Before the Strandline- Rules

by Linda L Zern

But it wasn’t completely true. A crowd milled at the entrance, talking low in a rumble of angry monotones and hisses.

  “How long before they bust it down?”

  A big man with arms like hams shoved a crowbar into the chain and twisted. He grunted and the chain snapped.

  “Not long,” Ella said. “Come on. We should get back to Darby. Put our stuff together. Get out and find Mom and Dad.”

  “And Ryan.”

  Ella gave Brittany a grimacy smile. “Yeah, Ryan too.”

  The gates swung open, but no one walked out. The crowd stared at the opening. A sound moved through the dirt under their feet, a new-old sound, a noise that felt vaguely familiar, that felt like something they should recognize—the rumbling of moving vehicles.

  Ella grabbed Brittany’s hand, got a death grip on her, and dragged her back into the cover of dusty scrub oaks and pine saplings.

  The first truck roared into sight. Not an Army truck. Not a Red Cross wagon. It was a Toyota Tundra with a 0.50 caliber machine gun bolted to the roof. A skinny man, his face covered with a hunk of American flag, manned the big gun. Other men bristled from the windows of the truck cab. A flash of light as the sun slanted hit the driver’s wrist. He was handcuffed to the steering wheel.

  “Mercs.” It was all Ella needed to say.

  They backed away from the sound of women screaming as the convoy closed in on the front gate.

  Heads down and moving fast, Brittany followed Ella as they scooted back to the secret breach in the wire and to Darby, who waited for them.

  They were out of breath when they reached the bump-out.

  “What? What is it? Ella. What?” Darby knew enough now, after everything that had happened to their family, to not raise her voice. It’s one of those things people got good at, talking low when the threat got high.

  Darby forced the wire open as Ella dragged Brittany after her.

  Breathless, Brittany pulled out of Ella’s grip. “What?”

  “The only ones still using vehicles, who can still get gasoline of any kind, is the militia or the Warlords and they’re here. We can’t stay. Darby get your bag, the one under your bed.”

  “But why aren’t the others running?”

  “Because they weren’t dragged off their neighborhood street by the Junior Militia. They’ve only heard about this kind of thing. They’ll start running soon. They will,” Ella said. Suddenly, she stopped talking and doubled over. She leaned back into the wire fence. Her arms braced against her knees, panic close to the surface. Seeing Ella frightened this way, close to losing control, made Brittany grind her molars.

  Anger. Anger was Brittany’s way. She wanted to smash something.

  Ella took a breath and straightened. Her eyes were blank. “I’ve got to go up to the medical tent. Grab a bag I’ve got there.”

  Darby’s face went white, the freckles on her nose stood out like stars. “Don’t go, Ella. We shouldn’t separate. Mom and Dad are gone. Ryan too. It’s always bad when we can’t see each other.” She reached out, her hands fisting in Ella’s shirt front.

  Ella didn’t need this. Not now. Brittany stepped to Darby’s side.

  “You’ve been okay since we’ve been here.” Brittany peeled her little sister’s hands out of Ella’s shirt. “We’ll meet back here, right Ella?” Brittany caught Ella’s eye and whispered, “Hurry up. You have to hurry.”

  Brittany threw an arm around Darby. “And I’m going to stay with you. Got it? It’s almost evening, and that’s a good time to go and get gone. We’ve got ten minutes. Go.”

  Ella sprinted away.

  A man and a woman, everyone called Mister and Mrs. Joker, hurried by the girls heading toward the front gate. She almost called out, to warn them, to distract them, to say, Hey! tell me another one of your lame puns that I hate and aren’t funny, but something stopped her. Something she’d learned almost without knowing how she’d learned it. When things got scary, it was better to get small and quiet and let the world take care of itself.

  “Darby, we’ve got to get our bags. This is going to be quick, fast, and in a hurry. Go low.”

  Brittany bent at the waist and headed into the heart of the PFC but had gone only five steps when she realized Darby hadn’t moved. She was frozen. Terrified.

  “Geez,” she muttered to herself. She waved her sister forward and mouthed, Move. But Darby hadn’t heard her, couldn’t see her. Her head had turned slowly to a new sound, another focus, something that dragged at Darby’s attention like a magnet.

  Then Brittany heard it. The raging rhythmic thump of a big gun. The people at the front gate—they were being slaughtered. Resistance would be futile.

  This time when Brittany cursed it was full out and serious. Lunging, she grabbed Darby and dragged her toward the sound of a metal dragon breathing steel and death at the front gate.

  Six minutes to reach the tent, twenty seconds to grab their bags, about six more minutes to reach the breach in the fence. Hadn’t they measured every distance inside the camp in steps and minutes, another kind of game. It was a deadly serious kind of game they’d practiced from the first moment they’d been funneled into this ratty collection of canvas and plastic?

  Sure. Because who knew what might happen or when? Who knew how fast or how far they’d have to run when the next crisis came? And so, they’d drilled.

  But this was no drill.

  Brittany yanked Darby down to her knees at the corner of the bad boys’ tent. It was empty. None of the rotten, teasing orphan boys they’d jammed together in spots all over the camp were inside. In front of them, the lead truck from the convoy rolled over a tent in the next row, dragging a clothesline of cloth baby diapers from its axle.

  Darby whimpered. Brittany jerked at her sister’s wrist. “Hush. You can’t fall apart. You can’t. Save it.” Brittany dug her fingernails into flesh until Darby turned her full attention back to her. “You can’t.”

  The truck backfired. Darby closed her eyes and then nodded—once—brisk and hard.

  “Good. We’re going to have to divert. To the school hut and then back up to our tent.”

  Darby’s eyes darkened. Her focus shifted. She seemed confused.

  Darby’s look made Brittany pause. Where was everyone? Where was the chaos? People running? Quiet had become grinding truck tires and the ominous sounds of shouted orders, and silence after the shooting. Don’t think about it. Don’t imagine what has to happen to make the sounds of a camp full of people disappear in moments. There was no smoke, and for one long second Brittany thanked the invaders for not burning them all to the ground. Maybe everyone had teleported to a galaxy far, far away?

  She almost laughed. Focus, Brittany. They dodged in and out of a row of family tents. But the questions would not stay away.

  What about Ella? What could she possibly have stashed at the medical tent that was worth the risk? Brittany shook her head. Don’t second guess Ella! Stay on task. Retrieve the bug-out bags, school backpacks that held a squirrel’s nest of stuff they might need. Keep your mind on that.

  But . . . the sock full of pennies bounced against her leg tied to a belt at her waist. She’d forgotten about them.

  At the corner of the last tent in the row, a man without a face—ski mask anonymous—blocked their path forward. He was distracted and didn’t see them.

  Brittany pulled Darby into the shadow of a tent someone had decorated with a design of the sun exploding fire and blood.

  “Stay here,” Brittany ordered. When Darby obeyed, Brittany exhaled. Okay then. Taking the chance, she peered around the corner of the tent flap at the man at the end of the row. Two more men had joined him. One man disappeared into the last tent. He pulled a girl out, jerked the child back against his body, and slit her throat. When she fell, her white face stared down the long row of grimy tents, her eyes wide open. It was Glenda.

  Nothing. Not a sound. Her death had come in a silent hush against the dazzle of a setting sun. Damn the sun. Damn it hell. Brittany�
�s hands went numb. She couldn’t swallow. She inched back to Darby. “We aren’t going for our stuff. We’re out of here. We’ll get new stuff. Come on.”

  But Darby didn’t follow, and rage billowed up inside Brittany like a fire before a wind. She whirled on her little sister, but Darby’s finger to her lips was enough. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

  “They’re in there. All in there. They’re hiding.”

  Someone had sliced open the side of the tent, Darby pulled it open by an inch. Brittany glared into the hollow room. They stood shoulder to shoulder. Their big eyes blinking like lemurs. The smell of ammonia and worse rolled through the space. They were hiding. They thought they were hiding. Brittany backed away from the room of big eyes and piss—the orphan boys and girls. Brittany pulled Darby away from the slit.

  “We’re going.”

  “We should tell them. We should tell them how to get away. How.” Darby pleaded with her eyes. Her hands were clamped together in that stupid way she had when she prayed.

  “No, Darby. We are going!” Brittany didn’t raise her voice. But it was there: the hate, the fear, the bile in the back of her throat. “Or these butchers will slit your throat and make me watch. They’re here for supplies and slaves.”

  Darby blinked again, her eyes closing in slow motion. Two or three tents down from them there was the muffled sound of a struggle, punctuated with screaming, began. Inside the sun tent, children began to cry.

  Brittany checked the corner and saw men in a tangled mess in the dirt. They covered someone on the ground—like ants. It wasn’t murder this time.

  “Now!”

  They ran. But the cursed expletive marked them, a man’s voice alerting the others. Like a neon sign, he’d flashed out their existence. Other voices grunted and moaned. If they were lucky, the men would be too busy for a while to bother with the two of them.

  “Now. All the way. We don’t stop.”

  They ran and then skidded to a stop.

  At the bump-out where the fence opened to safety and beyond, Ella stood, face smashed against the wire. Two men, the skinny man with the flag on his face and another fatter man, were tying Ella’s wrists to the fence with clothesline and working on her clothes with a razor knife. But there were only two men. There were only two.

  Brittany pushed Darby down into the dirt and moved to hide behind a quilt drying in the sun near the big, fat man. He slathered over Ella’s neck while the other one watched. The promise of rape. Nice distraction.

  Somewhere along the way, Brittany had wrapped her hand around the neck of the sock full of pennies. Was it when she’d seen Glenda die? Was it the tent full of sheep that had made her click into the weight and heft and power of the pennies in her sock? Later. She’d figure it out later.

  Now, she was going to cave in a man’s skull.

  The little one never turned when she brained the big one behind the ear with Glenda’s pennies. She caught the shrimpy guy on the backhand swing right into his eye before he noticed her. She kept swinging and kept swinging until the men quit moving, and Darby pulled her off of the bodies at her feet.

  “We have to go,” Darby said, her voice hard, tight, and brittle.

  The quiet of the camp was gone. The butchering had begun.

  “I can’t cut the paracord,” Brittany snapped. “The blood on my hands . . . I can’t work the knots.”

  Through a swollen lip, Ella said, “The bag, they didn’t take the bag. There are scalpels. Don’t cut me when you cut the ties.”

  Darby reached for the bag, fished out a blade. Behind them the camp didn’t so much explode as it dissolved. Like a collective gag of horror, the sounds swelled. Darby cut Ella free.

  “Get through that fence. Don’t look back.” Ella shoved Darby at the opening.

  The wire raked Ella’s skin where her clothes hung in rags as she wedged herself through the gap after Darby.

  Brittany covered their escape, clutching the blood-smeared sock with cramped fingers. No one would hurt her sisters. No one. She whirled, her back to the fence. It was a mistake, a mistake to look. Ella was right. One of the Mercs carried a baby by its legs . . . The man’s shoulder muscles bunched as he started the swing . . .

  Reaction set in. Her hands tingled. A gray haze shimmered in front of her eyes. It got hard to move. Move Brittany. Move. But her body had taken her mind prisoner. Nothing obeyed.

  “Brittany! Brittttany! Damn it, Brittany, come on, run. Damn you!”

  Her name, it was her name. She shook her head. It was Darby screaming for her and cussing, but Darby never said bad words—never, never.

  Okay, this was serious.

  The gray haze lifted, and Brittany slammed back into the bump-out, against the wire so hard she tumbled through, sprawling across the ground. Darby and Ella dragged at her arms, pulling her to her feet. Together they crashed into a scruff of grapevine dangling from a line of scrub oak. The woods closed around them like a prickly glove. Ella’s clothes hung in rags. In the lead, Darby shoved and bulled her way into the heaviest of the thicket. Like rabbits, they were like rabbits when the hawk’s shadow streaked across the open field. Hide. Hide. Hide. Find somewhere and hide.

  A wild potato vine caught at Brittany’s throat. It tore her skin, wrapping around her neck, choking her. She yanked with one hand to free herself, but it tightened—like it might be alive. Hands and throats and the vines, alive. She grunted, stopped, was afraid to call to Ella and Darby.

  Could the Mercs hear? Had they followed? A scream built in her chest, poured up into her throat.

  Panic became horror, became a baby swung by its legs through the air, and she was strangling, being strangled. Brittany spun and tore and thrashed. Vines tangled around her arms, her ankles. She was trapped. She was dying.

  It was Darby who came back for her.

  “Brittany, stop. Stop. It’s me. You have to stop. They’ll hear you, us. Stop.” Darby yanked at Brittany’s shirt collar. “Stop now. I’ll help you.”

  Brittany stared down at Darby’s hands.

  “Look at you. You’re all tangled up.” Darby had the scalpel in her hand. “Don’t move. I don’t want to cut you.” As careful as a seamstress, Darby sliced through the vines. She kept talking, but Brittany couldn’t understand what she was saying. It was a soft, easy babble.

  Brittany closed her eyes.

  “Come on. We should get Ella and keep moving.”

  They found Ella putting on a set of medical scrubs next to the trunk of a live oak. The big bag had been worth it: scrubs, scalpels, hopefully food. They sat down to wait.

  The sky filled up with glorious reds and oranges with dashes of yellow. Sunset. Darkness waited. The darkness would protect them. Screaming reached them when the wind shifted.

  “Brittany, you can put your pennies down now. It’s okay.” Then Darby’s hand was on the sock.

  “No.” Brittany shook her head. Copper and blood, the smell was in her nose, her mouth. It tasted of . . . victory. She shifted her feet. The knife in the key pocket of her pants thumped against her hip bone. Pennies. She’d killed someone, two someone’s, with pennies when she’d had a knife all along. Her fingers cramped around the bloody sock. She tucked it into the waistband of her pants, next to the knife.

  “Okay, then. But come on.” Darby pulled the potato vine that still clung to Brittany’s neck. A thorn cut into Brittany’s skin. There was blood, more blood on her neck. Darby studied Brittany’s face as if she was something made of glass.

  “I’m okay,” Brittany said. “Don’t be afraid for me.”

  Ella sat in the dirt at the base of the tree. She hugged herself. Her scrubs, blue against the brown bark, stood out like an advertisement. They were too clean, too fresh.

  “Ella,” Darby said, “roll around some or you’re going to get us in trouble.” Darby was right. Ella needed something to do. It was there in her face, the leftover shock and disgust.

  Ella looked down at what she was wearing and nodded. “You’re right.�
�� She picked up a handful of dirt and leaf mold and smeared it over her shirt front.

  Brittany slapped at a buzzing mosquito on her neck. “We can’t be caught with the bag either. They want it. They’ll always want it. We can’t have anything they want or look like we do.”

  “We are what they want,” Ella said, her voice flattened out.

  “But we can’t stay out here. We’ll starve,” Darby whispered. She sank to her bottom against a fallen stump. “And water, we need water.”

  Ella brushed her hands against her uniform bottoms and pointed to the bag with its big red cross. Brittany unzipped the bag. Leave it to Ella, there were pouches of water, MREs, medical supplies, and at the bottom of the bag—a pistol’s steel.

  Brittany pulled the pistol out of the bag. The sinking light caught in the sheen on the barrel. Soon the gray of the early night became the gray of the pistol.

  “Be careful. It’s loaded.” Ella reached out and took the gun out of Brittany’s hand. “But there isn’t any more ammo, just what’s in the magazine. And you know what a gun without ammo is?” She passed the water pouches out. “It’s a club. A useless club. We use it when there’s nothing else. Understand?”

  Darby nodded. Brittany nodded. But Ella hardly noticed. Brittany shifted

  Brittany sighed. “Not enough ammo to practice with. Not enough to win in a firefight. Not enough,” She tipped her head back to empty the water pouch. What they needed was an armory, stocked full.

  “Rest up.” Ella had turned bossy somewhere between the wire and where they waited for darkness to find them. “We’re going to run, and run far, but not until it’s all the way dark.”

  Darby hunched into herself, growing smaller as the light fled. Brittany snuggled up to her little sister, put one arm around her thin shoulders, and pulled her into her arms.

  “But what about Ryan? Mom and Dad?” Darby pointed out.

  It got too dark to see if Ella had heard them. She didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, I know. But we’re out of that place and can go where we need to to find them. That’s how I’m going to think about it.” Brittany slapped at a buzzing next to her ear.