by TM Catron
The wind blew foul-smelling smoke toward her. She sat up, gasping for breath, and massaged the back of her thigh until the pain subsided enough for her to stand. Then she hobbled through the trees up a low hill, away from the turmoil.
As she crested the hill, something down the road reflected the rays of the sun. Mina squinted. Two enormous creatures towered over the center of the road, standing upright on legs larger than pillars.
Invaders.
Mina ducked behind a tree. She was far away. Maybe they hadn’t seen her. After a moment, she peeked out from her hiding place to see what the creatures were doing. They stood still as stone, their naked bodies glistening golden in the weak sunshine. They had arms with things on the end of them that could have been fingers or claws. Their skin looked like grey stone—like a sculptor had roughed out their forms from a hunk of rock, but had quit before fine-chiseling and polishing the completed statue. Strange markings covered their entire bodies, but at this distance Mina could not see them clearly.
One of the monsters shifted, its hue changing from golden to grey, and Mina caught a glimpse of its face. It had two eyes in a blockish head. Almost human in form, and yet not. But they were too far away for Mina to determine what about their heads bothered her.
Another blast thundered from behind, and Mina’s ears rang again as the deafening roar replaced the silence. She turned. A ball of fire engulfed the road. The smoke was so thick now that the ship above disappeared entirely.
Two armed men emerged, running from the smoke. One jogged ahead, away from the fire, while the other lagged behind, coughing. He stopped and called out for his buddy to wait. But his companion continued to run straight for the invaders. Mina wanted to shout above the roar of the fire, to warn him of the danger ahead, but the words stuck in her throat.
As he came over the rise, he had to have seen the creatures. But he continued without slowing, running directly between them and along the road. The invaders did not even look at him. Why had they let him pass? Maybe they couldn’t see him for some reason?
The second man walked to catch up, still coughing. As he crested the hill, he stopped, eyes on the creatures. Half a second later, he broke for the trees. He took three steps before he collapsed to the ground, tumbling across the pavement. He didn’t move again.
The invaders hadn’t moved at all. Without pausing to question what had happened, Mina turned toward the trees and ran.
Whispered voices drifted through the fog in Lincoln’s brain.
“I’ve stitched him up the best I can, but he’s not recovering as fast as I would like,” someone was saying. “We need to find another donor.”
“None of us match his blood type. What about the guy who already donated?”
“He can’t give any more for a while yet, and I don’t think we can wait.”
The voices were fading. Lincoln needed the people around him to know. She was in Atlanta.
“What’d he say?”
“He said ‘Atlanta.’”
“His sister’s there. Or was. We have no way of checking.”
Lincoln faded in and out of consciousness for several hours. He was dimly aware that they’d found another donor—Colonel Nash.
“How long before we know if this works?”
“Not long, sir.”
Mina cowered all night in the dark, shaking with cold and jerking awake whenever she dozed off. As soon as the sun began to rise, she stretched her aching body and began to walk until she found another side road, looking carefully up and down before deciding to follow it. She trudged along slowly beneath the protection of the trees as clouds moved in overhead. She shivered and pulled her jacket closer around her, wishing for warmer clothing. Especially warmer shoes—her toes ached with cold.
Down the road from Mina, a small truck had pulled off onto the grassy shoulder. Its trailer doors were wide open. She surveyed it from the nearby tree line. It was a snack truck, the kind that stocked vending machines. She approached cautiously.
The trailer had been cleaned out except for a couple of half-opened boxes of smashed chocolate cakes, most of them open. Tiny flying bugs crawled on them, but Mina was too famished to care. She scooped up the cakes, swatting away the bugs, and stuffed the sweet pastry into her mouth, fully opening the packages to lick them clean. She had eaten her way through three before she remembered to save something for later. Carefully wrapping the remaining cakes, she placed them in an empty cardboard box along with the five unopened packages. The bottle of lighter fluid also fit in the box.
Mina jumped down off the truck feeling slightly more hopeful. She walked around to the small cab, trying the door. Locked. If she broke a window, she could spend the night inside. Mina looked up and down the road again, then up into the overcast sky. No, too open. What if the invaders were searching the roads? She walked away into the trees.
Darkness fell, accompanied by cold and misting rain. Mina gathered wood for a fire. Wanting to build something that would last all night, she gathered the largest branches she could find and piled them to her knees. After pouring lighter fluid over all of it, she held one of the lighters to a stick wrapped in leaves. As soon as the leaves caught, she threw it on the logs. The lighter fluid flared brightly for a minute, the flames licking the logs before suddenly petering out. She repeated the process only to lose the flame again. Frustrated, Mina tried pouring the lighter fluid over the fire as it burned, hoping the wood would catch if it were hot enough, but nothing would burn for more than a couple of minutes. On her last attempt, more air came out of the bottle than fluid, splatting tiny bubbles on the wood.
Cold rain poured down, quickly soaking Mina’s hair and everything below her raincoat. She threw the bottle into the dark woods and kicked at the logs, then picked up a charred branch and hurled it at a tree with a yell. The branch bounced off, unharmed. Mina sank down to huddle under a tree and pulled up her thin hood.
Dad and Lincoln had urged her to go hunting and camping with them many times when she was a child. She had always turned them down, claiming she didn’t want to know how her meat reached the freezer. Mina hadn’t been more than twelve the last time they asked.
She should have at least let them teach her how to build a fire.
Where was Lincoln now? Had Atlanta also been attacked? Probably.
The note from Cummings hadn’t told her exactly why Lincoln was headed to Atlanta. Maybe he was going to pick up Mina and take her home, but then, that sort of gesture was out of character for Lincoln. Perhaps he had been more worried than he seemed on the phone.
Whatever his reasons, Mina had to get to Atlanta as soon as possible. She envisioned a map of the eastern US in her head. Charlotte was located near the North Carolina state line, she was pretty sure. Atlanta was definitely in northern Georgia. South Carolina lay in between. If she went southwest every day, using the sun to guide her, she would more or less be headed in the right direction. Of course, I could wildly offshoot and end up in Florida.
According to the mile markers, she had traveled twenty miles her first day. Today, in the woods with tree roots and stones to trip her up, she’d made less progress.
Following the highway signage would be the easiest, but after the attack at the truck stop, the main roads made her nervous. Too many people were using them, making them easy targets for the invaders. And she would have more competition for food.
She considered her other options. The mountains bordered the western part of the state. She could find them easily if she headed west, then follow them south to Atlanta. Using the mountains as her guide, she might have a better chance of finding the city and a smaller chance of error. The mountains would provide better hiding places, too. And fewer population centers might mean fewer invaders. She hunkered down, pulling her hood further down over her face as the wind blew rain in her eyes. The flimsy cardboard box drooped as the rain soaked it.
In the morning, she would keep the sun at her back and walk west. Did the sun rise due east? She did
n’t know for certain, but as long as she headed generally westward she would be okay. Her mind more settled, Mina tucked as much of her body into her raincoat as possible and leaned against a tree.
The rain was unrelenting. Mina slept very little, dozing fitfully as morning approached. When she rose, her numb toes and fingers refused to work independently, and she could barely place the remaining cakes in her pockets.
In the feeble light of morning, her plan to find Lincoln seemed pale and impossible. She had no idea how many miles lay between her and Atlanta. How many invaders. How many obstacles. Mina took a deep, steadying breath and took out a cake from her pocket. The sugared cake tasted good, and her spirits lifted as she licked chocolate off the wrapper. If she had survived, Lincoln could have, too.
Finding east proved impossible, with the sky all grey and white and gloomy. She would have to implement her plan later. She stood and viciously beat mud off her jeans. Her stomach growled but she refused to eat another cake now. Not before she found more food to replace it. Unable to bring herself to return to the roads, Mina abandoned her feeble campsite and slipped farther away from the city.
DAY 6
“LINCOLN? LINCOLN? CAN YOU HEAR me? They’re looking in the tunnel. Everyone. We haven’t found Halston, but they’re looking.”
“It’s going to take days, maybe weeks. I don’t care about finding that psycho. Let him rot down there,” said Nelson.
Lincoln was laying on a cot in a large tent. Carter, Nelson, and Alvarez stood near him.
“He’s awake,” said Alvarez.
Carter leaned around Nelson to look at Lincoln. “How do you feel?”
“Been better. What happened?” His mouth was dry, his voice hoarse.
“Halston stabbed you. Don’t you remember?” asked Alvarez. The Army jacket was gone. She shivered in the light beige coat.
“I remember. What happened after that?”
“By the time we figured out what was going on, Halston had already grabbed your gun. Carter swung a torch at him, but Halston dodged him and bolted down Corridor B.”
“Would’ve been better if I’d hit him with it,” said Carter.
“He might have shot you, though,” said Alvarez.
“Don’t know why he didn’t. Still, he was fast, very fast.” Carter looked troubled for a moment, then smiled at Lincoln.
Alvarez moved to the foot of Lincoln’s cot. “We don’t know where he went after that. You were losing a lot of blood.”
Carter pulled something from his pocket and held it up for Lincoln to see. Lincoln squinted, his eyes focusing slowly. It was the sketchbook, sliced almost in two and covered in dark blood. “They found this in your pocket. Looks like it stopped the knife from doing any serious organ damage.”
Lincoln reached out and felt the gash in the middle. “Sorry about your book.”
Carter scoffed and laid it on the bed beside Lincoln. “For luck,” he said.
Lincoln looked around at his friends—they were all a little worse for wear, sporting bruises and scratches on their faces and hands. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”
The team stood there awkwardly, like they wanted to say more or thought he was going to say something embarrassing, but Lincoln spared them by asking, “What happened to the map?”
Nelson shifted from one foot to the other. “We think Halston grabbed it. Sorry, man.”
“That’s great.” Lincoln’s head hurt, and he laid it back down on his pillow. “How’d you get out?”
“We followed the trail of boot prints . . . and guessed. Schmidt was waiting for us outside. When we didn’t come back to our tents, he figured we had gone to the mine and followed us. He helped get you back to camp.”
For once Lincoln was glad Schmidt was so nosy. He’d have to tell the kid as much. He shivered slightly—why hadn’t anyone thought to light a fire or bring more blankets? “Any news from outside?”
Carter and Nelson exchanged glances but didn’t answer him.
Alvarez glanced at Carter and Nelson. “Actually, we just got word on the radio,” she said. “We’ve heard about Atlanta and some other places.”
“And?” Lincoln did not like the look on her face.
“And I’m sorry, but they’re completely destroyed. All of them—New York, DC . . . Atlanta.”
Nelson jumped in, “Power’s out everywhere. Widespread blackouts across the nation. From what the colonel’s pieced together, the attacks happened immediately after.”
“How do you know?” Lincoln asked.
“A man on the radio,” continued Alvarez, “and he heard it from a National Guard officer who’d been driven out.”
“That’s it?” Lincoln’s voice rose. The piercing pain in his side tormented him. “Don’t ever bring me news like that again, Alvarez, unless you can provide better evidence than that!”
“Lincoln, why would someone lie about . . .”
Carter intervened, touching Alvarez on the shoulder. “Now’s not the time. Let him be.” He turned to Lincoln. “We’ll come back in the morning. Get some rest.”
Nelson opened his mouth as if to say something, but he closed it again and followed Carter and Alvarez out of the tent.
Lincoln yelled after them, “How am I supposed to rest after that?” He knocked over a tray next to his cot, the metal cup and tray clanging down onto the dirt floor. The medic, hearing the racket, came back in and gave Lincoln some more morphine. He finally slept.
They kept him sedated for several days, as much to help him rest as to keep him from ripping open his stitches. When he finally woke, the same anger welled inside of him. But he refrained from upsetting any more trays or yelling at anyone. He didn’t actually have anyone to yell at, except the medic who helped him sit up and eat. Everyone was at the mine, although his team wasn’t allowed inside until every tunnel was declared safe. When his head cleared a bit, Lincoln realized he hadn’t asked Carter, Nelson, or Alvarez about their families. Ashamed of himself, Lincoln was glad they had left him alone.
Already he was stir crazy. There was nothing worse than being helpless, so as soon as he could sit up on his own, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and walked out into the sunlight. The day was cold despite the clear sky. The medic anxiously followed him, admonishing him not to tear his stitches.
Lincoln shrugged him off. “I’m not staying in there anymore.” But after a few more seconds of squinting in the daylight, he began to feel dizzy. The medic helped him back inside.
DAY 7
TREES PRESSED OVER THE CREEK, their branches a lattice against the pale sky above. At the bank, the snarl of roots and budding vines snaked all the way to the water, and Mina treaded carefully to avoid slipping into the bitter current. She leaned against the muddy embankment, breathing heavily and listening. Men’s voices drifted over from the woodland trail above the creek. She had to be moving in the same direction they were. They could move to the creek for water at any moment—staying here was dangerous.
Mina gazed back at the path she had slogged through, at its slippery stones and moss and tree roots, and dreaded the thought of fighting her way back along the creek bed. But she dared not leave its cover. On one side of the water, to the west, the thicket thinned quickly until nothing but small trees dotted the land all the way up to the road. Thinking of the massive black ship over the station, Mina shuddered and contemplated her other option.
A narrow nature trail lay on the east side of the creek. The large trees along the trail provided perfect cover for the people fleeing the open farmlands. But bands of armed men tramped up and down the trail. Using it was out of the question. Beyond the trail, a few more thickets of trees opened up to rolling farmland broken only by windbreaks. Why she thought she would be safe here, Mina could not remember. Now she was here, though, she didn’t know if she would be safer anywhere else.
She stood and headed back the way she had come, hunched over, as if walking that way would make her harder to see. The nagging hunger that
had awakened her this morning intensified as the afternoon wore on. And by the time Mina had fought her way back to her starting position, her body flat out rebelled, refusing to cooperate as she stumbled along the creek bed.
Finally, deep shades of dusk made further progress along the creek impossible. Mina washed mud from her hands and face and drank deeply. The water tasted of earth and sand and trees. If only she knew how to filter it. Thirst drove her to drink her fill.
She climbed out of the creek bed and crouched next to a tree, pausing to survey the path ahead. The wind blew cold night air through the trees. Nothing but the branches stirred. The men’s voices had faded. Pain rippled down Mina’s spine as she straightened and crossed the path. On the other side, the dense undergrowth grasped at her, adding new scratches to her arms and legs as she fought her way through it.
At the edge of the trees, the quiet field looked safe. The air was still, and a full moon shone down on brown shoots. Mina paused to find her bearings and looked for the tree she had camped by the previous night. Spotting it in the moonlight, she crept out of her hiding place and across the corner of the field. As she approached the tree, something moved at the corner of her vision, across the barren rows near a stand of trees. Dropping quickly, Mina pressed herself to the earth and lay still. The sharp smell of dirt and decay stung her nostrils and made her eyes water.
Mina chest constricted. What was she doing? She couldn’t hide in the dirt. Keep it together, Mina. Rather than overthink her options, she screwed up her courage, pushed off the ground, and darted behind the big tree, pressing her back to it and listening. Another breeze rustled the newly budded branches above. After several minutes, Mina risked a look. Nothing. Her heart rate and breathing slowed. Must have been her imagination. She slumped to a sitting position with her back against the tree. The sweat on her body cooled in the night air, and she shuddered.