Inside The Wall by Caleb VanSteenwyk (snow like ashes series .txt) 📖

“Attention!” Tyson screamed to everyone in the base, and they stopped dead in their tracks, looking toward him. “There are guards that followed Bryce and Clyde, and they may know where we are. The stairs and door will hold them for a while, but not forever! I want everyone in position to defend our position and then move out as soon as possible! I’m not sure if they’ll get in or not, but we need to be prepared if they do! Set up the barricades, and everyone get into position, now!” Tyson yelled. It was then that chaos broke through. Scar had stepped out of his room and was looking over everything, with his arms crossed. Clyde was now in the medical room, which was the farthest room from the entrance, surrounded by blurred glass windows.
The door to the artillery was opened, and many came through to grab weaponry. Others moved the desks and tipped them over in a line far from the entrance, to serve as cover. The guards were much stronger than us, and it would take a lot of firepower to bring them down. I was unsure what to do, until someone handed me a black shotgun with bullets strapped to the sides. “Go by Scar by the end of the barricades.” He told me. Tyson was gone, joining the chaos that was going on. Somehow, there was planning behind this seemingly random scattering. Within two minutes, everyone was holding a weapon, and was in position behind the tipped over desks. Behind us, in the medical room, there was screaming as they tried to get the bullet from Clyde’s leg, but soon, all was silent.
Next to me was Scar, with a gigantic sniper rifle in his arms, stand up on the top of the desk. Tyson was looking down the sights of an assault rifle. I wasn’t sure how useful the shotgun would be at long range, but I didn’t object. Above us, the heavy footsteps of armed soldiers was above us, and we could hear them talking.
“Are you sure they came here?” One asked.
“I’m sure. It may look run down, but its just part of their cover. Search the entire place.” Another confirmed, and there were footsteps all above us. I heard someone going up the stairs, but they didn’t realize the double usage of it, and just walked upstairs. Click, click, click! The guard’s boots rang against the stairs. Behind us, Clyde screamed again.
“Did you hear that?” One of the guards asked above us.
“Yeah but it sounded like it was under us.” Another replied.
“No one saw any stairs leading down, or tunnels?” One guard asked.
“No. The only other floor is above us, and there’s nothing there.” A guard walked on the stairs again. “Wait.” The guard on the stairs said, and jumped up. Smack! His boot slapped the floor. “This things hollow!” He yelled. Another kicked the stairs, and the banging sound echoed.
“Anyone got explosives? We could blow these stairs up, see what’s under them.”
“Nope. The one carrying the explosives died back there. That maniac kid attacked him.”
“Well, there’s still one way to get past them.”
“What’s that?” There was a crumbling sound, and a metallic sound as the guard hit the floor. He had run right through the stairs. That guard’s voice got louder, and closer.
“Guys, there’s a door down here! It’s some sort of camp.” I looked around me for the first time in a while. All the overturned desks were in a perfect line, and each Rebel was behind them, a gun pointed at the door above the desks. There were more noises, and the rest of the guards jumped down towards the door.
A guard tried the door, but it was locked, of course. It was double bolted from the inside. “How do we get through?” One asked.
“Same way we got past the stairs. Run through them!” A guard replied. Everyone in the base was prepared to open fire as soon as the guards burst through the door. One guard slammed into the metal door loudly, and one person fired a single bullet, startled by the noise. The metal door was now dented, but it wasn’t broken through.
“You hear that?” One guard exclaimed. “Someone fired a bullet in there!”
“Be prepared.”
Another guard took a try at the door, and broke it down. All at the same time, one hundred angry rebels opened fire. The sound was deafening, magnified by the closed space, and everyone’s ears rang. The smoke created by the guns was also bad very soon, and a faint haze was over the base. My gun sprayed two rounds of dazzling buckshot over the battlefield, and I fired again.
The unlucky guard who ran down the door was immediately torn to shreds. His armor opened up and ripped in many places, and blood leaked out of his suit. He fell to the ground face-first. The other guards showed no remorse, or any reaction to their fallen companion.
Everyone around me reloaded, and I struggled to find where to stuff my shells into, until Scar pointed to the back of the gun. I stuffed the shells into it, than pumped my shotgun, and regained my aim over the desk.
The rest of the guards stayed back for a while, and the tension grew. They could be getting backup, and then we wouldn’t stand a chance. There were six guard left, and I wasn’t sure if all of our rebels could take down that many. No one volunteered to go see what they were doing, and the base was shrouded in silence, amplified by the noise that had just finished.
As I was thinking this, all of the guards flew out the door, and we all opened fire again. There were small barriers that Tyson and his guards stayed by to greet people coming in, and the guards took cover behind those. Scar motioned to both ends of our line, and six people on each side crept around the edges of the base, towards where the guards were hiding. They were inevitably going to attack the guards, and I knew they couldn’t all make it. Each of them was poorly armored, with scrap metal scattered around them. None of these would stop an incoming bullet. Even their clothing didn’t surround their whole body. It was ripped in torn in every place. One poor kid wasn’t armored at all, with just street clothes on.
The rest of us stayed in position, ready to fire when the guards popped their heads up. The six men creeping up on the left side, including the kid, reached their destination. When they rounded the corner, the barrier would be in front of them, and they would attack. A man with the same gun as me took the lead, and tensed up, ready to leap into action and shower the guards with buckshot.
He waited for the other side to also reach their destination, and rounded to corner, leaping over the guard’s cover, and got one shot off, which echoed through the camp. But, his victor was short lived, and a guard shot the man in his head, ending his life quickly. The other lead man didn’t even get over the wall. A guard picked him up, and slammed him into the ground. Then, on the left side, a guard jumped up, holding his victim’s shotgun. We all opened fire immediately, but his armor took most of the damage. He blasted the remaining five attackers with two quick rounds. The kid with no armor fell like a rock, and the guard still stood standing. The rest of the attackers soon followed, and the guard picked up a rifle from a dead rebel. He soon started firing at our line of attackers with deadly precision. After the fifth shot, smoke blasted my face as Scar fired his sniper rifle beside me, and the guard’s visor shattered. Smoke rose from his helmet, and I realized that the weapon had started a fire inside the suit.
I ducked down in horror, trying not to think of the pain that the guard was experiencing. I tried not to think of the person inside the suit, and how he had been taken away. He was forced to kill, and now, to die. I needed to get back in the action, however, and I tried to get rid of my nausea.
I got back up to see the guard face-first on the ground, helmet still smoking. My ears hurt, and I couldn’t hear, because of all the echoing gunfire.
The five rebels on the other side that had advanced retreated back behind the desks- and everyone stopped shooting. Silence was emphasized by the ear-shattering noise that was going on just seconds before. The room was still, with everyone in the same position, ready to fire again when the guards got up.
All at once, the rest of the guards jumped onto the battlefield in full armor, and started firing on our line with their own pistols. One of the guards took the rifle from his dead companion, whose helmet still had smoke rising from it. The guard who grabbed the weapon showed no emotion at all towards his dead companion.
We all started returning fire, and confusion ensued as bullets flew everywhere over the battlefield. Our men were weaker, and not superhuman like the guards. Most of the bullets missed, and the guards kept running back and forth, dodging them. Their aim was not so off, and people began falling down around me, each bullet hitting their forehead dead on. Behind me, Clyde was screaming, adding to the noise. I tried not to think of him right now, because it was just too much.
Soon, guards began charging on our line, jumping over our desks, which were now covered in bullet-holes. When the guards were over our line, they began using physical combat as well, and they tore through our line of people. The guards seemed to be an unstoppable force on their own, and six of them were easily tearing through us. I was simply watching the others when one jumped right beside me. Startled, I fired an instinctive shot, which missed miserably. He lashed out towards me with his knife, and I ducked down to the ground on my back. I pumped my shotgun, and fired again at his visor. It cracked, but did not break. He again lunged at me, extending his knife.
The pain in my shoulder told me that he didn’t miss. I could feel my blood dripping down my arm, and could smell the iron in it, masked by the smell of gunfire. Tyson jumped up beside me, and punched the guard’s visor, shattering it into millions of tiny pieces, revealing the guard’s expressionless face.
“Finish him!” Tyson yelled at me, but I couldn’t. I recognized the face immediately. I froze, not being able to shoot, now that the man behind the visor was revealed. The man behind the visor was my father. I realized he hadn’t died in battle, he had been captured. When they lost the battle, the Nobles took him, and turned him into this monster. The man behind the visor did not recognize me, or if he could, didn’t show it. I looked away as Scar fired his pistol three times into the guards face, causing him to fall to the floor, dead.
When my father was taken away, it was sometime during the summer, and they said they were leaving for “work”. But by now, I had figured out what