After Humanity

Chapter Four

 Rachel

The black night air was cold as it wrapped around Rachel's exposed skin making her shiver. Mama would never have let her go out on such a night without a coat to supplement the thin cloth of her dress. The slavers, on the other hand, seemed not to care how uncomfortable she might be. But what did the cold matter? What did anything matter now? Mama was dead. Papa was dead. The idea seemed so impossible Rachel wasn't entirely sure she hadn't dreamed it. But could any dream be so horrifying? The echo of the gun still rang clearly in her ears, throbbing against her temples, all too real to deny.

The small party dragged her, stumbling along towards the bright orange-red flames in the distance. The spot where her beloved town should have stood, Rachel realized. As they drew closer to the town center the skeletal outline of the burned-out buildings became clearer, the smell of smoke, ash, and death hanging heavily in the air, burning her nose and throat.

 Walking down the streets that should have been familiar, Rachel felt the reality of her situation settling all the more heavily in her mind. The home she knew was gone. Small fires still smoldered all around, painting the night air with an unnatural orange-tinted glow, marking in ash, the places where store fronts and houses had been just hours ago.

Rachel saw large sibla men still patrolling the streets, likely looking for any humans they had missed, but the sound of screams  Rachel had heard earlier seemed to have been silenced, the crackling of dying fires taking their place. There was still a good deal of sobbing to be heard in the air somewhere not far off though, punctuated by the jumbled sound of harsh orders barked in reply. She dreaded facing whatever terror lay ahead, but with her hands bound and an armed retinue just behind her, there seemed to be no choice but to keep moving forward.

Rachel's eyes opened wide in horror as her captors forced her down the main street. There, right in the town center was a line of bodies. It seemed the sibla had rounded up all of the townsmen and shot them. Each of the corpses was dotted with dark patches where the bullets had pierced their flesh, the ground around them stained with their blood. She looked away, not wanting to see if she recognized any of the faces, but that didn't help the churning in her stomach. She imagined that all the corpses wore the pained expression her father had as he rolled on the ground in agony. 

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to try and will the image away. She was alone now and she had to take care of herself. She had to be brave as Mama said and try to figure out how to get away. But where could she possibly go? Everything she knew was gone now.

The sounds of commotion increased as they neared the edge of what remained of the main town border and Rachel quickly saw the cause. A large bonfire in the street clearly illuminated what seemed to be some sort of processing station the sibla had set up. 

Rachel could see two large tractor-trailers, the vehicles that had brought the sibla to their village.  The trucks' long metal forms cast dark shadows along the ground that seemed almost as monstrous as the creatures behind her. Struggling to see inside of the open trailers through the darkness, Rachel could just make out the rows of cages crowded into the vehicles. Eyes peered out through the bars. The rest of the town's inhabitants, she realized with horror. They were all being taken prisoner!

 Turning her attention to the light of the bonfire she could see a small group of terrified women standing beside it, guarded by heavily armed sibla. Each was being taken forward one by one towards the flames where sibla men waited, holding long rods of iron in their hands.

Rachel froze watching one of the struggling victims as a sibla ripped the shoulder of her dress away to expose her flesh. The poor woman emitted a horrible cry as one of the iron rods was pressed, white hot, into her skin, branding her with an angry red scar. Rachel's mind raced. They were leading her towards that same fire. She couldn't let them.She couldn't!