As the sun started to peek over the trees behind her, Sophie made her way into what had once been a city. She was still considering the luck that had gotten the two guards drunk on the very night of her mission. She had read about people being drunk in books but had never witnessed it. And seeing their incapacitated state, she wondered why people would have ever done that to themselves willingly.
She hadn’t been outside the borders in over a decade, and even then had mostly stayed out of the destroyed cities. But Sam had marked the places on the map where there were most likely to be people, so that was where she went. Great mounds of concrete and metal rose up like megaliths grown from the earth. In some places it looked like stone had rained down over the city, and in others, as if a giant had merely blown down buildings like toys. The creak of metal scraping metal sent a shiver down her spine as she picked her way through the rubble. She’d been walking for hours and had not seen or heard another living soul. Even the wildlife had vacated this part of the world. But not the vegetation. Trees sprang up where once there were rooms. Automobiles were encased in kudzu. Cradled in mist, the morning air held a green smell mixed with sulfur.
Sophie lost her footing on some bricks and decided to stop and rest for a few minutes. This was as good a place for breakfast as any. She planted herself behind a wall with jagged edges along the top, pink bricks hiding behind the gray. Propping her rifle up to the wall, she pulled the boiled egg and bread from her bag. She began to wonder if this mission was a foolish idea.
Carried along the breeze, the first hesitant notes of a haunting song met Sophie’s ears. She couldn’t quite make out any words at first, just a note here and a note there. Was it human, she wondered. She’d heard of places being haunted, and this was just that sort of place. The voice grew a bit louder. A woman singing something about smiling. Odd choice of words in this desolation.
“Hands above your head!” a boy’s changing voice squeaked from behind her. She held her bread and half-eaten egg above her head. “Jimmy, get her gun!”
“Hang on, now. I’m not going to hurt anyone. Can I turn around?”
“Slowly!” Every word out of his mouth was a shouted command. He was overcompensating. When Sophie looked in his eyes, she saw how scared he was. The two boys were barefoot and wore clothes that looked like a patchwork quilt. Their hair was short but messy; smudges of dirt went from head to toe.
“Steady on, Ted. I’ve got her gun. Calm down.” Jimmy was smaller than Ted. Sophie thought they might be brothers.
“Do you have any other weapons?” Ted shouted again.
“No, just the gun. Can I put my hands down now?”
“Alright, but slow. And keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Very well.”
“We’ve got to bring her to Gran.”
“I know that, Jimmy. I’m not an idiot. Come on, you. Come with us.”
“Can I bring my bag?”
“Give it to Ted.”
The two boys led her across several mounds of rubble to the one building left standing fairly intact. The sign over the door was partially broken, but she could make out the word “school.”
“Gran!” the boy Ted called. “We found a trespasser.”
They led Sophie down a long hallway with pockets of light coming in from the rooms along the hall. At the end, they entered an office. An elderly woman, long white hair around her shoulders, sat in a chair with exploding cotton stuffing. Through a gaping hole in the roof, one bright ray of light lit up her white hair and piercing blue eyes. She was older and thinner than Mrs. O’Dell, Sophie’s only point of reference for an elderly woman.
“Come in, come in, boys. What have you got there?”
“We found her down the block hiding in the old diner,” Jimmy offered.
“I found her,” Ted insisted. “She’s got a Corsair rifle. One of the new ones with the silencer.”
“Interesting. Alright, come get your breakfast.”
The boys pounced on two open cans on the desk before her.
“Steady on, now, mates. That’s got to last you ’til tonight. Don’t bolt it. I think we’ve got a fair day’s work ahead of us.”
The woman walked around the desk to face Sophie. She too wore clothes of mix-matched fabrics sewn together in no particular pattern. Sophie noticed she had a strange accent she’d never heard before and wondered where this woman came from. She didn’t look particularly menacing, but Sophie wasn’t sure she felt quite safe here, either.
“So the boys caught you trespassing, eh? Who are you, then? You don’t look like a Corsair.”
“I’m not.”
“Where’d you get the gun?”
“I stole it. In a manner of speaking.”
“What does that mean?” The old woman was looking Sophie up and down. She walked carefully around her in shoes held together with bits of twine and fabric.
“I’m not sure I should tell you. I don’t even know who you are. How do I know you’re not a spy for the Corsairs?”
“Fair point. Fair point. You’d recognize a prison brand, wouldn’t you?”
Sophie nodded her head as the woman raised her sleeve, exposing her inner left wrist where there was a tattooed number on her crepe skin.
“Okay, so you’re not a spy.” Sophie saw where the boys had set down her gun. She could get to it in a second if she needed to. This wasn’t exactly the securest facility. She decided to take a chance. “I’m here looking for help. There’s a resistance force forming against the Corsairs, and we need more people. Are there others here? By the way, my name is . . .”
“No, no, love. Nobody has names in this part of the world. Identity is dangerous. It’s how they find you. Some folks call me Gran, but even that I don’t always answer to. You never know when a soldier is undercover, trying to trap you.”
“Wouldn’t they just figure out where you live?”
“Not if you’re always moving. Sometimes a school, sometimes a hospital. But you’ve got to be careful.”
“Of what?”
“The patrols. Nothing is what it seems. Everything could be a trap by Corsairs, especially near food and water sources.”
Sophie’s eyes softened as she thought of her own days of dodging patrols in the Forbidden Grounds in what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“They burned all the houses years ago,” Gran continued. “Every time a patrol comes through, they burn something else. The Fire Brigade. The Torch Brothers. Match Boxers. Flame Throwers. They have different names, too. You were asking about others. There used to be more people hanging about. But I reckon there aren’t many of us left anymore. These little fellas didn’t have anyone to look after them, so I let them follow me around. So where do you come from, love? You don’t look like you’ve been living out in the open long.”
“I live on the other side of the Border.”
“You mean you came from over the wall?!” The old woman seemed excited and frightened at the same time. Her entire body seemed to resonate with emotion as if someone had plucked a string on an instrument.
“Wall? No, the other side of the barbed wire fence. What wall are you talking about?”
“The bloody great concrete wall that runs the length of the country, I expect. No doors. Too high to scale. But somehow the soldiers come across it. Never been able to catch them at it, though. I stopped trying to get over it years ago.”
“Where is it?”
“Twenty miles or so west of here.”
“So you mean there’s a second Border?”
“And we’re smack in the middle like a refugee sandwich.”
“My God, we had no idea. So you’re saying there could be other people on the other side of the wall?”
“There must be. Someone built the wall. And the fence you’re talking about, it completely surrounds you?”
“Only on three sides. Like the letter ‘C.’ The fourth side is the ocean.”
Gran’s eyes lit up again with excitement and then wi
th unshed tears. “You’ve seen the ocean? It’s still there?”
“Right behind my house.”
The old woman turned slightly away from Sophie and seemed to be talking to herself. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean, I’d begun to think I had dreamed it.” She paused, taking a deep breath and wiping roughly at her eyes before turning back to Sophie. “So, what’s within the fence? Why is it there?”
“Four or five towns, I think. I’ve never seen all of them. Only heard of them. And I don’t know why the Border is there. The Corsairs told us it was for our protection, but we never really believed that.”
“Towns. And people live in houses, not out in the open?”
“Yes. Once the borders went up, we all migrated to what houses we could find in the area. Houses left behind by who knows what people or why. How did you get here?”
“I used to be married to a soldier in the Watch. Not like these blue-coated soldiers now, the cowards that patrol, rounding up innocents and murdering them. I was captured in the First Revolution. When I escaped, I tried to head back to where I’d last seen my husband and our group. But the borders had already gone up, and I couldn’t find him or our children anywhere.”
“You must have been in prison for a long time.”
“Years,” Gran whispered.
“How did you get out?”
“They used to bring in young Corsair cadets to watch the prisoners. Thought it would harden them. Mostly, it did.” She looked out the window toward the rising sun as she told her story. “But this one little fella with strawberry-blond hair, he used to stand outside my cell, back to the bars, standing at attention and just talk to me. He’d been captured and forced into the army like most of them. But he seemed kinder than the rest. One day when no one was looking, he just opened the door and let me out. Didn’t say a word, but just stood there with the door open. Probably gotten himself shot by now.”
Sophie stepped closer to the old woman and put her hand on her shoulder.
“Anyway, when I got out, everything I’d fought for was gone, and everything I’d fought against was roaming free. All I could do was hide. Hide and survive. But what is that . . . survival?”
“I know what it is to be a survivor, the one who escaped, the one left behind. I know how it feels to be eaten away with senseless guilt that you’re the one still alive. It makes me want make up for those who should be here and aren’t, to do what they would have done if they had been left behind.”
Gran’s freckled and wrinkled face shone with understanding and more. She seemed grateful to be talking to another woman.
“Look, why don’t you come back with me?” Sophie offered. “At least it’s somewhat safer where I live than it is for you here.”
“No, not yet. Who knows what events that would set in motion?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come over here.” The elder woman reached out the broken window to grasp a few pieces of rock and brick. She tossed one of them into a bucket of water that stood below the window. “See those ripples? The rock has no say in where those ripples end up or what they touch. Every move we make, every choice is a rock in the pond.” She took several more rocks and threw them at once into the bucket, ripples intersecting everywhere in indiscernible places. “Something as major as jumping the Border fence? Well, that’s a damn boulder in the pond. For now, for your safety and mine, I’ll stay where I am.”
“How can I find you again?”
Gran smiled with a hint of mischievousness. “Who says you will?”
Sophie stayed for a short time with the little band, eating their breakfast together and talking about their different worlds before she decided to head back. Her meeting with Gran had given her enough information to know she would only find a few stragglers here among the Forbidden Grounds. Who knew what was on the other side of the wall? Another society? More Corsair troops? She knew one thing for certain, one person would not be able to make it over the wall alone. This was a job for a larger group.
After Sophie left, Jimmy, Ted, and Gran discussed their most exciting discovery in months. “Did she look familiar to you, Ted?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah, like that crazy girl we called Red.”
“Whatever happened to her?” Gran asked the boys.
“Last time we saw her,” Jimmy answered, “she was running for the fence. Probably a Corsair shot her.” He spoke not unkindly, but with the same detachment he’d speak of a squirrel or a rabbit, creatures just as doomed by their inevitable fates.
13
LINE OF SYMMETRY
E mbers of the charred house still smoke days after the fire has gone out. Kyle sits under a tree blackened by the blaze, his ash-colored face and clothes blending with his surroundings. His knees are drawn up, his hands numb from gripping the rifle so tightly. How long has it been since he moved from this spot? He hears movement near him, pulls the rifle closer to his chest, and stares at the embers. He sees feet, then legs, a face before him. He’s aiming the gun, cocking it, ready to fire.
“Whoa! Hold on there. I’m not going to hurt you, buddy. Look, I’m putting my gun on the ground. Can you do the same? Go on now, put the gun down. I swear I’m not going to hurt you.”
Kyle doesn’t speak but lowers his gun.
“What’s your name? I’m Sam.”
Silence.
“Is this your house? Where are your parents?”
Kyle’s eyes move back to the embers.
“Okay, well, why don’t you come with me? You can’t stay here. The soldiers will be back soon. I heard a squad of them not a mile away from here.”
Kyle can’t move.
“Come on, now. I’ll help you, buddy. Let’s do it together.” Sam pulls gently but with unexpected strength to get Kyle to his feet. They walk through the forest with Sam holding Kyle’s arm around his shoulders, guiding him to his camp. For at least a week Kyle is nameless to Sam, but Sam stays with him, teaching him slowly the things he’ll need to survive in the woods. Sam becomes the constant in Kyle’s life, filling the hole where something called parents used to be, only blank faces now.
* * * * *
“I’m leaving for the Senate, Gemma. I’ll be back in a few days.”
Gemma reached around her husband’s neck, planting a long kiss on his lips that took his breath away. “I wish you didn’t have to go. Besides, there doesn’t seem much point anymore.”
He quickly picked up his bag. He wanted to get on the road before the heat took over the day. “We just keep doing what we can do. Stay the course, as they say.”
“Please don’t say those words to me.”
He tired of her never-ending fight against the Corsairs. “Alright, alright. See ya in a few days.”
“Be careful.”
“Yeah, I will.”
Kyle kicked at the rocks along the road. It would take him all day to reach the Wash District, and he dreaded the emptiness of it. Near the far Northern Border there was an old courthouse next to the Corsair base. That courthouse was home to the new Senate, being the only official government building nearest the old nation’s capital. On the road just north of the courthouse, half of an ancient road sign swung and creaked in strong breezes. The sign used to point the way to Washington, D.C. in the time of Before. Washington, D.C., had long been underwater, and the letters that were left on the sign only read Wash District. So the area where the Senate met and where the Corsairs had their base was christened the Wash District.
As the humid heat came in waves over him, pushing up from the ground and down from the sun, Kyle felt trapped by it—trapped by everything. His commitment to the Corsairs and the mission that had brought him back within the borders. His loyalty to Gemma and Sam, wanting to protect them from the Watch. His love and history with Mark. How could all of these things that were a part of him be so conflicting? Order. Routine. Consistency. These were the things he needed and craved more than anything. He liked to imagine life as a woven tapestry, when
in reality it was more like the tangled, unruly, and unrelenting vines of kudzu that took over everything. He needed to talk to someone, needed the old friendship with Sam the way it used to be, but hated the need at the same time. Kyle’s drive for order and control pushed him to be the best, but that had always meant being better than Sam or it meant nothing at all. And where Sam had developed into a survivor, Kyle had become a soldier even before the Corsairs had found him.
Time was when he could talk his problems over with Mark, as well, when Mark was the only person who understood him. For years, Kyle had felt like he was the only man in the world who was attracted to other men. Thought there was something wrong with himself, even. But then he met Mark. Mark, who showed him he was not alone and there were others like him. Of course they’d had to lie and hide because of the laws against extramarital relations and Corsair rules against fraternization. But those were only logistical problems to Mark. He had convinced Kyle that all they had to do was be careful and bide their time until they could get out of the army and find a place where they could be together without hiding. Some place on the other side of the wall where survival and beating the enemy weren’t the only goals. A house, a family, a life beyond the army, beyond the fighting. It had seemed perfect, a dream to look forward to. It had only been a matter of time.
But time was their enemy. Time kept them away from each other when they were assigned missions in separate places. Time made things awkward after long absences, worked on Kyle’s memory, and gave root to guilt instilled by Simeon. Simeon often wrote to his adopted son when he was away on missions and reminded him of all that was expected of a general’s son. The letters reminded him he was held to a higher standard of obedience, purity, and loyalty. Time was a river, with Mark on one side and Kyle on the other, and the longer and farther it flowed, the wider the river became. When Kyle allowed himself to think about it, he realized he’d wasted half his life waiting for it to begin.
Mark had looked wonderful in his uniform, and Kyle had been overcome with nostalgia and memories when he’d seen him again. But now Mark wanted something else from him. It wasn’t enough anymore that they bide their time. It wasn’t enough that they eke out chances to be together. Now Mark wanted Kyle to give up his other loyalties to join a fight he didn’t believe in. How could Mark expect him to turn against the man who had saved him from starvation and death in the woods? Why couldn’t Mark see that he was helping the wrong side?
A Light From the Ashes Page 24