Part IV: Liberation by Fire
A vibration through the cold earthen floor awoke Annie from her miserable, fitful sleep. She opened her eyes, but it was still perfectly black in the hole. Still aching from the bruises and welts the cruel Zath policemen had given her, she rose slowly to a sitting position and waited, breathing lightly.
The rumbling vibration came again, more felt through the floor than heard. Then another followed it quickly, buzzing through the floor and audible this time as a faint thunder. Suddenly, with a swirling mixture of fear and hope, Annie Archer realized what was happening. The bombardment of Jaron had begun.
Drawing her legs up to her chest, Annie huddled against the wall as the explosions began to come faster and faster. The pit she had been thrown into, deep in the lowest subcellar of the police station, was probably safe, she thought, unless the whole station collapsed and buried her. In any case, there was little she could do but wait.
After a time, a harsh siren began blaring somewhere in the station above. The distant sounds of shouting penetrated down to the subcellar. All the time, the earth trembled from the powerful blasts rocking the city above.
Suddenly there came a rapid series of muffled pops which Annie knew must be gunshots. These were followed by more shouting, then another volley of cracks and pops, then silence. Annie held her breath and watched the patch of absolute darkness where she knew the rim of her oubliette loomed above.
After what seemed hours but were probably minutes, a crack of light burst into existence above her. Annie squinted as it widened into the shape of a doorway, with a shadowy backlit figure filling the aperture. She knew the figure could represent either rescue or death, and was powerless to do anything but wait.
The figure fumbled with something, then an oil lamp flared to life with a reddish glow in the man's hands. He was an older man with a face full of stubble, dressed in civilian clothing, a gray wool jacket and heavy gray denim work pants, and a soft black cap. A white armband was tied to his upper arm, the traditional color of Alephia.
Annie tried to call out, but could give only a wordless cry of relief. The man instantly understood that she was a slave, and began to look around the room. Then he went to the back wall, and setting the lamp on the floor, retrieved a wooden ladder from its hooks. He lowered it carefully over the lip, as Annie rose to her feet, covering her nakedness as best she could with her arms.
When it reacher her, she began to slowly struggle up the ladder. Her rescuer, seeing her weakened state, clambered halfway down the ladder to help. "Alright, there we go, doing fine," he murmured as he helped pull Annie up with one callused hand holding her pale, slender hand. "Almost there."
They reached the top of the pit, and stood in a cellar room with two more pits on either side. One was empty. The other held a crumpled, naked body which did not respond when the man prodded it with a boot. He said a brief prayer for the dead, then hurried back up the ladder. Annie, meanwhile, had wrapped herself in the man's jacket and was trying to stop a sudden bout of shaking.
"We're going out now, lass," the man said, and Annie nodded weakly. "Stay behind me," he warned as he drew a revolver.
Carefully, the man opened the door and looked into the hallway, gun held ahead of him. When he was sure it was clear, he gestured for Annie to follow. They moved through cold cellar hallways red-lit by scattered lamps. They saw no one save for a few bodies of Zath officers, sprawling gun-shot in pools of dark blood. They took one detour when they found a room filled with smoke and fire from a burst lamp, but the man seemed to know the way, and Annie followed gratefully.
Staying close together, they ascended a stone stairway, up into a higher cellar. The man let out a deep breath when he saw, waiting down the hall, a band of men and one woman, all in civilian clothes and white armbands. They cradled rifles or brandished pistols. One was wearing a Zath policeman's uniform and a white armband; either a turncoat, or wearing the outfit as a disguise. A handful of prisoners wrapped in blankets or wearing jackets taken from the dead stood in a knot nearby. Annie looked for Nathalie, but she was not among them.
"Have you seen a woman, Nathalie, she had dark hair but they shaved it... they whipped her, she would have cuts... she has a brand... the mark of... the..." Annie stammered, but she was met with blank looks or sad shakes of the head from both the Resistance fighters and the prisoners. At the though of Nathalie's brand, the mark of death, tears began to well up in Annie's eyes.
"We have to go," one of the fighters said. "The bombing is underway, this is the only chance we have. We know which areas are being hit, we have our escape route. But we don't have much time." So together, the group hurried down hallways and up another stairwell, this one concrete and lit with electric lights.
They found themselves on the ground floor of the station, surrounded by offices. Down one hallway, the ceiling had been shattered by a bomb, broken concrete and twisted metal spilling through the opening to block the way. They detoured through an office filled with scattered papers and painted with stray blood stains, one crimson hand-print marking the door. In the next hallway, the bodies of freedom fighters and black-clad Zath police were tumbled and twisted in horrible positions of death, and Annie walked in sticky, lukewarm blood, which soaked the entire floor. She was too numb with horror to do anything but hurry along with the group. They saw no one else alive.
Finally, the group reached the wide double doors at the front of the station. They stepped out to find the city of Jaron on fire.
Across the wide square, great turreted buildings were shattered, vast apartment blocks were blazing with curtains of orange flame, lighting their columns of smoke from below with hellish red light. Sirens howled across the night. Flashes of explosions back-lit the ruined skyline like lightning. Searchlights stabbed upward to light the vast bulks of bomber-airships,illuminating the winged sword of the Alephine Air Corps. Biplanes and monoplanes buzzed as they chased each other across the black sky.
