with the house, as he was doing right now.

"Okay, but can you tell me again how he looked when he fell?" I heard him ask behind me.

Adrian gave a small laugh. "Again? Aren't you getting tired of hearing this story?"

"Jay, don't bother Adrian with this again," Willow said calmly. "She probably doesn't want to talk about it anymore."

"Oh, it's no trouble." Adrian cleared her throat. "Okay, so, he was grabbing onto Zane's tail, the floor cracking beneath him..."

I smiled and closed my eyes, letting the winter wind hit my face. The night was clear, but I could smell a storm blowing in from the west. We were on top of an old diner, having a celebration of sorts. There wasn't any sort of commemoration over Akiran's death in the camp, but a new energy seemed to buzz through the camp. The first day after Adrian and I got back, there was a massive commotion on the wall. We could hear it from the militia camp. The eerie sound of thousands of people mourning him. But after a few hours of that, it grew quiet and still. Then there was a massive exodus of people leaving the AFM wall the day after. Thousands upon thousands of people left the city. Busses came and picked up the group of people. People with dead, soulless eyes and hollow cheeks.

The group had passed by the militia camp on their way away from Charlotte, and almost all of our soldiers stood guard outside of our camp to make sure they didn't try anything. I almost wished they had tried to attack, because then it wouldn't have left me with an ominous feeling in my chest. But they didn't. They just walked by, barely giving us a glance. It was as if they were entranced by something that left them apathetic and brooding. They may have failed, but they weren't finished with us. We killed their god, and now we were going to pay.

Ever since then, the wall had stood silently around the city. It had been alive once, too, I believed. Just as alive as the house that killed Akiran. AFM breathed life into it, and they were the heartbeat of the wall. But now that they were gone, the wall was cold and dead.

Tomorrow, a demolition crew was coming in to tear down the empty shell that was once a living, deadly creature. Because of that, several teams had been sent in to the wall to retrieve anyone still in there. One of those teams had been led by Abel. He said that AFM's wall was nearly empty, with the exception of a few disoriented, sickly children that were sitting alone, repeating their numbers to themselves in hushed tones. His crew brought back seven, but there were about thirty in total. Twenty-six of them died shortly after we took them in. There was also a starved, barely alive, middle-aged Alpha that they had brought in. He was still alive and on life support in the medical center. They believed that his name was Blaze Davis.