The Lonely Heart

Bang! The sounds of explosions wake everyone in the building. The only thought on my mind is that we are being attacked but who would dare do something like that. ‘Providence is one of the finer places since the Plague has taken over. We receive threats but we deal with them humanely’, I thought.

“Jemma, come on. We need to get going.” the guard, Mason, says from outside my room. “We are under attack.” Those words just confirmed my darkest fears.

“I’m coming,” I say as I rapidly toss off my blanket and begin getting dressed. I grab the pocket knife from my top drawer that Mom always said I should keep with me in times like these.

When I open the door the smell of sulfur exhilarates my inner self as well as makes me fearful for what is to come. The resounding thud of heavy footfalls comes from above. Infantry moving into position to try and intercept before they can take the main room.

We have gone over protocol many times. ‘You can never be too ready,’ Mom always said. She had the entire village do these things she liked to call “Shelter in Place” drills once a week.

Mason snaps me out of my train of thought with a quick shake. “This is no time for you to reminisce! Come on.” He takes my hand and starts leading me down the hallway and towards the stairs. The safe room is on the bottom floor.

“I’m sorry. I just never thought any of this would happen.”

“Neither did we but that doesn’t mean we aren’t prepared. We will survive. We have to.” Looking outside from the stairwell I see just how much has happened since the explosions woke me up. People I know, teenagers and adults, are out there fighting. Defending our home while I get led to the basement to stay safe.

“Jemma! Again.” Mason has to pull me away from the view outside.

Running down the stairs usually isn’t allowed but I guess this is a special circumstance as no one seems to care. Every floor we pass more soldiers, people, are engaged in a war that we didn’t ask for. All we have ever done is try to live our lives away from the plague.

The sign on the wall says that we are on the first floor. Mason gets pulled away from me by a man with the same platinum blonde colored hair as mine.

“Mason, we need your help. Let me take Jemma. You always were a better fighter than me.” he said to Mason.

“Listen, Jackson, I would love to but that is why I have to be the one to take Jemma. You know if I left my position the Godmother would kill me.”

“I had to try, we are getting killed out there.” a slow trickle of blood rolls down Jackson’s face covering his right eye.

“As soon as I make sure that she is safe I will be out there. Just try to stay alive until then.” Mason says to Jackson as the door at the end of the hallway is kicked in and an axe goes soaring through the air. It is too late to do anything as it finds purchase in Jackson’s back.

“We got the pretty boy!” A rather large man says stepping in from the doorway. He has two others following close behind. The large man has a burly coat that is adorned with many different knives and daggers. By his side is a flintlock pistol and a witch doctor’s mask covers his face.

‘The Black Death’ I think to myself. ‘They are the only ones foolish and stupid enough to actually launch a full-blown assault on us.’ Mason looks at these men almost stunned.

I grab his hand and begin to pull him down the stairs. “Mason, let’s go!”

“Look, boss. They’ve got a pretty one.”

“Yeah, they do. She will be ours.”

“Make sure to not damage her face when we capture her.” The bigger man states as he orders his comrades to charge Mason.

Mason smacks my hand off of him. “You run. You know where you need to go. Leave these guys to me. I’ll meet you there.”

Without a second thought I dart down the stairs, one floor, two floors, three floors until finally, I am at the bottom. For the first time tonight, I am alone and it is quiet. The heavy footfalls above me seem to be a distant memory.

Thoughts begin to fill my head. ‘Will Mason be alright? Should I have stayed? Should I have dragged him with me? No, no. What could I have done? Did you see that man? This isn’t the time for this. What is the code? 3-6-4-1.’ I keep repeating the code in my head until I’m merely a few footsteps from the 3-inch thick metal door.

The lights in the hallway flicker for a moment before all power shuts down. ‘Oh no, oh no.’ I make it to the door and start frantically typing in the pin code. 3-6-4-1, enter. The red light is the only thing glowing in the darkness. 3-6-4-1, enter. The red light flashes again.

‘No, no. This cannot be happening.’ I fell to my knees. One more time. I have to try. “Think that pretty lady went all the way downstairs?” the bigger man says from two floors up. My spine shivers at the thought of what has happened to Mason.

“Little man roughed me up pretty good. I think this is the way they were headed.” Three sets of heavy footsteps start making their way down the stairs, slowly. They have me trapped. I stand back up and push in the code again, 3-6-4-1, enter. Ding, the lock goes off. The red light it gives off feels blinding now. All hope is lost.

“Did you guys hear that?”

“That ding? It must have come from the lowest floor. She has to be down here.”

“Here little kitty, kitty” They start calling from above. There is no time to act, I dash beneath the stairs and hope they don’t see me. I lift the lid of a small cargo box and climb inside, leaving it open enough for me to peek out.

“We know you are down here. We have a little something for you.” The repugnant smell of the man is nearly enough to make me gag. In his hands, he is carrying the head of Mason. “We have already got your boy toy. Come out, come out wherever you are.”

They clumsily make their way through the hallway and all I can do is sit in fear and hope that they don’t find me. I try placing the lid fully over the crate I’m in but it squeaks as it comes to a close.

“That was by the stairs.”

“Come here, little girl. We won’t hurt you. I promise.”

Each of them gathers like a pack of hyenas around a dead carcass. Converging around me, I should have bolted out the front door when Mason went to fight them. I pull the pocket knife out and flip it open.

One of the lackeys flip open the lid and I swing the knife catching part of his wrist.

“Ouch, the bitch cut me.” He yelped.

The bigger man grabs me by my hair and drags me out of the crate. Packing peanuts scatter across the floor.

“Let go of me!” I scream.

“You are a lovely one.” He says before he backhands me. “Look at this little toy you have. What more do you think you can do with that?”

I kicked at his chest and thrust the pocket knife into the wrist holding me up. I fall to the ground and sprint towards the stairs.

The man pulls the dagger from his wrist, “Don’t just stand there. Go get her!”

At the top of the next floor, the one whose wrist I slashed tries to grab me. I take his arm and toss him into the wall. He grabs my ankle just enough to trip me up.

“Let go, you bastard!” I say while trying to stomp his face in. The other guy is catching up quickly. Finally, his hands slip off and I continue running. It’s all I can do, my only hope.

I dash out the front entrance, the door broken off of its hinges. I nearly gag stepping over Mason’s lifeless body. Stepping outside I take in the gruesome sight of what has happened. Everyone I know, everything I know has been torn to shreds. Dead bodies are strewn about. Mom nor James are among them.

I pick up a bloody axe from the ground and wipe it off on a piece of cloth. As I walk through what has been my home for the last 18 years of my life all I can feel is regret. ‘What more could I have done?’ That thought paces back and forth in my head.

Walking past the garden I notice that all of the crops have wilted and the putrid stench hung in the air. It took me a moment to realize but then I connected the dots on why nearly all the marauders from the Black Death were wearing plague doctor’s masks, or gas masks. ‘Oh no. I need to find Mom. They brought the Plague.’ I take off in a sprint towards the factory.

“Oi, she’s over there! Don’t just let her run past you!” The large man says when he finally steps out of my family’s home. Leaving everything behind that’s been broken.

It seems like everyone that wasn’t fighting began to converge around me. Too many for me to fight by myself. I turn and launch the axe behind me hoping to get rid of one of them.

I quickly slam the metal door to the factory behind me and lock the iron pipe in place to keep the door shut. I breathe a sigh of relief. I turn around and realize that for the first time I am standing inside the factory. I am horrified to see people I have never met in torture chambers. Some are dead on things that look like ellipticals to produce electricity. ‘No wonder I was never allowed in here.’

Maneuvering around the grotesque scene on the bottom floor I raced to the top, hoping that my Mom would be in the room that is labeled as her office. I burst in the door. I see my Mom on her knees with blood pouring down the side of her face. I feel a thud on the back of my head and I fall to the ground.

“Well, I am glad we have an audience.” I didn’t see him before but a thinner man steps out from behind the desk wearing a pearly white plague doctor’s mask and a black suit.

“Why are you doing this?” I say feeling a boot on my back pressing me into the ground.

“The Godmother broke our agreement. These are the consequences for her actions.”

“So you had to kill our entire way of life for what?” I scream before my head gets kicked into the floor.

“Well she left us with no choice. An eye for an eye, I’d say.”

“Why did you come here? You were supposed to be with Mason in the safe room!” my mom says to me.

“Don’t waste your breath.”

“Mason is dead. Everyone is dead. They brought the plague.”

My mom stands up and tries walking towards the man in the suit. “How could you?” Suddenly a loud bang erupts in the room. A hole was blown through my mother’s chest. She falls to the ground and her, now bloody, heart shaped locket falls to the ground and opens. Inside is a picture of me as a child being held in the arms of two people that resemble me, each with platinum blonde hair.