Dark's Dominion by Joshua David Bellin

Author:Joshua David Bellin [Bellin, Joshua David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Sci-Fi, Apocalyptic
Publisher: Mostly Wind Books
Published: 2020-10-20T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The little girl’s wretched cries echoed in Michelle’s ears.

She reached for Tyris and pulled her close, trying to stifle the girl’s sobs against her chest, but it did no good. Even when Petra cocooned against her friend and mimicked Michelle’s shushing noises, Tyris only cried harder, a sound of such utter desolation it made the pitch-dark vault seem as if it were already a tomb. Michelle understood Tyris’s distress. The girl had lost both her mother and father on the same terrible day, and she’d counted on Michelle to take their place. Now, Michelle had failed her, too.

Anger coursed through her veins as she held the desperate child against her. Anger not at Laman, not at the creators of the Skaldi, but at herself. After all she’d suffered at the hands of Udain Genn’s oldest and youngest sons, how could she have trusted his middle child to chaperone her to safety? And of all the places he might have chosen, how could she have let him lead her to yet another of the military installations that seemed to exist everywhere in the country, buried like poisonous mushrooms beneath the unsuspecting public’s feet? Laman himself was probably less a villain than an imbecile, his head too full of adventure novels and superhero movies to admit that not all stories have happy endings. But she knew, and still she’d set judgment aside and allowed him to shepherd her and the others to their deaths.

When Tyris finally cried herself to sleep, another voice emerged from the fathomless darkness—Laman’s, babbling empty words that Michelle could only assume meant he was crazy with pain, if he hadn’t lost his mind altogether.

“They shouldn’t have been here,” he said. “This was supposed to be a safe place. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe there wasn’t anything back there in the lunchroom. We could go and check it out, if I could just get up …”

She heard him trying to raise himself, then his gasp of pain. His body sank to the floor, and his voice resumed.

“They never should have used the flamethrower. That was stupid. We could go back and check, and I bet we’d see it was nothing, just a little pile of string …”

On and on, he tried to convince himself, or to convince her. All he succeeded in doing was make her feel as if he was blaming her—for contradicting him, for getting everyone so worked up they’d shot at the first thing that moved. Eventually, she couldn’t stand to listen to him anymore.

“Laman,” she said. “If you don’t have anything constructive to say, just shut up.”

He did, for about a second. Then he went on exactly as he had before.

“I was so sure of it. Everything was going exactly the way it was supposed to. There was the entrance, and there was food, and everything was working out. I’m going to go back right now. I bet it wasn’t anything at all in the lunchroom, and that stupid guard …”

Michelle shifted the sleeping

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