Sector 27- Assignment

by J J Pasinella

  The biggest building that he could see from where he was inside the tree line had a large hole in the side. It looked as if it had been taken out by explosives. He could make out some lettering near the blown out portion of the building, George Washington Elementary Sc.... He wondered what it was. Up and down the streets lining the sidewalks were cars. He had never seen anything like them. The only type of vehicles he had seen before were Humvees. Most of the cars were broken in some way, whether the windows had been shattered, the roof and hood smashed in, or the few that were completely broken in half. One thing he noticed almost immediately was the type of lamp posts that lined the street. Most of them had been dislodged, but the ones that were standing looked beautiful to him. They were large and decorative, inlaid with floral patterns and large bronze caps over the glass, shielding the bulbs. There were small craters scattered throughout the town, buildings missing pieces, and some buildings completely collapsed to the ground. The town sat in the middle of a ring of small hills. He wondered what it used to be like down there. Another thought crept into his mind as well. He wondered if maybe, just maybe, there was a group of Eco-terrorists living somewhere down inside. That thought gave him a sense of hope, but at the same time dread. Would they be welcoming of him if he walked into their camp? He was still wearing his uniform from the grid. Would he come to find out that the Keepers were telling the truth about the type of people they were?

  After a short time of surveying the town he decided that he would head back into the woods a little ways, off the path, and tomorrow he would carefully make his descent into the town below.

  2.2 (Beyond)

  Caleb slowly opened his eyelids from where he lay under a large tree a couple hundred yards off the path. The sun was hanging low in the morning sky, it shot narrow beams of light through the dense forest, bouncing from leaf to leaf before finding its final destination on Caleb's face. He sat up, rubbed his eyes to rid them of the night, and let them adjust to the light now saturating the forest. After taking the lab coat off of his lap, he dug into one of the pockets and pulled out his last bottle of water. After drinking it down halfway, he had to force himself to stop in order to make it last as long as possible, and returned it to the coat pocket. He sat there watching the light, the way it danced with the slow swaying of the leaves, and enjoyed the first morning he would have free of the oppression that was within the grid. After a short while, he stood up, dusted himself off, and made his way back toward the narrow dirt trail. He looked down at his forearm, which had stopped bleeding by now, and lightly poked it with his fingertips. A sharp burning sensation flared up in the area he touched, he winced a little bit, and then left it alone. A small price to pay for escaping through the fence.

  When he had finally made his way back to the tree line atop the gently sloping hill, he crouched down and surveyed the area once more from beyond the cover of the branches before making his way down into the town. It looked different this time. He could see more than he was able to the first time he saw it. It looked much larger than before, it seemed like half of the town had just appeared overnight. There was nothing moving down below, a gentle breeze would blow through every now and then, moving a small cluster of papers in a swirl before dropping them into their new location. When he was feeling safe enough to move out into the open, he pushed aside the branches that had been hiding him, and took a few short steps out onto the slope. There were three roads winding through the town and over different parts of the rolling hills that surrounded it. Two of them could be viewed all the way up their slopes before gradually disappearing behind a blanket of large pine trees. The other one led up and over another hill that was not surrounded by trees. In fact, it looked as if the road would come up over the hilltop and onto a vast plain, but Caleb couldn't see for sure from where he was.

  Now at the bottom of the hill, Caleb quietly inched his way across a street and began to move along the sides of one of the buildings. It was a large brick building, three stories high, covered in dust with several small holes cut through its exterior. He stopped at one of the openings and found that it was big enough to peek inside. He crouched down and peered into a large open room. There were wooden chairs that had been flipped over and scattered. On the floor, leaning against the wall, there was a large black rectangular box with a screen that looked like broken glass, but it remained inside the parameters of the shape. It reminded him of one of the holo-screens from back inside the grid. From a large window on the other end of the room shot a bright beam of sunlight. Particles of dust were falling like snow inside of the beam and landing on the scattered pieces of wood and brick strewn across the floor. It didn't look as if anyone had been here in quite a while. He continued tracing the outside walls of the buildings until he reached the massive opening in the building he had seen from within the tree line that said, George Washington Elementary Sc... Silently he stood just to the left of the opening, listening for any movement from inside. In the distance he could hear the sound of chimes, which he had never heard before, and the occasional rustling of leaves from the hillside. He took in a deep breath and stepped inside.

  He found himself within a large elementary school classroom. There was a blackboard in the front and a small doorway to the right of that. The door was laying sideways in its frame still barely connected to one of the hinges. There were dozens of desks scattered throughout the room, tipped on their sides, upside down, bent legs, surfaces cracked in half, but one desk sat perfectly straight, upright in the corner of the room. Caleb made his way back toward the desk and looked inside. He pulled out a book with the words, A Future Vision: Utopia, by Aaron Browitz written on the tattered cover. He had never read a book before, he had only learned to read so he could understand his work assignments and schedule. On the inside cover, before the story began was written, “Dedicated to my newborn son, Patrick.” He sat there in the corner of the room reading, allowing himself to be absorbed within the world it fleshed out before him, and letting him momentarily forget how things were now.

  Before he knew it, dusk had come upon him. Suddenly, it seemed an ever nearing sound of footsteps was approaching from the other side of the opening in the school. How long had it been? Was it the wind? Questions raced through his mind and he quietly began to search his surroundings for something, anything, to grab hold of. He found his hands on a detached metal leg of one of the desks. He picked it up, shuffled toward the opening in the wall and stood just beside it. The movement stopped, he heard a short rustling sound followed by a metallic clanking. Caleb stood, hand gripped tightly around the desk leg held close to his chest. The silence hung in the air for what seemed like an eternity until finally the figure of a small mangy dog limped from around the corner, looked Caleb in the eyes with a pitiful stare, and then kept on going the way it was headed.

  Caleb let out a sigh of relief, his shaking hands loosened their grip on the metal desk leg and he sat down against the wall. He didn't want to travel any further since the sun was almost fully set, and he decided to sleep inside of this building for the night. He moved a few of the desks onto their sides and laid them in a line in one of the corners of the room. Then he lay between them and the wall, the desks giving him a small sense of security as he drifted off to sleep.

  ****

  Morning came upon him quickly as he peered out over the tops of the row of desks. He took out his water bottle, drank half of what he had left and would try to save the rest for the days to come. He decided he was going to leave the town in the opposite direction he had come in, up the road towards the wall of pine trees. It was still early, the sun had not fully emerged from beyond the hilltops, but he decided to start moving. He wondered what Andrew was going to do when Caleb didn't show up to the lab. Today marked the start of the new work block and he hadn't seen Andrew for two days. Caleb was almost overcome with joy that he didn't have to see him again, listen to him make comments about things happening inside the grid, Eco-terrorists, seminars. Yet, since he had escaped, an
ever-growing part of him desperately wanted to free Andrew from that place, free as many people as he could. He hated the Keepers, what they made him work for, holding him hostage for so long, and especially taking his father away from him. Caleb was hoping against hope that the Eco-terrorists were real, and even if they were exactly how the Keepers described them, he didn't care. He would still join them, fight against everything the Keepers stood for. He would sacrifice himself if it meant there was a chance of defeating them. This line of thinking hastened his movement up the hill, along the road and into the forest.

  He had been walking for some time now. The sun was directly overhead as he kept pushing through the large pine trees. By the time evening set in he stopped to listen. He heard something that sounded like trickling water. He kept moving as the sound continued to grow louder. He came to a point where he could see the edge of the dense forest and what looked like a small clearing beyond the last row of branches. The sound was right on top of him now as he slowly edged his way towards it. He gently pushed through the last few hanging branches and found himself in a narrow clearing. Right at his feet stood a row of small bushes with berries on them, and beyond them a steady flowing stream with smooth rounded rocks scattered throughout. The stream was no more than two feet deep, it was crystal clear and cool to the touch. Beyond the stream Caleb could see a vast wall of mountains running from right to left in front of him. They looked massive even though they were miles away. Up the slope of the mountains he could see the continuation of the pine trees with small openings containing lush green grass sprinkled throughout. Without knowing if the water was going to be good to drink or not, he plunged in and began drinking. Then he took out his empty water bottle and filled it, followed by the other nearly empty bottle. After he had satisfied his thirst, he gently washed the gash on his forearm. He continued on along the bank of the stream further toward the mountain. He picked berries off of the small bushes lining the forest as he went, stuffing some into his mouth and others into his lab coat pockets. For the first time he had left the grid he was without any cares or worries.

  After a short distance following the stream bank, he turned back into the forest guarded by the berry bushes. He was thinking to himself that he could stay here for a little while, rest, regain his strength, and then decide which way to continue moving. He had been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn't realized how far in he had travelled, and more importantly, he hadn't noticed the small wooden cabin standing no more than twenty yards ahead of him. At this point, and after what he had seen in the town, he had become bolder in approaching it. He moved with no hesitation up to the rickety wooden door. He gave it a push and it slowly creaked open. From the doorway it didn't look very big, and it was pitch black inside. He took a couple steps in and froze dead in his tracks. Something hard had just dropped against his back, right between his shoulder blades, and he heard a voice say, "That's far enough. Don't move a muscle or I'll pull the trigger."

  2.3 (Beyond)

  The steady stream current whisked around a pair of soft, pale shins. A young woman, about the age of twenty five, was crouching over, filling a dozen or so canteens with water. Her high boots lay toppled over on the bank of the stream with knee socks flowing out from the mouth of each one. She was average height, no more than 5'6", with long red hair that was pulled back and tied up behind her head, glowing in the sunlight. Her cargo pants were rolled up to her knees and she wore a red and blue flannel buttoned shirt. She had light green eyes that sparkled with a sense of youth and innocence. She whistled along to herself, to no specific tune, as she finished filling the last canteen and put it into a large green back pack. She made her way up towards her boots and sat down on the bank of the stream. Then she removed a tattered gray towel that had once been a brilliant white, and began drying off her legs. After a little while she put on her socks and boots, stood up, and picked the back pack up off the ground. She stuffed the towel back into the side pouch, zipped it shut and moved along the bank, stopping in front of some berry bushes. She picked several handfuls of them, stuffing them into plastic bags she kept in her backpack, and eating others as she moved along.

  Soon after, she made her way through the bushes and into the forest. Her steps had a bit of a bounce to them as she continued whistling along and navigating her way through the large pine trees surrounding her. She stopped at the foot of a tree, marked by the carving of a small “x”, and deviated off the track she had been following. The sun was high in the sky as she climbed the gentle slope of one of the hills leading toward the massive range of mountains in the distance. At the edge of the forest she spilled out onto a clearing on the slope of the hill, about a quarter of the size of a soccer field. She walked toward the middle of the clearing and knelt down in a small garden.

  The garden was full of lush green vegetables: spinach, lettuce, beans, onions and garlic. Taking deep breaths in, she allowed the soothing aroma to fill her nostrils and entice her appetite. She removed another plastic bag from her backpack and filled it about halfway with an equal portion of each of the vegetables. After placing the filled plastic bag back into her backpack, she walked over to a ridge on the opposite end of the clearing from where she entered, and took a pair of binoculars out. As she raised them to her eyes, she focused on a set of large cylindrical towers that looked like smokestacks in the back corner of a large enclosed facility. Along its sides ran a large fence draped in barbed wire. Inside of the compound were numerous older looking brick buildings except for one large white building in its center. This grid complex was about two or three miles from where she stood, and even by looking through the binoculars she could hardly make out any people moving around inside. At this moment the smoke stacks lay dormant, and she often wondered what their purpose was. The 'Colonel' knew what they were, but he had always refused to tell her. He refused to tell her much about anything she would inquire of when it came to what she saw while she was out in the forest. When she had finished surveying the grid far below, she went back down the slope opposite the complex, entered the clearing, and cut across to the forest through which she had originally entered.

  She made her way back to the tree marked by the “x”, and turned back up into the thicker portion of the woods. After several miles of travelling, she came to a small wooden cabin surrounded on all sides by thick pine trees. On the back side of the cabin there was a small stone chimney that was blowing little puffs of smoke into the air. She headed for the front door and swung it open.

  "Hey Colonel! Did you miss me?!" she said, in a playful tone.

  An older-looking man who was bent over the fireplace in the back of the cabin slowly turned his head toward her, smiled and said, "Heh, yeah, you know how I can't stand the peace and quiet."

  "Oh, stop!” she replied, “I filled the canteens, grabbed us some berries and picked a bunch of veggies for our soup!" she said, still speaking in an excited manner.

  The older-looking man had a fire burning in the fireplace, with a small kettle suspended over the flames. There was a little bit of simmering water inside, and steam gently lifted out of the pot and into the room. "Good" he said, "then I'll get to making us supper."

  After a short pause the woman took on a more serious demeanor and asked, "Why won't you tell me what those smokestacks are for? I try to look down there every day, but I can't see anything that's going on inside."

  The old man didn't respond right away, but eventually said, "Alice, I've told you not to go over the ledge to look down there. Why do you need to know what goes on inside that place? Just believe me when I tell you that it's nothing you need to worry yourself about,” he said sternly, then continued in a more gentle tone, “All you need to worry about is tending to your garden and keeping me company.”

  "Ok, fine," she said, playfully. "You know one of these days, I'm going to get you to tell me what's down there."

  "Alice, don't worry about what's down there. We have a good thing going on up here. Now grab us some bowls and come
take a seat."

  The interior of the cabin was much larger than it appeared from the outside. The ceiling peaked in the center with gentle sloping planks falling from the middle beam to the walls around the room. Just inside the door there was a tiny wooden table with some stools in the right corner. A small glass-paned window overlooked the table and let a little bit of light shine through. Straight across the room in the back left corner was the stone fire place with the black kettle hanging above the flickering flames. On the left side of the room there was another small window and a little wooden countertop with a bucket sitting on top of it. Above the countertop, beside the window were two rickety cabinets hanging on the wall. In the back right corner was a doorway with a tiny bedroom inside. There were two sleeping bags on the floor. One was rolled up against the wall over by the table and stools, and the other was spread open in the bedroom.

  After a little while the smell of onions and garlic filled the room as the colonel took a metal pole, tucked it under a metal wire looping above the opening of the kettle, attached at either side, and placed it on a small smoothed out stone just outside of the fireplace. Then the man took several spoonfuls of the liquid mixture and filled an old ceramic bowl. He handed the bowl to Alice, then filled another bowl for himself.

  "How are your vegetables handling the summer so far Alice?" the man asked.

  "They seem to be loving all the sunshine. I've never seen them this bright and full before. It was a good idea you had to replant some of the seeds over there."

  "Good," he said, “Have you been back down near your other garden lately?"