Road to Redemption by Mike Brooks

Author:Mike Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2020-02-05T13:19:13+00:00

Monsters

Essy hadn’t been able to see much of what had been happening, but she’d heard screams, and heard gunshots, and smelled smoke.

Donnel had stopped crying and wailing. At first Essy had thought that was a good thing, but then she realised that her brother wasn’t really doing much at all. He barely ate or drank when their captors put in food and water for them, he didn’t speak to her, and even when he was looking at her, he wasn’t looking at her. His face might be turned towards her, and his eyes might be pointing in her direction, but he didn’t seem to be seeing her. So she held him close, and sang hymns softly, and told him that everything would be right again, even though she was no longer sure that was possible. Donnel still thought of their captors as monsters, and Essy had come to as well, even though she’d caught glimpses of human faces and heard human voices. Just because you were human didn’t mean you weren’t a monster.

The only thing Donnel really still did was shrink back from the monsters when they came to the bars of the cage. They had to pull him out of it when they decided it was time for the children to empty themselves, and they ignored Essy’s screams to be gentle with him. It wasn’t that they were rough, as such, just… uncaring. So far as they were concerned, Essy and Donnel needed to be moved from inside to outside so they could urinate and defecate, and then get moved back in again. That was going to happen whether they wanted it to or not, and if they weren’t as quick about it as the monsters wished them to be, the monsters would drag them out or throw them back in.

Then, one day – Essy wasn’t sure which day, because she’d lost track of them – they weren’t bundled back into the cage as soon as they’d finished their business. One of the monsters grabbed her by the back of the neck, and one picked Donnel up, and they were hauled away from the cage. Essy started to struggle against the man’s grip, then tried to force herself to relax. She didn’t want to go back into the cage, after all. Maybe they were going to be let go?

That was a terrifying thought anyway, because she had no idea where they were, and she didn’t know how long she and Donnel would last in the underhive. Snake-Eye Val had told them stories of a family who’d got stranded in the depths somehow, and had found all they’d needed to build their own home and eat until their bellies were bursting, but Da had got angry at her when he’d thought Essy couldn’t hear, and yelled at the old woman about filling his children’s heads with nonsense. Certainly, Essy had wondered why, if the depths of the underhive were so full of food, her family were living near the border of Hive City and not always growing enough slime to feed them all.

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.