Thoughts

The Child Apocalypse: Two

Several causes of action ran through her mind, but the girl knew there was no way she could outrun sixteen firearms trained directly at her. If anything, she was still lucky they hadn’t shot her on sight as soon as she opened her eyes.

“Contact with Subject Z has been established. Requesting immediate extraction at the LZ point,” with the amount of tactical gear covering their entire body as protection from her, it was impossible for her to know just who exactly had spoken. But that was the least of her problem.

They were going to send her back to the camp. She had a slim to no chance in getting out of this situation alive. But if she were to return to camp, she would have a one hundred percent chance of life becoming increasingly difficult than the first time.

“On your feet!”

The command came from her left side. She had enough experience with these men to know that an order was only issued once verbally. The next time physical contact was used to ensure you understood what was being communicated. She got up to her feet, arms raised in the air and the idea of running still fresh on her mind. This was a bad day to wear skinny jeans really.

“Turn around and place your hands at the back of your head…. Slowly,” this voice added when she was about to spin around. The girl complied and started making her turn, churning the numbers over in her head at the possible success rate of her running.

Option one: there was the guard, third to the left, who seemed to have a slight rigidity with his movement. His reflexes could be 0.4 seconds slower than the average adult, meaning if she could slip by, it would be through that opening.

Problem: nothing stood between him and the door to take refuge under the bullets he would shoot at her. There was a ten percent chance of a successful escape and even that was with a eighty five percent chance of a bullet wound. She did not like those odds at all.

So she went to option two: when she first entered the rundown mansion, she had glimpsed a window in the adjacent room that was cracked open. Dodging past the guards would be a twenty eight percent chance of success but if she could, she’d get to the window and to the cold rain. Not a very successful way of escape, but the chances of being shot had reduced to sixty one percent. Still not good enough.

Option three had promise though. She had studied the human anatomy back in the camps as she was designated to be a medical operative. She didn’t know much, but what she did know she could not forget. With just a couple of pin point attacks, she could incapacitate the guard to her extreme right and make her way up the stair case where a solid wall separated her and the guards.

There were still the unknown variables in the upper rooms but her mind had placed them as a secondary threat seeing as her current environment was stressful enough. But bullet wounds had decreased dramatically to a thirty six percent chance.

Yeah. She was sure option three was the only one with the least probability of being shot and most percentage of success. She had completed her spin, one of the guards approaching with the cuffs when she made her move.

In afterthought, she felt very foolish for not account for the structural integrity of the floor she was attempting to run on. That was a huge oversight with all this super intelligence she was suppose to have. Disarming the guard went of without a hitch. She had dodged the swipe to her head by the next one and was already up the flight of stairs when one of the steps caved in and her foot got stuck. The bullets rained so loud through the wall that it became impossible to hear the storm raging outside.

She had just managed to tag her foot loose when the thirty six percent chance of a gun wound happened. The pain was unimaginable, even with all the preparation she had done prior to this escape plan. It felt like a force of nature had torn though her torso completely.

But she couldn’t stop. She had to move or the bullets from the bottom of the stairwell would make her part of the dead.

The upper level of the house was just as dark and just as ruined as the bottom. She ran through the corridor and chose the room at the end of the hall to get holed up in.

“Spread out and find her! Use lethal force if necessary.” The command rang from down stairs and footsteps sounded as they ascended the staircase. She quickly turned the key in the lock and stepped away from the door. There was nothing else she could do. Her escape plan had not been thought through well. The room she was in had its windows boarded shut. There was a huge bed in the middle of it, all manner of clothes scattered on top.

She lumbered over to it and grabbed the coat. It was freezing cold but she was in no mood to worry about that. There was the more pressing matter of the blood pouring from her mid section.

She could hear the guards searching each and every room in the upper level. There were only seven rooms here. With the interval it took to open one and the number of footsteps she could count per second, they would reach her room in a matter of eighty six seconds.

The pain in her mid section was becoming unbearable. She couldn’t even make any rational thoughts with that pain. The adrenaline from all the running was now wearing off and the exhaustion was returning. She couldn’t do anything now if they found her. She was going to die her and that was all the statistics she needed on the matter.

“I’m sorry Dana,” she whispered to herself at the eighty fifth second. She registered the sounds of alarm and gunshots. The need to sleep was too powerful for her to resist this time. She felt her consciousness slip and the tumble down the dark oblivion, but not before she saw the door kicked open and the gun trained at her.