Intuitions of War- chapter 4

Intuitons of war

Chapter 4: Surviving

Before Harper could fully sort out the chaos going on within his mind, the bombs were already dropping. He was in a cage which he did not have the key to unlock, the French didn't seem to have any plan to save him, as most of them began to run away.

'...crap' was the last thing that hit his mind before one of the bombs landed directly in front of the cage. Within the next few seconds, he was sent flying with the cage, considering he was still inside of it. While flying away with the cage, he banged his head on one of the bars, and immediate pain began to sprout from his head.

"Crap!" he repeated again, except this time with his mouth. However, before he could close his mouth, some of the blood dripping down from his head fell onto his tongue, so he swallowed the blood.

'It doesn't quite taste good…' his mind began to roam for a bit, before focusing once again on the situation in front of him. Or, maybe better said, below him, considering he was flying through the air with this cage.

*KSHH*

The cage rattled loudly when they hit the ground, and Harper was pretty much unconscious, considering he was literally all over the place.

'Did we finally land?...' Harper attempted to stand up, but his legs were much too shaky to stand up right now. He groaned, and began to look around. It was at that moment that he realized it, the big hole in the cage door.

"The bomb blew right through it…" Harpers mouth was slack, surprised at the power of a bomb. Though he was uneducated, he knew pretty well that stuff like metal and steel were hard to break. He had also heard about the explosive power of bombs, but didn't know that they were this powerful.

'That doesn't matter right now, crawl out!' He began to drag himself towards the blown open door, removing useless thoughts from his mind. Right now, he just needed to survive, or he wouldn't even have the time to use his mind to think about useless things.

"Ahhh!"

"Quelqu'un fait quelque chose!"

No matter where he looked, it looked like a terrible battlefield with blood and death surrounding him. He wondered how a single plane could carry so much bombs, but he looked up again and realized why there were so many bombs.

'That's… much more than just a single plane…' When Harper gazed to the skies, he could barely see the sun through all the bombs and the planes.

"Is this how a demonic invasion would feel like…?" Once again, his mind began to roam to useless thoughts, before he slapped it out of himself and began to get away again.

Now that he thought about it, it wasn't all blue skies and happiness when he looked up, but dark clouds, and it seemed like rain was beginning to set in. It was getting a bit chilly, the wind trying to push him back. Above all that, there were screams of dying men all around him, and he was pretty sure there wasn't a river of blood in the streets before.

'I can't stay out in the open like this, I should get into one of the buildings on this street…' Harper began to think ahead, trying to survive out of desperation to continue his life.

"Wait… maybe the sewers would wo-!?" Before he could finish wondering out loud, another bomb dropped right onto a building to his right, which came crashing down onto the stone street. Luckily, Harper was on the left side of the street, so he was pretty much safe, except for a few pebbles that flew out at him.

Well, that's if you aren't including the ears.

'It's so loud… everything is so loud and painful…' Harper stopped crawling for a bit and put his hands on his ears, trying to block out any sound that he could. He didn't want to feel anymore pain, he just didn't.

Whether or not he could consider this lucky or not, Harper didn't know, but the French didn't seem too focused on him.

'Well, considering the situation, focusing on me may very well cost them their lives…' Harper understood the situation, that all of these bombings and loud sounds were happening, but thanks to those, the French were just trying to get out of here, same as him.

They seemed to all be running in the direction of the docks, which is probably where the invasion began.

'Security is too damned lax in Newgate, how could the French just dock their boats and ships at the dock so easily?!' Harper's anger was swelling, but it wasn't just at the French, but at the British as well. Not only did they provide terribly bad security at Newgate, which allowed the French to infiltrate, but they were bombing on the assumption that there were no innocent British people left alive, and even if there were, they probably wouldn't stop.

"Is there no country that tries to protect its innocents, that fights without putting others at risk?" Harper was extremely disappointed, especially with everything going on right now. How could a nation like Britain, known to be one of the best in the world, also succumb to using its citizens as fodder.

'For now, let's just get out of here.' He rearranged himself and his senses, and attempted to stand up again. However, he was actually able to stand up this time.

"All right, time to get out of here." Harper looked all around, and realized that the buildings weren't really a viable idea. They would easily succumb to bombs, so he moved onto his next idea.

He looked straight at his feet, or what was beyond them.

'The sewers…' He began forming the idea that he was going to use to get out of here, considering he knew what he was doing. He had been in the sewers before, it was a good way to get around if you could deal with the terrible stench and keep your sense of direction.

"Thankfully, I can do both." Harper realized that it might be his last remaining choice, so he started looking around for any entrances to the sewer. Meanwhile, bombs were still dropping around him, and buildings and streets were blowing up left and right.

Right when he finished looking around and still couldn't find anything, fortune struck.

*BOOM*

A bomb dropped a couple of meters in front of him. Harper was sent flying into a building behind him, hurting his back severely. After taking the time to get himself together, he saw where the bomb had dropped and smiled.

For it had opened a path directly into the sewers.

"Nothing left to do except to go for it!" Harper threw caution into the air and made a mad dash to the opening leading into the sewers. Once he got close enough to it, he leaped right into it, falling into the wasters of the sewer.

'Well, I should be safe for now, just gotta keep running 'till I get out of Newgate.' Harper had navigated the sewers before, though not very well. However, he did remember the way to go if he wanted to follow the sewers out of Newgate.

'I believe it's this way.' He turned left, and looked ahead into the dark abyss that was the sewers. There was a stench that was so existent that he felt like shoving a pistol into his nose and pulling the trigger, the stench was terribly bad.

'Just bear with it for a while, I'll make it if I can just keep moving.' He began jogging, and was even considering running just so he could get out of the sewer faster, but he knew that it would be smarter to conserve his energy in the long-run.

'I'll make it out of here, and start a new life. Everyone else is dead, there's nobody that I know or who knows me that is alive. I have to start a new life, hopefully not as an urchin. Actually, I think that I don't have much of a choice besides becoming an urchin.' Harper began to mutter within his mind about useless stuff.

He looked around in the sewers, and besides some torches and a terrible stench, the water running was incredibly green, and it looked like there was some big brown stuff within it, which wasn't all crap.

'It's always terrible when I come here.' Harper thought as a huge rumble from above him took place, shaking him around. The bombs were somehow still dropping, which just shows that the power of the British isn't to be underestimated.

'To be honest, I can be mad at every nation for as long as I want, but in the end, this is just war. No matter where I go, it'll be the same.' Harper was calming down now that he knew he was somewhat safe, and began to rationally think, especially concerning war.

"Y a-t-il quelqu'un ici?"

Harper heard a shout echoed throughout the sewers, and it certainly wasn't in a language that he spoke.

'The French are down here!' Harper realized that if he, a child could think of escaping into the sewers, then why couldn't the French? He whirled his head around, to face the direction from which the shout rang from. He didn't see anybody, so it really must have just been the sewers echoing.

"Is there anybody here? I won't harm you."

The same accent and voice came out again, except it was in english. At this point, Harper began to recognize the voice.

'It's the guy who translated to me when I was in the cage!'

Harper realized the situation, and began jogging away. However, even his jogging caused a lot of sound, and a few seconds after he began jogging, he heard full on running behind him.

'Crap, why does it echo so much!?' Harper thought, and also burst out into a wild run, knowing that he had already given his location away.