Jake pushes the half open door back with the barrel of his gun. There is just enough sun left to see the entire front lobby of the building. Glass smashes under my careful foot as I tread lightly.
Jake puts a finger up to his lips as he pushes the door to the back room open. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a dark figure pass the open door. Jake continues to crack the door a few inches every second.
“Drop your weapons,” a scared voice calls from out of the dark.
“Drop yours first,” Jake counters.
“We’re unarmed,” the voice says, still afraid.
Jake pushes the door the rest of the way open. As the sunlight floods into the back room, five faces shine in the light. They all have their hands high in the air.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“We are voyagers,” the first man says with a slight stutter. “Who are you?”
“Voyagers?” I ask. Robert and R. J. had used the term, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.
“A small group of non-registered humans who travel, living undetected by The Elected, or any other group,” Jake answers while lowering his gun. “They’re harmless.”
I follow his example while keeping my finger on the trigger. I hope they are who they say they are.
“Who are you?” the first man asks again.
“Let us bring the others in, and we will explain,” I say.
“Others?” a thin woman asks, while hiding a little boy behind her.
“Yes, we are a group of soldiers that escaped The Force,” Jake replies.
“How many are you?” the first man asks.
“Nine others,” I answer, “eleven all together.”
They all look at a woman who appears to be the eldest in the group.
“Very well,” the woman answers.
I rush out into the front room, waving our group to follow me.
“Voyagers,” I say to Magi.
“Ha,” Robert scoffed, “nasty pillagers.”
“You have no right to speak unless you are asked to,” I say, turning on the man that was once my father.
He looks at me with a shocked expression.
“Do I not have a right to an opinion?” Robert asks.
“Only if that opinion is right,” Eli says, passing him up, tossing a sideways stare in his direction.
Magi wobbles into the back room, clutching her bloody arm. Without missing a beat, a girl not much younger than me helps her to the ground.
“You have lost a lot of blood,” the girl says. “My name is Cara.”
“Thank you, Cara,” Magi grunts as she hits the floor.
Magi begins to doctor her own arm with little usefulness. “Here, let me,” Cara offers, as she takes a pair of pinchers from her pocket, sanitizing it with a clear liquid. “This may hurt a bit.”
Magi bites down on a clean bandage as she allows the strange girl to remove the bullet from her bicep. We all look in silence. Other than Paul, who is dead now, no one other than Magi has been able to do anything medical for any of us. It’s nice to have the help. Magi has tried to train Samantha, but she hasn’t been able to teach her very much on the move.
“You can stay with us this night,” the woman in charge says. “but not a night more.”
We all grunt our agreements. Jake takes the time to tell her who we are and what we are trying to do.
“My name is Rosa Maria, but I much prefer to go by Rose to non-personal acquaintances. Also, these are my people,” she responded by gesturing to the four-remaining people in the room.
We learn that Rose is the oldest by far; her gray hair shines in the remaining sun light. The man with the stutter is Hector, he is Rose’s son and only living family member she has besides a daughter she doesn’t seem to want to talk about. The war killed her husband and eldest son years ago.
We learn the hauntingly thin woman is Tawnya and her son is nine-year-old Bryan who hasn’t spoken one word since we arrived. He still hides behind his mother. The fifth person in the room is Cara, but she isn’t related to any of the others.
We all make ourselves as comfortable as possible with sixteen people in a small store room. Lucky enough, the voyagers have enough food to offer us a bit of sustenance for the night.
“That man is bleeding,” Bryan tells his mom, while pointing at Robert, choosing this moment to speak for the first time.
Cara bends down to examine the bullet graze on his upper thigh.
“It is only a flesh wound,” she says confidently. “Do you wish I treat it?” she asks Jake and me.
“Do what you must to stop the bleeding, but nothing more,” Jake answers.
Cara busies herself with clotting the blood pouring from my father’s leg as the rest of us try to settle in for the night. Now I feel I might finally get comfortable, but it is short lived when a loud cracking noise breaks through the room, followed by a scream.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We all jump at the awful sound coming from Samantha as Magi and Cara pop her shoulder back into place. She whines a moment, cursing under her breath, while rotating her shoulder around and around to take away some of the stiffness.
“That hurt,” Samantha curses under her breath while pumping her hand, trying to get all feeling into it.
“I’m sure,” I say, while rubbing the invisible pain from my own shoulder.
Samantha finally lays down next to Magi on a pile of old rags, trying to get more comfortable while healing from their injuries. Robert sleeps propped up against the wall, with his injured leg resting on a stack of broken window coverings. He sleeps, oblivious to the screams that
