Hold the Line (Reality Bleed Book 7) by J.Z. Foster

Author:J.Z. Foster [Foster, J.Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Winter Gate Publishing
Published: 2021-06-26T22:00:00+00:00

The refugees were rounded up and separated in small groups, by age and gender, so that their interrogations would not affect one another.

Several members in Dark Ocean could communicate in Russian, but only Endo spoke it flawlessly.

He was given the task.

“We’re going to make a perimeter and scout while we talk to them,” Ito had told him as he chewed on a cigar. “You seal them off in groups, and find out what they have to say. Tell them if they comply, we will strip them of their weapons and they will be allowed to leave on foot. Their fate will be their own.”

So then, one by one, Endo made his way through the groups, and for several hours he took them away to hear their stories. Something in his stomach began to writhe and squirm like a demon in his gut. It painfully rubbed his insides.

But now wasn’t the time to try to subdue the pain. He only ignored it.

He spoke first to an old woman with a sun bleached dress, who had already seen many horrors in her life.

“Monsters. They kill and eat, and the dead rise up again.”

And then it was a boy, too young to hold a rifle, but old enough to understand that things would never be the same.

“They took my mother.”

Each had a story.

“No eyes, but they had teeth. So many teeth.”

Each a scar that would never fade.

“I saw him turn when it got into him. It squeezed so tight there was nothing left. Only the monster. Then he stood again.”

Endo knew that the world had changed, that something horrid was now here.

But hadn’t it killed the enemy of his people? Was this not the will of Heaven?

Each time he finished his questioning, they all asked him the same.

“What will you do with us?”

And each time, Endo told them what he was told.

“We will take your weapons, and you will be allowed to leave.”

It was only when Endo got to the old man, the only adult male in the group, that he was asked a question.

After the old man, who had a long gray beard and a bald head with liver spots, had told Endo his story, he leaned.

“See the girl there?” the old man pointed and Endo looked.

A young girl with a knit scarf and pale blue eyes he could see from even here. She squeezed a ragged doll that was missing one arm.

“She’s only eight,” the old man whispered, his voice hoarse. “She likes to paint, and ever since she saw them take her brother, she hasn’t put down that doll. He gave it to her.”

None of that mattered. Why should Endo care if a girl painted or carried a doll?

So why was he looking at her? Why did he feel a strange tension in his neck?

The girl couldn’t possibly hear them, but she looked up at Endo. She couldn’t see his face, not while in CAG, but he could see hers.

What was she to the world?

Endo looked away.

“Let the children go,” the old man whispered, his eyes wide and glasslike.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.