Slave to a Sinful Empire Pt. 04

Part IV: Liberation by Fire

A vibration through the cold earthen floor awoke Annie from her miserable, fitful sleep. She opened her eyes, but it was still perfectly black in the hole. Still aching from the bruises and welts the cruel Zath policemen had given her, she rose slowly to a sitting position and waited, breathing lightly.

The rumbling vibration came again, more felt through the floor than heard. Then another followed it quickly, buzzing through the floor and audible this time as a faint thunder. Suddenly, with a swirling mixture of fear and hope, Annie Archer realized what was happening. The bombardment of Jaron had begun.

Drawing her legs up to her chest, Annie huddled against the wall as the explosions began to come faster and faster. The pit she had been thrown into, deep in the lowest subcellar of the police station, was probably safe, she thought, unless the whole station collapsed and buried her. In any case, there was little she could do but wait.

After a time, a harsh siren began blaring somewhere in the station above. The distant sounds of shouting penetrated down to the subcellar. All the time, the earth trembled from the powerful blasts rocking the city above.

Suddenly there came a rapid series of muffled pops which Annie knew must be gunshots. These were followed by more shouting, then another volley of cracks and pops, then silence. Annie held her breath and watched the patch of absolute darkness where she knew the rim of her oubliette loomed above.

After what seemed hours but were probably minutes, a crack of light burst into existence above her. Annie squinted as it widened into the shape of a doorway, with a shadowy backlit figure filling the aperture. She knew the figure could represent either rescue or death, and was powerless to do anything but wait.

The figure fumbled with something, then an oil lamp flared to life with a reddish glow in the man's hands. He was an older man with a face full of stubble, dressed in civilian clothing, a gray wool jacket and heavy gray denim work pants, and a soft black cap. A white armband was tied to his upper arm, the traditional color of Alephia.

Annie tried to call out, but could give only a wordless cry of relief. The man instantly understood that she was a slave, and began to look around the room. Then he went to the back wall, and setting the lamp on the floor, retrieved a wooden ladder from its hooks. He lowered it carefully over the lip, as Annie rose to her feet, covering her nakedness as best she could with her arms.

When it reacher her, she began to slowly struggle up the ladder. Her rescuer, seeing her weakened state, clambered halfway down the ladder to help. "Alright, there we go, doing fine," he murmured as he helped pull Annie up with one callused hand holding her pale, slender hand. "Almost there."

They reached the top of the pit, and stood in a cellar room with two more pits on either side. One was empty. The other held a crumpled, naked body which did not respond when the man prodded it with a boot. He said a brief prayer for the dead, then hurried back up the ladder. Annie, meanwhile, had wrapped herself in the man's jacket and was trying to stop a sudden bout of shaking.

"We're going out now, lass," the man said, and Annie nodded weakly. "Stay behind me," he warned as he drew a revolver.

Carefully, the man opened the door and looked into the hallway, gun held ahead of him. When he was sure it was clear, he gestured for Annie to follow. They moved through cold cellar hallways red-lit by scattered lamps. They saw no one save for a few bodies of Zath officers, sprawling gun-shot in pools of dark blood. They took one detour when they found a room filled with smoke and fire from a burst lamp, but the man seemed to know the way, and Annie followed gratefully.

Staying close together, they ascended a stone stairway, up into a higher cellar. The man let out a deep breath when he saw, waiting down the hall, a band of men and one woman, all in civilian clothes and white armbands. They cradled rifles or brandished pistols. One was wearing a Zath policeman's uniform and a white armband; either a turncoat, or wearing the outfit as a disguise. A handful of prisoners wrapped in blankets or wearing jackets taken from the dead stood in a knot nearby. Annie looked for Nathalie, but she was not among them.

"Have you seen a woman, Nathalie, she had dark hair but they shaved it... they whipped her, she would have cuts... she has a brand... the mark of... the..." Annie stammered, but she was met with blank looks or sad shakes of the head from both the Resistance fighters and the prisoners. At the though of Nathalie's brand, the mark of death, tears began to well up in Annie's eyes.

"We have to go," one of the fighters said. "The bombing is underway, this is the only chance we have. We know which areas are being hit, we have our escape route. But we don't have much time." So together, the group hurried down hallways and up another stairwell, this one concrete and lit with electric lights.

They found themselves on the ground floor of the station, surrounded by offices. Down one hallway, the ceiling had been shattered by a bomb, broken concrete and twisted metal spilling through the opening to block the way. They detoured through an office filled with scattered papers and painted with stray blood stains, one crimson hand-print marking the door. In the next hallway, the bodies of freedom fighters and black-clad Zath police were tumbled and twisted in horrible positions of death, and Annie walked in sticky, lukewarm blood, which soaked the entire floor. She was too numb with horror to do anything but hurry along with the group. They saw no one else alive.

Finally, the group reached the wide double doors at the front of the station. They stepped out to find the city of Jaron on fire.

Across the wide square, great turreted buildings were shattered, vast apartment blocks were blazing with curtains of orange flame, lighting their columns of smoke from below with hellish red light. Sirens howled across the night. Flashes of explosions back-lit the ruined skyline like lightning. Searchlights stabbed upward to light the vast bulks of bomber-airships,illuminating the winged sword of the Alephine Air Corps. Biplanes and monoplanes buzzed as they chased each other across the black sky.

The sight of the city burning had distracted the group from the horror nearer at hand, but only momentarily. Now Annie gave a low moan of pain and horror as she realized what stood at the center of the square. A cluster of wicked pikes thrust into the sky, and on each was impaled a body. The evil spear-tips protruded from their open mouths or their split throats.

Annie was frozen in shock and terror, sorrow and disgust, anger and hate, until one of the fighters shook her by the shoulder. "We have to go!" he cried, and Annie forced herself to follow as the group began to jog across the flagstones of the square, moving only as quickly as the slowest and weakest ex-prisoner.

As they passed the impaled corpses, Annie found herself weirdly compelled to look up at their faces, to remember these dead. She began to whisper a prayer, but was stopped short by a sight which froze her blood. Nathalie was one of the impaled. Her bloodied but recognizable face gaped with horrible slackness. The bloody spear-tip glistened in her open mouth.

Annie screamed, then, and the world swam before her eyes, suddenly unreal. She felt herself dragged along. After that, she remembered nothing, stumbling along in a fugue.

*****

When she returned to her senses, Annie was lying on cool, dewy grass, on a slope. She blinked, looked around. The group was sitting on the bank of the river. A stone bridge loomed to their left. One of the fighters passed Annie a canteen, and she found that she was parched. She drank the cool water quickly, dripping some onto the borrowed coat which was still her only clothing.

"Annie," a voice said, and she looked over to see Simon crouched beside her. The whole scene still seemed like a dream to her, so the sudden appearance of her lover (her husband, she remembered suddenly) seemed only natural. Annie smiled with tears in her eyes. They kissed fiercely, and he began to seem slightly more real. Still, Annie could not begin to feel the emotions welling up inside her at the reunion, or she would spend the whole night crying on this bank.

"You're safe now," Simon whispered. "You're free. I'm not leaving you again. I promise," he assured her. She nodded, felt tears rolling down her cheeks.

"You came back," she whispered, and found her voice was raw. Now Simon nodded, and she saw tears glittering in his eyes as well, lit by the distant fires. They moved instinctively closer, and kissed again, now more softly, Simon being careful with Annie's split and cracked lips.

They held each other silently for a long moment, on the peaceful bank at the center of the shattered city. Then a whistle came up from below, and they saw a barge bobbing in the dark river, a man at the rudder waving to them with a white cloth.

Simon helped Annie to stand. They began to descend carefully down the slick grass with the other Resistance fighters and fugitive slaves. "Wait," Annie said suddenly. "Wait, what about Zelle? Did you see her?" she asked Simon desperately.

"No, I'm sorry, I haven't," Simon answered sadly. "Did... did you? She wasn't in...?"

"No, she wasn't," Annie answered firmly. "She wasn't captured. She escaped from the shrine. But now I don't know where she is," she continued, sounding fatigued and hopeless.

"It's alright," Simon said softly. "Another Resistance group will find her, or she'll find them. She's smart, and quick... if anyone can make it out of the city, she can. She made it out of that basement during the raid. And Annie..." he said, now stopping on the slope and looking into her eyes. "I'm sorry, that I wasn't there. I'm supposed to protect you. You're... my wife. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Annie said. "Don't be sorry. You saved me. If you'd been there, you would have been killed, or worse... but God protected us."

"Right," Simon said distantly. "Right. But let's not count our blessings until we're out of the city. Let's hurry," he said, and they began once more to descend the sloping bank. Soon they were on the cobbled walkway at the water's edge.

"Go! Get going!" came a yell from the top of the slope, and Annie saw that some of the fighters had stayed at the top, crouched in shooting positions at the lip of the street. Then they began to fire their rifles and handguns at unseen assailants.

Those below hurried onto the barge. Annie saw that the bottom was covered by burlap pieces, perhaps sacks cut in half along the sides. Simon eased her into a crouch, and pulled one of the sacks over her, as the other fugitives and fighters did likewise. Soon the whole group looked like bundles of cargo. The bargeman threw his white cloth into the river, and pushed away from the bank with his long pole.

As they began to move slowly down the river, Annie and Simon held hands beneath the burlap. Around them, explosions boomed, fires crackled, shots snapped, people and sirens screamed into the night. Annie prayed for Zelle, and for Nathalie's soul, and for God's deliverance from this sinful Empire. She gave thanks for her rescue, but she knew that she had many more perilous miles to go, before she reached her freedom.

*****