Pain

Chapter 9 - The Beginning of the End

Chapter 9
The Beginning of the End

The following few weeks were hectic. Bella nursed Koby back into health while the rest of us worked day and night to rig up traps or keep watch wherever we could. There were at least three people on watch at one time and when you weren't on watch, you were expected to be carrying out Nigel's orders. We were all exhausted, but no one was complaining. We knew what we had to do.

By the time Koby was able to help out, we'd dug at least three trenches from varying distances in the bush side of our campsite. The trenches were filled with sharpened sticks and covered with netting we'd bought back with us from New Guinea, which allowed us to cover the death-traps with leaf litter so that they weren't obvious. While this seemed like a genius idea on Nigel's behalf, we had to revaluate when Rocky almost stumbled into one on his way back from sentry. Now there were little nicks on the trees that you'd pass on the way back to camp, only visible if you looked in the right place.

Nigel had also decided to run wire between a fair few trees at various heights in order to trip or clothesline anyone that was running after us should we be spotted out in the bushes. Again, this plan was faulted when I tripped over one after a toilet break one afternoon and almost lost my foot. Now we had to remember to stick to certain paths on our way to and from sentry posts or toilet breaks.

He'd set all sorts of other things up too, like hiding spare weapons in various places around our campsite so that if we were ever stuck, there was an easy solution. He'd left ammo in places too. I just hoped that we never needed it.

With Koby now back on board, I spent a good week pestering Nigel about getting back to our original mission. I wasn't sure if he was just having too much fun getting back to his old self, or if he'd actually forgotten about the base, but it took a long time before he agreed. Finally, the date was set and I eagerly packed up everything I thought I'd need to take out the soldiers and get Jamie back.

The morning of our planned attack was the first time in weeks that we'd decided not to post a sentry. We were leaving after all, and having to go and get someone before we set off just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. After much discussion the previous day, we'd decided on taking a different route to the base, one that would give us a better vantage point and a potentially safer trip. The campsite was set back to its original state, with our tents and supplies we weren't taking tucked into little hiding places. We'd done this so that even if the soldiers happened across our home, they wouldn't know that we'd ever been here. Now, we were all packed up and ready to head out of the camp via the hidden waterfall tunnel.

"So, everyone knows where to meet if we get split up and the seven other meet up places in case it goes completely wrong?" asked Nigel, fastening another knife to the inside of his ankle.

Several members of the group answered him with a very annoyed yes. He turned to give them a cheeky smirk, when a whole heap of noise erupted from the bush. There was a snapping noise, followed by a whole lot of screaming. The second I heard the snapping, I knew what was going on.

"Soldiers," I heard Mel whisper.

"Take cover!" Nigel ordered, ducking behind a rock and pulling Jen behind him.

Everyone began to scramble for some kind of cover and that was when the first lot of bullets went tearing through our home. I jumped behind a thick tree trunk, loading my gun into place and beginning to fire as the soldiers came running into the clearing. Quite a lot of them were covered in blood, which meant Nigel's booby traps had at least done some damage. They might have even reduced the numbers of this attack.