Only The Living (Lost Survival Series Book 1) by Tyne David

Author:Tyne,David [Tyne,David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-09-20T03:00:00+00:00

17 | Parents

I pretended to be asleep. I'm not proud of it, but as I lay beside my mum and Beth, I faced the wall and kept my head down as it happened. Not from fearing my own safety, but concerning my family, my friends and everyone else in the room who could hear the struggling.

A booming voice echoed over dozens of sleeping bodies. “Just fucking admit what you did. I saw you sneaking around.”

His victim seemed to be a rather distressed male, still attempting to clear his name.“I-I never stole anything, officer! You've got it all wrong!” Another swift kick seemed to bring him to his knees.

“Is that right? We take you in, give you protection, a place to sleep, food to eat—”

The winded man let out an involuntary laugh, although the dread in his voice was apparent. “Food? Ha, what food? We're starving in here, and if I was going to be treated like shit anyway, I would've stolen some so that my son could have an actual meal!”

More agonised grunts and scuffles filled the community centre’s air, as more policemen came to restrain the lone man. They called him a thief, barking that he was ungrateful while they beat him mercilessly.

I tilted my head to face the scene, but not enough to draw their attention. All I could see was the man's son crying silently in his bed, too petrified to look up at the assault. The officer motioned over two more faceless uniforms, and the beaten man was then dragged by the hair towards the front entrance.

One of the pigs actually had the audacity to howl with laughter, resonating throughout into the hall. “You want food, huh? There’s plenty more where you came from!” Exile, I thought as I pictured the Lost waiting outside those gates, ready to tear that man limb from bloody limb.

So this was what it came to, when everyone blindly followed an authority without question. A room full of bystanders, including myself — now I understood the urgency behind Millie’s plea to leave.

This was much more macabre than a handful of power-hungry coppers, and I didn't want to be around when they started tightening the noose around the community centre’s neck.

Mils wanted us both to escape during the night, but I saw matters differently. I couldn't abandon my mum, Beth and Ian like that; they would surely die at the mercy of men whose pride outweighed their capabilities.

Things had to change around here, no more blind eyes. Sure, I pretended to be asleep... but pretty soon, I was going to wake up.

----

That morning, which had yielded a little under fifteen minutes of rest, my mum requested some alone time with Beth. “She's lost her parents, her entire world! Poor thing... If she's bottling it all up, that can’t be healthy for any child. We need to have some girl talk, just for a little while. Okay, sweetie?"

Being separated from Beth made me anxious, but I knew it had to happen sooner or later.

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