The Fear Within Me

17

I can feel consciousness tugging at the edges of the black sleep that envelopes me. The first thing that registers is the splitting headache that pounds behind my left ear. Second, the sound of voices all around me. My drowsy thoughts try to gather whose voices they are, but I draw a blank. I hear women and children.

I somehow shake unconsciousness off me, and open my eyes to find myself surrounded by people who are all dirty, bloody, and scared. We are all connected by shackles that bind our ankles.

I pray furiously for one tiny moment that all this is a dream, but know that it is pointless. All I can do is look around for any familiar faces, and find one: Garrett. He stares blankly, lifelessly back at me. He has a gunshot wound through the middle of his forehead.

Then it all rushes back to me. My father and his men, Alex. All dead. Two more people I care for are gone, and I am here alone.

My eyes fall on a little girl, no more than six, as she cries on the shoulder of a man who is obviously a stranger to her, because he pats her stiffly on the back and avoids eye contact. I pull myself into an upright position and pull my knees underneath so I can crawl over to the girl. An olive-skinned boy shoots me a dirty look.

"Are you trying to get us all killed?" he spits. I stop in my tracks and turn to face him.

"Where are we?"

"Where are we?" he repeats my question with acid sarcasm, then picks up in a mock commentators voice, "And on your left, folks, The Camps. On your right, look at that, more! Looks like we're smack dab in the middle of Shitsville. Enjoy your stay!"

"Thank you for your educational speech. What camps are you talking about?" I know where we are. I never had to ask in the first place. But it's as if I need to convince myself they're real, and that I'm in one.

"Sure as hell isn't summer camp."

I try to swallow, though my mouth seems to have been filled with cotton. An agonizing shout sounds of ahead of us, and my fellow prisoners and I jerk our heads in that direction. Then I figure it out. All of us here, we're in line. We're waiting here for death.

The little girl begins to cry, and the man pulls away from her with no remorse. I finish crawling the rest of the way until I am at her side.

"Hi sweetie," I say quietly, "What's your name? I'm Sam."

"Marie," she says with a whimper, "I'm scared." I wipe away the tears that stream down her dirty face.

"I know. It's okay to be afraid."

"Are you scared?"

"A little," I say, then take her dirty hand in my own, "How old are you?"

"Six and three-quarters." Her response is monotone, but I figure that under different circumstances, she would have answered with zest. She offers a small smile, revealing her missing two front teeth. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying. This all seems so wrong, this child fighting for her life. All these people who are scared of dying but come to expect it. This isn't the way the world should be. We were all so busy with being perfect that we forgot how to live life. Makes me pity myself and everyone around me. And pity is dangerous when survival is on the line. Pity is but a distraction.

Several Halos surround us and begin to release us from the chains. When Marie and I are free, I pick her up.

"What grade are you in?" Fear threatens to overtake the whole of my being, so the small talk I make is as much for me as it is for her. If I'm freaking out, she will follow suit.

"First," she says, ashamed, "My mommy held me back. I wanted to go to school, but she said all the boys were too mean."

"You want to know a secret?" Her eyes light up as she leans into me, so as to keep the secret between us. Her gesture makes me laugh. "I was held back too." It's an outright lie, but I figure anything to make this little girl happy is worth it.

"No way," she says with a grin.

Our procession stops suddenly and I bump into the woman in front of me. She turns, curses colorfully, and turns back.

"Watch your mouth, lady. She's six years old."

"Six and three-quarters," Marie corrects matter-of-factly. I can't help but laugh.

"Is this some sort of joke to you?" she asks caustically. "I don't know if you understand what's going on, but we're all about to die."

"And being a bitch will save us, right?" I counter. She rolls her eyes, huffs, and turns away, looking defeated.

We begins moving again, and enter into a clearing where an old mill used to be. Now it's littered with Halos, who mill about as if a day in the office. One Halo walks by, dragging behind him bloody and mangled corpses piled high on a sled-looking thing. I look away quickly, but not before an image is burned into my mind, and cover Marie's eyes with my hand.

"Close your eyes, hun," I say quickly. We stop once more, and a large group of Halos approach. They pick out all the men and throw them into a center of what seems to be a fighting ring. One man clings to a woman and kisses her hard on the mouth before being yanked away.

A fight? Seriously? Why would these Halos want to fight human men, who don't stand a chance? It was my understanding that the things were too stupid to comprehend anything but war and its tactics. Their creators and the media alike don't seem to have given the creatures enough credit. This is entertainment. Wicked grins cover the faces of each and every one of the Halos as the primal ring fight begins. Even the two who are meant to be standing guard look on with devilish smiles.

"Are you a good climber?" I ask Marie as I shift her to my back. A plan has already begun to formulate in my head. I feel her nod against my back. "Good, me too."

I take off running without another thought headed straight for the trees. Shouts and grunts erupt from behind me, and I hear my fellow hostages cheer. I don't dare look back to see if I am being followed. With Marie on my back, I can't run as fast as normal, but my goal is to put as much space between us and the Halos as possible. I don't make it more than 100 yards when I feel I am being followed. I slip Marie off my back and tell her to climb.

"Go up as high as you can. It's thick enough at the top that you can climb from one tree to the next. Don't come down, don't look back. Go!" She looks at me with frantic panic, but starts scurrying up the tree. She is a good climber. I smile to myself. Soft footfall sound in plenty, and I can tell I'm surrounded. I swallow hard and pick up on a dead sprint back to camp. Blue streaks blur of to my sides, but I reason that if I make it back to camp, they'll never know I was gone.

I burst through the line of trees into the clearing to find the people I was with strewn across the forest floor, their necks twisted at awkward angles. A Halo emerges from a building and stares me down. A menacing smile creeps into its features, sending chills up and down my spine. All the others pale in my vision as that Halo strolls across the yard, slips its fingers around my neck, and hoists me in the air. I open my mouth to make a plea, but abruptly shut it. That's exactly what they want, and exactly what I refuse to give them.

"Go to hell," I choke out. The words are inaudible. The creature brings me to eye level, and my head pounds due to pressure. Why not just kill me? Why not just kill us all? Then in a flash I remember the truck of women. I remember asking Alex about it. They want the women to reproduce, and the men for entertainment.

The Halo grunts and nods a few times, then releases me. I crumple into a ball when I hit the ground, and they drag me toward the building with no protest.