Out For Blood 32

Ella was not happy, the entire Collective had gathered at the Town Hall but six of them. Sam and Dane were away, they had a very important reason for not being there, their mission was of the utmost importance to the future survival of the Collective, but the fact she couldn’t reach them on the cell-phone they had taken niggled at her intensely.

The brothers Sheldon and Mervyn were in two of the other buildings keeping guard. But Hal and young Billy should have finished by now and joined them. She had a feeling something had gone wrong in the station room and hoped the blond one was not harmed further; the Primary One may need her. She would have used Sheldon or Mervyn to find out what was going on but had no way of contacting them.

She roused Zack from watching with a few snaps of her fingers, and then instructed him to use the tunnel to collect one of his dogs and find out what the hold up was with Hal, and if young Billy had gone back there he was to bring him back also. Zack put on a thick coat, a pair of gloves and a hat, then took a flashlight from a table and opened the door that led into the basement of the building.

He walked over to the hatch and opened it to gain access to the tunnels. In the floor behind him was another hatch, this one was made of steel and was electronically controlled, it led to the Primary Ones’ inner chamber. Zack switched on the flashlight and entered the tunnel.

Not counting the basement, which really was only a small room excavated for the use of the tunnels, the Town Hall consisted of two floors. The ground floor had the main entrance doors in the centre and five large widows either side of it. The upper floor had one large arched picture window above the doors and again five windows either side of that.

Ellas’ residence was the whole of the upper floor although she only used two of the rooms for personal use. She moved in there when she took over the day to day running of the Collective as the Primary One now never leaves his impenetrable chamber, for reasons only she and he are aware of.

The ground floor is only used by the Collective to watch when a storm hits. They were there now looking from the windows and watching; they had started to gather the night before, the last of them, Ella, arriving just before the downpour began. The Town Hall is at the north side of Martinsville, at the top end of Main Street looking south along its length.

There is a street off to the right holding a dozen houses, another to the left holding the same. Farther along Main Street there were sixteen more houses, eight on either side. Behind the houses on the left are the dog kennels, after those two more streets left and right holding a further dozen or so houses each.

Farther along Main Street on the left are a garage, a cinema, and stores. Facing these on the right are the schoolhouse, the library and the police station and courtroom.

When Ella took over the Collective everything ran smoothly, nourishment was fairly easy to come by as people travelled far and wide looking for work, and no one would miss them should they not return.

However in recent months Ella had struck a deal with an outsider that stopped the need for them taking people, but that deal went sour (literally) and the population of Martinsville suffered greatly going down to 136. Ella vowed that one day she would repay the outsider for what she had done to her people. And with any luck, today was going to be that day.

Zack hated using the tunnels, the floors were wooden and every time he walked on them water and mud would ooze from underneath. The walls were always damp and during a heavy downpour like this one the tunnels were prone to flooding, and on two occasions had actually collapsed.

He was only yards into his underground journey and was already being hit on his hat and on his shoulders by water that had seeped through the ground above. Every time this happened he would rub it off immediately, he didn’t want any of it soaking through.

He eventually reached the tunnel that would take him to the kennels, he shone the flashlight into it and on seeing two inches of rainwater covering the wooden floor he decided to go on without one of the dogs. He wouldn't need them anyway... he was only going to get Hal and maybe young Billy.

It wasn’t long before he had reached the tunnel that would lead him to “Chambers”, and eventually to the station room where Gregg and Jill were still trying to formulate a plan of escape...