Chapter 27 - HELL'S GATE

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When the sirens trumpeted, the infected turned their yellowed eyes to the colony. In the path to the noise, CiCi is trapped in their pursuit.

Running, with nothing left but the fight for her own life left in her cramping legs, CiCi relived a terror she thought she'd never know again. With Nick, with the others at her side in these disturbing times of constant life and death, she held a false sense of confidence. A confidence, that stripped away with each step she took away from that camp, no matter what new form of scary took charge in the absence of her protectors.

Her note left, hopefully not in vain for Nick, may have been a fool's errand. With the sniper from the tower shooting with lucky fail at her path, the dodging pattern she took bequeathed her life to the coming horde.

Having no choice but to turn around and take on the colony's bullets, the sniper turns his aim to the slimy dead that reached after her. These were fresh turns. The gunk left over their mouths and noses, that still leaked from their eyes, meant they'd been human within the week.

To the locked gates of the colony, she jumps. Desperate, to climb up the metal partition and away from the reaching hands that aimed for her shrieking cries.

Her knife clutched in her hand and her only weapon with Abel's confiscating of her bow, waves absently against the decaying digits of the dead. Crying for help, screaming, for the enemy to come save her, nothing but the sirens answer her back. Nobody comes running, not even the sniper on the tower. A lone gunman who still shoots at the horde that may very well, bring down the gate with her should the coming dozens join the overwhelming numbers climbing up behind her.

Closing her eyes, trying to accept her fate as she reaches the upmost notch of the given metal fence that's closed off to brick above, she silences her thoughts to voice her own last rites.

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion. Blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin."

A surplus of gunshots behind her, CiCi can't find the strength to look back, nor to hold on any longer as she's pulled down by the hands that grab her ankles.

She waits for the bites to rip her apart, but in turn, finds alone the painful slam of the metal gate when she's turned against it.

Disbelief takes hold of her forced inner peace, when the eyes casting down on her are no longer that of a filmy yellow, but that of a different danger.

"Abel..." She utters out, her built up tears falling freely over her reddened cheeks when she blinks nervously in succession.

"You've lead the way to Eden, Jael, and it is by God's good grace that I'm here to save you now." He says to her, his eyes never shaking that crazed look that she's seen in a madman before. The shadow grows in his stare as he adds, "But if you do anything again like that without my blessing, I will let the demons take you. It is your job, as a woman and as a chosen protector of Eve, to be obedient. You are one of my chosen, should you survive your initiation. You should thank God that you are on His side...for now."

In being released from his clutches, the bodies of the slain infected scatter behind his wide form. Beyond, is Isaac, Abel's own men, and others she both recognizes and some she doesn't. Too many to make out, but with Isaac's sorrowful expression and with the absence of Paige at his side, CiCi's panic rises to tighten harshly on her throat.

Abel and the built, unhinged men of his order begin to break down he metal gate. Crowbars, hammers, even a blow torch works against the barrier that protects the colony from the dead and bars them passage.

Not minding her own advice in her head to keep quiet and stay away from Abel's attentions further, she can't help but shout at Abel's back, "Where is Paige?"

As Isaac pulls her back and the crazed man who just saved her life ignores her, CiCi brushes Isaac's betraying hand off her shoulder to search the faces among the living. On the ground, she steps over the dead. One, donned in army green pants and a sniper rifle, with the name badge of PETROV displayed on his army hat. The man, that shot at her earlier, that Abel's men took out with the horde.

The siren blares on, bringing the staggering figures of their mortal enemies and grim fate to start trickling in from miles off. Staring into the faces of everyone she passes, desperate to find Paige, to find Emma, she finds neither among the group.

Imagining the worst and sobbing for the two women CiCi believes, were murdered or left behind, it's in her search that disbelief strikes her harder than ever. A ghost, surely, from the past they shared with Dalton in the time of the living.

Those trademark, doe eyes of Audrey Miller—one of three survivors from the St. John Massacre—shoot in alarm her way.

"Audrey?!" CiCi cries out, not sure if she has finally cracked, or if the image of her lost friend holds root to reality.

She's cloaked, hidden under a hood of a heavy wool fabric. Concealed still, by the team of men around her—Abel's men. As CiCi goes to step forward, to reunite with her best friend who went missing years ago, she's shoved away by the man between them.

As they tighten their weave around Audrey, CiCi is taken back further, when Abel is once again, there to spin her.

"Keep your distance." Though he utters no threat, it's there in his presence. Frazzled, in the dangerous static that bounces off of him and onto her.

CiCi nods. The only acknowledgement of his words, that she can evoke.

The gate ahead opened, they move inside. Nothing stirs but their own shuffled feet. Behind them, the gates close by Abel's men. Blowtorch returned, to seal up against the infected that quickly close the gap of their danger and safety.

Abel goes to Audrey's side, taking her hand and though CiCi knows she shouldn't be staring and asking her friend a thousand silent questions, she can't help it.

Isaac takes up the vacancy that Abel left at CiCi's right and whispers to her, "He calls her his Eve."

Gulping down, CiCi turns her face harshly away from the friend that refuses to make eye contact with her.

"And what about Paige and Emma?" CiCi asks.

"I don't know," Isaac replies, "They went missing like you did. I thought they went with you..."

Near the gate where CiCi left her note for Nick, she looks back. Seeing him taking the paper left, faith restores within her. Nick doesn't see them and scatters in the opposite direction, waning down the hopeful surge of her heartbeat. Fighting the urge to run to him, to call out his name, Isaac shushes her under his breath.

"If you call him, he's dead. We might be too. Play along for now. Abel likes you. Work with it till we find our own plan." Isaac fades in a whisper, as Abel's penetrating eyes cast onto her own. That unreadable, dangerous glare, that either holds a thousand thoughts or none at all.

When they pass colonists, none take note of their presence. Thinking them to be part of them, Abel has his eyes set forward on the house on the hill. The largest of the houses, a plantation mansion that casts down onto the small kingdom below it.

"There." Abel points upward and CiCi's sure not even Russell himself, could stop anything Abel set his eyes on.

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