It was dark inside the trench and the ground was shrouded in gloom, but we could make out shapes in the mud hidden beneath the shadows. I moved forward tentatively and nudged the nearest shape with the toe of my boot.

Something gave way under my foot and an arm flopped forward and hit my leg. I squealed in shock and jumped backwards, colliding with Taylor who slapped his hand over my mouth.

"Are you insane?" he breathed in my ear before releasing me.

“Sorry." Funnily enough I wasn't used to touching parts of a corpse.

I bent down to examine the body, a woman in the colours of our unit. I stepped over her carefully and checked the next prone form. It was another member of our unit and as we moved down the trench I counted more and more of our dead.

"Ambush?" I asked the others.

“Must have been," Taylor replied.

“Do you think we're losing the trial?" Evan asked after we passed the twelfth body.

There was a long silence while we all thought about what that might mean. If we couldn't get back out of here we could be slaughtered as the rival army chased down the last of the opposition. We were wearing the wrong colours, which marked us as the enemy, messengers or not.

"We need to take a look at what's going on," Evan finally spoke, breaking the silence that had trapped us.

“How?" Taylor asked.

"We'll have to risk getting up high, but if we can work out where we are, we might be able to find our way to Laurie," Evan replied, looking up at the edges of the trench high above our heads.

"Let's move along until we can find an easier way up," I suggested and we pressed on.

The ground squelched under our feet and the mud was sticking to our boots. It didn't help with being stealthy but at least the sound would let us know if anyone else was sneaking about too.

A shudder ran down my spine, I still couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched.

Eventually the trench opened up and we entered an area with a low stone building in the centre. We stopped and surveyed it warily.

"What do you think?" Taylor asked in a low voice.

"That if someone was lying in wait in there we would be dead already," Evan replied.

"Do you think we can use the roof of the building to get up onto the bank behind it?" I asked, looking at the way the sloping roof reached up until it was level with the high ground above us.

Evan nodded slowly but he looked nervous about approaching the shack all the same.

"Let's get on with it then." Taylor moved towards the building and we fell in behind him with tension spilling between us.

There was an open doorway in the brick front of the building and no obvious way to climb up from the outside. The roof was made with thick red tiles that had broken away on one side, leaving a pile of smashed rubble on the ground.

We spread out to check the other sides of the building but there weren't even windows for us to use to climb up and the roof was out of reach.

"Maybe there's a way up inside?" Evan suggested. He moved forward cautiously and Taylor and I followed close behind him.

The interior of the building was dark.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I suppressed a shiver as I stepped over the threshold. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me not to go inside but I ignored the feeling and continued forwards.

The squelching of our feet was cut off as soon as we set foot on the stone floor. It was eerily quiet in the little building. The space was split into several small rooms and we were standing in a tiny entrance hall.

We carefully began to move forward into the nearest room. I glanced about anxiously. A huge, muddy footprint stained the floor next to my boot, far too big to be Taylor's or Evan's.

My head snapped up and my hand flew to my pistol just in time for me to leap back as Grey charged at me. A gun went off somewhere and the noise echoed so loudly in the confined space that it made my ears ring.

My efforts to escape propelled me backwards into Taylor and we both fell to the floor in a heap of limbs. My pistol was knocked from my grasp and skittered noisily across the floor into the darkness of the far corner.

Tags: Susanne Valenti Science Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net