The Belial Sacrifice

by R. D. Brady

  Simon nodded before turning to Riley, his expression bright again. “I guess that just leaves the two of us, Mr. Quinn.”

  Miles could tell Riley was scrambling to come up with a way out of the request. It’s not that Riley wasn’t smart; he just hated being the center of attention. But at the same time, having Riley support Simon would go a long way in demonstrating how important education was to the kids.

  “Don’t forget you promised to help me with Dixie in a little bit.” Miles turned to Simon. “I need some help moving her and her cot.”

  “Oh, no problem. I’ll have him back to you in plenty of time.” Simon looked at Riley expectantly. Miles shrugged at Riley behind Simon’s back. Best I could do, buddy.

  Riley sighed. “Okay, Simon. Let’s go.”

  Simon nodded. “Wonderful, wonderful.” He latched on to Riley’s arm before he could escape.

  Riley looked back at Miles, and Miles struggled not to laugh. Riley, undeniably the toughest of the young Phoenixes, looked miserable. Facing a legion of aliens was not a problem. Standing in front of a classroom full of kids—terrifying.

  Riley let Simon lead him toward the school tent, his hand still on Riley’s arm. Riley would have shaken off anyone else who tried to pull him this way, but he couldn’t with Simon. The man meant no offense, and Riley had known him since he was a kid. He was family.

  Up ahead, the school tent had its flaps open. The sounds of children wafted out toward them. Riley remembered sitting next to David and then Miles, spending his days learning what he thought were useless facts when all he wanted to do was learn how to fight. Funny, though, the more he’d learned to fight, the more important what he learned in school had become.

  Simon patted Riley’s arm before they walked in. “I just need you to look serious. I won’t draw too much attention to you.”

  Riley should have known Simon wouldn’t make him uncomfortable. “Whatever you need.”

  Simon walked into the tent first, and Riley followed, although he had to duck under the fabric. As soon as he stepped in, all talking ceased. Riley’s eyes roamed over the group. There were fourteen kids. No wait, thirteen. Dixie wasn’t here. Riley knew all of the kids—all were younger than fourteen. They were the Jingle kids.

  He winked at his sister, Maisy, who sat in the front row. They thought she was eight but couldn’t be sure. They’d found her floating down a river five years ago right after the Unwelcome attack that had killed Riley’s mom. For three years, she didn’t say a word. But she was a pretty happy kid, at least during the day. At night, though, she’d find her voice and her fears. Thankfully, the nightmares had lessened over the years, especially since Lyla had started her defense training.

  Most of the kids were too young to fight, but his aunt insisted all kids have some initial training at evasion. Two days a week, they met in the forest to learn how to move through the trees soundlessly. As they got older, bells were attached to their shoes and belt. They had to move without making a sound. Maisy had proven to be particularly adept at slipping through the forest without even a soft jingle of a bell.

  Simon gestured to the back of the tent. Riley headed to an empty seat back there. An old chalkboard had been propped up in the front. A quick glance at it told Riley the topic: The Incident.

  Riley sighed. He knew the kids had to learn it, but it seemed so unfair that they had to learn about such a horrific topic at such an early age. But as his aunt often reminded him, this generation of children knew of the harshness of the world since birth.

  “Class, I’ve invited Riley to see how well you are learning your lessons. He has often told me how important it is for a soldier to think well.”

  As he took his seat, Riley arranged his face into a serious expression, although all the big eyes staring back at him made that difficult. “It’s true. We need solders who can read situations, understand complexities.”

  Simon smiled, nodding. “Now, class, can someone tell me what was the initial event that resulted in our planet’s instability?”

  A dozen hands shot up in the air. Simon chose a small girl in the front with long, curly, dirty-blonde hair. Alyssa Ryder, six years old and Adros’s sister. Alyssa clutched her doll to her chest. “The asteroid.”

  Simon beamed. “Very good, Alyssa.”

  Although correct, it was a highly simplified answer. The real answer was greed. Back in 2026, NASA had pulled an asteroid into the Moon’s orbit and mined it. They found a treasure trove of new elements and minerals.

  It didn’t take long for the private sector to recognize the financial gain of asteroid mining. But unlike NASA, ByerTech didn’t want the expense of wrangling an asteroid into the Moon’s orbit. They decided it would be cheaper to pull one into Earth’s orbit.

  NASA hadn’t done that because they judged it to be too dangerous. One miscalculation, and the asteroid could crash into Earth, setting off a worldwide catastrophe. Governments across the globe had argued against the actions. But no one controlled space. And legally, there was no way for any of them to stop ByerTech. By the time the countries managed to draft laws to block them, ByerTech had moved all the technology they would need into orbit.

  Ignoring the worldwide condemnation of their actions and with potential profits clouding their view, they decided to go ahead with the cheaper operation, arrogance abundant in their ability to control every variable. That arrogance had resulted in the deaths of billions within a few weeks and millions more over the next few decades as the repercussions kept spiraling out.

  Simon nodded, his thick gray hair unmoving, but his glasses slid down to the end of his nose. He pushed them back up, directing his attention to the rest of the class. “Correct. The asteroid hit in Europe in 2026, destroying most of the world’s population. What exactly were the physical effects?”

  A flurry of answers rang out. “Giant tsunamis.”

  “Volcanoes erupting.”

  “Earthquakes.”

  “Erratic weather patterns.”

  “Countries sank.”

  Simon gestured for quiet. “Very good. What country do we currently live in? Mr. Raffe?”

  “The United States,” Dart Raffe replied.

  “And what has changed about the US? Ms. Chambers?”

  “We no longer have a federal government, our elevation has increased due to crustal displacement, we have less land mass, and we no longer have machines.”

  Simon beamed. “And why don’t we have machines?”

  “The poles switched.”

  “Yes. The electromagnetic field shifted, making all electronics null and void, for the most part.”

  A horn blasted from somewhere outside the tent, followed by two others in quick succession. Everyone froze. Emergency signal.

  Heart racing, Riley leaped to his feet. “Everyone stay here until you get your assignment.” He rushed out of the tent, knowing Simon would keep the kids together.

  He sprinted for the warning post. Six Phoenixes stood gathered there. Each wore a green or brown cloak, carried a long wooden staff usually slung over their back, and had a sword strapped to their waist. Lyla, the leader of the Phoenixes and the camp, stood in the middle of them. Her blue eyes met his with a nod. She had been in charge of the camp for the last three years. And although he now towered over her, he never questioned her authority, and neither did anyone else, at least not for long.

  “What is it?” Montell asked.

  Lyla’s voice didn’t waver as she met each person’s gaze. “We have intel that the Unwelcome are planning an inspection. Riley, you and your unit get the Jingle kids to the cave. Go.”

  Riley nodded, stepping away with his group, who had fallen in line silently behind him as Lyla issued instructions to the others.

  His mind organizing what needed to be done, he scanned his group. There were five of them. Himself, Petra, Shane, Miles, and Adros. “The kids are at the school. Adros and Shane, you get them. Petra, we’ll grab the supplies and meet at the cave. Miles, head there
now and make sure the entry is clear.”

  Everyone dispersed quickly without a word, even Adros. In moments like this, there were no disagreements, no questions. Everyone did what needed to be done. Because when the Unwelcome showed up, they weren’t looking to take the camp’s resources or even to take people with them.

  No, when the Unwelcome showed up, they had only one thing on their agenda.

  To kill the Cursed.

  Lyla’s skin tingled and her blood thrummed through her veins as she made her way toward the main gate. But she focused on keeping her expression calm, knowing she would help either stir up panic in the camp or calm it down. Lyla made eye contact with all who looked her way, giving them a nod of assurance. Inside, she prayed that the visit went well. Their camp, named Attlewood, for a rusted sign unearthed near one of the camp’s wells, was finally doing well. When they’d first started the camp, they’d had little more than a hundred people, one house standing, and lots of determination to make the place work.

  Now they had ballooned to over two hundred people, had about two dozen freestanding wood cabins, a community kitchen, a stable, training area, and acres of crops. Everything was encircled by a strong fifteen-foot-high wooden fence. And every time the Unwelcome arrived, all that hard work was put in jeopardy. But like everything else, they’d prepared for these moments. Now all that preparation would either pay off or sign their death warrants.

  Campers crowded the sides of the path, emotions ranging from fear to hate, usually both. Lyla was no different. She hated this, hated them. Five years ago, when she’d learned of the Unwelcome, she had been terrified. All they seemed to want to do was kill.

  At that time, the Unwelcome had seemed to kill indiscriminately. And then she’d learned that they’d created a city along the coast. There’d even been rumors they’d done the same in other areas of the country, where cities had not been too badly destroyed. They’d fixed them up, returning power to them and allowing humans to live in them as well. Of course, there had been a price for that kindness—each human had to bring a child with them and hand them over to the Unwelcome.

  That was when the Unwelcome’s killing pattern changed. No longer was everyone a target. Now it was clear they had one primary target: children between the ages of eight and thirteen. Those children were killed immediately, vaporized to ash. Younger children were taken into the city and adopted by people trying to wash the stain of their actions away.

  Now, five years later, they were interested in those between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, the children known as the Cursed. Lyla’s chest felt tight at the thought—Riley and Miles were in that age range.

  And although Maisy was seven years old, Lyla wasn’t taking any chances with her or any of the other kids. Some kids looked older than they were, some younger. She didn’t think the Unwelcome would take a human’s word as to the age of the kids, so anyone school age was hidden away when the Unwelcome arrived.

  Lyla took a breath, her anger mounting as she thought of her three children—Riley, Miles, and Maisy. It had only been a few years ago that a few members of their camp had tried to take them, along with another dozen kids, to trade in. Lyla and the Phoenixes had stopped them, but Lyla had vowed never to allow the camp to be that vulnerable again. She’d initiated the Jingle Program, and they’d moved even farther inland. Simon had even figured out a method to create water from the movement of air that allowed them to stay away from all water sources.

  All new members were carefully vetted and watched for months to make sure they weren’t an Unwelcome spy. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it had kept them safe all these years. But eventually the Unwelcome had found them. And they dropped in every three to four months, sometimes even at night. The image of the Unwelcome striding through the camp in the dark of night was the stuff of nightmares. The smallest one she had seen was over seven feet tall. And they were always covered from head to toe in a skintight navy-blue uniform with a dark helmet covering every inch of their faces.

  After all this time, no one knew what the Unwelcome looked like under their uniforms. They were a complete unknown. And the terror she’d experienced the first time she’d seen one was still with her. But now that feeling of terror was surpassed by another feeling—hate.

  Lyla didn’t know how many had been killed when the Unwelcome first arrived, but the numbers had been huge. Her sister, Muriel, had been one of the casualties, as had Miles’s mother and sister. And she believed Maisy’s family had been killed by them as well.

  At the first sign of the Unwelcome, the Jingle kids and the Cursed disappeared into hiding at a spot they had searched long and hard for. It was far enough away that the Unwelcome would not stumble over it and hidden enough that from the air it would be unnoticeable. But Lyla didn’t have time to make sure they reached it safely. She had to trust Riley and the other young Phoenixes to do their jobs, because right now, she had another job.

  She was the welcome committee.

  “Okay, you guys are doing great,” Riley said quietly, glancing back at the kids that filed silently behind them. He and Petra had grabbed some bags of food and skins of water, then they’d hustled out of the camp. They’d caught up with Shane, who had a group of six kids. Adros had already gone ahead with another group of older kids and some supplies. Miles would be helping get them all settled.

  Ahead, he saw the entrance to the cave. It was wedged between two tall trees and a large boulder. It was actually a cavern under the ground. The trees were full of branches, which should give them cover from the air. He glanced back at Petra. She nodded at him to show she had all her kids.

  Riley let out a breath. Good. He ushered all the kids into the large cave entrance, the air immediately cooling. There was a long tunnel that sloped downward almost imperceptibly. It was wide and deep, so all the kids could fit, with room to spare.

  Riley stopped next to Adros, who stood at the entrance, ushering the other kids inside, taking a head count as they passed him. When the last one filed in, he looked over at Adros with a nod. “Six.”

  Adros’s mouth dropped open. “I only have seven. That’s thirteen. We’re missing someone.”

  “Count again,” Riley ordered, but Petra was already running down the tunnel to do just that. Riley scanned the trees surrounding them. How had they missed someone? Had someone fallen behind? They had done this drill thousands of times.

  Petra ran up to him. “We’re missing one Jingle kid. And Miles isn’t here, either.”

  Riley stared at her, shock rooting him in a place for a moment before his mind shifted into gear. Miles was supposed to be the first one here. If there was a kid missing, though, Miles must have gone after the other child. But who …

  Then it hit him. “Dixie Carolina—she’s sick. She’s in the med cabin.”

  Miles struggled to get Dixie up into his arms from the cot. She didn’t weigh much, but it still wasn’t easy with only half an arm. He’d been halfway to the cave when he remembered she was here.

  “Miles?” Dixie asked, her blue eyes peering out from a face that was still flush with fever. Her blonde curls hung limp next to her face. She’d been in the med cabin for five days. Although only eleven, she was tall for her age, making her appear older—old enough to be mistaken for a Cursed.

  “It’s okay.” Miles forced a smile onto his face. “I’m just taking you for a little fresh air.”

  Dixie nodded her head, her eyes closing again.

  Miles got Dixie into his arms and hoisted her over his shoulder. Thank God she’s light, he thought as he looked out of the tent. The coast was clear. Everyone was lined up near the entrance, although he knew the Unwelcome were most likely patrolling the forest as well.

  Taking a breath, he darted out of the tent and headed for loose board in the fence. He pulled the board back, turning sideways to slip the shoulder with Dixie over it through first. He yanked his foot back as he released the board, just barely missing pinning it there. He didn’t even look around. He
was out in the open here. He sprinted for the tree line. He stepped beyond one of the giant oaks and leaned against the tree to adjust Dixie. No yells called out, and better yet, no blasters, so he let himself a moment to feel some relief. So far so good. But his pulse still raced, and sweat rolled down his back.

  Pushing himself from the tree, he adjusted Dixie as she started to slip, and she let out a little groan. He winced. “Sorry, sorry. Shh, it’s okay.”

  Miles looked around and realized he was off course. He needed to head more north if he was going to get to the cave. He changed direction and stepped on a branch. The crack sounded like a thunderclap. He went still. Please let no one have heard that.

  He waited, but everything remained quiet. Too quiet. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. No birds, no chatter of small forest animals. Everything had gone silent.

  Miles’s heart began to pound. It sounded so loud in the still forest. He moved carefully, racking his brain to think of someplace he could hide Dixie, knowing that the cave had been a ridiculous idea. He’d never get them there without being seen.

  Down by the water, there were some downed trees. He could probably put her in one of those and then cover her. She’d fit. She was small enough. He wouldn’t, but he’d worry about that after he had Dixie hidden.

  He felt a little better with a plan, but not by much. Focus on what you can do. Worry about everything else later, he warned himself.

  He stayed off the path, knowing if the Unwelcome were nearby they would follow it. And besides, staying off the path made it easier to hide his footprints in the forest floor.

  His shoulder began to ache, but he didn’t dare move Dixie to the other one. He wouldn’t be able to prop her up with his half arm. He shoved away the resentment that always surfaced whenever his arm kept him from doing things. He didn’t have time for self-pity now.