Status: Redo of my old story

Silence Falls

Chapter 102: Ten Seconds To Surrender

The group resting in the mall were deeply asleep and so completely oblivious of the events that were arising in the front and back of the mall, and what was advancing for them through the tunnels below. The soldiers painstakingly swept the first floor of the mall, not concerned for their safety against a group of mentally ill patients. Their steps were agile and their voices hushed in case there was someone on watch for intruders. In their ears was an earpiece with a small attachment by their mouths that was their microphones, this they used for covert communication. This gadget has benefited them in many onslaughts into the enemy’s compounds to either eliminate or apprehend their targets. “Team Foxtrot, what’s your position, over?” A voice belonging to Marsh contacted through the earpiece to the group’s Sargeant, Korbin Bridges.

“Infiltrated the mall. First floor is all cleared. Heading to the second, over.” Korbin responded back, his senses wired to the slightest noise or movements around him and his team.

“ Foxtrot, we just received words from Tango that the target has been spotted outside of the mall’s entrance! I repeat, Subject V has been spotted outside the mall's entrance, over!” Marsh abruptly notified him, his voice more urgent than before.

Korbin stopped his troops by lifting a hand up, and lowered his weapon in incredulity. Did he hear that right? It couldn't be! Not this soon. Not this easily. “Can you repeat that again, sir?”

“Subject V has been found, Sergeant! Reinforcement is already on the scene. Your orders are still the same, finish your sweep and CAPTURE anyone you find inside, do you copy?” Marsh demanded.

“Copy.” Korbin grumbled, gesturing his soldiers to proceed onward up the stairs. The slumbering kids were sighted not too long after that order within the mattress store. The soldiers assembled by the entryway, their backs pressed against the cold wall as they waited patiently for Korbin’s order. With a firm nod from him, the soldiers speedily filed into the store and directed their flashlights into the faces of the dormant kids. Seconds later, they were hollering down at them simultaneously, enforcing them to bolt awake in terror.

“GET YOUR ASSES UP! RIGHT NOW” Kramer shouted, jabbing the barrel of his gun at the face of a green eyed boy with inky black hair.

Allen did the same to a group of girls all bundle together on two mattresses. “GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN BED! ON YOUR DAMN FEET!” The females scurried away from him and flung their arms around each other for protection.

“MOVE IT! MOVE IT!” Adkins commanded, standing closest to the exit of the store as a lookout.

“GET DOWN ON THE GROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!” McKay roared, pacing before their beds while keeping his weapon drifting from one shaken child to another.

The group of kids had all jumped up in distress when these men started bellowing out of nowhere, and were blinded by the lights flashing in their eyes. Their hearts hammering in their ears had made it difficult to fully discern what they were being directed to do. The females remained crowded together on their beds, too frozen to move a muscle. Connor was the only one who was composed enough to understand what was taking place right now, and so he hurriedly darted out of his bed to assist the others out of theirs, obstinate to make sure they would comply with these soldier’s every word. After two minutes all the kids were finally on the ground with their hands behind their heads. The female wept to themselves and trembled like leaves. Connor and Bam were jointly pissed that they were finally captured. Cris just wanted to be left to cry himself into an early death instead of having to go back underground again. The soldiers kept their guns on the kids as they were handcuffed and their heads bagged with that familiar black bag. This only reduced the females to overwrought tears.

“Alright men, let’s get them outside and into the van for transport!” Korbin instructed his men.

Their prisoners didn't bother to try and beg to let them go, or to call them names in a small attempt to revolt. These men were highly trained military soldiers, what could they possibly do to intimidate them into letting them go? Having no choice, they allowed the soldiers to drag them out of the store and out of the mall that had become their home.

As soon as they stepped over that threshold to the outside world, however, Team Foxtrot froze at what they beheld. Their military Humvees were levitating twenty feet off of the blood-soaked and corpse strewn ground from where they were parked. Soldiers were either tumbling out of the open doors or dangling on by the door handles. Between the Foxtrot team and the hovering Humvees was a young man with long black hair and pale skin, his arms lifted towards the floating armored vehicles. The Foxtrots gaped in utter shock at the boogeyman himself in the flesh...Subject V. The soldiers looked to their leader on what to do, but Korbin was speechless. From what he understood, the only reason they were in these swamps was to pinpoint and recover an ancient lore from outside of the town of Silence Falls. For days they have searched and every day turned up with nothing. What are the odds that he would appear here just when they learned the location of Dr. McCarter’s son? Maybe...this was no coincidence. Perhaps, Subject V had elected to wander with the doctor’s son like the father alleged instead of slaying him. Then that must mean that these newly discovered patients could also be affiliated with their target too…which meant…

Korbin narrowed his eyes before choosing to go on his hunch. Reaching out beside him, he seized the back of the neck of one of the females that they had just arrested, and at the same time reached for his loaded handgun in it’s holster to press the end of the barrel against the female’s bagged head. Alexis let out a wail at the sound of a gun cocking right next to her ear and then at something hard pushing against her temple.

“SUBJECT V!!” Korbin roared from behind him, watching his head snap in his direction with his trademark blue and green eyes. The whimpering girl in his hold seemed to soften their target instantly. Subject V's hands fell limp to his sides, allowing the Humvee’s to drop back down onto the ground where the windows shatter upon contact. His blue and green eyes stopped glowing and morphed back into flawless orbs filled with concern for the girl.

My god, these kids were this supernatural being’s weakness?

“Subject V, I will only give you ten seconds to surrender to the military, or I will not hesitate to shoot this girl and blow her brains out all over this parking lot!” Korbin bellowed to him with confidence, inflaming his men's morale a little bit.

Korbin opened his mouth to start counting down, but was delayed by their target turning around to face them to fall to his knees, carefully placing his hands behind his head in surrender. Guns killed humans, Subject V was aware of this, but what he didn’t know was if he could prevent the bullet from that handgun from entering Alexis’s skull and through the other side in time to save her, and he wasn't about to take that risk to find out. Subject V did not know what else he was supposed to do but surrender. These men now knew that his family was his weakness, which meant they could use them to get him to cooperate with whatever they wanted. Hopefully that meant they knew if they massacred his family they wouldn't be able to control him anymore from ripping them into pieces. In that case, his family will stay alive either way, but that didn’t mean harm wouldn’t come to them in other designs. For now, that would have to suffice, even if he didn’t like it. Better them alive than dead.

“Handcuff him and ready him for transport. Radio headquarters of our retrieval and get a van over here to move these kids to another location.” A leader from Tango shouted before soldiers scuttled around in preparation. Eventually, a white van pulled up and the patients were quickly tossed in and sent down the road away from what was their only taste of normality in a long time. Subject V was handcuffed with chunky shackles, his face shrouded completely with a black metal mask, and his body chained up to a gurney before that was lowered into a thick metal sarcophagus with a high tech lock system along the side. A small team in a large military truck arrived with the purpose of loading Subject V up and escorting him to his new holding cell.