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The Trap: Year Nine
I will find a way to save her.
He
wasn’t stupid. He knew things looked
grim. His heart, however, couldn’t
accept the possibility of giving up.
She
coughed. A dribble of blood came out of
her mouth. Did she have internal
injuries he could not see? He shut that
worry out of his mind, and gently held her head on his lap. She looked up at him, the happy spirit she
always exuded from her beautiful green eyes, was now vanished. “I’m so tired,”
she said, in a weak voice he could barely hear.
“I’m so tired of fighting everyone and everything.”
“Don’t
give up,” he urged. “I’ll get us out of
this. I promise.” He stroked her red hair, once long and
flowing, but now very short, due to the horrors of the rebellion year. It had slowly grown back, but still did not
even cover her ears.
“I
tied to do the right thing,” she said, tears forming. “There were just so many losses, so many
people I cared about. Maybe I hid what I
could do too well. Maybe I should have
been open about it from the beginning.”
I doubt that. It would have just brought tragedy sooner. Intolerance
and suspicion bred too well in their little petri dish.
“It
will be all right,” he said, attempting to soothe her fears. “Soon they’ll break off their search, and we
can make our escape.”
She
inhaled a jagged breath, gulping air as if it would be her last. “Escape?
Escape where? There is nowhere to
escape from this madness.”
“T-that’s
not true! We could escape to the
tunnels. Remember what Morgan said she
found down there? There are places and
food sources down there that almost no one ever goes to, and there may places
no one’s explored yet.” Hard to believe after
the failed quests to find a way out, but last year Morgan found someone down
there who had been hiding for over seven years.
She
looked at him with a slight grin of disbelief, a glimpse of her true character
shining through her pain. “Seriously,
you want me to be a tunnel rat? Really,
Philly? Has it come to that?”
Phillip
Irman eyes brimmed, filling with affection for his love. “You wouldn’t be alone.” He bent down and gently kissed her, tasting
the metallic blood still at the corner of her mouth. “You’ll never be alone.” He kissed her again, this time their lips parting.
“I’ll always be with you.”
He
heard noise in the hallway. Surely, they
would not look in the supply closet they were hiding in. And if they did, they would not look behind
the desk. He motioned for her to be quiet.
It
was involuntary. The pain was just too
great. She muffled an anguished cry as
best she could, but the waves of pain caused her to momentarily lose control,
and a stapler on the desk clattered to the floor.
In
here!” someone just outside the door shouted.
“There’s something in here!” They
moved the knob. “It’s locked!”
“Break
it open!” and then the incessant banging
began. It wouldn’t hold long. He was afraid
to move her. He clutched his only weapon, a kitchen steak knife.
“It’s
okay, Philly,” she whispered. “I love
you.”
“I
love you too, Andrea.”
And
then they burst in. A half-dozen of
them. He couldn’t take on all of them, as much as he wanted to. There was
nothing left he could do.
Now
it was all up to her.
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