Bloody Choices, Julie Steimle [little readers .TXT] 📗

opened their eyes and sat up. Jafarr walked over to the emergency lights and snapped them on. The room immediately glowed with an eerie yellow light that also filled the corridors and the tunnels around. A low throbbing sound emanated in the room.

“Spread the word, Mr. Demmon. I already evacuated the children in the lower cavern,” he said.

The room immediately sprang to life. And though several feverishly staggered to the exits, gathering whatever weapons they had on hand, a few gazed up at Jafarr who ran to the supply shelf, pulling off their provisions and shoving them into sleeping bags.

“I have to find Orrlar,” Jafarr said, shoving more supplies into the bag he was holding then handing it to Mr. Demmon.

Five others joined him, yanking down as many weapons as they could carry and strapping them on.

Facing Alzdar’s father, Jafarr said, “I sent the children to the warehouse hideaway. You should be able to get them from there when everything is clear.”

Mr. Demmon nodded. “We’ll go to the farm processing hideaway. There are good exits from there.”

“Go quickly and take this.” Jafarr handed him the maps he had in his jacket.

Staring with a gape at Jafarr, Mr. Demmon was about to ask what was in Jafarr’s head but the undercity boy had no time to explain. Without another word Jafarr shoved Mr. Demmon to an exit. The man looked back once as Jafarr rushed over to a floor grate, pulling it out of place and climbing inside the gap. The boy was gone like a rat in a hole.

Slipping down the narrow wall space, Jafarr bent back the bracer bar that used to block the hole of that part of the floor, making sure it locked tight. He then slid down the narrow wall, stepping on pipes and tubes and wires until he came to another panel they often used as a doorway. He pried it open. The emergency lights were already lit here, and the room was already empty. Relieved the others had read the signal, Jafarr started to breathe more easily as he walked through the rooms in the lower caverns to make extra sure they were evacuated.

Not a soul in sight, and the doors were tight shut.

Reassured, he crossed over to one of the weapon’s cages and searched for a rifle or a pistol. Not one lay inside. With a shrug he closed the door. They were thorough, and though it did not benefit him when the survivors returned or when the P.M.s followed, he knew it was good for those that left.

 

Rescue

 

He searched around for another unlocked exit. Seeing none, he climbed back into the wall. Pulling himself back up to the upper level, he heaved himself back into the room now empty of the sick. Jafarr strode over to the wall where he opened yet another panel that would take him upward, the one that would lead him to the first hall a raiding party would come to.

He climbed up and up, his heart pounding, racing really. Jafarr figured that he did what he could. Hopefully Ka’rren would have no worries that the people were safe when he got back.

Emerging into a small space below another floor grate, Jafarr pushed the grate up then to the side. He climbed into a small maintenance room no larger than a closets designed to give access to the workings for a large spacious hall that overlooked several undercity air vents. The yellow emergency lights cast a jaundiced hue over the maintenance room as well, something they had rigged so that the light from below would not be noticeable. Jafarr pulled the grate back over the hole then stepped out of the maintenance room into the narrow passageway leading towards the transit tunnel, taking care that his footsteps did not echo. His heart raced.

The passage was only five yards long. At the end of the hall he could see little light, yet the closer he got to it he heard the faint echoes of shooting, screaming, and running—fighting.

Dread sank into his stomach. His lips were already white as he breathed shallowly through them. He peered out of the passage into the transit hall, looking over the balcony of the stair that led up the maintenance entryway. At the bottom of the transit cavern steps on the chipped tile were several dead. They did not even make it to the stairs.

With a shudder, Jafarr peered down longer, trying to identify the faces of the dead—but before he could figure out who was killed, Jafarr spotted a People’s Military officer stalking into the hall hefting a laser rifle with one arm, his helmet down and his eyes twitching at all dark recesses. He did not see Jafarr, but then he wasn’t looking up just yet.

Jafarr could still hear some laser fire in the cavern, but off down the hall where he could not go without being seen. Figuring the rebels must have been cornered somewhere beyond his view, he slipped backward into the maintenance hall. When he reached it, he peered up above the door where in a typical metro maintenance room would be a vertical shaft. The rebellion hadn’t covered it. It was still open.

Taking in a breath, squatting first, he leapt up and grabbed the first rung. Then Jafarr reached up for the next rung, kicking, and pulled himself up to where he could brace his feet on the doorjamb then the computer console. His muscles strained and ached, but he heaved himself up rung after rung until he could place his feet on the first rung then rest his arms. Catching his breath for only a brief moment, he continued up the shaft.

Just as Alzdar had once shown him, Jafarr stopped at a panel that opened into the wall, prying it apart. He heaved himself inside where he crawled once again in the machine works, this time in the casings just above the cavern hall where he had just been. Like a burrowing mole, he squeezed and pulled himself through the parts until in front of him, just a few feet, ran a vent that fed into the metro maintenance hall where he wanted to be. This one did not have a door.

Drawing himself up to the thin metal frame, Jafarr took out a pocketknife that he now carried in his jacket, immediately stabbing it into the thin gap to open the edgings that sealed the vent closed. The metal was bendable, making it easier to pry it open, and he bent it back like the lid of a soup can, climbing in the moment it was wide enough.

He had to shimmy part of the way through the venting until he could crawl. It took him in a climb upwards where he could actually hear the shooting as well as the yelling below in the transit sector. Just hearing it set his nerves on fire, and he scrambled more earnestly to where the commotion was the loudest. Opening his knife once more, Jafarr, stabbed it into the venting, breaking apart the largest hole he could muster, shoving the tin inside the ceiling. Below him through the ceiling grate, he saw several of the rebels in arms pinned down by P.M. laser fire in a desolate corner of the metro hall. Climbing out of the vent, he crawled over the ceiling grate until he was above them, then he pried up two ceiling grate tiles, sliding them to the side to leave a big enough hole.

“Hey! Up here!” His voice was just loud enough to get their attention.

Three heads turned up, but the others still focused on the People’s Military officers that were shooting at them. The barricade they had made from an overturned maintenance rover was starting to fall apart, and several of them were badly wounded.

“Jafarr!” they exclaimed, looking both surprised and relieved.

“Climb on up!” Jafarr yelled down to them.

Notwithstanding the vehicle barricade they could climb on, the gap was larger than any could reach. Jafarr clenched his teeth, looking around the shaft for a pole he could use, but in the end there wasn’t anything loose to use. He took off his jacket and hung it out of the hole by its sleeve. “Grab hold. I’ll pull you up.”

Someone grabbed it immediately, and Jafarr heaved as best as he could, hoping to heaven that his jacket would not rip apart. Then the others suddenly leapt for the hole, lifting another high enough so he could get inside, then another. Jafarr pointed to the open vent for those scrambling inside as tossed down the jacket for the next one to climb up. They would have been shot to pieces were it not for the ones that stayed below still exchanging fire with the People’s Military. As they hauled up the trapped rebels one by one, crawling off into the vents Jafarr had come through one was hit, and the fire started to direct towards the hole.

Soon there were three left down below. Jafarr threw down his jacket one more time, achy and sweaty with calls for them to hurry up and climb inside the vent.

“Get the one in the ceiling!” one of the P.M.s shouted.

One of the three remaining rebels climbed up on the arm of Jafarr’s jacket. He took a hit to his leg before he was completely pulled in, but Jafarr did not let him fall, grabbing his arm to heave him up. The man crawled inside, clenching his teeth with a nod to Jafarr before he shuffled to the vent as fast as he knew how.

 Jafarr tossed down his jacket for the next person, but when he looked down there, there was only one man standing and that man was bleeding heavily from severe laser wounds. The other man lay dead, shot precisely in his forehead with a glassy-eyed stare at the ceiling.

“Come on!” Jafarr called, waving for the man to climb up.

But the man yelled back, “Go! Go! I’ll hold them off!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Jafarr shouted. But as he said this, the man took a severe blow to the chest and fell against his friend, still moaning for Jafarr to escape.

 The laser fire turned toward Jafarr’s head now. Yanking back his jacket, Jafarr ducked back inside the ceiling. It was too late. There was nothing else he could do.

He climbed back through the vent going all the way to the other side where he scrambled out of the hole and bent back the metal so that the vent fit in place once more. Rushing back through the wall casings, he reached the end where he peered down into the maintenance shaft at the tops of heads belonging to the escapees that were heading back to their base of operations. With a nod, he climbed out of the hole and closed up that panel. He followed the others down the shaft toward the maintenance room, hoping the P.M.s had not yet discovered was a main entrance into their hideout. Then he went faster.

He clambered down quickly, soon passing the wounded rebels below him by slipping to the side of the ladder and scrambling past them to the bottom. There, he dropped onto the floor grate below with as light a foot as possible then sprang ahead to the