by Kevin Jusino
The air is hot and dry, heavy in my nostrils as I fan away a plume of dust with my hands. Corey hops onto the ground besides me, followed by a still-drowsy Henry and Cacy. It doesn’t take long to realize we’re in some kind of pop-up military camp. To my surprise, I see even more vehicles here: mostly Jeeps and frighteningly large vehicles with weapons attached to them. What do they need those for? Within the tents are large containers with what I assume to be various supplies; already, kids have lined up while soldiers pass out bottles of water and packets of food. A red tent with a white cross on it set apart from the others catches my attention.
“I think they can check your head over there,” I tell Henry, pointing it out.
“I’ll go with you,” Cacy says, leading him over to it.
Corey tugs on my arm again. “Can we get food?”
I give him a smile, happy that there’s at least one good thing I can give him. “Sure bud, lets go.”
Taking his hand, we line up with the rest for food, my forehead already slick with sweat from the sweltering heat. Couldn’t the aliens at least have the decency to invade on a cooler month?
I mostly train my focus on the sights around us, noticing the armed guards positioned at the gaps in the camp—probably meant to make sure we don’t run off, the way everyone always seems to be glancing at the sky every few seconds as if they’re afraid the Globe will show up at any second, and the fact that some of the soldiers are facing away from the camp…almost as if ensuring nothing can get in.
“You’re from Backston too, right?”
I don’t realize the girl in front of us is talking to me until Corey tugs on my finger, bringing me back to attention.
“Yeah, we are,” I say with a nod.
She bites her top lip, her shiny blonde hair appearing to glow against the sunlight; she must have come from another bus because I don’t recognize her face. “Have you also noticed anything…weird?”
I have to keep myself from laughing. “You mean besides the whole alien invasion thing?”
“Sorry, that sounded stupid,” she says, glancing at the ground. “I mean about us. How they’ve been almost been…collecting us.”
I shrug. “Well it’s not exactly the smoothest search-and-rescue I’ve ever seen.”
She shakes her head insistently. “Think about it. Think about how many buses there are.”
I pause, looking back at the vehicles that brought us here. What does she mean? They’re all identical, with the same tinted windows and the same amount of seats…but wait.
“There should be more,” I mutter.
A nervous giggle escapes her, as if she’s been waiting this whole time for someone else to understand. “Right. And they said they’re collecting everyone under eighteen. Our town is small, but its not that small.”
“What does that mean?” I wonder aloud.
Corey looks up at us with a smile on his face. “Maybe it means we’re special?”
The thought may be reassuring to him, but it does nothing except send fear spearing through my chest. I think back to how forceful the soldiers were when taking Cacy and Henry away from their home…and the same phrase I keep hearing them say.
No one left behind.
I don’t notice we’re at the front of the line until the soldier shouts, “Next!”. The blonde-haired girl gives me a frightened look before collecting her rations and scurrying away, leaving me with the sensation that my insides are being twisted inside-out. Could what she was implying really be true? Have we been selected apart from the other youth?
We collect a few cereal bars, fruit cups, beef jerky packets, and flimsy-looking sandwiches before returning to the main area. A few picnic tables have been spread out, already filled with nervous-looking kids who try to strike up chatter to calm their fear. I lead Corey over to one of the farther ones, where only a few kids have sat down. Amongst them is the blonde girl from before.
Corey snacks away happily, too innocent to fully process what’s going on, while I only pick at a few strips of jerky and manage to force a few bites of the sandwich. Most of it is devoid of much flavor anyways.
“So, how old are you?” the blonde girl asks, apparently not having much of an appetite either.
“Seventeen,” I say. “I turn eighteen in seven months.”
She nods slowly while gnawing on a cereal bar. “I’m fifteen…I was trying to see if maybe they’re collecting us based on age.”
The word sends shivers down my spine.
“I’m nine!” Henry chirps, making me envy his ability to be so blissfully unaware.
“Found anything yet?” I question.
She shakes her head and releases a low sigh. “I don’t think so. Most of the ages seem random, so it probably doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Weird. I’m Zoey, by the way.”
Her hand shoots across the table, and I shake it. “Rachel.”
I decide to like Rachel; sure, she’s a little quirky, but I can already tell she’s very resourceful. A survivor.
Corey pokes my arm, almost startling me. “Look, Cacy’s here!”
Cacy leads a slightly-more refreshed Henry—who holds an ice pack to his head—over to our table. She gives the nearby soldiers who guard the clearing behind us an accusing glare before sitting down at the table.
“How is it, Henry?” I ask.
He offers a small smile, although it turns into more of a grimace at the end. “Better. Just a mild concussion, but I should be good. No infections to worry about, thanks to you.”
Good, so at least I didn’t end up messing up completely and killing him. Maybe I’m not so bad at this whole thing than I thought.
Cacy sighs. “He’s being brief. They had to give him a few small stitches, and a few Tylenol pills. The swelling should go down in a few days, too.”
Rachel squints her eyes as she listens in, as if attempting to solve a math problem in her head. “The soldiers did that to you?”
“Of course it was them,” Cacy replies, her vengeful eyes wandering back to the ones that stand close by. “After all, who are we going to tell? It’s not like we can post about it to Twitter. There’s no more rules, no more consequences; we’re at the mercy of the people with guns…and vehicles, however the hell they managed to pull that off.”
“Interesting…” Rachel trails off.
“I don’t trust them,” Henry says, offering his opinion for the first time. “When they were stitching me up…I overheard some of the soldiers talking behind the tent. They were arguing.”
“About what?” Rachel jumps in eagerly.
“They…they were saying that what’s going on is wrong. One of them was, at least. That they shouldn’t be doing this to us. And then…they mentioned the others. The aliens. That’s all I heard.”
The twisting sensation in my stomach intensifies, and I’m glad I barely ate because I think I might’ve thrown it all back up after hearing what he said. So, the suspicion I’d had this whole time wasn’t just misguided fear. Something’s going on…something that involves the aliens above, and I don’t feel keen on sticking around to find out what it is.
“We have to get out of here,” Cacy says, breathless.
“Aren’t they going to keep us safe?” Corey asks, his voice small.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay, remember our promise?”
He nods, and some of the fear on his face fades away.
“But how could we?” Rachel mutters to herself. “They have the weapons, and the manpower, as well as the knowledge. Perhaps it would be a better idea to stick around for a little while and collecting as much information as possible before finding a way to escape.”
“Sounds risky,” Henry huffs, taking a swig of water.
I look down at my backpack sitting between my knees. There’s one factor they’re leaving out of this equation, something the rest aren’t exactly fully aware about.
“Maybe we’re not as powerless as you think,” I sa
y. “There’s only what, two soldiers per bus?”
Rachel nods. “That’s how many we had in ours.”
I think back to one of the last things Mom ever told me: follow your instincts. Fight or flight, the most important rule of all. With how we’re fenced in, there’s no way we can slip away.
“So we’ll fight our way out,” I say, almost whispering.
Henry gives a wary glance at the soldiers surrounding us. “That’s practically suicide.”
“Not unless we have the element of surprise,” I answer. “We wait until we’re on the bus, and then we hit them.”
They watch me with confusion as I dig out the teddy bear from my backpack and place it on the table; to anyone else, it still looks like a harmless stuffed animal that happened to get cut up a bit on its spine. Definitely no weapons hidden within.
“Zoey…” Cacy says. “I know this has all been stressful but—”
“There’s a gun inside.” I say it with so much clarity I have to turn around to make sure none of the soldiers heard.
Rachel stares at it with wide eyes. “Well that certainly changes things.”
“You can say that again,” Henry says, his face no longer clouded with pain.
Cacy still seems unsure, and she scoots an inch farther away from the bear. “Are you sure about this?”
“It’s that or take our chances with these people,” I say. “If what they did to Henry was the least of things, how can we trust them to keep us safe?”
She sighs and looks back at her brother, reminded of what happened this morning, and I can tell she won’t need any more convincing. At least we have a plan.
“But where will we go?” Rachel asks, tilting her head.
The table goes quiet. I guess I hadn’t thought that far quite yet.
To my surprise, it’s Corey who speaks first when he says, “There’s a cabin in the woods…at the end of the road, I think.”
I look down the stretch of highway to where the empty plains suddenly stop at the base of a large forest. I know that area has always been a popular campsite, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more areas to place a tent over there.
“It has food and stuff,” he continues. “My daddy would take me there sometimes for the weekend so we could go fishing. I didn’t like it that much ‘cuz it was always smelly.”
“Would you be able to lead us there?” Cacy asks, her face hopeful for what must be the first time in days.
He hesitates before nodding. “I think so. He would always show me ways to get back in case I ever got lost, plus I know the roads.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Henry says. “There’s no way we can go back right away, I’m sure it won’t take long for them to notice one of the buses is missing; staying low in the cabin for a day or two would buy us enough time before heading back.”
“It’s an option,” Rachel confirms. “Virtually one of our only options, it seems.”
“Does that mean we can go back home?” Corey asks, still as innocent as ever.
I offer him the most reassuring smile I can muster. “Maybe, Corey. Maybe.”
I hope it’s enough for him. For all of us.
CHAPTER SIX
MY HANDS HAVE already begun to go slick with sweat by the time we’re ordered to return to our buses. We spent the rest of our few minutes in the camp going over the plan as many times as we could, analyzing and refining it until we were all satisfied that it was the best we could do.
Still, the pressure seems to grow heavier and heavier on my shoulders with each step I take towards the vehicle, the rough gravel crunching underneath my feet. There’s no telling what’ll happen if we mess up; one look at Henry’s wound says all we need to know about how negotiations are handled in this new, dangerous world. If we ordinary people have had any power before, we sure as hell don’t now.
It’s up to us to take it.
Sergeant Day counts us in as we step onto the bus, making sure no one’s missing. I wonder what the punishment for that would be. Luckily, it seems that she doesn’t care if it’s the same kids as before, because Rachel is let on ahead of me without any trouble. Only when I start walking down the isle do I realize the last kid in line has been sent to another bus, probably to keep the amounts even. She starts crying immediately, and a surge of guilt runs through me. I wonder if she had a friend, maybe even a sibling, on this bus.
I sit with the rest at the back of the bus like before, wondering why the air seems to have grown thinner; or maybe I’m just too nervous to remember how to breathe.
No one seems to be very talkative, and I find that my eyes keep drifting towards where Sergeant Day and the soldier next to her sit, so much so I have to force myself to stare at the same spot on the floor. There’s not much surprise in a surprise attack when I can’t stop acting so suspicious.
One by one, we hear the engines of the buses start up with a roar for each, sending my nerves aflame. I close my eyes, waiting for the tires to start moving with their signature squeal; if our bus is in front of any of the others, it’ll make this whole thing a lot harder, since everyone will see us swerve off the path. I count my breaths slowly: one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten…eleven—
My body rocks forward as the bus starts to move, and I open my eyes with a start, immediately looking out the window. All the other buses have surpassed us, rumbling down the road ahead. We’re the very last in the row, greatly eliminating the chance that someone will see us escape.
I almost want to call it a miracle, but with the way things have been going lately, I’m not sure I’ll be able to believe in those types of things ever again. This could just slightly change my mind, though.
The rest of the kids seem to have had their spirits lifted, however, as I don’t see any of them crying anymore, and even hear a few spare laughs. I suspect their satisfied appetites and thirst have something to do with that. How many of them have fully bought into the promise of shelter at the end of wherever our destination leads, I wonder? Better yet, how many of them are like Corey and barely even understand what’s going on?
Another feeling of wrongness seeps into my stomach, only this one is different than before. It isn’t directed outward, towards the people who are doing this to us. It’s at myself: the knowledge that something I’m doing is wrong.
“We can’t go through with the plan,” I say.
Henry is quickly the first to say, “What? Why not?”
“You don’t have the gun?” Cacy asks, her eyes wide.
“No,” I mutter, wincing at how loud she says it. “I mean, yes…yes I still have it. But I don’t think we should go through with the plan. We can’t just leave all of the other kids in those buses to fend for themselves. If what Henry said is true, and they’re planning to use us somehow, something bad might happen to them, too. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Henry sighs and shakes his head, but I see my words have weight judging from the twinkle of doubt in his eyes. Rachel, once again, seems to be calculating my words in her mind, her head tilted slightly as she stares at the ceiling. Cacy only stares at the front of the bus and chews her bottom lip nervously while Corey continues to hold my hand tightly, unaware of our dilemma.
Rachel is the first to speak and says, “I think it would be interesting to see exactly what they want with us. I mean, in a way, we each truly must be special in some way. After all, why else would they want to keep us so badly?”
“That’s why we should get as far away from them as possible,” Henry says, almost whispering.
“I’m with Zoey on this one; it’s not fair to leave everyone else behind,” Cacy says. “I mean, what are we even supposed to do with all these other kids on here with us? We’ll be responsible for them, for taking them back home, for getting them to their parents safe and sound. Do we really want to take that chance? Imagine all the things that could go wrong out there…it could be hell.”
I look back at the twenty-or-so other kids
on the bus. I can’t imagine the chaos that would come with having them march out with us, when most of them seem to have just gotten comfortable with their new fates. I suppose we could just leave them, but to me that feels nothing short of evil.
It doesn’t take much to tell Henry’s having trouble with this change, but I can easily spot the moment he cracks.
“All right,” he says, leaning back in his seat. “We’ll stay.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, satisfied that we’ve all agreed. I’m not sure if only one dissenting opinion would have made a difference, but I’m glad Henry is on the same page as us, even if only a little bit. Some instinctual feeling within me says that it’s times like this when staying together could be the difference between life and death.
Rachel pulls out a cereal bar from her own backpack and takes a bite, nothing but the sound of chewing filling the empty silence before she says, “Well, what an interesting change in events.”
I couldn’t agree with her more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HOURS THAT pass are nothing less than agonizing.
It feels like most of it is spent in silence, our minds too preoccupied to come up with casual chatter. I can’t believe it was only a few days ago when I’d been running on bright green hills above the town with my friends, my world filled by nothing but wanderlust and the urge to feel free. What has become of my other friends? The ones I wasn’t able to say bye to, or make sure were okay?
Cacy must be worried sick about Ryan, and Ethan could be god knows where. I realize I didn’t see them at the rest stop with the other buses, which I suppose proves Rachel’s theory that only a select few of youth have been collected.
I can’t believe I didn’t even think to look for them; I guess I was too preoccupied with everything else going on in front of me.
Have I already started to let my old life go that quickly?
Well, at this point, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get it back.
For the most part, we seem to be sticking to the country side; the only real sign of civilization we’ve passed through was a tiny town that seemed to host only a gas station and a few 7-elevens’. We all crowded the windows again, hoping to catch a glimpse of…well, anything, but came away disappointed. It seemed to be completely deserted, turned into a ghost town. Either the inhabitants had left their homes, or something else had made them leave.