AFTERMATH PART IX

AFTERMATH

A miniseries set in the world of the Senses Novels

Part IX

The trouble began in earnest the next morning when we began our routine for the burials. One group of men would go from place to place in the mornings and gather up the dead in push wagons. A group of guards would then board three-wheeled motorcycles and lead us out to whatever area we were going to be using that day to dispose of the deceased.

The three-wheelers that the guards used were stable in the rough terrain surrounding the camp and could go slow enough to stay with us as we pushed the day’s load out.

Eli was helping to push a cart along when we all heard the groaning from the pile of bodies. We’d all heard it before. Someone was barely alive in there. None of us were inclined to stop and dig through to find the survivor. We knew what would happen; we’d all seen it a dozen or more times. Eli had not.

Eli stopped and pulled back on the cart, hard. This made all of us stop. He didn’t bother to run around the front, he climbed over the back and began to feel around with his hands. That got the guards’ attention.

The guards started shouting at Eli to get down and start pushing again. A few had already aimed their rifles at him. Eli began to throw the dead bodies off of the cart as though the weighed nothing, each body hitting a guard and knocking him from his bike. The ones aiming their rifles were the first to get hit.

Finally, Eli found the living one. A young woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. She might have been pretty once, but starvation and disease had erased any trace of what might have beauty. She was gaunt and scarred.

Eli’s hands did their magic, and she started to revive. That is until the shots rang out and her body jerked. Multiple bullets ripped into the girl’s body from behind. From where I was, I could see that Eli had been hit several times as well, but didn’t seem to react to the injuries at all.

As fast as the bullets penetrated the woman’s body, Eli was healing her. Then a bullet ripped through her head and another through her neck, nearly severing the now shattered skull from her body. Even then, we could see that the body was starting to heal, but more shots were fired, and Eli was forced back by the impact of the rounds hitting him. In those few instants, as the woman lay dying and, in truth was already dead, I saw Eli.

The look on Eli’s face was unlike anything that I had ever seen before. All at once his body seemed to stiffen, and that was the last conscious thought I had for a while.

The pain that burned me from my head through my torso was unlike anything I had ever felt before. It was as though blazing hot rods were being pushed through me. I was screaming, I knew it, just as I knew that everyone around me was screaming.

When we woke up, every single guard was on the ground, eyes wide, mouths open as though caught in mid-scream. They were all dead. The rest of us were recovering from the agony, but alive. Eli was standing over one of the guards looking down at him. Somehow he sensed that I was watching him and he turned to face me.

“That is enough. I will go back and gather my things. I will leave this place today. You, all of you may join me or stay. That choice is yours.”

With that, Eli turned and started walking back toward the camp.

Interested in learning more about the Senses Novels series? You can start with volume 1, the #1 Best Seller, AURA, exclusively on Amazon.