Pilgrimage II

The car kicked up no dust. Thick bedding of gravel groaned under the accelerating vehicle plowing towards the gate. Despite my efforts to keep up, the car was escaping. My legs ground into the gravel and my lungs sucked hungrily at my throat. My sides were on fire. The girl and the boy stood still and white against the rich chocolate clay of the fields. They could not move without me. The car could not avoid them. The men would get out of the car and murder or torture my charges. I had abandoned them to the forces of the authorities intent on killing us three. The gate opened for the car and slammed shut behind it.

I ran up to the gate, climbed it, and cut myself open on the cyclone wire and jumped over. The boy and the girl were occulted behind the white car that was now parked. The doors were hanging open with well appointed, but entirely gray men exiting the vehicle. The well dressed and manicured set of ghouls were moving around to the front of the car. I picked up a fist sized boulder and ran up to the first suit. He turned his face, or where his face should have been, pale and gray, toward me. I leapt on to him and choked him with one hand and battered the side of his head with the rock. Without any resistance or fighting back, he fell in a heap, clear blood running from his crushed head.

The commotion had drawn the attention of the other employee. The ghoul pulled out his pistol and began firing into me. Pain seared my resolve into a solid ball in my stomach. I threw the rock into his face and he fell. My momentum brought me to his body and I fell on to him. My fists beat his face of their own volition while he struggled to get up. As his face became soft under my hands, he struggled less and less until he finally lay still. I stood.

The boy took my left hand, and the girl took the boy's right. We began walking to the North. I apologized to them for the abandonment and endangering. They were silent and following. The brown dust rose around our feet while the sky, azure and pristine, shuffled the clouds away, the Indian paintbrush exalted in our survival along the road in minute explosions of red and yellow. My fists hurt, but I never bled from the wounds in my chest.

The laboratory faded behind us into the hills. The walk was long, but we were almost to the river. Beyond the river was the North. Unfortunately, my foray into the parking lot of the lab had alerted the authorities to our escape. The North clouded over and the beat of helicopters reached us from the darkened sky. Under the clouds, forboding and cold, sat an enormous brick building.

As we walked closer to the border, we saw brick stretch away from the building on both sides into eternity. On top of the wall was concertina wire and men with guns out and dogs with red eyes. The wall was impassable. The North had only one way in and one way out: through the building festooned with potlights and sporting an enormous seal above the door. Two lions ripping a man in two underneath a haughty perched eagle were painted in gold on the noble red crest.

Our little troop walked up to the doors, massive steel plates the size of a house. With a friendly ding, the doors slid open for us.