by Keri Lake
Abel is set before me, and he clutches my leg, the rabbit still dangling from his arm.
Across the road from us, another line up of boys, perhaps fifteen in total, mirror us. Every one of them looking bewildered and out of place.
I know there’s an alley behind me that butts up to a fence, with a hole and the ruins of a city on the other side. Used to be Las Vegas. Now it’s just a pile of cinder and rubble that my friends and I sometimes like to explore. I could make a run for it, but Abel could never keep up, and it’d slow me down trying to carry him.
Commotion from the left snaps my attention in the direction of Thomas, a boy from my school, doing that very thing. My muscles burn with the urge to follow him, and I have to squeeze Abel’s arm to keep from breaking out of line.
A pop freezes me in place, though. That god-awful sound that will forever terrify me, and I turn to find Thomas sprawled on the pavement in the alley with the red river of death flowing from his head.
He was my age.
Only fourteen.
He stuttered in class and was afraid to play kickball with the boys at recess, so he often sat on the swings with my best friend, Kiara, and me, who I’m guessing is dead, unless her mother shaved her head, too. They called him a coward in school, but today, I think he’s the bravest boy I’ve ever known, because I surely don’t have the courage to run now.
His death summons a low hum of mumbles. Some of the other boys even sob for him.
The cold sensation that long settled over me ices my muscles, so I can’t so much as blink, let alone cry. My surroundings have flipped into a dream, and my head won’t let me believe it’s real.
None of this is real.
When I face forward again, one of the men in black suits is standing before me, staring at me. He tips his head, and a gloved hand reaches for my chin. Gripping either side of my face, he guides my head left then right, examining me. In spite of the branching cold inside my veins, my hands are sweaty. Alarms blare inside my thoughts, warning me that he’s going to know I’m a girl, and I’ll be lying in a river of blood, just like Thomas. And my mother.
Seconds tick off inside my mind as I wait for him to call me out as a traitor. A liar.
Instead, his hand falls away, and he circles his finger in the air.
In the next breath, he grips my shoulders, twisting me to face the back of the boy in front of me, with Abel separating us, and in a single-file line, we walk forward.
At the end of the road sits three large trucks, each covered with a deep green tarp that swallow the lines of boys into the belly of each vehicle. One of the monsters lifts Abel, who wipes his nose on Sarai’s rabbit. I hoist myself into the truck behind him, and guide him toward one of the benches lining the inside of the truck’s cab. Abel climbs onto the bench beside me and nuzzles his face in my side, lifting my arm to wrap around him. His body still shivers, but his tears have calmed to sniveling and the occasional hiccup.
On the opposite side of me sits an older man. One who looks out of place among all of the younger boys, and when he stares at me, furrowing his brow, I remember why. Instinctively, I run my hand over the stubble of hair that once reached the middle of my back. For the first time in a matter of minutes, I have the urge to cry again.
I recognize the man from the apothecary where my mother traded her herbs. I’ve always thought of him as a mean, grumpy old codger, who often argued with my mother over the uses of certain medicines.
As if any of that matters now.
The thought of my mother spurs another tug of my throat, and I keep my gaze locked on my hand resting atop the book in my lap.
“She was a fiery lady, your mother. Full of spirit and grit.” The old man’s voice draws my gaze to his, his soft tone catching me by surprise. “On to a better place, that one.”
“Where?”
“Heaven. If you believe in that sort of thing.”
Do I? Have I ever once believed my father is in heaven? As a devout Catholic, my mother believed in such things, but could I?
“Do you?”
His chest rises with a breath, and his shoulders slouch on the exhale. “I have to.”
“Why?”
“’Sgood to believe in something. Keeps you livin’, when everything else is gone.”
I try not to let the weight of that thought push down on me, because I know it’ll crush me. Not everything is gone, after all. I still have Abel. “Who are these people? Why do they kill only the women and girls?”
“Mercy, I suppose.”
“For what? Where are they taking us?”
He nods toward my book. “You like to read?”
I glance down and back, momentarily confused that he didn’t bother to answer my question. “Yes. I read and write stories.”
Being a well-read teenager is almost an oxymoron these days. No one has time to read, trying to stay alive out here, but my mother insisted I learn, anyway. I’m an anomaly—a word most of my peers wouldn’t know the meaning of.
“And in this book, does good overcome evil?”
I nod, recalling the final scene my mother read to me.
“The place we’re going … there is no good there.” He turns his face away from mine, and the crease of his brow, the grim expression on his face, stirs a sinking feeling in my stomach. “You hang on to that book. Hang on to your stories. Because in the end, they’re all we have.”
Chapter 2
Wren
I once read that a scorpion could survive a nuclear war. The thought made me laugh, imagining some displaced bug scampering across the ruins, trying to figure out what the hell happened to everyone.
I mean, one minute, you’re shoe bait, the next, you’re the only thing left with legs.
That same article postulated that humans wouldn’t live beyond one hundred days into a zombie apocalypse. The most skilled at survival would make it, but with major odds stacked against them for infection, or getting eaten alive, and there’d be no second generation because a pregnant woman trying to run from a Rager would be laughable, if it wasn’t so morbid.
Humans would pretty much be wiped out, leaving the world in the hands of the straggling flesh-eaters and some really confused scorpions.
Guess those scholars weren’t betting on a real estate mogul to exploit one of the biggest solar panel farms on the west coast and build an entire community out of it. One surrounded by the big-ass wall he eventually built to keep pretty much everything and everyone out.
In a month, I’ll celebrate my eighteenth birthday. Because I’m a second-generation survivor.
They call this the Rebirth Era—literally, trying to rebirth the population. Even though a good chunk of the world was wiped out by a single contagion, it wasn’t that one single thing that reduced us to a fraction of what we once were. Nuclear power plants leached, gas lines exploded, entire cities caught fire, as people were getting sick and couldn’t maintain them. Gangs and criminals rioted, trying to establish control over the fallen cities, killing each other off. Then there were the people who had terminal illnesses, ones who died of malnutrition, and countless others who committed suicide.
About a dozen catastrophes packed into a decade.
The dried, crunchy carapace sits in the palm of my hand, and I stare down at the fried scorpion, my tongue watering for the salty tang Papa seasons over them, and pop it into my mouth. The boys in my community say scorpions aren’t a ladylike snack, whatever that means. When the world goes to hell, everything becomes edible.
Sure, we have food, but scorpions are a delicacy—particularly as these ones come from the other side of the wall.
And they’re a good reminder that life isn’t always predictable.
Nabbing the bottle of water from my pack, I tip it back, washing the salty taste from my tongue. In the desert, the scarcity of water provides a means of trade—a way to feed your family, or get the supplies you need to defend them. Inside the walls, where I live, water is merely a perk of living in Szolen
Farms. That’s what we call our little community, made up of about two thousand, give or take. It’s named after the founder, ironically, the son of what was once a billionaire oil tycoon before The Dredge hit. His father, apparently, disowned him for investing in the self-sustaining project.
Now it’s an oasis to the hellish world beyond the wall.
Here, we have clinics, schools, small eateries, bakeries, farms. Heck, we even have cars and motorbikes—all of which run on the electricity provided by a huge solar panel farm that happens to be heavily guarded, all hours of the day. Trade is our currency, and luckily for me, Papa is one of few doctors, which makes him a much sought after member.
The decimation outside the walls is a world we only hear about from the few brave enough to venture out for occasional supplies. Medicinal plants, for example, that Papa will sometimes gather during the day when the Ragers are most visible.
Those of us on the inside, we live a relatively peaceful existence, as violence could get a person killed. Well, any unstable behavior that could even remotely be mistaken for The Dredge could get a person killed.
It’s nice. A great place to live, I guess.
Still, for whatever reason, the other side calls to me.
It tells me that we’re too comfortable in a world that seeks to eliminate humankind. And that, one day? We’re all going to be in for an unpleasant awakening, when the Ragers, or some other threat, get smart enough to breach that wall.
Smokestacks can be seen rising up toward the clouds from as far as our house, and because we’re told nothing exists out in the Deadlands, I find that an interesting observation.
One that begs for investigation.
‘Restricted’ plasters a bulky sign attached to the barbed wires that surround the entire perimeter of trees beyond. For most, the warning is enough to keep them out.
I’m not most, though.
I’ve been inside a few times before, but never quite made it to the wall toward the back. It’s the only place within the community where trees butt up to the edge—ones I’m guessing are tall enough to climb and see the other side. It’s also the only part that isn’t guarded, which makes it twice a curiosity for me.
The wires are charged with enough volts to scorch my insides, so when I lodge a fork-tipped branch, to lift the top wire just enough to climb through, my hands tremble. It’s only recently that I was given permission to wander beyond Phase Two. However, the north side of the community, and particularly this forest, is a no-no. Papa would kill me himself, if he knew I’ve ventured inside again, but with the sun high in the sky, I can be back before dark falls, and since I managed a head-start on supper, he’ll never suspect a thing.
Out of the eight thousand, or so, acres that make up our gated community, this section accounts for forty acres of manmade forest. An isolated enclosure within the walls, completely off limits.
And I’ve yet to discover why.
Careful not to let any part of me touch the wires, which hum a tune of death as I crawl between them, I set my hand onto the bracken at the other side and hold my breath. The slightest jerk, and I could catch one of the barbs, clinging to the fence as it electrocutes my innards to ash. With one quick push, I roll onto the other side.
Safe.
A strange odor mingles with the scent of damp brush, like burning hair, or meat on an open flame. It crinkles my nose, as I glance around and let the thick copse of trees swallow me beneath a shroud of high branches. Forests like this don’t naturally exist in the desert, brimming with a carefully cultivated assortment of fruit trees—Moringas, or drumstick trees, lots of fig trees, jujubes and pomegranites. Like everything else here, it feels fake and out of place.
An enchanting little fairytale forest, surrounded by miles of infernal drought.
The idea was to use as much of the land as possible to harvest fruit, and a number of groves sit at the south end of the compound that are gathered from more frequently. According to Papa, it began before the bombs, part of the community’s sewage water for afforestation program—a way to keep from depleting the already-scarce water source by irrigating with waste.
Lush greens, tall and short, capture my attention as I make my way deeper into the forest.
A sound catches my ear—low and droning, quiet, but constant. On instinct, I pause, scanning across the tree trunks.
Nothing.
It’s never nothing, though, and the unnatural sound draws my feet deeper into the woods in search of its source.
At my hip is the hunting blade Papa gave me for our excursions, and at my side, the Shepherd’s Sling he made, like the one used to defeat Goliath in the bible. Should I ever find myself on the other side of that wall, Papa says I’ll never run out of ammunition with all the rocks and rubble.
Another thing about me that isn’t very lady-like, I guess.
They say, in times of war, more boys are born, and my generation produced two for every girl. If I happened to be more like the girls my age here, I suppose I’d be hanging out in the common areas with the rest of them, or sneaking off into one of the unoccupied homes with the boys for sex, because that’s what they do for fun, it seems. Twosomes and threesomes with a single girl aren’t unheard of. Can’t say whether, or not, it’s consensual, since they’ve all mastered the art of corking the rumors that might taint someone’s reputation. The competition amongst the males is enough to make a girl want to go nun.
Or maybe that’s just the case with me.
I’m not like them, at all, which is why I avoid them. I don’t wear the clothes they wear, or go to their schools, or care about the trivial things they do.
I’m home-schooled, for the most part, and have read damn near every book in the local library.
As they wade through their history and Latin, I’ve been taught to survive in these harsh lands. I know how to plant a garden from seeds, and find water in the endless miles of dirt and rock.
And while they believe such lessons are frivolous in this place, I think they’re anemically prepared for the realities of life.
It takes about a half hour to reach the other side of the forest, and the tall concrete blocks of the wall surround our compound. The infamous barrier to the Deadlands that keeps out the Ragers, along with anyone else even remotely infected with the Dredge. Though Ragers aren’t often seen this far into the desert, the occasional gunshot heard at night confirms they’re out there.
The droning hum is louder here, and the distinct click click click casts a chill down my spine. It’s the chatter of their teeth when they’ve stumbled upon food. Something of a dinner bell to the others, just before they break into a feeding frenzy. I don’t know how I know it so well, I just do. In nightmares, it often precedes the moment just before a Rager pops out, and I wake in a cold sweat. Even now, the hollow roil inside my stomach tells me that horrific sound has rattled me down to my very bones.
Yet, I still need to see.
I glance around for any sign of a guard post that might be situated in the treetops. At the opposite side of the community where I live, there’s a much smaller line of sycamores that carry the fort-looking platforms, from which guards watch, all hours of the day. I’m guessing I’d have already found myself in their crosshairs if this stretch were properly guarded.
According to Papa, we have two armed branches—The Mediators, which are the men who guard the wall and solar panels, many of whom, are relatively friendly. Then there are the ones I’ve never spoken to, beyond the wall, known as The Legion.
More aggressive than our Mediators.
They seek out the Ragers, hunt them down, and keep marauders from breaching our community from the outside. If the Mediators are our defense, then Legion is offense. Sometimes they bring back survivors who somehow managed to avoid infection, but mostly, they kill. Dressed in black uniforms with facemasks, they don’t look human, at all.
They have no identity. No personality.
It’s rare to see them, as they live on the other side o
f the wall, but on occasions, when they’ve marched through, I’ve gotten enough of a glimpse to keep my distance.
I tip my chin to the sky, toward where the leaves of the sycamore looming above me reach out to the surrounding trees. The forest isn’t as dense here, and the extensive gap, filled in by bracken and forest vegetation, tells me the tree stood long before the wall was built.
Setting my foot against the bark, I hop up to a grab hold of a branch, and pull myself. Climbing is natural to me, and there are a number of rock hills within the community to test my endurance each day. A part of me feels as if I’m preparing for something, as if Papa is preparing me, the way he insists that I know as much about the landscape as possible. We even do occasional survival drills, but he has yet to take me out with him beyond the wall, into the Deadlands. He says I’m not ready yet.
Of course, I’ll never be entirely ready until I’ve gone beyond that wall.
The scent of burning meat assaults my nose, hitting the back of my throat with the urge to gag. I hoist myself onto a thick and sturdy branch to catch my breath, and turn toward the top of the wall that sits at eye-level. One more branch up, and I can see over the edge of the barrier.
Click click click draws my attention downward, and the air stalls in my lungs. I tighten my hold of the branch to keep from falling, while my heart drums against my ribs.
I’ve never seen so many up close, perhaps three, or four, dozen, pacing back and forth, twitching and jerking as they’re known to do.
Ragers.
Corralled into some sort of pen.
A ragged black object hangs from the barbs, and studying it brings forth the realization that one of them has burned to a char—perhaps the source of the smell earlier. Between the sun beating down on it, and what is obviously an electric fence with all of the warning signs, it no longer looks like it might’ve once been human.
Rough bark scrapes against my skin with my trembling.
Ragers are humans so infected with the Dredge, their brains basically look like sponges. Laymen call it a virus, but Papa says its what’s known as a prion that invades the brain.