***
Limp arms and a trail of blood were all that was left of Alice when the sentries dragged her out of the house and tossed her into the dirt. Warren, like the rest of the community that was forced to kneel on the hard asphalt in the street, looked at her body, praying they’d see some movement from her. But it never came. Her body was tossed next to the two dead sentries that Alex had killed.
When the leader of the Coalition himself, Gordon Reath, stepped outside of Harper’s house, he was wiping his hands with a rag. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing dark stains that decorated his arms. He tossed the bloody rag onto the mound of dead flesh then pointed at Warren. “Him.”
Warren’s knees were relieved from the pressure grinding them against the lumpy asphalt as two sentries picked him up by his armpits. The sentries dragged him inside after he wasn’t able to get his legs underneath him after having knelt for so long. On his way inside, he caught a glimpse of Alice’s body. Blood and large lumps disfigured her face, making it unrecognizable.
The sentries dragged Warren over the bloody boot prints that smeared the tiled floor. They dropped him into a chair in the kitchen next to a lantern that illuminated the concentrated splatters of blood around the chair’s legs.
“Your friend is a pain in my ass,” Gordon said.
“Welcome to my world,” Warren replied.
Warren’s knee popped as his foot slipped on the slick blood-soaked tile beneath him. The metallic heat and taste overwhelmed his senses. He felt like he was swimming in it.
“Where are the seeds?” Gordon asked.
“Go to hell.”
The remark earned Warren a blow to his cheek, which tumbled him out of the chair, and his shoulder smacked against the tile. He pressed his palm against the floor to push himself up and his hand glided through an already-smeared streak of Alice’s blood. Once Warren was stabilized and on his hands and knees, Gordon kicked his side, cracking his ribs. Warren collapsed back to the floor. Short, sporadic breaths that caused the slightest upheaval of his chest felt like broken glass grinding inside of him.
Gordon stepped over him and leaned down. “Six of my sentries are dead because of your friend. And on our way here, he said that there was another stash of seeds in this house. Now I ask again: where are the seeds?”
Warren lay there motionless, paralyzed by pain. Alex will come back. He’ll get us out of this. He won’t let us die.
Gordon delivered another crushing blow to Warren’s face, breaking his nose. A gush of blood spurted, momentarily distracting him from the pain of his broken ribs. His vision blurred. The people around him turned into nothing but distorted figures. He felt Gordon pick him up by the collar of his shirt, but the fabric was so weak it ripped, and Warren crashed back to the floor. The symphony of agony reached its crescendo as Warren trembled on the floor, disfigured and maimed like the bodies out front. He would be joining them soon. There wasn’t any other way.
“Where. Are. The. Seeds?” Gordon demanded.