CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
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THE WOODS APPEARED completely and utterly empty. Climbing up onto one of the guard platforms beside Bellamy and Clarke, there was nothing that she could visibly spot hiding between the trees. Both her and Bellamy searched for anyone in the scopes of their weapons, but there was nothing.
"Where are they?" he wondered, tense at the absence of their enemy. "Why aren't they attacking?"
"Because we're doing exactly what they wanted us to do," Clarke realized, her face winding up in frustration. Taylor lowered her gun and looked over to her with wide eyes, knowing exactly what she was trying to get at.
"What are you talking about?" Bellamy questioned, getting no answer as she whipped around and looked below her.
"Lincoln said the scouts would be the first to arrive," she continued, this time louder so that more could hear her. Finn was waiting at the bottom of the platform, expecting some answers from those above him.
"If it's just scouts, we can fight our way out!" Octavia exclaimed, rushing toward them to take a stand next to Finn. "That's what Lincoln would do."
"We're done doing what that Grounder would do," Bellamy dismissed, jumping down from the platform, Taylor following him quickly. "We tried it and now Drew is dead. You wanna be next?" He gestured to the body that was lying lifelessly in camp, the ones who brought him in having set him down in a hurry. The blade still stuck out of his face at a sickening angle.
"That Grounder saved our lives," Finn argued earnestly. "I agree with Octavia. For all we know, there's one scout out there." He looked between the three that surrounded him and up at Clarke, who still stood up on the guard post, clearly attempting to think things through.
"And for all we know, that's exactly what they want us to think," Taylor countered, shaking her head slightly and crossing her arms. "That we're safe if there's only one scout."
"One scout with insanely good aim," Jasper chimed in, pointing his gun at the trees from a different guard post than the one that Clarke was standing on.
"I think trying to leave again is a bad idea. They're more experienced fighters, ones we can't even see. We can't fight them if we can't see them. If they can pick us out in the open, they will," she said, pointing out what she had before they left the first time. "We're too vulnerable out there. Staying is our best chance."
Octavia looked at her with a troubled expression, stepping forward to stare at Clarke. "Clarke, we can still do this," she tried convincing. Everyone was looking up at her expectantly, all four of them searching for a definitive answer.
"Looking to you, Princess. What's it gonna be?" Bellamy asked, the rest of them now calmed down and looking at Clarke as well. "Run and get picked off out in the open, or stand and fight back?"
Clarke looked back at the forest for a moment and then back at her people before jumping down from the platform. Finn caught her by the arm before she could move any further past him.
"Clarke, if we're still here when Tristan gets here..." he began, trailing off slightly at the thought of whoever he had just mentioned. That left Taylor to conclude it was someone they had run into during whatever had happened when they got separated when hunting.
"Lincoln said 'scouts'. More than one. He said, 'get home before the scouts arrive'. Finn, they're already here," she finally decided, before rounding back on Bellamy. "Looks like you've got your fight."
"Okay, then. This is what we've been preparing for. Kill them before they kill us!" Bellamy shouted to the masses. "Gunners, to your posts! Use the tunnels to get in and out! From now on, the gate stays closed!"
Octavia looked disappointed while Finn was running his hands over his face in dismay. Taylor turned around to get into the dropship, Finn on her heels within seconds. "You honestly agree with this? This is war, Taylor, exactly what happened ninety years ago," he stated, looking at her in a sort of disbelief.
"I know that, Finn. I don't have to like the war to realize that this is what's going to keep us alive," she retaliated quickly as she pushed the tarp on the ship back and stepped in. Finn's defeated sigh was audible from behind her, but she didn't want to focus on that. What she couldn't understand was him not being able to see past his peacemaker ways to realize it was too late and this was life and death now.
Raven sat on a chair uncomfortably while Clarke and Bellamy stood around the model of the camp and surrounding area that they had set up on the table. Taylor and Finn each took a place beside it and waited. He still looked slightly upset about how things had turned out.
"We've got twenty-five rifles with twenty rounds each, give or take. Roughly 500 rounds of ammo," Bellamy began, looking down at the miniature camp spread out below him. His eyes looked up at the end of the table that Clarke and Finn were at. "While you two were gone, we made some improvements. Thanks to Raven, the gully is mined."
He pointed to the marks they made that signified the mines. "Partially mined, thanks to Murphy," Raven corrected, breathing heavily as she held a cloth against her torso.
"Still, it's the main route in. If the Grounders use it, we'll know. She also built grenades," Bellamy explained, picking up one of the narrow metal tubes. Clarke furrowed her brows as she looked over at the stock of grenades that they held in a very small box.
"It's not many," she pointed out, shaking her head.
"Again, thank you Murphy," Raven said bitterly, staring at the minimal amount of grenades they possessed.
"But it's better than nothing, which is what we had before," Taylor replied, agreeing that she wished they had more to use, but tried to look at the brighter side of the situation.
Bellamy nodded along to her statement. "We'll make them count." He placed the grenade down in the box with the others carefully, now pointing to the thin sheet of metal that they used as the gate in the model. "If the Grounders make it through the front gate, guns and grenades should force them back."
After he finished, Clarke still looked at him like she expected there to be more to the plan. But that was really as far as they had gotten. If the Grounders got in, they couldn't do much except retreat to the ship.
"And then?" Clarke asked, looking between Bellamy, Taylor, and Raven expectantly.
"Then we close the door and pray," Raven responded simply. Clarke's eyes widened and she stood in shock for a few seconds.
"And pray what?" she inquired further. "That the ship keeps them out? Because it won't."
"Then let's not let them get through the gate," Bellamy interjected, raising his radio to his lips before commanding, "All foxholes, listen up. Keep your eyes and ears open. Inflict casualties, as many as possible. You can hold them off long enough to make them turn back. That's the plan."
"That's always your plan, just like the bomb at the bridge," Finn said quietly.
"Damn right. You got a better idea?" Bellamy replied, giving him a challenging look.
"Look, that's the plan and you don't have to agree with it. Either help us, or don't. It's your choice," Taylor snapped, balling her fists slightly and giving him a sharp, pointed glare. It wasn't the time or place for argument and they had gone too far to go back.
"It can't be that simple," Clarke breathed, garnering some confused looks from the other three. She turned to Raven, her face still deep in thought. "You said there's fuel in those rockets, right? Enough to build a hundred bombs?"
"I also said we've got no gunpowder left," Raven told her bluntly, once again dismissing the idea of more explosives.
"I don't want to build a bomb. I wanna blast off," Clarke proclaimed, her eyebrows and lips twitching up slightly as she fully thought out the plan. Raven's face shifted in realization and the corner of her mouth twitched upward in a grin.
"Drawn them in close, fire the rockets. A ring of fire," Raven added, nodding her head slowly.
"Barbecued Grounders. I like it," Bellamy agreed with a grin, Taylor nodding along and exchanging glances with everyone else.
"Will it work?" Finn asked, looking down at Raven.
"The wiring's a mess down there, but yeah. You give me enough time, I'll cook 'em real good," she confirmed, breaths still slightly labored. Everything else would help them defeat the Grounders, but this was their only shot at winning. Or their only shot at living through the night. Either way, it had to work.
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With the day coming to an end and everyone around her fervently preparing, the Grounders had still not come. She was going almost stir crazy with anticipation. Never had she had to face anything of this magnitude. Sure, she had faced death before, never more than on the ground, but this was something else entirely.
Finally, she saw who she was looking for and paced up to him quickly, not knowing how much time she would have before the inevitable occurred. Bellamy was helping a few other kids stack up bags filled with dirt to create walls in front of the dropship that they could shoot behind if the Grounders got past the gates.
"Hey, can we talk for a minute? Privately?" she questioned as he leaned over and placed the last bag in his hands on top of the stack. He nodded and they stepped off to the side of the ship where not many people were gathered, most making preparations near the gate.
She had been thinking about it for a while, what she was about to say. The day that she avoided telling him about it on the banks of the river, she felt guilty, and didn't think that she had to tell him at the time. There would always be time for her to tell him, she had thought. But now that there was the chance that either one of them could die, she didn't want it to go unsaid.
"So...there's something I need to say. Just in case this goes wrong and one of us doesn't make it out of this," she began shakily, the thought not making her feel any better about anything.
"Hey, we will," he interrupted confidently. At least he was completely confident in their plan. Or he was just lying for her sake. She stared down at the ground and wished more than anything that she could believe him. "Taylor."
Looking up, he was much closer than she originally thought. She was ignoring the constricting feeling in her chest and the quickened beating of her heat, for reasons she wasn't even sure of yet, and tried to focus on what she was trying to tell him.
"We're going to make it through this," he asserted, quieter this time, raising his hand and squeezing her shoulder gently in assurance. A saddened expression graced her face and she opened her mouth to say something, but a distant sound pulled them both out of the moment and back into reality.
"War drums," she let out, eyes widening and turning to Bellamy. "It's time." They were both needed elsewhere, and those words were all the indication they needed to know that they had to wrap it up. Stepping away, she nodded at him firmly before turning around, desperately clinging to his assurances that everything would be okay. It had to if she didn't have the chance to say what she wanted to.
Ducking into one of the tunnels, she ran as fast as she could to the foxhole. Jasper, Harper, and Chandler were all waiting there with their guns at the ready.
"It's about time you showed up," Chandler joked, not looking as playful as he sounded, his pale face and nervous look not matching his words. She smirked at him lightly before taking her position between him and Jasper. Jasper handed her the radio for the foxhole and she nodded in thanks.
"I see them! They're moving! I count one, two, three, no — wait — there's four. I don't know man, there's too many of them," a boy named Sterling's panicked voice spoke from the radio. Taylor narrowed her eyes and glanced through the trees. Just like earlier, she saw nothing.
A few gunshots rang out from nearby, piercing through the night eerily. "South foxhole, report now," Bellamy's voice demanded after the shots had ceased.
"Yeah, yeah, we're okay," Sterling confirmed. "They didn't attack, it's like shooting at ghosts." Just as he spoke the words, shadows moved between the trees quickly, back and forth, distantly in front of them. Jasper wasted no time in firing off a few bullets, aiming loosely while not one of them hit anything.
"Don't waste any! We're getting Raven time, but that doesn't mean we won't need them!" Taylor warned over the sounds, now joined by some that came from a different foxhole. She attempted to aim at a Grounder, but the way they moved was too quick for her to get a clear shot.
"This isn't working!" Harper exasperated, pulling her face away from the scope and lowering the gun in aggravation.
More muffled shouts came from the other end of the radio, proving that the other foxholes were having the same troubles they were. Even more of the Grounders appeared, materializing out of thin air — or at least that's what it seemed like. Taylor fired off a few shots, missing every time she did so.
Jasper grabbed the radio from her belt and pressed the button while he continued to fire off shots. The Grounders were getting faster and closer. "They're everywhere — Harper, get down! — we need backup!" he stammered into the radio, dropping it once he finished the sentence. Harper ducked so that Jasper could aim where he wanted and actually hit something.
Fire erupted and sent a Grounder flying into the air with a scream. All of them watched with wide eyes as dirt rained down following the explosion, smoke dissipating into the night.
"Raven, our mines actually worked!" he exalted into the radio happily.
"Jasper, we need you in the dropship now," Clarke's voice suddenly ordered, a sense of urgency in her tone.
"Negative, we can't give up the west woods," Bellamy told her. Taylor grabbed the radio from Jasper's hands and went to press the button, but Clarke was already talking.
"The west woods are mined, Bellamy. The Grounders just figured that out," she argued. "Jasper, get in here."
"We barely have enough people here as it is, and that's what they're going to figure out soon. The mines won't last forever," Taylor breathed into the radio over Harper's shouts that there were more Grounders along with her gunfire. Two more mines went off in a burst of flame, sparks, and dirt.
"They're drawing our fire," Jasper realized after Harper finished shooting.
"Damn it, I'm all out," Harper said, apparently not completely processing what Jasper was getting at.
"They want us to run out of ammo," he said, before taking the radio back out of Taylor's hand once again. "All gunners, listen up. The Grounders aren't attacking, they're making us waste bullets. Don't shoot when they're running laterally."
"Jasper's right. Don't fire unless you're sure it's attack. Repeat, do not fire until you are sure," Bellamy agreed. It all made sense. Taylor was seriously impressed with Jasper for figuring it out, much less before anyone else did. She patted him on the back a few times encouragingly.
"Nice," she told him, him giving an anxious grin in return. Only a few moments passed while they waited for more Grounders to arrive. Only this time, it was roughly three times as many than the number that had been drawing their fire.
Some of them yelled ragefully as they charged at the camp. Time seemed to pass in slow motion as Taylor took a breath and pulled the trigger, hitting one in the stomach. He fell to the ground with a scream and she tried to repress the horrible feeling that wound up inside of her. She wondered how many lives she would take by the end of the night.
"I have to go, you guys can hold the woods!" Jasper yelled before ducking out of the foxhole abruptly and hightailing it to the tunnels. Before she could stop him, it was only the three of them left defending the west side.
There were too many for her to count. "Taylor, this isn't looking good!" Chandler shouted over the chaos, tens and tens more Grounders running at them. Shooting bullet after bullet, her heart dropped when she pulled the trigger and nothing sounded but a click.
"I'm out! Are there any more?" she questioned wildly, eyes darting around the confining hole.
"Shit! Those were our last clips!" Chandler cursed from beside Harper, who was pulling a few knives out of the loops of her belt. Taylor followed, knowing that was their last line of defense. Throwing the strap of the gun over her shoulder, she pulled out the most dangerous knives that she had in her possession, holding one in each hand. Putting one of them on the ground, she snatched the radio from her belt and pressed the button.
"The west woods is falling, there are too many of them! We're gonna try and hold them off!" she gulped, putting the radio back on her belt before looking at the other two seriously. Close to a hundred Grounders now approached them. She nodded and they nodded back, all three scrambling out of the foxhole and to the general area of the tunnels so that they could get back to camp before the number of assailants got too high.
Almost immediately a Grounder tackled her to the ground. This time, it was a female Grounder, so she wasn't so disadvantaged when it came to size. The feeling of the gun digging into her back when she hit the ground elicited a grunt of pain from her lips, her teeth gritted as she wrestled with the woman who wanted to kill her.
The woman's knife dug into her side, the twisting of the hilt making it all the more painful. Taylor screamed out and raised her knee, hitting the woman in the stomach with as much force as she could muster. She took the momentary gasp as an advantage and stuck her knife somewhere around the Grounder's throat, the gurgling, choking sounds giving her the edge to push the woman off of her.
Scrambling up from the ground, she dashed over to the foxhole nearly breathlessly. Her fingers dug into the dirt walls of the tunnel and she tumbled through it, falling down on the other side at Chandler and Harper's feet.
A loud boom pulled her out of any thoughts that she had coming out of the tunnel. Instead, her attention was turned to the flaming comet looking objects flying through the sky in a shower of flares and explosions. It looked like a meteor shower, but she knew that whatever it was, it was far too big to be natural.
"It's the Ark," she whispered in recognition, standing next to the other two as they stared up in awe as their home fell down to Earth among the stars. "They're alive." The spark of hope that was ignited in her chest at the realization was about as powerful as the fire that carried the rest of their people down to the planet.
Shrill screams rang out from the forest and the metallic sounds of clashing swords erupted through their ears. Those screams weren't of the Grounders and when she saw Finn bolting back into camp, she could only guess that he had tried Bellamy's earlier plan of using the Grounders' other enemies.
There was no more time for her to stand around and wonder about the Reapers or the Ark. Shots of the gunners rang out from their positions, but some of them began to dash away when the cracking sound of the gate being pulled away echoed.
With just a few pulls, it fell to the ground. "Use the grenades!" someone yelled out from beside her. Taylor ran to the stacks of bags and grabbed one of the grenades out of the box and used one of the torches to light it. The first ones to break through the gate were the first ones to fall, screaming as the fire consumed them whole.
Clarke came rushing out of the ship with Finn and Miller in tow. "All right, Jasper did it, everyone inside now!" she commanded, her voice barely rising above the sounds of the death and destruction. Taylor lit another grenade and fired it to another crowd of Grounders pouring through the gates.
The two ducked behind the bags on the opposite side. "Taylor, we're out of grenades!" a boy worried from beside her, narrowly dodging one of the Grounder's arrows.
"Doesn't matter! Get inside the ship!" she ordered, throwing her arm over her head as she dashed from one of the walls to the other, landing roughly beside Finn. Another mine exploded, but the endless sea of Grounders continued to flow into the camp, swords taking out their people left and right.
Gunfire still persisted, the opportunity to shoot getting much more narrow the more time went on. There would be no bullets to be found in any gun soon enough. "There he is!" Finn yelled, pointing to one of the tunnels where Bellamy had just emerged.
"He's never gonna make it — Bellamy, run!" Clarke shouted. Taylor's eyes widened at the number of Grounders that surrounded him. Bellamy grabbed an abandoned gun and tried to shoot, only to find that there was nothing left.
One of the leaders tried cutting him with the sword and punched him square in the face when he tried to dodge it. The leader delivered punch after punch, Taylor covering her mouth in horror while tears gathered in her eyes, unable to watch the atrocity in front of her.
"He's killing him," Clarke whimpered with the same sort of horror Taylor was watching in. Finn took a gun from a passing boy and raised it, shooting the Grounder that was attacking Bellamy. "Stop, Finn! No!"
Clarke looked utterly shocked, Taylor wanted to follow. She stood up to do so, but Clarke grabbed her and shook her head.
"Don't!" she ordered. Taylor lowered herself back down to Clarke's level, Miller's shouts to get in the dropship a distant echo. All around them, their people were dying brutally and there was no way to save them. Taylor and Clarke weren't enough to protect them all.
She wasn't going to leave until she knew that Bellamy was coming with her. She wasn't going to unless he and Finn were with them in the ship.
"Clarke! Taylor! Now!" Miller called out over the gunshots and screams. Taylor was being pulled away from the cover and into the dropship, fighting Clarke the whole way.
"No! We can't just leave them!" she screamed at Clarke with all that her voice would allow her. "Bellamy!" Taylor stopped her struggle and Clarke released her from her grip once she heard the sound of the doors starting to seal. Before they could fully close, however, Anya — the Grounder leader they met at the bridge — came tumbling down the ramp and into the ship, swords drawn.
Thumps reverberated in the ship, coming from all sides — the Grounders were climbing. "Jasper, now!" Clarke ordered. Jasper leaned down and pulled the switch, nothing happening. Anya stared at them and it dawned on Clarke what she might be thinking. "Anya, you can't win."
Anya reared up with her swords, a scream forming at the back of her throat, but Miller quickly raised his gun and hit her in the back of the head. What happened after that was a blur to Taylor, she stepped back as the crowd enveloped Anya, multiple screams suggesting what to do with her.
"She deserves to die!" Miller argued, wielding a knife, Clarke catching his arm before he was able to go any further.
"No! We are not Grounders," she snapped, staring down everyone who tried to touch a barely conscious Anya threateningly.
In a split second, the whole ship rumbled menacingly beneath them before anyone was able to have another thought. Taylor fell to her knees, the metal floor beneath her unnaturally warm. When the shaking finally ceased, there was a period of time where no one spoke. She raised her head and felt more tears when she realized something.
"Where's Octavia?" she questioned. The response that she received was silent.
"We don't know. She might have gotten out," someone told her. She didn't pay much attention to who because her entire world had begun to crumble down around her.
"No...no..." she mumbled, tears welling up in her eyes. She had lost everything. Bellamy and Octavia were her family and she lost them. It felt like her heart had been ripped straight from her chest. She knew that it was possible Octavia was still alive. She was holding out hope that she was. But Bellamy was dead. He was gone. And nothing could have possibly prepared her for the unimaginable pain that she felt when those doors closed and she saw him for the last time.
Shakily, she stood up and made her way to where Clarke was standing near the door. Her fingers were wrapped around the lever, but she was hesitant in pulling it. Taylor's eyes met hers numbly and she nodded, Clarke taking a wavering breath before pulling the lever again.
The tarp that they used as a makeshift door was mostly parted, giving them a full view of what they had just done. The ground was completely ash, still smouldering slightly, smoke blowing in the wind.
Taylor and Clarke stepped down from the ramp and into the ash first, the rest of the hundred that had survived following them fearfully. Bones that were not fully burnt laid within the piles of ash. It felt morbid and wrong to walk on, the powder parting for her boots as they glanced around.
Nothing remained. It was no longer their camp — it was a graveyard.
Anya coughed behind them, now tied up and disoriented. Taylor and Clarke finally stopped walking, Clarke's eyes landing on two skeletons next to each other. They both met each other's gazes, their looks communicating one clear message. What have we done? Taylor felt the sobs building up in her chest at the thought of one of those skeletons being Bellamy's, but a strange object landing at her feet wiped her mind of all thought.
Red smoke billowed up around them and Taylor's eyes searched high and low for some kind of way out of whatever was happening. But as the smoke invaded her lungs with coughs overtaking her body, and her limbs felt weaker, she realized there was no way out. And when she fell to the ground, all she saw was the red that invaded her every sense. A red that faded into a deep, unforgiving black.
END OF PART ONE
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