Silence Falls

“Fuck me, man, all this dust is seriously going to clog my lungs.” Bert fretted faintly, coughing several times as he leafed through numerous dusty folders that had been hoarding dust on the shelf for several years.

He and his trusty sidekick Otep had managed to attain access into the preserved undisturbed library across the street from the mall. Their objective was to exhume a map that would hopefully blueprint the entire town of Silence Falls, and all it’s backroads that would lead them to a secure exit out of sight of the army that might still be out hunting for liberated patients. If they could only obtain that, everything should be able to go smoothly from here.

Standing close behind him with a small handheld flashlight she had nabbed from the mall before they left, Otep assisted him in browsing through the stack they both believed a map could be tucked within. She snorted at his complaint before ridiculing his torment. “What, you feel like dying on me already, old man?”

Scoffing in quick response, Bert continued to flip through withered sheets of aged crinkly paper. “You fucking wish, woman.”

Otep opened her mouth to further make fun of her best friend but was muted by a deafening sound coming from upstairs, the ground floor of the library. Before either one of them could weigh on who or what it was that made that sound, a team of heavily armed soldiers kicked down the main doors of the library’s entryway. The flashlights binded to their large guns aided them in their sweeps of every crevice of the main floor. “MOVE MOVE MOVE!”

In the basement far below them, Otep and Bert hastily ducked down in an attempt to shelter behind some ancient boxes, not wanting to even consider what those sounds could possibly mean though their drumming hearts were fully cognizant. Above them, they heard an emphatic bellowing voice bark among the beat of hefty combat boots marching across the hardwood floors. “FIND THEM! NOW!”

“Oh my god.” Bert panicked to himself, too petrified to make a move that wasn’t driving his fingers into his long hair to tear at the strands. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! FUCK! This can’t be happening right now!”

“Holy fuck, they know we’re in here!!” Otep gasped out, flattening her back against the boxes as she rapidly tried to brainstorm a strategy of some kind that could prohibit them from getting captured.

“FIND ANYTHING!?” One soldier clamored out to another.

The other’s rebuttal was just as noisily. “NOT YET, SIR! EVERYTHING’S CLEAR!”

“T-That doesn’t make sense!” Bert panicked in disbelief, the sounds of the floor above becoming rambunctious by the minute as the soldiers began to close in on their location, splintering down doors and pitching furniture over along the way. “How did they find us!?”

“KEEP SEARCHING!” A superior office demanded. “I WANT THEM FOUND TONIGHT!”

Otep hissed a curse as she ran a hand through her blond hair. “It’s my fault…I shouldn’t have agreed to this fucking plan! We’d be safe in the mall if it wasn’t for my stupid consent to your plan! God, I need to learn not to encourage all your damn schemes all the time!”

“Hey, this was MY idea in the first place which makes this MY fault! Those nightmares I’ve been having were causing me to lose my fucking mind, I had to do something about them! I had to do THIS! If you had decided not to come with me, I would have gone alone by myself anyway. I am the one to blame, not you!” Bert passionately guaranteed her before hearing a door he thought led to the basement door above them being knocked down. Tipping his head back to stare up at the ceiling, he listened in again.

“SOMEBODY CHECK THE BASEMENT!” A nearby voice hollered, followed by the flight of boots marching closer to their hiding spot.

They were coming for them.

They would find them!

Without a plan, Bert seized Otep by the arm and wrenched her on to her feet. He lugged her behind him to the nearest window that was installed high above their heads. Because of this height, Bert had to release Otep to plant his hands on her hips so he could hoist her up to reach the windowsill. “Here, pull yourself up there and see if you can open that window!”

“Why!? What the fuck for!?” Otep cried out, delaying her escape by struggling in Bert’s hold. She didn’t want to ask the more dire question in her mind, because she didn’t want to hear him voice his answer. She understood what he was going to do, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“Why the fuck do you think!? To save your fucking self! I’ll try and keep these douchebags busy while you make a break for it! NOW GET YOUR ASS UP THERE!” Bert yelled at her before giving her a forceful boost that made her head hit the window, popping it open. “HURRY UP, THEY’RE COMING!”

“BUT BERT!” Otep revolted, tears pricking her eyes because he was about to sacrifice himself to save her. These last few moments would be the last time she would see her dearest friend.

“GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOW!” Otep heard a soldier holler at Bert from within the basement. Her nails dredged into the long dewy grass outside the window as she felt Bert’s grip hastily jerk away from the back of her thighs.

He was gone.

Bert was gone.

With as much strength left, Otep sucked up her tears and managed to haul the rest of herself out of the basement window and to safety. Otep struggled to get back onto her feet again and was bumbling towards the stone wall that bordered the town of Silence Falls when a group of thirty soldiers materialized in front her from the shadows almost like they were supernatural phantoms of the swamps. All at once they went off, thundering for her to get down on the ground while aiming their weapons at her. Blinded by the beam of light on top of their weapons, she floundered backwards onto the ground. Panting for air, she tried to scurry away from them on her hands and knees alone as fast as she could. Nothing was going through her mind other than never going back to that underground prison ever again!

“Little girl, they WILL shoot if you do not comply with our orders! STOP MOVING!” An approaching soldier shouted before he snatched her up by her arm from the dewy grass, hindering her from fleeing.

“FUCK YOU, I AM NOT GOING BA-“ Otep screeched before the butt of a hand gun came crashing down onto her head and blackened her vision.