She waited patiently, like a feral beast bidding time for the right moment to strike its prey, her dirtied and naked body still as stone. The furry creature dug up and down the pile of a rotting corpse, taking a bite off the human flesh here and there, with her eyes following its every moves.
When it started biting into her, she knew the time was ripe. Quick as a snake, her hand snatched the beast; the other one moved to help take hold of it.
The rat squirmed frantically, being stuck in her grasp, and before she could let herself felt anything, Lana smashed the rat into the wall. It finally stopped moving, its head was but a puddle of flesh and blood.
‘Food’ she thought with hunger, her stomach roared for the mess of fur and meat in her hand. She quickly peeled out the skin that covered its dead body, pulled the raw rat meat apart and stuffed her face with hunger, even when she gagged at the smell and taste of blood.
‘What am I doing?’ Lana thought, despair filled her heart and a stream of tears reeked out of her eyes. Yet she still continued to bite into the raw flesh of the innocent rat she killed, its hot red blood dripping onto her chest. For other than the thousands of maggots crawling over the dead body piling around her, it was the only thing she could consume to sustain herself if she wished to stay alive. Even if she could feel her body wasting away every night that had passed.
It was not long till she had devoured every last part of the meat in her hands, and was left with only the rat’s bone and skin. Her hands shook in disgusted of herself as she set the poor animal’s remain away from her, piling it with the other.
“I’m sorry…” She whispered with a coarse and sobbing voice. She had lost count on the number of its kind she had killed for the sake of sustaining her malnourished body, but to her sorrow, it would not be the last.
‘I could make it my last.’ She thought, it only took going hungry for a few weeks and the end would come to her, or she could smash her head into the bleached towering wall, the same way she killed those poor rats if she wanted it to be as quick as possible.
‘I should have died that day.’ The thought went through her mind for the millionth time, and the sad thing was she believed it was true. When the ancient bell rang for the third time, she should have been killed by the solar gun of that guard, or at least by the fall after the shot. But in a cruel twist of fate, she had survived both, only to be in this pitiful state.
Lana’s hand moved to touch her left shoulder, where the burnt wound had healed into an ugly and brown scar. The guard who supposed to execute her had somehow missed his shot, instead of hitting her heart and ended her life; the wound brought an unspeakable pain to her for more days than she could count, and she had to hold onto the wound, suffering through the leaking blood and waiting for it to heal.
But Lana somehow could not say which was worse, the gun blast, or her fall. It was the pile of corpses, belonging to the people who had been executed that before Lana that reduced her fall and saved her life; otherwise, the drop would have killed her. She lifted herself up, her body shaken by the freezing night air hitting her exposed skin, to see her legs; the right had taken the entirelity of the fall, and now all the bones inside the leg had shattered apart and healed crookedly, rendering her ability to even walk, which made her life in the execution pit even worse than it should have been. She couldn’t hop around on her remaining good leg, for the surface that was the pile of corpses was uneven and made her slipped and fell every time she tried to do so, and crawling on all four was out of the option. So all she could do was dragging herself around the surface of flesh and rot, grabbing hold to other human’s remain to move herself forward.
Lana’s hand moved to her head. The hair that many of her neighbors praised as being beautiful golden lock was now a tangle messed, mixed with dried out blood and dirty filth, coarse and hard to the touch, and bad to the smell, though for the last part her body was giving the same effect. Repeatedly she had tried to fix her hair; repeatedly she only made it worse.
Lana shook her head, she had taken up the habit of falling into deep thought lately, as there was nothing to do other than that but eat, sleep and cry in her new life in the execution pit. She let herself fell back down onto the pile of flesh and gazed into the sky. The moon could not be seen that night, making the star shone brighter than normal, but made her ability to navigate the pit much worse, though it made no matter, her eyes had adapted to darkness by now.
It was barely a life, in the execution pit. She didn’t even know how long had passed, losing track of time by the pain, misery, and loneliness she felt every single day. But Lana had remembered the day when someone else had survived the execution, a man of maybe forty, the blast had missed his heart but landed into the middle of his stomach instead. Lana had crawled to see him when she heard his whimpering for help after he landed on his back a few feet away from her. Blood was leaking from his wound, so Lana tried pushing her hands over it to stop him from bleeding out, all the while trying to comfort him with what she knew were empty sweet words, telling him that he would be okay. The man couldn’t respond, for every time he tried to say something, he coughed out blood till he lost his breath. It had gone on for many countless hours till the life faded away from his eyes. Lana cried herself to sleep that night.
As the army of stars traveled through the night sky, Lana reminisced about the person she had missed most of all, Sophia. She wondered what her older sister was doing right this moment, sleeping in the small little room they shared with Ren, most likely. She also wondered whether or not her sister would miss her.
‘Why should she? I brought this onto myself.’ Lana thought, if she didn’t steal that stupid honeyed bread, she would not be here, hunting rats to stay alive. But knowing her sister, she would still miss her in spite of that.
For more times than she was able to counts, Lana had hoped against hope that Sophia would appear over the edge of the pit, with a ladder in her arms, rescuing her from this hell and they would flee together into the sunset. But it was all a fantasy, she knew, to the rest of the world, whether they cared or not, the girl name Lana was already dead.
If there was something she thought about slightly less, it was whether or not her surviving the execution was an act of god or not. After all, it was near improbable that the guard who paid the first salute to the new supreme leader would miss his shot in such a manner, and the chance of landing on her leg and saving the rest of the vital parts of her body was incredibly thin. Often she wondered that maybe her family might have prayed for her life, and the god had given her mercy.
‘Fool’ a voice spoke in her mind, a voice that resembled her own, but deeper and darker ‘What kind of merciful God would save a girl’s life, but still left her in such a place as this.’
‘Maybe I should end it right here.’ Lana thought, it wouldn’t be hard, and nothing awaited this hell of a life but the fiery doom of the New Year’s purged. So her fate would always be death, and it would come, sooner or later.
She turned to the dirty and bloodied curved concrete wall closing around her. It was too smooth for any climbing, even if one of her legs wasn’t broken. So the skill her sister had taught her was also useless to help her. Lana wondered how much of her shattered soul hadn’t been crushed yet.
‘No one can help me, and I cannot even help myself.’ Lana thought, miserable, depressed, and filled with despair. She shook her head in an attempt to rid herself of her dark thought and dragged herself to the area where she discovered that it was the most comfortable spot to sleep on. Her broken leg hit into one of the rotting skulls along the way and she had to bit her lip to not wail in pain. When she finally reached the area, she wiped the tears out of her eyes; her naked body crawled into a ball of sadness and drifted into sleep, where she wouldn’t have to suffer the hell that was this pit for just a few hours.
Thck! Just a few seconds after she managed to close her eyes, she heard the strange sound, which alerted her. It sounded like something landed into the pit, but that couldn’t be, for there was never an execution after the sun went down, and the sound was too soft to be a body falling. She tried to get back to sleep, but eventually, curiosity took hold of her and she pulled herself to the source of sound to investigate.
Dragging herself over a pile of corpse, she squirted her bloodshot eyes at the area where she assumed the mysterious object had landed, and what there wasn’t a pile of flesh and blood, wasn’t an army of maggots and rats, not a wall of smooth concrete, the only three things she seen for more days than she could remember. It was a water canteen, sitting in someone’s dead embrace.
“Water…” Lana gave out, her voice coarse from sustaining herself with rat’s blood; she pushed herself down the hill of body, holding in the gulp of pain every time her broken legs hit into something. She didn’t bother to think how the canteen was there, or any implication of its existence, the only thing that mattered to her was to get hold of it. When the canteen was in her grasp, her hand went for the attaching rope, pulled the cap open, and gulped down the canteen’s content. The water was refreshing, and it felt like it was the tastiest thing she ever had. The liquid cleaned her throat, mixing in with blood that still in her mouth, yet it did not ruin the taste. She kept drinking from the canteen, the water ran down over her dirtied skin cleaning some of the filth, and then it was all gone. Lana tried to shake any water left in the canteen out into her mouth, and managed to get a few drops, but then there was nothing left.
In frustration that she never knew she ever had, she flung the canteen away; smashed and shattered into the pit’s wall and fell into a pile of body, and out of her sight.
‘What is happening to me?’ Lana thought when the frustration died down. She should be gladded that she had a real water to drink for the first time in a long while, not being angry when it inevitably ran out. Being in a pit was starting to affect her, she realized, and not in a good way.
But before she was able to think more of it, she heard a second sound, quieter than the first but closer as well. Alerted, Lana dropped onto the floor and stayed still, trying to blend in with other corpses, for the guard who worked in the execution pit would kill her with their solar gun if they knew that she was still alive down here.
After she gathered barely enough courage, Lana raised her head, took a look at the direction where the sound came from, and the sight filled her heart with hope and joy.
A long and thick rope that could support Lana’s weight was slowly being lowered down into the pit; the length was tied together for a foothold to climb on. It was her salvation. With all of her strength, Lana dragged herself toward the dropping rope, which had reached the layer of bodies she was on. Lana grabbed hold of the end of the rope and lifted herself into a stand position, pressing one of her legs into the first knotted, forgetting that it was broken.
"Arghhhhh!!!" She cried out and fell over back into the piles of rotting fleshes, but still managed to hold onto the rope. In spite of that, she released the grasp willingly anyway. To think that even though her mean of escape this hell of rot and flesh was right in front of her, she still wasn't able to use it. Despair took hold of her heart once again.
'Soph wouldn't have given up.' Lana thought sadly, tears starting to form into her eyes once again, 'But I'm not Soph.'
Yet the thought of her sister gave Lana a will power she never had, like Sophia was urging her on to go forward, to take the opportunity in front of her…
'I will have to try anyway.' Lana finally decided and stood back up. Putting her good foot onto the knot, she pulled herself upward, grasping the footholds above with both her hands, her bare skin dug into the rough surface of the rope. With a slight hesitation, she pressed her stiff and broken leg into the next knot.
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The pain made her mind gone numb and Lana nearly screamed for a second time, but managed to force the voice in, for she knew that the worst had yet to come. Channeling all her courage, she lifted her good foot off the knot, putting her entire weight into her broken leg. As the pain came rushing in, Lana tried to distract herself with happy thoughts, but even the memory of her family couldn't overcome the hurt from her fractured leg having to support her entire body.
And then it passed, she managed to pull herself up and switched to her good leg, a great washed over her as her determination grew.
‘Now I just have to do it twenty more times.’ Lana thought grimly, but there was hope now, she could do it.
So up she went, step by step, like how her sister had taught her. Grinding her teeth together every time she needed to apply weight into her broken leg, and somehow managed to endure the pain every time. Lana could also feel that the rope was slowly moving up along with her as well as if the person who had dropped the rope was helping her.
But when she reached the mid-way point, things somehow got worse. As she was pulling herself up to another foothold with her left arm, she was in too much of a rush that she overreached her hand and the half-healed wound on her shoulder split open, bringing agonizing pain through her body.
Lana wanted to scream, but she knew that if she did, her voice would be heard across the authority district, and she and whoever was there to rescue her would both be executed, and they would make sure she was dead this time. She couldn’t give up either, though it was a shorter fall from the first time, she was still afraid of it, and breaking another leg would mean the end of her.
‘There is only one option left.’ She decided, as the blood from the newly-reopened wound dripped down her shoulder and across her frail and naked body ‘I have to keep going.’
She endured the pain of her two wounds, climbing closer and closer to the edge. In her fit of mad determination, Lana heard the voice of her friends and family urging her on, but Sophia was the loudest of them all, being part of both groups. Her sister’s voice kept her going when in every moment she was ready to give up, hold by hold and knot by knot, the memories of Soph gave Lana the will power she needed to take on the hurt and escape the pit.
When the edge was within her grasp, one of Lana’s hands went for it to provide threshold for the last of her climb. But she didn’t grab it; instead her hand caught into someone else’s, a gloved hand which pulled her upward.
“Thank y...” Lana about to say, with a voice that was improved with clean water, but the words caught in her throat. For in front of her was a man in a white guard uniform, a gun in his other hand.
"No..." Lana gave out, as all hope disappeared from her heart, they were going to kill her again, and this was all just a twisted and evil ploy to crush her depleting hope. Half of Lana wished to release her grabbing hand from his and fell back into the pit, ending it all by herself in a fit of twisted spite.
'Look with your head, not with your eyes.' Lana suddenly remembered, it was something Sophia liked to tell her. She took a deep breath and looked at what she was seeing more closely.
The guard was carrying a bag on his back, which he shouldn't be, as Lana had remembered being taught in school that it was against their protocol to carry one. On his belt was a knife, which also was against their protocol. She looked up and down his equipment, though in a midst of the night, it seemed like it was a normal guard uniform, she could say that it was a little bit too dirtied and battered than what she normally would see from an actual guard. Not to mention, if she actually calmly thought about it, would there be a guard so evil as to do all of this just to crush her spirit?
Her last silver of doubt disappeared when the guard shifted his gaze away when she saw her nakedness “Are you alright?”
Lana did not know what to reply, suddenly realized how much of a pitiful state her body was in “Yes…”
The man took a look at her bleeding shoulder, then at her broken leg “No, you don’t.” He pulled Lana off the edge of the pit, then lifting her into his arms like she weighs nothing more than a small sag of flour, which she probably did from barely eating anything.
“We can wash it with water and bandage the wound,” He said when he dropped her inside the building next to the pit, the rope he used to rescue her was pulled back and put into his bag. Lifting his visor for better vision, he showed Lana that he seemed to be about thirty years old, a few locks of sandy hair peeked from the helmet “But we need to make you a clutch and a temporary protector for your leg. What’s your name?”
“Lana” She answered, weakly, her body still trembling what the pain she endured on her climb.
“I’m Wall.” He answered, searching through the cabinet in the building and produced a bottle of water. He then drew his knife and cut a short length of his rope, then handed it to Lana “Bite on this, and tried not to scream.”
Lana nodded and put the rope between her teeth, preventing her from biting her own tongue. Seeing that, Wall poured the water into her open wound. Strangely, it did not hurt as much as she imagined, though she could still feel the rope’s splinters digging between her teeth, and the water felt more like hot oil than anything. When the water washed away the blood and filth in and around her wound, Wall wrapped the area around it with a roll of bandage from his bag, Lana tried to move her arm, it still hurt, but less now.
“We had to have you check by Doc later, but this should work for now.” He finally said, tugging the bandage behind one another to make it hold together on her shoulder “Let’s go find you some clothes.”
Lana looked at her exposed skin, she had spent so many days without any cloth that she forgot that she was supposed to wear one. Part of her had a sudden urge to cover her body with her hands, but she knew how stupid it was to consider about social appropriateness after this much time she was in this man’s presence.
Wall helped Lana walked by carrying her by the shoulder to the next room, where she remembered it was the one where she had entered the day she was executed, on one side was a pile of clothes from the freshly executed the day before. Her savior dug through the pile and threw her a bleached red T-shirt and a short dress pant. Though Lana would like her old dress back, she assumed it was already sent to the trading square to be sold at a cheap price, so she decided these would have to do.
As Lana struggled to put on the pant with her broken leg, the clothes may be loosely fit, but still worked, she saw that Wall was still searching through the pile, picking out one that was still in good quality and tugged them into his bag, even some that did not seem to fit his body. Lana wanted to ask him about his action, but she knew that it was none of her business.
Wall found a few pieces of sticks lying around the pit, he put two next to her broken leg and one under her foot, then tied it together with the rest of his bandages. After he gave it one last check that it would hold, he handed Lana a long one to act as a clutch.
“Try walking,” Wall told her.
Lana lifted herself up and tried to put some weight into her broken leg. Though it’s still hurt, she had regained the ability to walk, though poorly.
When Wall saw that she could press her weight into her broken leg, he closed the visor of his helmet and turned to the facility gate “Let’s get going then.”
“But to where?” Lana whispered to herself, she would want to return to her home, but knew full well that the prospect would be impossible. Though she loved her parents very much, they sadly were, like Sophia had said, a sheep that would feel obligated to turn her in. But if she could not go back to the only place she ever knew, then she didn’t know where else.
Regardless, she followed Wall awkwardly with the help of her clutch through the building metal gate and into the alley below, the dreaded crushing tower overshadowed them like a dark tall giant with out-stretching arms.
They turned left, right, left, left then right again through the twisting road, Wall seemed to have no problem navigating through the alley, which was strange because it was a new moon tonight and the road had little to no brightness to speak of. Then she realized that his guard helmet likely had night vision equipment attached to it.
“Thank you” Lana finally managed to say, as they proceeded through the alleyway “For…saving me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He replied after a nod “It is our belief that everyone, is worth saving.”
‘Our’ Lana noticed grimly, and she suspected that he was not talking about the order of the guard, which he did not seem to be a part of.
“You there!” A commanding voice called behind them, before she could ask him about his word. Her Lana’s body frozen at the called, while Wall turned around to meet the voice calmly.
“What is that girl doing there?” The voice asked, as Lana glanced back at the source of it. The speaker was a guard, a real one this time, his gun dangerously pointed at her.
“I…caught her out passing the curfew, so I’m taking her to the holding cell,” Wall told the guard, struggling to lie at first but the rest came smoothly.
The opposing guard looked at Lana’s crutch and the woods around her leg, then at Wall’s bag and dagger “Let me see your scanner.”
Lana looked at Wall’s wrist, in dim light, you could not make it out, but the device on his wrist was just a simple watch, not a guard device. As dread filled her heart, Wall nodded and reached out his hand “Go ahead.”
But as the other guard went to examine Wall’s ‘scanner’, quick as a snake, Wall’s hand formed into a fist and punched into the side of the guard helmet, toppling him over into the stone pavement. But as he tried to regain composure and stood up, Wall smashed the back of the guard’s neck with the solar gun he quickly drew from his back, knocking the guard backed down. He didn’t try to get up afterward.
Lana would have had scream at the event unveiling in front of her, but Wall noticed her near outburst and covered her mouth, muffling the sound that would otherwise alert the entire district, and had brought half of the order would have come for their life.
“You kill him…” Lana managed to say in a wailing voice after Wall released his hand.
“I did not, at least I hope so.” Wall reassured her “He is a common, just liked us, but simply was picked to be a guard. Get his equipment, we could use it.”
Lana nodded, now calmed. She did as Wall asked; peeling off his gloves, and saw that the man was missing two fingers for some reason, then unlaced his leather combat boots, and pulled the gun off his grasping hand. Meanwhile, Wall pulled off the man helmet and then proceeded to tear apart the circuit board hiding under the plate protection. After he had thoroughly ruined the helmet, he threw it far behind them, letting it rolled away into the dark.
“His reinforcement would be here soon.” Wall told her, in half a hurry tone “So let’s get going, the passage should be by the next corner.”
‘Passage?’ The thing Wall said was becoming stranger and stranger.
They turned at the next crossroad into an area between two storage facilities, an alley with thick stone wall at both sides and nowhere to go forward.
“It’s a dead end.” Lana realized, she tried to look for the passage Wall was talking about, but she could see none, just bricks and mortars and stones on all sides.
“It wouldn’t be a secret passage if you can found it with minimal effort,” Wall told her and moved to the right side of the alley wall, then started counting the giant bricks that made up the wall.
When his silent counting reached thirteen, Wall gave the brick a light tabbed then pulled it off the wall. He moved the brick slowly, as to not make any sound, and also because it seemed to be very heavy. When the giant stone slab of brick left the wall, she saw that the mortar also came with it, so when put back in; it would be seamless that it was removable.
Wall turned on the light function of his solar gun and flashed the bulb into the hole in the alleyway he had created, inside was a short drop to a stained ground below, then a tunnel overreaching a long distance away that the gun’s small light could not illuminate.
“What is this place?” Lana asked Wall, filled with wonder yet anxiety at the same time.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Wall said and turned off the light “But it seems to be older than this part of the city itself, so I assume the constructor had built the wall over it. In any case, this is the furthest I can take you without explaining what lie ahead.”
He gestured Lana to sit over the moved brick, and Wall slung the gun onto his back and did the same on the ground, he lifted his and spoke in a wary voiced “There is, a safe haven, no, just a haven of sort half a mile away from where this tunnel led to.”
“A resistance?” Lana burst out, without realizing. Though the history was intentionally tainted, like Sophia had told her, the yellow dawn rebellion and many before them were a glorious uprising which many commons of their respective time flocked to.
“Barely” Wall admitted, his eyes noticeably lower “We had to steal most things from the city, and barely scrape by. But we had food enough for everyone most of the time and treat them all fairly, though keep in mind that you had to work, sometimes hard work, but so does everyone else.”
He raised his eyes to match with Lana’s “I cannot and will not force you to join us, so you should choose by yourself now. You can come with me to the cavern of the free, terrible name, I know, or we can part here, and you can go back to your family.”
For a moment, Lana was tempted, ignoring all reasons and went back home to meet her family again, but she knew that it was impossible, even if how sweet it must be. The place where Wall would take her to was likely the best chance she had.
“I’ll come with you.” Lana finally said, “But can I at least say one last goodbye to my family?” It would be nice to be hugged by her parents again, to see Ren’s smile and to speak with Soph, to tell her of what happened, and maybe even cry together.
‘On that day, it was the first time I see my sister’s cry.’ It was bitter, but sweet as well, the tear expressed her love and despair, her grief and her joy, and it felt like she was truly expressing herself for the first time. The memory of that moment was what kept Lana forward, and she wanted to tell Soph that.
But Wall shook his head “I’m truly sorry, Lana. But it is best that no one knows you are alive.”
She could only manage to nod, with her small wish shattered into the ground “Let’s go then.”
But as Wall lowered her down into the dark tunnel, a small realization hit Lana. Wall was coming back to the city, so why couldn’t Lana too? After her leg got better, she could ask Wall to take her back here again, and she could surprise her family with her return and said the goodbye she wanted. She might even be able to convince Sophia to join her. Finally living life away from the giant grasp of the supreme leader and his unjust law, her sister would like that.
For the first time in years, Lana looked forward to the future with a smile.