Aftermath

The sudden release of energy caused by 23 striking out with her newfound power did more than she ever could have contemplated. She now lay propped up against a section of crumpled wall, blood poured freely from the open tears in her flesh caused by jagged shards of rock that had been propelled in all directions by the brutal force of the blast. A large cluster of fallen debris that had missed crushing her legs by mere inches obscured her from easy view of anyone in the corridor. That she escaped so lightly was a miracle, given the state that the armed and armoured soldiers were in.

            One of the soldiers lay in complete ruin; several others were still twitching as the last vestiges of life departed from their misshapen forms. The smell of blood, burning and death lingered and was heavy in the air. No air conditioning units were still functioning well enough to remove any of the pungent odours from the corridor.

            A medical team rounded the end of the corridor at a light jog with kit bags full of first response medicine and struggled to find their way through the dust that hung in thick clouds and the debris that littered the floor. Live electrical cables dangled from the ceiling and caused momentary flashes of light that illuminated the carnage in sickening strobelight.

            “Christ,” one of the medics exclaimed, doubling over and emptying the contents of his stomach over a fallen chunk of caved in ceiling as he caught sight of the remains of one of the soldiers who had ran from 23 early on. A colleague patted him on the back in an attempt to soothe him whilst the remainder of the team kept on ahead, right up to the site of the confrontation.

            The other two crouched beside each of the men in turn, checking for any signs of life before sharing a meaningful look with each other that confirmed the worst. None of them would make it, and the kindest thing to do would be to provide painkillers to grant them a smoother passing into the next life. They administered the drugs with a sense of solemn duty and stood gathered around them. There would be another team along later to dispose of the remains in the appropriate manner, and later another team would make the necessary repairs.

            “Do you think terrorists were behind this?” asked the oldest of the medics with a frown, a man in his early forties with salt and pepper hair. He was military trained, as were they all, and he had not let his posting here diminish his fitness or capacity for violence in any way. He carried a lethal air about him for one practicing medicine.

            “No, Sir. It’s gotta be to do with those people in the hangar,” replied the youngest. He had only been in the unit for a week after exceeding the expectations of his superiors on the front line. “You know we’ve been sent here ‘cause of our military training just as much as our medical. It’s not the first time I’ve wondered if we’re guarding them or keeping ‘em penned in.”

            The older of the two nodded his agreement. He glanced around the corridor as if searching for something unseen and his eyes took on a haunted look. As a good soldier, he was expected not to question orders but to act and respond to certain events in certain ways as dictated by his superiors, and to do so immediately. Still, he believed that he needed to know more about this hangar than he was currently allowed. Something felt wrong, and he knew he had good instincts. He considered voicing his opinions to the others but kept quiet, not wanting to cause them any more stress; they were good guys and deserved to be spared his worrying until he had further proof.

            “Don’t you worry about those patients or why they’re being kept here. It’s above and beyond any of our pay grades, and I don’t want to end up jobless or worse because I couldn’t keep quiet,” he said.

            Silence descended upon them like a black shroud, enveloping them. None of them said a word as they concluded their business in the rubble-strewn corridor. The medicine took effect on the dying and out of a sense of common purpose they remained with them until the end, talking to them about such banal things as the weather in a vain hope to restore some vestige of normality to the situation.     The older of the two was stood on a stone, looking at the door that led to the hangar. A red light flashed above it to indicate that the emergency door overrides had kicked in and the large metal door that seemed more at home in a fortress had clamped itself shut to either protect or imprison the people inside. All he knew about them was that they were ill and needed round-the-clock supervision in case something happened or they took a turn for the worse.

            They said that they had been found in strange circumstances and that they were glowing when they had been discovered and that it was an alien invasion. He thought it was absolutely ridiculous, wondering how anyone could believe something so outlandish. He assumed it was someone making up a rumour to scare the new recruits that had been assigned to the facility. He had no time for such air-headed discussion and either scolded or ignored the men engaging in it depending on his mood.

            “David, come here,” he said, turning slightly, “I want to ask you something.”

            “Sir?” he said, stopping halfway through returning their equipment to the kit bag to go and stand beside his superior.

            “If there was a blast in this corridor and the emergency lockdown routine was activated, then that means the door was open when the blast went off. I’ve never known that door open in the three months I’ve been working here,” he said, hesitating slightly to choose his next words carefully, “No one was due to be down here and yet an armed response team was dispatched. Why?”

            David shook his head and did not seem to understand the significance; it was obvious that none of this had occurred to him. He was a gifted medic and a brilliant soldier but he lacked any special talent for thinking outside of the box that sometimes led to errors in his judgement, the medic thought.

            “What if one of them escaped?” he said.

            “Escaped and did what, sir? I doubt he would have improvised an explosive and used it to blast an empty corridor. The walls of the hangar are weaker, it would make more sense to try and blow them if they wanted to get outside,” said David, and the medic decided that he had a valid point and nodded slowly, chewing it over in his mind.

            “You have a point, I suppose,” he said, “we should return to the main complex and report what we’ve found.”

            As they turned to leave, they heard someone cough. It sounded like a woman but none of the response team had been female. The two medics shared a look and paused in their tracks, straining to hear some other sound that would indicate a direction.

            “Hello?” the older of the two called, his voice echoing in the rubble. His greeting was met with another cough and then silence, but this time they were paying attention and managed to work out the direction from which it came. Both of them stepped carefully towards the cough and reached a point where the debris was concentrated and would not allow easy passage. The medics climbed easily up and over the collapsed section of ceiling and looked down over the wreckage.

            “Bloody hell, how did she get there?” said the younger, but the medic was not listening anymore.

            He studied her carefully, something tugging at the corner of his mind. She was an attractive young woman in her mid twenties with dark hair, possibly auburn; it was difficult to tell in the low light. As he strained to get a closer look, he let slip a curse that shocked the younger medic. He realised what was bothering him, now. Her clothes were saturated with blood but there was not a single scratch on her, and she was glowing. The nimbus of light that shifted in colour that the others had spoken about was real. She was one of them.

            Before he could recover from the shock, she opened her eyes and looked around in a daze. She looked to her right and muttered something under her breath, paused, then muttered something else. Then she nodded and looked directly into the medic’s eyes.

            “Help me,” was all she could manage, and she slipped back into unconsciousness.