Bloody Choices by Julie Steimle (sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt) 📕

corridor to keep watch. The others dropped down from above one by one, most limping while clenching their bleeding wounds. One of the others opened the grate hatch, helping the less fortunate inside. Jafarr glanced back once to make sure they hurried.

One of them walked over to him, listening also for footfalls or cries of the People’s Military. So far, nothing.

“Help the wounded get down there,” Jafarr whispered to him then reached out for the weapon the man was holding. “Hand me that. I need it.”

The man blinked once at Jafarr then passed the pistol over. He cast Jafarr another puzzled look when he walked over to the grate, but he did as the sixteen-year-old boy said.

Jafarr walked back out to the corridor, peering carefully into the transit hall where that one People’s Military officer still patrolled the cavern, still unaware the rebels had escaped from their corner. The P.M. did not see Jafarr. He mostly scanned the dark cavern for changes; the dead still dead.

Sneaking back into the maintenance hall, Jafarr helped the last of the refugees get below the grate to the hideaway. Then with one more glance toward the metro hall to make sure no one was following, he climbed in after them and pulled the grate down, latching it securely then descending into the machine works. By the time Jafarr reached the room he exhaled a heavy breath and scanned the casualties.

“How many did we lose?” Jafarr asked.

One of the men, a Doric Bently who was nearer Jafarr’s father’s age and with just as much clout, said while clutching an arm, “About twenty from our group.

“Your group?” Jafarr blinked at him, hardly registering what that meant.

“Twenty,” Doric repeated, nodding.

Frowning, Jafarr looked up at the grate above them again. “They could still find us here. We have to go.”

“What about the others?” a woman Jafarr knew as Kiina asked. There was a nasty graze on one cheek, one hand severely burned with blisters but all otherwise fine.

Jafarr cringed, shaking his head. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know how many teams you had out there. Ka’rren wouldn’t tell me his plans after our argument.”

“There were four teams,” Doric said, now gesturing to one of the men to open a hatchway to go downward. He then signaled to another man to get the wounded into it. “Ours was to meet up here. Ka’rren led another to an uppercity rendezvous point that would take them back here eventually and—”

Jafarr suddenly pulled the one man from the hatch, shaking his head. “No. Not that way. I’ve already evacuated the place. You need to go to the emergency shelters. That’s where I’ve sent everyone.”

“You’ve sent?” one of them murmured, taking a step back.

Nodding, Jafarr opened the other hatch. “Go this way.”

“Wait.” Doric set his hand on the shoulder of the one Jafarr had just been directing. “What authority do you—?”

Above they heard feet pounding, shouting also. Someone called out that they had found blood.

Hissing through his teeth, Jafarr said to Doric, “No one else was here. Now go.”

Doric blinked at him, but the others were already shoving their way into the escape hatch, one pulling on Doric’s arm.

“What about the others?” that woman Kiina asked Jafarr again, her eyes wide with terror. “My husband was with them!”

The thumping was getting louder. The P.M.s were pawing the ground for loose floor grates.

Jafarr looked her in the eyes, urging her to the escape hatch. “I’ll go find them and warn them.”

The grate above banged. The loose one rocked on the brace bar, and a P.M. cried out that he had found something.

“Go!” Jafarr shoved her into the hatch.

The group scrambled inside, pulling it closed and locking it. Jafarr looked up once more as the commotion up top heaved the grate out of their way. With a hop, he darted to another side panel, yanking it off to the side. Then he stepped away from it to the doors of what looked like an electrical panel, heaving it open then removing the ceiling. Jafarr climbed up the shaft that extended up from the panel, shutting the narrow door behind him with a slight click. That shaft led him into a small room just on the other side of the maintenance room above, the echoes of the P.M.s scrambling down clear enough on the other side that he was sure they would be able to hear him if he did not take care with his steps. There he slid a vent grate aside, climbing into the large cylinder that would take him quickly out of the center of operations.

The echoes of P.M. voices soon muted in the hollow hush of the air intake, nearly sucking Jafarr into an enormous stainless steel room that contained a round whirling fan the size of a truck. Luckily the fan grate stopped him from going further. But then there was also the handhold next to a hatchway for maintenance. He pushed on the hatch, but it wouldn’t budge. Inside the fan room, Jafarr spotted another, larger doorway.

Sliding the fan grate aside, Jafarr lowered himself into the fan chamber, clinging to the rungs of the maintenance holds that ran along the wall and narrow walkway, stale wind rushing around his ears sucking everything through the blades to the mesh of vents going from it. As Jafarr pressed along the wall, keeping as far away from the wind and blades as he could, he slid to the left groping the machine slot for the door. This time the wind blew hard against him to knock him into the small vents. But he took out his hacker’s card, clutching it tightly, and inserted it into the machine works. The door popped over after two tries.

Windswept, Jafarr nearly fell into the hallway. But he found his footing then turned to shut the door, though it took three tries to get it to catch. With the pressure of the wind pounding like a huge hand, he struggled to hold his own feet, yet when the catch enabled he slumped against the door and caught his breath.

But then his mind snapped up again onto his task. There were three other groups out there, one of which planned to head back to their main headquarters from the uppercity—and that was Ka’rren’s group. Jafarr knew three direct routes from the P.M. ammunition cache that Ka’rren had planned to raid, one of which was more direct than the others. And though Ka’rren had a direct personality Jafarr didn’t think he was that stupid to take the shortcut home if it meant leading P.M.s there also. So Jafarr chose one of the other two and hoped it was the one Ka’rren had taken.

The Dead

 

Jafarr walked in and out of the machinery from the fan room, peering around for some sign of the rebels for what seemed over an hour, but there was nothing. He eventually emerged from that machine hall through a door, and that opened to a crawlspace over a transit hall in the middlecity. The lights did not rotate here. They burned under a dusty catwalk in a rather narrow roofed room. Jafarr crept in the rusty darkness, carefully stepping upon the grate with ears perked. There was barely an echo within the hall. The dust shook off onto the light covers with each step, but nothing else stirred. Managing to make it to the access door, Jafarr then climbed down into another shaft.

He descended the rungs several feet then stopped. One of the rungs felt sticky wet under his palms. Jafarr lifted up his hand to peer at it, but in the darkness he could barely make out what it was—though a chill of suspicion drove his imagination to the extreme. He reached back up, groping the rung. The wet substance was not any higher. So he felt over the shaft wall next. There he discovered the same wet stuff on the right side leading up to a panel door. He pushed it apart then climbed in. Within the pitch-black machine workings he could feel an occasional puddle of that wet stuff under his hands and bruised knees, and in some occasions he noticed drier smeared trails. Jafarr hurried.

Near the end of the tunnel the light started to grow. Looking down at the trail he was following, Jafarr could see now that the wet stuff was what he suspected. Blood. Swallowing, Jafarr crawled further until he got into a space where he could stand. From there he followed the blood trail and the smeared footprints in it, pausing only once with a blink at the direction those foot prints were going. It was the opposite direction he was heading, pointing back the way he had come from. Looking back over his shoulder at the dark tunnel, Jafarr frowned. However, he continued to follow the trail backward anyway, especially noticing how much the blood puddled in one spot, smeared around as if someone had fallen and was carried. Near it were singe marks from laser fire.

He came to an open door. Pausing at the edge, Jafarr took a breath then peeked into a recognizable machine room. There at the entrance lay three rebels dead. One of them was Ka’rren.

Catching himself against the wall, Jafarr covered his mouth, trying to keep from throwing up. He clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and took deep breaths then looked back once more, checking the other faces. Ka’rren and two men he didn’t know. Ka’rren eyes were wide open staring at the ceiling, a gaping flesh wound in his chest and one in his shoulder. His leg had been entirely charred. The other two men did not fare any better.

Staggering back, Jafarr rushed to the way he had come, fixing his mind on the living that had escaped down the shaft and still needed help.

Survivors

Back through the shaft, Jafarr climbed down the ladder, watching carefully where to go next. The moment he reached the bottom he halted, staring a two more dead—a woman and a man—that were sprawled under the ladder. Both had multiple wounds, though the killing blow seemed to be from above, their heads still smoking from laser burn. Staggering, Jafarr leaned on the ladder, trying to keep down the nausea.

Looking over the floor, his eyes flickered to the faint light from a metro tunnel ceiling not far off that reflected off the blood trail. Twelve in the group. Five dead. Not one of them was Malay. He had to keep going, quite sure the P.M.s were