80

by Aaron Denius

  They must have been scared by my choice of weapon, because the two figures run off. Both looked like young kids.

  Before I can register anything else, something jumps on my back. I reach over with my left hand and pull whatever it is over my head. I throw it to the ground and see that it is an older outsider. The outline of his bones is visible through his exposed skin.

  Seconds later, dozens of outsiders charge toward me, most in conditions as bad as the older man, so they don't move very fast. I run off in the one direction where I don't see any outsiders, and with my speed, I create some distance in seconds. However, I see others pouring out of various hiding places and coming toward me from different streets as I run.

  I slow down as I realize that I let myself get trapped. The malnourished outsiders have blocked every path except for one. I turn, ready to fight my way out, but the dozens have become hundreds. As much damage as I know I could cause, there are way too many of them.

  My legs continue to carry me to what appears to be my last stand, along an alley flanked by two large brick buildings. At the end, there is a brick wall that looks to be about sixteen feet tall. I assess my options and take off in a full sprint toward the wall. Before I get there, I jump against the wall of one of the buildings to try to propel myself higher up the back wall.

  A stinging pain jolts through my body as I slam hard into the wall. My hands smack at least a foot from the top. The wall is too high. I fall and land on the blood-stained ground. The outsiders have done this numerous times before. I feel stupid for falling for this. I lost focus, and I overestimated myself.

  I turn my back to the wall and face the horde coming toward me. They walk over the concrete slab and wire I called a weapon. I forgot that I dropped it when I ran toward the wall.

  If I'm going to fight off my death, it will have to be with my bare hands.

  CHAPTER V

  “Up here!” I hear a voice call out.

  I look up and see a rope fall from an open window two floors above me. I'm not sure I can trust it. There might be more outsiders waiting for me up there. But given the prospect of having to fight off a hungry mob of fifty or more, I'm left with no other choice.

  The outsiders closest to me see the rope and quicken their pace. They push each other out of the way and trample those who fall to the ground. As unified as they were in trapping me, they have abandoned any notion of teamwork to appeal to one of their most basic instincts: hunger.

  I jump for the rope and grab hold of it. Immediately, I pull myself up, but not before an outsider grabs one of my legs. The little muscle she has does its best to hold on. I kick with my other leg, connecting with her jaw. The crack of the bones shattering in her face is a sound I won't soon forget. She falls to the ground, and I pull myself up to the second-floor window ledge.

  I look back down before I go into the building and see that a few outsiders have taken advantage of their fallen comrade. They are pulling her body apart, their hunger getting the better of them. She screams in pain, but it's short-lived. Any humanity that any of them possessed, they lost long ago.

  A clean hand reaches through the window to help me through. With shadows hiding the person behind the hand, I choose to ignore the gesture and step through on my own.

  “I'm not going to hurt you,” the voice says. It's a woman's voice. Soft and peaceful.

  “Thank you for helping me.” I hope that my gratitude will appeal to this person's compassion. Or at least buy me some time as my eyes adjust to the darkness. Right now, all I see is a silhouette.

  “You helped me earlier. I'm repaying the favor.” Her voice calms me as her hand touches mine. The hint of confusion dissipates as her face reveals itself. It's the girl whose bucket fell in front of me.

  My face warms up, and my heart races. My hand feels smaller in her hand, so I pull it away.

  “What's your name?” She grabs my hand again. This time I don't pull back.

  “80,” is the only word I'm able to push through my lips. I guess that's all she asked.

  She pulls me and leads me through the building. “I'm KJ. We need to go. The Cabras won't take long to get into here.”

  Before I can comprehend what's happening, KJ is pulling me through the building. We run up never-ending flights of stairs. Some of them are only a couple more days away from crumbling. As we wind our way farther up the building, physics appears to stop working. A few struggling pillars are all that are left holding up some floors. They bear the weight of the many floors above them.

  We stop a few stories from the roof, and she leads me to the edge of a blown-out window. I look down and can't see the ground below me. We have risen into the middle of the smoky clouds that envelop the city. The slight breeze creeping through the window forces me to inhale the dry, ashy oxygen. I can feel it making me weak, but KJ seems used to it.

  “Let's go!” she shouts as she steps through the window and disappears.

  My heart stops when I see what I need to do. Right next to my left hand is a thick wire jutting out from the concrete window. It shakes as I follow it with my eyes into the dense clouds.

  “Come on!” Her shout is taken by the wind. She’s put some distance between us.

  I stand up in the window and almost hit my head on a second wire protruding from the top ledge. I grab that wire with both hands and begin to slide my feet along the bottom wire. Within a few seconds, I am far enough away from the building that I can no longer see it. The clouds have engulfed me, and I try not to think about the burning my lungs feel with every breath. Each new inhale makes my grip on the wire weaker.

  “How far across is this?” I ask, trying to distract myself from the fact that my arms and legs are shaking. The wires are less taught here, so I must be near the middle of the neighboring buildings.

  “It's not far. I've already made it.” She eases my nerves.

  The wires have tightened again, and I begin to feel more confident—until the bottom wire shakes with a violent jolt and my feet slip off. I scream as my hands squeeze tighter on the upper wire, but the pain shooting down my arms tells me that I have torn more skin from the palm I injured removing the leg from the table. Blood starts coating my palms.

  “80?!” KJ yells out.

  “Someone shook the wire!” I shout back as my feet try to find the other wire. My hands work harder to hold me up. After clipping the wire a couple of times with my feet and not finding the footing, I decide to spend my energy getting across. I just hope I'm close. The lack of visibility makes it hard to see how much farther I have to go. With my grip getting slick with the blood, I'm not sure I can go more than a few yards before I fall.

  Hand over hand, I work my way toward the building. I force a tighter grip each time, but it takes its toll on my shoulders. A haze creeps into my head; the heavier breathing has brought in more filth into my lungs. I stop for a moment, trying to regain my focus. A disturbing thought enters my mind. Will the fall kill me before the Cabras tear me apart?

  “I can see you! Come on!” Her voice snaps me back.

  My hands start to move again, and after a few seconds I can see her as well. Her body leans out of another window and reaches for me. I summon the rest of the strength I have and make it to her. She grabs me and pulls me through, both of us falling to the ground.

  “Thank you.” I exhale, then turn my head over and see her looking right at me. Her eyes embrace me with warmth. She smiles at me, and when I return the favor, my cheeks flush with blood. I look down in embarrassment. Her arms are still wrapped around me. If my heart was beating fast before, it has doubled in speed now.

  She must have noticed that she’s still holding me because she pulls back her arms and rolls onto her back. “Sorry.”

  The silence lasts long enough to feel uncomfortable. Almost in unison, we laugh. For those brief moments, it's just the two of us. The rest of the world does not exist. There is no pain, anger, sadness, fear, or death. There is this small pocket of time, this cubicle of spa
ce. As the laughter dissipates, the darkness and destruction in the world return. It angers me. Why must the bad in the world be the standard and the good be reduced to moments?

  “Why did you help me?” She snaps me back to the broken world we're in.

  I search for the answer. The reason doesn't come. It's as if it was a natural reflex. “I just did.”

  “I've seen others get killed for less. So, you very well could have saved my life.” She kisses my cheek.

  Fear shoots straight into my heart, and I jump away from her, stumbling over debris as I fall against the wall.

  KJ stands, her eyes wide in shock. “I'm sorry. Was that not okay?”

  The focus returns in my eyes and my heartbeat settles. I see her standing before me, vulnerable and weak. My stomach feels the same. The vulnerability gets to me, and a nervous laughter darts out of my mouth.

  “Why are you laughing?” she demands, the weakness flipping to an embarrassed anger.

  My cheeks flush, and a new kind of fear encompasses my body. I want KJ to like me. But what if she doesn't? I muster all the confidence I was created with in response: “I've never been kissed before.”

  She smiles, “If you react like that every time, it will never happen again.”

  That's the last thing I want. Aside from the shock and fear, the feeling I had was of uninhibited happiness. Since I turned and became more woke, this is the closest I have felt to being human. “I promise it won't.”

  “Good.” She grabs my hand and pulls me through the door. We descend through a building that is in much better shape than the one from which we came. There are cracks and holes in the walls, but the footing is sturdy.

  Before I can register any more of the building, we jump out of a hole in the ground floor into the street. It's clean. That's the first thing I notice. No trash, no debris, and most important, no bodies. It gives me a glimpse of what this city might have looked like during a better time.

  “Get behind me.” I step in front of KJ. Ahead of us, I spot two figures walking across the street.

  She pushes me aside and keeps walking. “Don't worry. It's safe.”

  I catch up to her. I'm a little weary, but I do my best not to show it. “Where are we going?”

  “My home.” She picks up her pace, and I follow suit. We pass the two figures from before, and they go about their conversation without even glancing at us. This part of the city has a lot less weight hanging over it. We make a couple of turns, passing a few more people, and then stop in front of a short building.

  “Is this it?” I ask.

  “Yes. Stay close to me, and don't get offended by anything my family says.” She grabs my hand and leads the way.

  The building is only one story high, and though it's run down, it appears well taken care of. The area around the outside is clean compared to how the rest of the city looks. We enter the building through a door covered with heavy fabric. The second it falls back behind me, darkness surrounds us. She smacks the wall right next to my head, and a dim light flickers on above us.

  “Sometimes it needs a little help.” She smiles at me. “The solar panels don't capture as much sun as they probably once did.”

  “KJ, is that you?” An older woman steps out with two smaller versions of KJ behind her.

  KJ pushes me forward. “Ma, this is—”

  “What are you doing?” the woman screams back. She pushes the two little ones back. “How dare you bring that filth in here!”

  The woman takes a step toward me, but KJ gets in the way. “No, he's not like that. He's the one I told you helped me. He was in trouble with the Cabras at the Dhimashada. I got him out.”

  “I told you not to go messing around there.” The woman's shoulders settle, and she lets the younger ones run out to hug KJ. Now that all three are together, I can tell that they aren't identical, though it seems like everything about them is struggling to be. The blonde hair, blue eyes, big smiles.

  KJ turns to me, “These are my sisters. Pocket is the youngest, and Jean wishes she was the oldest, but she's not.”

  Jean sticks her tongue out at KJ and storms off into another room. My eyes follow her away, then lock with the eyes of the older woman.

  She grabs my face with both hands and pulls me close to her face. “Let me get a closer look at you.”

  “That's my mother, Martha.” KJ hands off the information as she walks into the adjoining room. “It's best to let her finish.”

  “What happened to your eye?” Martha gets right to it.

  “Yeah?” Pocket adds, excited for the answer.

  “I lost it,” I spit back. I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do right now. The scientists created me to deal with interrogations if I were captured. This just doesn't register.

  Martha looks at me for agonizing moments longer and then disappears into the same room as Jean. I'm left alone in this dim-lit room. There is a long couch pushed against the side wall with a short table in front of it. Under the only two windows flanking the door are small shelves stacked with books. The same heavy fabric as the door covers the windows.

  I'm about to call out for KJ when a tug at my arm lets me know I'm not alone. Pocket, the youngest, is standing right beside me. Has she been there the whole time?

  “Where is KJ?” I demand. Perhaps a little too strong, since she takes a step back and her eyes dart wide.

  She grabs my hand and leads me into the room KJ had entered.

  “Are you hungry?” KJ says the second I walk through the threshold.

  The little one is still holding my hand, and she does not seem to want to let go. I decide to let it be.

  “She likes you.” KJ smiles at me. “I'm a bit jealous.”

  Pocket and I compete for embarrassment. Both of our faces have turned bright red. This must scare Pocket, because she lets go of my hand and runs off. I'm relieved, since I was already feeling awkward enough without her holding my hand.

  “Go set the table for dinner!” KJ shouts after her. She turns to me. “So 80, what will it be for dinner? We have pouches, lentils, chicken…”

  “Chicken!” I blurt out. I've had way too many pouches, and I've never heard of the other one. My mouth waters at the memory of the time I shared chicken with Atom. The burnt taste of orange and the juicy meat that enlightened my mouth. That seems like ages ago now, but it's what led to my being here.

  KJ prepares some chicken over a flame and serves it with those lentil things. They look like dirt, and I don't care for them much. Her family joins us at the table, and we tell each other stories over the delicious meal.

  Martha speaks of how the scientists and first set of drones came when she was KJ's age. At the time of their arrival, Nairobi was prosperous, though corrupt. The longer the scientists stayed, the worse it got. She mentions how the scientists destroyed resources and the infrastructure. The stadium's inside used to be an open-source garden where people from the city would only take what was needed. The community maintained it together. When the scientists took over the stadium, they got rid of the crops and gave everyone injections and pouches. Those who were not vaccinated fell to rabid dementia. Those are the Cabras.

  I tell them about the compound, Atom, and the other Genesys. How they shipped me out here for breaking the rules. I also divulge that many scientists and I don't want the world to end and that we are working to stop the Ragnarok.

  “What do you mean, stop the Ragnarok?” Martha interjects.

  “The world is going to end?” Jean whimpers.

  “Do you guys not know what's happening? What they are building?” I'm surprised by their lack of knowledge.

  “They never told us. They punish you for questioning anything,” KJ responds.

  I look at all four of the women. “They're building bunkers. For those Genesys I mentioned. The scientists believe that humans are on the verge of extinction, and the Genesys are the restart for humankind. Almost everyone else will be killed in a worldwide nuclear event.”

&
nbsp; The air has sucked out of the room. KJ and her mother are at a loss for words. Even the little ones seem to understand the gravity of what's happening. My heart aches for them as I see them try to come to terms with their mortality. It makes my resolve to stop the Ragnarok even stronger.

  I stand to comfort KJ, but two drones burst into the house before I can reach her. They tear down the fabric covering the door and aim rifles at us. I recognize 13 right away. Instinct throws me between the drones and KJ's family. I sense Martha retreat into another room with the two young ones. KJ remains behind me. The second drone steps toward the room behind me, but I cut him off and push him back.

  “Stand down, 80!” 13 demands.

  “Why are you here?” I shout back.

  13 pulls his gun and aims it at me. “You are in violation of—”

  I charge and knock the gun out of his hands. It tumbles across the floor. My fists fly in fury as his connect with various parts of my body. He's quicker than I am, and the blood that I already feel streaking down my face is a testament to that fact.

  He has the upper hand and throws me to the ground. KJ draws my attention. She's doing all she can to keep away from the other drone, who’s chasing her around the room. The pain of 13's knee digging into my chest pulls me back to my predicament.

  “I would kill you if it weren't for direct orders not to.” He glares at me. Fire burns in his eyes. He might not be able to kill me, but he sure seems intent on getting me close to death.

  “Stop!” Pocket runs out of the backroom and jumps on 13's back. He flings her off, and she lands hard on the ground.

  “Pocket!” Martha screams from the doorframe to the other room.

  I use the opportunity to grab 13 and pull him into a sleeper hold. My arm squeezes tight around his neck. He struggles against me, but I have the perfect leverage, and his flails have little effect.

  “Let him go!” the second drone commands. When I look over, I see that he has Pocket in one arm, his gun aimed at KJ.