The Survivors

The group of twenty survivors had been placed into a large pop-up triage station in the courtyard outside the building.

Maria looked in on each of them in turn and it quickly became clear why she had not known about the rest of the missing ones. Aside from the scant few survivors that she had known of, Sally Longden and Cathy Yates were not among that group, much to her regret. The others all had the strung out look of the homeless and hopeless.

However most all of them shared a look in the eyes, a empty stare. Maria hoped that they had simply retreated inside himself to survive, maybe they could come back. Yet there were a few whose eyes contained the glint of flint, they had been sandblasted by horror and it had revealed a hard core. Those few may yet have some use.

Maria had been one of them, longer ago than her driver license would suggest, she had been through the same sort of hell as them. Even now she could still feel the heavy iron of the shackles, the sound of chanting, the pain, the blood.

In the now she came to the last cubicle, the girl who claimed she had not been touched. Maria stepped through the thin curtain and found a girl shiver on the edge of the bed. Her thin greasy hair looked like it would blow away in a strong breeze along with the rest of her. She clutched her arms around her shoulders, head down, trapped in her own hell.

“Hey,” Maria began softly, the girl had not given a name or spoken to anyone. “You’re safe now, don’t worry.”

As Maria moved forward to comfort the girl she stopped shaking, and a voice that was horribly familiar came from her downcast mouth.

“You asked me if I knew who you worked for,” The voice of the one eyed woman went as she turned her face up. She didn’t look the same, if it was not for the lack of the eye and ugly scar you would never suspect. “Why do you think I let them find you?”

Maria realising that she didn’t have a sidearm as the women gave her a crooked grin.

“Don’t worry,” she went on. “I just want to make a deal is all.”

“A deal?” Maria repeated dumbly. “What kind of deal?”

“I walk out of here scott free and you can consider your debt to me repaid.”

“Debt?” Maria was incredulous at that. “What the fuck do I owe you.”

“Do you really think you are the first person to end up here with a soul sigil?” The Woman mocked, her voice becoming more lilting with every passing moment. “We ‘recruited’ most of our vessels from other cults. If you don’t believe me just check the bodies.”

As she spoke Maria was finally able to nail down the accent, it was irish, although she could not nail down exactly where in Ireland.

“I let them find your sigil,” the woman mocked. “I let them find you and I let them tear down this little operation.”

“Why?” Maria asked.

“Because the world would have become very dull if it had gotten in.” The woman replied bluntly. “And I can’t stand things to be dull.”

Maria backed away from the woman, watching as she again went back to shaking like a leaf. The act so good that even Maria doubted her own eyes and ears a little.

Outside the room she found Miller, reeling off orders as she tried to get the survivors ready to move.

“So what are we doing with them?” She asked Maria, who did her best to hide how shaken she was.

“Uh...I,” Maria stammered. “Send them to Holding for now. I’ll sort them out.”

“You sure?” Miller asked with a raised eyebrow, seeing something was wrong. “A few of them are about ready to pop.”

“If they pop they pop,” Maria explained bluntly. “Nothing living will come out anyway.”

“And our pristine survivor?”

“Standard debrief and release.” Maria said, even as doubt still swirled in her mind.