Status: Redo of my old story

Silence Falls

Chapter 60: An Operating Walkie Talkie

“Hold on, wait a minute! Are you saying they have bars and strip joints on the other side of this wall then?” Connor requested facetiously, needing to take the edge off from almost getting discovered and apprehended by a squad of soldiers sweeping through the long grass earlier. They had managed to escape, luckily, but he had no idea where that same team was throughout the swamp.

“What?” Bert inquired, scrunching up his face in criticism. “No, dude, I’m talking about the former library this town used to have and the late super mall that I knew wouldn’t ever see the light of day when the concept was first pitched.”

“I don’t get it, Bert. You said the walls kept the sins on the other side of it. How is a library and a mall considered sinful?” Demitria probed while rubbing her arms to get the goose bumps to go away.

“Because the library is customarily a place stockpiled with all categories of books to read. That also means an abundance of those books propose the contradictory opinion of how life started on earth outside of God’s ministrations. Such opinions aren’t admitted in Silence Falls, in fact, they simply aren’t entertained at all because they aren’t the way of life here, they are denounced as sins. The fear Silence Falls had come to acquire after the library was authorized for structure was that their children would get their hands on such books and it would reverse their beliefs. The numbers of nonbelievers could become too immense and the next thing they'd all know their children would have to be dispatched into the swamps like we were.” Bert explained, citing what he had overheard his father confer with other members of the church when he was younger. He’d been keen to see his first library that had other excerpts than the biblical catalog. “It was only when the council members' own children became at risk that they didn’t waste any time, they closed the library down for further recoveries. I don’t know if they still plan to ‘fix’ the library ever again or just leave it to wither away. Some would say they should just tear it down because it was a disturbing settlement to make. Yes, they too wanted their child to study about the world through library books, but not the world’s sins.” He gave a shrug and rolled his eyes. “But if you ask me, they see everything as sinful anyway. The mall had a complementary story, but got shut down directly after opening. It was manufactured to be a modern day mall at the time, just like the ones outside of Silence Falls. A new council member managed to sway the councils to approve of the plans, but soon the unseemly clothes, jewels and pieces were too much to stomach. They shut that place down for good. For years they talked of dismantling it afterwards, but I guess they forgot all about it and left it to the swamps.”

“Holy shit, these people are serious about this whole God crap, aren’t they?” Bam murmured, with a frown, shaking his head in objection of how uptight these townsfolk were. It was suffocating.

“What about that council member who proposed the mall's development? Whatever happened to him?” Onika interrogated, a bad feeling wriggling up her spine. She knew something dreadful had happened to that person.

“Her. And we never saw her face around town again, nor her family. Her entire bloodline linked into this town’s history dissolved without a trace.” Bert shared sorrowfully, looking down at his feet with remorse for he knew even at his young age that that meant the family was wiped out in secrecy.

“Guys, I’m sorry to discontinue this history lesson of this town and it’s demented residences, but can we get going now before someone shows up and tries to kill us?” Natasha deflected as respectfully as she could considering the circumstances.

“Natasha is right. Let's get going, you guys!” Otep announced to the group before leading the way along the transcending wall keeping them out of Silence Falls.

The group followed her along the wall quietly, hoping not to captivate any attention along the way. After a few minutes past, Cris almost tumbled on a black object wedged against a rock on the ground. Stooping over to pick it up, he established it to be a black walkie talkie, an operating walkie talkie. “Hey guys, I found something!” Cris hailed out to the others ahead of him quietly.

They all swiveled around and scurried back to cluster around him to observe what he found. Their eyes magnified at the appearance of the transmission mechanism. Reaching out for it, Bam took it from Cris without permission and began to further scan it. “Oh man! Do you think this thing still works?”

“I think it does. That red light is blinking on the top near the antennae.” Cris returned, his finger suggesting to the small blinking light.

“Wow, I haven’t used these in a long time! How do you- WHOA!” Bam exclaimed as he dropped the walkie talkie due to the voice coming out from the gadget. He had barely turned a dial and all of a sudden someone was communicating as clear as day.

“Slater, where is your position, over?”

Everyone gawked down at the walkie talkie, unclear if the person on the other side was talking to their walkie talkie. Distraught eyes searched each other for somebody to take charge of the situation until another voice spat out in response to the first one.

“Moving alongside the wall. Watching for Subject V and any survivors, over.”

Oh my god! Along the wall! They’re hunting along the fucking wall, Bert internally panicked before rotating around and scampering along the wall. Everyone jostled to catch up with him until the foreign direction they were headed began to unsettle Connor who requested Bert’s immediate attention. “Wait Bert, what the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing!?” Bert hissed, not slackening down as he interacted with them on the go over his shoulder. “They’re inspecting along the walls, which means they‘ll find us unless we keep moving!”

“But Bert, we don’t know where the fuck these guys are! They can be ahead of us or behind us for all we know!” Bam added, also beginning to experience Connor’s concern. He tried to navigate around everyone else just to catch up with their leader until he unexpectedly halted in his path and swung around. The others behind Bam ran into each other.

“I know that, damnit, but this way is the only way out of this swamp and into a safer area of town! This direction is our only chance!” Bert elaborated frantically before advancing on.

“Bert.” Hermanni addressed him from ahead next to a small stream. Before the others could interview him as to his whereabouts, he gestured with a hand to something formed into the wall.

Bert put some distance between him and the wall so when he peered down he could see a tunnel at the bottom of the wall. The good news was that it led to the other side of the wall and was big enough to fit the largest of their team. The bad news was that it was barred. Bert hunched down before the grate and started to tug on the ancient grimey metal. Sadly, it wouldn’t give an inch. “Shit!”

“What’s going on, Bert?” Otep hailed to him as she and the others hastily caught up to assemble around him. “What did you find?”

Bert cursed beneath his breath as he mopped the black goo onto the grass below him. “Hermanni found a way to the other side of the wall, bu-“

BANG!