Chapter 15: The Big Evacuation

Daniel

I sat in my room after everything was cancelled due to the days events, and for the most part everyone did nothing, I don’t blame them, they did just watch one of the big authority figures turn on the school and execute on the students, and to add insult to injury the commander got away. It was all a dire situation with no resolution in sight, to add insult to a very large injury John walked in informing everyone in the room that an evacuation was taking place, and for all leaders of every team to arm up. We all did so, quickly and with precision, all of the school’s students and staff were in one big group with fighters and guards all surrounding the civilians. This was something that the school must have surely never seen before, as this plan was knocked up in a matter of minutes it seemed like. It made sense however as we were trying to avoid getting obliterated in an attack. We strolled outside the school gate, making our way down the street, our plan was to make it to the nearby town and hitch multiple buses to the nearest airport and send everyone home. That was the plan and it is all we had, we were closing in on the nearest town and it was getting too quiet, we had been walking for 30 minutes and nothing had happened, who knows maybe we beat them out.

As we walked, I watched John, he was working as a kind of scout, running forward and making sure that if he saw something everyone would be ready to fight, but you could see that he was on a big mission, trying to find anything to unleash his anger on. I was worried, and so was Benton, even though Benton was in grieving just as John was, he was keeping himself together, managing himself better than John. I made my way up to Benton, “Hey, is John all good?” Benton Sighed “No, he has been nothing but angry since she died, he hasn’t showed anything else, he is too hellbent on revenge to even focus on anything else.” He looked over to John “if he doesn’t sort himself out, he will end up dead.” Benton continued to march on, checking on others, and making sure things ran smoothly. For someone who didn’t want to be a leader he was doing a very large amount of it now…

Benton

We had been walking for some time now and we were surely getting close, most people were no longer on full alert and it worried me. At any second we could get caught in a hail of bullets, but we didn’t, we continued to walk, marching forward into and uncertain fate. I made my way over to John who was just as heated as ever, I spoke to him “You doing okay?” he ignored the question “They should have stuck by now, I know there out there, but they could have caught us out for god knows how long at this point.” I understood what he meant, we have been off alert for some time now and nothing seemed to be happening. “I get what you mean, but as long as some of us are keeping a look out we will be fine.” He held the same output, he remained frustratingly focused on everything, at this point nothing could calm him. I didn’t blame him for what he was feeling, but he needed to pull it together during this time of crisis like the rest of us.

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We took a break in order to catch our breath and have a quick drink and then keep moving, however the moment we stopped we heard a single bullet fire into the crowd. Everyone began to panic, John was the first to notice what was happening “THERE IN THE BUSHES!” he began to smoke out the relatively thin forest around the road trying to force them into showing themselves, I did the same, clearing the forest with a thick layer of unbreathable smoke, even if it didn’t harm them, they couldn't fire on us because they couldn’t see… at least that’s what we thought more gunshots came out of the smoke. I yelled out “They have thermal, duck under something to hide your heat signature and keep moving!” I could see where the shots were coming from and I began to open fire on where the flashes of gunshots were coming from. John then made a rash decision throwing a thermite grenade into the dry part of forest, igniting one side of the forest in an engulfing flame, burning whole side for nearly a kilometre in that direction, he did the same to the other side burning it down to a crisp and only when the flames settled and fizzled out did you see all of the bodies that were left behind due to his actions, even though they were the enemy it was still inhumane how they died, burning to death is one of the worst ways to die, and these people were just following orders, they didn’t have much other choice. Everyone stared in horror, John however remained expressionless he then heard one of the soldiers that were not quite dead yet, groan in pain. He stormed over to him and held him up. “Where is he!” John asked aggressively, he got no response “WHERE!” he then slapped the burnt soldier making him scream in pain. Everyone standing around him was uncomfortable with what was happening, but no-one stopped him. The soldier wheezed “He… Must… Win!” John let him go, stood up, pulled out his sidearm and put a bullet in the soldier’s head, I broke. “What the fuck man!” I yelled at him, “you can’t just fucking obliterate everything in your sight because of what happened, there are still rules that have to be upheld. We have all lost someone John, we lost the same person!” John didn’t want to hear it “Yeah we did, but you didn’t have to have live with them dying in your arms in pain! I have to live with that, not you!” he then continued his march forward, not caring about if anyone was following him.