Previously:
Hundred Camp
"It's a dropship! Made to survive heat. We survived in it to get down here!" countered Bree, desperately, from the near the top of the ladder.
"Most of the tech's dead, and we don't have anyone to fix that!" Bellamy reminded harshly.
"It's still smarter than going out there!" yelled another of the watchers, having elbowed another kid in the gut to get up onto the ladder quicker.
"I can't drag you all, dammit. Be smart about this!" yelled Bellamy.
Polis
By the time Clarke was mounted, and made it to the city limits, the riding party had grown larger than she'd expected. She, Miller, Caliban, and Gaia were joined by Charlotte, and Yulian, as both seconds had thrown themselves onto their horses hastily, but also Lincoln, leading a unit of Lexa's warriors that he'd been able to ready in time.
Towards Hundred Camp, and the fire, Clarke set a punishing pace, but everyone already knew there was nothing they could really do.
It would take too long to reach home.
Chapter 8
Fire Meets Fate by Ruelle
85 days till the end
Approx. 12:30am
Water, clothes, whatever they could carry.
What was there to even save that they could carry through the flames.
"Be brave!" Bellamy ordered.
The delinquents squirmed around. Pulled on more layers to hide their skin. Used up the water stock of the dropship wetting their hair. As their hands shook, Bellamy remembered what these had faced, in this life, and in the memories of the chosen few.
"I know you. All of you! You're survivors, that's you whom you are! That's what Skaikru is- survivors! We can do this! We will make it through!" he roared hoarsely over the muddled noise of the hasty preparations.
These kids who'd readied themselves and the camp to face an army, with stiff upper lips, and defiant scowls... wept. Quietly. But they weren't cowering away in the corners, trying to avoid their fate. Somehow fire scared them more than the threat of Azgeda bearing down upon them with axes and fury. Bellamy tried to meet each of their eyes. To memorize their faces so as not to lose track of any.
Slumped against the wall, Monroe waited, her hand already clutching the door's lever. Cade hovered nearby. The young boy winced as his knuckles brushed against the door. Was it his imagination, or was it getting warmer? At his side, Jones braced Sterling a bit, though at least Sterling's blue eyes were open and his feet on the ground. Their spats, and uncertainty forgotten, Bree and Troy tightly held to each other just behind Sterling and Jones. The rest of the delinquents pressed together in a great, squirming clump, hands intertwining. Just as they had as kids when they'd walked on field trips from their classrooms to Argo, or the med bay, or the observation decks, or Go-Sci... They'd always been restless then, too. Especially whenever they left their own station. Bellamy stomped around the huddled mass, and straightened them out into double lines. Readied them to march the moment the ramp hit the ground, like good little soldiers.
Their numbers were uneven. Bellamy would walk untethered. If she'd been here, Bellamy would be looking for that bright golden hair, reaching for his partner's hand as they waited for the door to drop. But she wasn't here. She hardly ever is. Like the ghost of Clarke's grief, Bellamy imagined Murphy, mouth covered just as he'd done during the outbreak, shifting restless in the line of delinquents. Could practically see the kid squeezing Clarke's hand- preparing impatiently to drag her through the flames and the smoke if necessary. Or carry her. Bellamy remembered how he'd carried their princess from Arkadia's hold. Shit, he had to get a grip. She wasn't here, and neither was Murphy, and the world had narrowed down to their camp, and escaping it. Their home had became a death trap.
How many more ghosts would haunt them, come tomorrow?
Bellamy maneuvered his way to the front of the queue, touching arms, and squeezing shoulders, trying to brace them up, at this last moment of fleeting safety.
Touching Monroe's shoulder, he nodded at her weary, questioning glance.
She threw the lever down.
"Stay together! We've gotta find a way out!" ordered Bellamy over the sound of the door creaking down steadily.
The door landed with a terrifying thud.
Nobody moved as the rush of smoke engulfed them.
"Once more into the breach, my friends,"
He stood to the side of the door, watching his flock descend. With a pang, he remembered ducking into the flow of kids loading ONTO the dropship, only months ago. He'd grabbed a hold of a girl he later learned was named Fox, and hauled her impatiently onboard, anxious. Marcus Kane had stood by, and not questioned Bellamy's appearance, as that man had watched the delinquents' progress silently. Since then, they were Bellamy's charges. It was all on him now.
Down they went. Their ordeal just beginning.
By the time their feet hit the dirt, they realized in waves- the gate wasn't the way out, and the wall might not be either. The flames, closest in the back when first discovered, had circled the camp by igniting the wooden spikes of their fence.
The cabin, that Clarke said they'd never had a chance to even begin the first time around, was already engulfed. Their home on the ground.
The wall and gate of Hundred Camp looked like the gates to hell.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here... Bellamy hunched his shoulders.
They were utterly surrounded.
Last of the dropship, unfortunately having to leave it open, Bellamy didn't realize for a moment where Monroe was already leading the head of pack.
He'd told the dropship crew to find a way to shut down the tunnels' access. Raven had offered to use a tiny bomb to bring it down, but she'd barely got the idea out of her mouth before Octavia had gone off.
"Don't even think about being stupid enough to obey him!" she'd began, leaping up from where she'd been lounging on the moss stuffed cushions, and lunging into Raven's face. The elder brunette skittered backwards before stiffening up.
Her bellowing protests, and snarling orders that no one touch it hadn't made much damn sense to Bellamy, or anyone else, he was sure of it, but Clarke had simply held up her hands for quiet, and declared "Octavia's right, we may need an escape route one day," and Bellamy had folded. The pair of them, he couldn't fight them both. Not every moment of every day. Not when they had such... an advantage over him.
Raven had held her chin up, but did not protest Clarke's intervention.
The blonde had merely continued on with whatever the hell she'd been doing before. As if it was no big deal. Bellamy had been beyond irritated, and purposely made one of the wall towers in a good location to keep an eye on the tunnel's entrance.
Now, Bellamy realized, that Octavia, or Clarke, had obviously given Monroe the idea.
Ducking their heads, and only pushing each other a bit, Skaikru flooded into the tunnel, Monroe at the front, and Cade clinging to her hand. It was narrow, and the entrance created a bottleneck jam, but the kids jostled for position to keep moving. Waiting for them all to get inside, Bellamy turned slowly in place. Looked around their home. It really was home. More than Factory ever had been.
The last pair scuttling down into the darkness, Bellamy risked one last lingering look back.
The flaring wall illuminated their home into a hellish nightmare. The camp was bright as a red dawn. Bright enough to see the cabin's roof, that they hadn't even yet managed to totally waterproof, and now never would, was collapsed. The walls were going up, and the open windows showed there was no hope of saving anything else from there now. The crackling and swoosh of flames burrowing into his ear's, Bellamy bowed his head.
It wouldn't last till dawn. Their home, their home, gone.
The tunnel's darkness offered the hope and succor of cool earth, and escape. With long strides, Bellamy caught up quickly to the back of the seventy-something pack of kids.
As they marched, two by two, braver now down in the safe smell of dirt, and dry leaves crunching beneath their feet, they were safe. Some stumbled, but still they were clinging tightly to their partner, and so none fell. The darkness they'd feared since falling to earth had become the comfort. So onward they went. Bellamy kept looking over his shoulder, back towards camp, though he could see nothing once they'd made a couple winding turns. The tunnel slated down away from camp, and grew colder than even the early January bitterness above ground. Their free hands tucked into folds of furs, and empty pockets.
The thick echoing of their boots filled the tunnel, comforting in the reminder that though they could see nothing, they were far from alone.
They'd been moving, slow, but steady in the pitch black of the unlit underground, when Bellamy hesitated, pausing. The kids before him didn't notice. Kept moving forwards. But the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, and his gut was churning. The kids ahead had come out of their shocked stupors, some of them at least, enough to make up a ratchet that drifted back to him. That was fine. Good. A relief, really. The delinquents were only ever quiet in disaster, or sound asleep. But now, he wondered at the sounds from behind. That he couldn't understand over the echoes of voices and feet.
Blindly, Bellamy pivoted on his heel. Took two long steps back towards camp. Then another few. Seized up when he realized what felt off. Deep breathe, he wanted to turn back, and follow his people... was the tunnel beginning to warm up? Was that light, somewhere from the way they'd come?
One turn. Less than forty steps back.
Till Bellamy got his answers.
Heat, the threat of the chase, and Bellamy's screaming instincts were right.
Light crept, red and orange, and spiteful, creeping down the dry, dead leaves along the tunnel floor, waist high already.
Groaning, he slammed his hand into the earthen wall confining him, and ignored the dirt and rock that fluttered to the ground. Hitting leaves that would soon feed the fire as it chased them. It wasn't moving fast, down here, at least, but it was still following.
The camp must be absolutely engulfed, by now.
With that thought striking him, Bellamy turned and bolted.
"Move, move your asses!" he screamed, not waiting till he caught up to them.
"Fire in the tunnel! Fire in the tunnel!" yelled Bellamy, as he ran, long legs covering the distance swiftly.
Passing through a split in the path that he didn't know why they'd picked the left side over the right, Bellamy continued yelling for them to hurry. Just beyond it, Atom was waiting with Collette, still holding on, not that Bellamy realized as barreled into them.
It took hardly any time at all for him to slam right into someone, and Bellamy recognized Atom's voice, then Collette's, asking how close the fire was, and together.
Together, they closed the last gap between them and the rest of Skaikru. The steady marching transformed into a panicked stampede. To be trapped deep in the tunnel if the flames caught up with them...
No, swore Bellamy out loud, that couldn't be their fate. The smoke was reaching them now.
By the time Monroe realized the floor was rising up sharply for the exit, there was light waiting for them here too. Faint, but glowing nonetheless. She didn't stop, anyway, and neither did the scurrying pack at her heels. They charged from the exit away into the little clearing it opened onto.
Here there was fire, too.
Pressing close to the right side, behind them it wasn't near so bad, that they could see, but to the left...
Flowed rushing, rapid water.
They'd found the river. It wasn't even the one Clarke had sworn had... sea monsters in it. No, this, Monroe grinned in relief, was their river. The one they'd relied on since they landed, where they drew their water, where their splashed, and cooled themselves before winter.
Here, a couple miles downstream, it was wider than it seemed possible. Far too wide to even make out the opposite bank well in the dim orange glow. Too wide to swim across with the rushing, rapid current certainty. Except they didn't have much choice, probably. They had no way to know had deep it was, only that they could walk down the bank, and end up at shoulder-height in the river only a few steps in. But even across the river, there was the horror of fire rising to the treetops, but it lay behind them, and far to the east.
Mingling with the shadows in the gleam of hell, there was the smoke, lighter here, than when they'd left camp but still enough to burn their throats. Never mind their lungs.
Follow the river!
Bellamy choked out the command. The fire had jumped the river somehow, back towards camp, but looking downstream- looking downstream, across the river past a wide bend, they could see miraculous clear sky and bare, staid trees, through the smoke. They just had to follow the river long enough to outrun the fire, and hope it didn't spread. Here it was wider than they could hope to cross in the rushing current. As if more than a dozen of them had learned to swim yet.
They followed it, just staying far enough off the bank to keep dry ground beneath their feet, as the smoke thickened. The roaring heat chased them. Feet slipped. Splashes of kids falling into the river, and desperately crawling out. Bellamy circled around, just out of the crush, away from the bank, to meet the end of the pack. He ushered the stragglers forwards. Heat nipped at his heels. Scorching ash fell from the burning tree cover above. Shrieks rose.
They were running, but the fire was faster.
Following the river wouldn't work much longer.
They had to go down into it.
"We can't cross yet, but get down the banks. Soak your hair. Your clothes, Go, hurry!" cried Bellamy, pushing against those kids within reach. Even with his hands on them, he couldn't tell who they were in the grey veil of smoke. A pair of boys, scrawny and shorter than him. Could've been nearly any of the delinquents.
Despite easily supporting the far lighter boy, Jones shifted uneasily. The weight of Sterling at his side, and the spitting, angry hiss of the water as it swarmed past them... Jones watched as his people began to hurry into the river on Bellamy's word, and Monroe and Cade's silent example.
With a jerking motion, Jones moved forward, and steered Sterling, with his eyes near closed again, right into another kid's shoulder. When the other boy turned to look, startled, Jones ducked out from under Sterling's arm, and all but shoved him side-ways to the random kid they'd bumped into.
"Hold him up, you hear me?" demanded Jones, but he didn't stick around to see if the kid had caught Sterling, or let him hit the ground.
The protests didn't bring Jones back- he was already moving away. They were all gonna drown in that damn water.
He grabbed a hold of the jackets on another pair, and tugged them closer to the river, and struggled ahead, trying to catch the rest ahead. There wasn't as many as there ought to be. He followed the last of them, at the head of the pack, into the river, feeling his jacket stink to his skin through his shirt- burning his back, his neck...
As his people got the idea, they bent at the waist, dunking their heads, and scooping up handfuls frantically to douse their clothes. Soaked himself now, Bellamy inched sideways up the bank, till he was high enough out of the water to stand his ground. There he stood, on a firm scattering of deep set, rough rocks, to watch the procession.
Wading down. Ankle deep. Calf deep. The current rushed against their legs. Rocks sent heavy, soaked boots slipping. The bank was a sharp incline. They were hip deep, and staggering to move with the current before they knew what was happening. Chest deep for some of shorter kids. Yelps, and panicked cries abounded, as some went scrambling back up the banks. In the water, the few Ark issue jackets and cargo pants were just as heavy as the furs, and hide garments. Kids began to shed them, tossing their slippery weight pitifully towards the bank, where most were simply swept along down the river along with their owners.
Where was Zoe, Bellamy wondered. Cade, Sterling, Collette, Bree, Atom? Mary, for all the stars above, where was Mary? Clarke would never forgive him if anything happened to her. He'd never forgive himself.
The wide bend grew closer. They just had to get through it, and then, then, Bellamy hoped he was right. The smoke was still growing thicker, as they gasped through their makeshift masks, too hard to see much, but it looked like the river narrowed.
All the gods that may be, let it narrow. Let us cross. Keep us from drowning to escape burning.
Bellamy prayed.
Don't let me have killed them leading them into this water.
They struggled on.
Slipping on rocks.
Falling to their knees into the current.
Being swept away, and sucking in mouthfuls of water, full of soot from themselves.
Sinking into mud.
Choking on grey, stinging smoke.
Flinching at the burning ashes.
Holding onto each other by arms, and shoulders, and necks, trying to stay together. To stay upright.
