𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐊𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐚 [𝐁𝐱𝐁]

CHAPTER 35: Burri Brigade Part 2/2

[Continued]

The burly and bald soldier grimaced at the sight of the tiny droplets of blood that had splattered on his shirt. It seemed the blood angered him so he gestured to a plateless, black van and the wailing baby was taken there. By what seemed to be soldiers in junior rank to him, who never brought the baby back not even as the long minutes passed by where the dead bodies were left lying in plain sight and more houses were searched.

"What do you think they're doing with the baby." Esly inquired, his demeanor armored with a natural journalist's curiosity.

"Belongs to the government now. For the good of science." Crocky drawled with a lopsided smile in answer.

Esly gasped then let his camera lens take direction to the van the baby had disappeared into. And the rest of us returned to watching the scene below. After what seemed to be ages of silent observing the soldiers talk amongst themselves. As all the houses had been searched and everyone had been dragged out Crocky shook his head and stared at me. "Burris man. I want them all to die."

I stared at the livid wound on his nose and eye. "A life for a life, will never heal us. We'll just be repeating history Crocky. Is that what you want?" I asked with a raised brow.

"No but..." he started to say but was cut off by the twins.

"We're going back inside now, you guys coming?" They had packed and they were still wiping away tears from their cheeks.

Crocky held my forearm and shook his head answering for me. "Not yet, you guys go ahead." He finished with a lazy nod.

The twins left with hunched backs; the trucks below drove off in a line; without whomever they had been looking for. And the baby was in one of their trucks, probably headed to some secret location where they would experiment on it. I repeated a silent prayer thankful for the vials we had stolen, I hoped that would stall their unethical practices for a while. The lifeless bodies were still on the ground and no one would move them until after three days as per the law of the West.

Crocky cleared his throat and measured me with his eyes.

I released a sigh and acknowledged his glaring, "I'm not all that apologetic, what you did was wrong."

"Why?" his voice was a low timbre that forced me to look at him in the eye.

"Why?" I echoed his question, with a raised brow.

He hummed. "It can't be about Audrey because I didn't make her sleep with Tanaka. Not that it matters because he refused to smash her...something about respect. It can't be about the breaking into the Green Roof because you're not above that, if your three-step plan to the Coup de tat is anything to go by. And it can't be about the watch, it costs less than the gold I conspired with Audrey to steal and besides the watch was from his grandfather. The man was worse than Robert Kaplan himself." he blinked then asked once more. "So why?"

I held his gaze; his green eyes were a candle in the black night. A flame of curiosity flickered in them causing his dark irises to expand in wait. The wind brushed the dark night with a soft breeze that gave me comfort. A childlike hope to roll around like I was six again and share a secret with my best friend swept over me with the wind. I sat up, making noise on of the rooftop with my boots and when he sat up closely, next to me, we stared at each other again.

"I like someone." I told him.

His breath caught, his gaze flitted from mine for a second, his lashes blinked and then his glinting green gaze was back on mine. "Wh..." he cleared his throat. "Who? Since when?"

I chuckled, Crocky had never been the patient type, when we were kids his mother used to tan his hide because he would dip his unwashed hands into her pots before she was done cooking. When we were graduating from primary school, he started sleeping with centuries old dirty magazines stolen from the history books at the camp under his ragged pillow. To help speed up the process of him having his wet dreams he said. When puberty came, he attempted to date everything that moved. It was no surprised when he became the first of us three to rid away his sexual innocence. In an emotionless romp with a girl, he had dated the longest in three months.