“The Merchants?”
She nodded. “They attacked the church. Nine or ten of them. We outnumbered them, but they had weapons, and they caught us by surprise.
Welp.
One of them threw a molotov cocktail through a window. There were other families there, families with kids, so I grabbed a fire extinguisher and tried to stop it from spreading.
That seems like an odd thing to do if they were actually trying to take over the church. I guess either that wasn’t actually their goal, or they thought they could take it over quickly enough to stop the fire themselves.
Spraying around- I couldn’t put it out, didn’t want to try in case I just spread it around, so I just contained it, for all the good it did.”
At least you tried.
I take it the church isn’t the target of the mission? It kinda sounds like it’s going to have gone from ashes to ashes by now.
She shook her head, “They came through the doors and began attacking people, one of them grabbed my brother, I- I panicked. I used the extinguisher to spray towards them and tried to pull him away.
Shame that wasn’t containment foam.
…
I wonder if containment foam would be effective at extinguishing fires. Probably dangerous to try, though. Don’t want to get stuck in it by accident with a fire raging around you.
We do know it’s not flammable, at least, or they wouldn’t have used it on Lung or on prisoners sharing a wagon with him.
I couldn’t, and others were approaching, so I left him and I escaped through the broken window where the bottle had been thrown inside.
Some might criticize Sierra for giving up and running away, abandoning her brother, but I honestly think it’s a good thing. She recognizes when she’s not able to do something about it herself, when to flee to seek help. That’s much better than getting captured alongside her brother and being unable to do that.
When I got back an hour later, there were fire trucks and police and ambulances there. My brother was the only one missing.
Well, that’s something at least.
The others were there, but badly hurt. Burned or cut up, beaten. Derrick, the man who’d invited me to stay there-”
Ouch.
But yeah, maybe the fate of Derrick isn’t super relevant?
She broke off, and she stopped walking, turning away so her head was facing away from me.
I waited patiently. When she’d turned back so I could see her face and started walking again, I gently asked, “Dead?”
Less relevant or not, though, worth letting her talk about it. Listening is a severely underrated way of helping people.
She shook her head. Quietly, she said, “They cut him up with a broken bottle. The doctor said they bent him over and shoved it between- he’ll have a tube running out of his stomach and into a bag for the rest of his life. And he might never walk again. You understand?”
Eesh.
So why did the Merchants attack? To hurt people just for fun? For resources the people inside were living off of?
“I think so.” Not that I wanted to.
Heh, yeah, that’s fair.
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