by Hunter, Ryan
The buildings became houses and tents. Tarps stretched to provide privacy, shelter or shade. The streets opened up into narrow lanes the size of sidewalks, tents and shelters packed at the base of each permanent home … homes like T had described with pitched roofs, brick walls and chimneys.
CHAPTER 26
We collapsed in the shade of a towering building made from particle board and corrugated tin. My stomach retched, and I rolled to my knees, my back cramping with the pain of losing what little water I had left. Stomach acid followed, burning my raw throat, until I rolled to my side and pulled my knees to my chest.
T sat beside me, his breathing normal, his legs stretched out as his head lulled against the building at his back. “Deep breaths,” he said softly, his voice rhythmic—calming.
I sucked air in through my nose, the relaxation technique I’d learned in the healing center becoming useful. I pushed it out through my mouth until my lungs burned and my vision blurred.
“Deep breaths,” he said again, “not hyperventilate.”
I used what little energy I had left to slap his leg.
He chuckled.
I sat, leaned against him and pushed my legs out in front of me too, mimicking his relaxed posture. “We made it, T,” I whispered.
He rubbed my shoulder. “Yes we did.”
“Now what?”
A child squealed somewhere out of sight and two men argued behind one of the flimsy walls. “We blend in,” T said.
My head cleared. I focused on my filthy hands and broken nails … “How can we blend into anything other than dirt?”
A child rounded the corner, the street narrow where we sat, little wider than the sidewalks we’d used in Section Seven. He slowed when he spotted us but continued forward with his eyes wide, his hands at his sides.
His hair hadn’t been cut in ages and dirt smeared his cheeks, but what caught me most were his clothes: he had no shoes, no shirt and his ragged shorts hung from his skinny hips. As he reached us, he smiled.
“I’m Ben.”
His smile was contagious and I returned it. “Hi, Ben. I’m—”
“Kate,” T interrupted. “And I’m Tom.”
He scrunched his nose as he looked us over, his fingers brushing against my tangled hair. “They’ll do.”
I touched my hair, feeling twigs and dirt embedded in the mass of knots. “What will do?”
“The names.”
I shook my head. “What do you mean?”
“You could do better, but they’ll stick.”
He knew we lied about our names but it seemed common enough.
“When did you get here?” he asked.
“Today,” T said.
“Did you come for harvest share?”
T and I exchanged a glance. “What’s harvest share?”
Ben jumped as another boy sprinted around the corner screaming, “I knew I’d find you!”
Ben squealed, waved and took off toward the boy, narrowly escaping his arms as they resumed their game elsewhere in the settlement.
T stood, brushed off the back of his pants from habit and offered me a hand. I took it, teetering as I planted my feet. “Whew, lightheaded.” I clamped my fingers around his hand and waited for the feeling to pass. “What do you think harvest share is?”
T swiped a thumb over my cheekbone and said, “I don’t know, but judging from the looks of Ben, we’re going to fit right in.”
“If we lose our shoes,” I added.
He looked down at his running shoes that must have cost the Alliance a fortune and he smiled. “I’m okay with losing my shoes—later.”
Squared off homes of brick and rock sat at intervals below and between scabbed houses, the leftovers of a society the Alliance had “bettered.” The windows were gone, left open to let in the breeze or patched with sheets of plastic, blankets or cardboard.
I walked ahead a few paces and paused, turning full circle. Handcrafted tents filled the spaces between, piles of clothing, pans and scavenged boards marking entries as people hoarded their meager belongings.
“People are choosing to live like this,” I whispered to T, expecting to hear children crying, adults scowling.
He walked down the cracked asphalt ahead of me, pausing at a corner to turn. “Houses as far as I can see,” he said.
I caught up to him. “The other direction too.”
A woman sat on the ground several feet away, her hands buried in suds, a bucket of water sloshing as she washed out clothing by hand. Overhead, the rest of her clothes hung from wooden pins, water running from the threadbare fabric. She smiled, and I noticed something different in her expression than the women in Section Seven, but I couldn’t place it.
We passed the woman, and I couldn’t help but notice her hair was combed and braided, her face clean, but the expression? I scrunched my forehead together, trying to figure it out when T touched the lines in my forehead and smoothed them with his fingertip. “That will make us stick out,” he said.
I recognized the expression then—peace. I skipped a pace and turned back to stare. Had the woman really been at peace? She sat on an old crate, a dented bucket large enough to wash a single shirt between her knees. She had a pile of dirty clothes large enough to take a full day of washing, all of it tattered or torn … the few clean clothes dripped onto her feet, left spots across the ground—
Ben bolted around the corner and the woman caught him, giggling at something he said.
I turned—watched—as she lifted her soapy hands and swiped them across his cheeks. He shook the suds off and she laughed again as he sprinted away, just ahead of the second boy. “Told you that you couldn’t catch me!” Ben yelled.
The woman looked up, over her bucket, her smile lingering, and I turned away again, knowing I should be embarrassed that I’d been watching, but feeling a touch of envy instead. I took T’s hand and watched the children in the shadows with wooden cars and one-armed dolls.
“The people are happy,” T said.
“It seems like it,” I admitted, “but how?”
The road we walked now felt inches wider than the others. Fewer tents barred the pathway and piles of discarded clothing thinned away. “They’ve found their safe haven,” he whispered. “They have some semblance of freedom.”
A huge apartment building towered on the corner, some of the windows still intact. “This is what we set out to find,” I whispered.
T squeezed my hand as we passed the building and entered their ‘City Center.’ “Do you think you could be as happy here?” he asked.
The park in the center of the square was a garden—grass gone—vegetables and long dark rows of soil replacing it. The trees were not merely for shade—fruit dotted them while pickers searched among them for the ripest apples and plums and whatever else they seemed to be producing.
I stepped across a cracked white pipe, no more than an inch across. Water dribbled from the crack and ran into a puddle where three little girls dipped their toes and painted their legs with mud. Glancing back, I saw other white pipes, meandering through the streets to a few crude taps.
One of the girls waved, her fingers thick with mud that ran down her elbow and plopped in the water beside her, splattering her cut off jeans.
I waved back, in shock at how they could play in the street and laugh about it—wondering at where their parents were—why they weren’t watching their children’s every move, keeping them safe …
Could I be happy here? “I don’t know, T. It all seems so foreign.”
“Happy children are foreign to you?” he teased.
I watched the children and noticed each had their hair braided or in ponytails, secured with strips of fabric. Again, I touched my hair, working more twigs free, and I wondered if I could use some of the water from those white pipes, dip my head beneath one of those taps—“Everything is.”
T tugged on my hand and pointed back toward the park. I lifted my head to take in the playground, the old metal frames o
f the swings still intact and the swings replaced by ropes, cable, boards—whatever these people could find. A teeter-totter made of a long board had three kids piled on each side, screaming and giggling each time it clattered to the ground. But what T had wanted me to see was the line for fresh produce, the line we’d nearly run into.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
I unwound the bandage from my right hand, something I hadn’t thought about since the stitches. The skin looked shriveled and pale, the four stitches T had added dark little knots—but the gash had begun to heal enough that it needed air. I shoved the bandage in my back pocket.
“You won’t need it for food,” T said, referring to the sensor I’d gouged out in my mother’s kitchen.
“We don’t have anything to offer for the food,” I whispered, stomach cramping, well past the stage of grumbling.
We stood just behind the line, still sheltered by the shadows of the apartment building where windows filled with clothes hung to dry or curious faces as the people recognized someone new.
“People are staring,” I whispered.
T stepped out of the shadows and a young couple at the back of the line turned.
My heart crawled into my throat, pulsing so fast it cut off my voice.
The woman had blond hair, cut short enough to stick up in small spikes all over her head. Freckles dotted her nose and cheeks and her blue eyes had a spark of mischief, similar to the glimmer I caught in T’s from time to time. She wore a sleeveless sun dress that hung inches above her knees, feet bare, belly bulging.
Pregnant? Here?
I looked around the center but didn’t see any kind of hospital, much less a sanitary place to give birth.
She took my right hand, ran her fingers over the wound and asked, “How long ago did you remove it?”
Sweat trickled down my sides and the fear of discovery returned, a fear I knew I didn’t need here. I took a deep breath and focused on her pale hands against my dark and dirty ones. “I’ve lost track of time,” I admitted. “A week—but I keep ripping it out.”
“It’s almost healed now,” she smiled. “The scar will fade soon.” She lifted her hand and a tiny white line was all that remained of her sensor. Mine would never look as good as that but here, it didn’t seem to matter.
“I hope so,” I managed.
“I’m Summer,” she said.
“I’m … Kate,” I remembered.
Summer shook her head. “You look more like a June.”
“June?”
She shrugged. “I’m a warm weather kind of girl.”
Her husband wrapped his arms around her from behind, watching us over her shoulder, “You two look hungry.”
I caught my bottom lip between my teeth but nodded.
The line wound halfway around the park, and I thought of the days our rations ran low in Section Seven—when we’d waited for medicines—doctor visits and wondered why they wanted to live like this when they could have comfort while they waited. “Is it always like this?”
Summer shook her head. “It’s the first real day of harvest. Everyone’s excited.”
“But how do they know what to give you without—” my eyes darted to my hand.
“You tell them.”
“And they believe you?”
“Why would we lie?” she asked.
I remembered the skinny boy on the street and thought, because your kids are hungry.
“We all work in the gardens,” she said. “We take our turns planting, weeding, watering … we even take turns making the breads and other staples … most of us can’t cook in our homes so we have to rely on others anyway.”
I bristled at the thought of being dependent on so many but the way she spoke made me wonder if they enjoyed this.
“Is there enough—to go around?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Usually.”
They’d all given up definites for usually? But then, what had I given up? I’d given up security when I’d cut out my sensor, my mother when I’d walked out of my home … I’d nearly given up my life.
“Don’t you want to do something about it?” I asked. “About all this?” I motioned around us and her eyebrows drew together as she shook her head.
“We are doing something.”
I thought of the men in the hills planning to make a real change, and I couldn’t help but wonder why these people just sat here when they could be a part of that. “What are you doing?” I asked.
T placed his hand on my lower back, a warning to let it go but I couldn’t. I had to understand what made them want to live this way.
“We’re giving our children freedom,” she said.
The girls in the mud had stopped to watch us now, their hands in their laps while they struggled to understand. Those kids were happy. I couldn’t deny it. Summer was happy, the woman doing her wash, the people climbing those trees— “I don’t understand.”
“We make our own decisions here, June,” she said, using the name she preferred. “We work together—learn to live with one another not just by one another.
“Our children learn lessons we prepare, not some Alliance council, so we can teach them about the things that really matter—freedom, respect, self-worth, God.”
They taught their children about God? How?
“Doing without a few things is a small price to pay, wouldn’t you agree?” she asked, picking up my hand once more and tracing around my wound with the tip of one finger.
I nodded. I’d already decided I couldn’t live like the other Citizens, but when you had children to consider … “What about their checkups? What about germs, bacteria …” I knew I sounded crazy to her because she laughed before responding.
“Scare tactics, June. Kids build stronger immune systems when they can play—when they can explore.”
T’s arm wound around my waist, his hand squeezing my side as if to confirm her words. He’d played in the woods growing up and he’d survived. “But what about your baby?” I asked, quietly now, concerned. “Where will you give birth?”
“In my home,” she said, turning as the line inched forward. “We’re almost up. Do you prefer green or red apples?”
CHAPTER 27
Because the walls were thin, the population dense, silence didn’t come easily—nor did privacy. Summer had offered us a place in her tent, which she shared with another young couple, but T and I opted for sleeping in the open, under the now vacant swing set. The moon had filled out from previous nights, inching its way closer to full. It would help light the trail as we traveled in the upcoming days but it would also make us easier to see. I nudged the seat of the swing and it rocked back and forth, the ropes tied to the top whispering around the metal frame.
The sound soothed me, blending with the other soft noises of night—a woman singing lullabies, a couple giggling as their footsteps pattered toward home, a child whimpering.
Crickets took up a chorus, and I snuggled into T’s side, resting my head on his shoulder as we stared past the black metal bar above to the glittering stars.
“It makes sense,” I whispered.
“What?” he asked, hand moving to my back, making tiny circles.
“Why they choose to live like this.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Even with all they’re missing, they’re happy because they can make up their own minds about their lives.”
His hand stilled on my back before he asked. “Do you want to stay here, Brynn? They’ll take us in without question, help us blend in.”
I let the words fill my heart, mingle in my mind. Finally, I shook my head.
“I’d build you a tent in any color you wanted,” he teased.
“A pink tent won’t placate me,” I said.
“Pink?” he asked, and I knew if I looked at him his eyes would be huge, surprised—perhaps shocked.
“It’s not actually about the color. It’s about making this life last. And knowing there’s even a chance of it evolving li
ke the rest of One United would make me restless.”
“Me too,” he said. “Sooner or later this will change. The Alliance will either see it as a threat or an asset and they’ll move in to take control.”
“So the only hope is to change the way the Alliance works.”
He chuckled. “Such lofty dreams.”
“At least I have them.”
T leaned his face into the top of my head, inhaling before he rested his cheek in my hair. “I like you like this,” he whispered.
“Snuggled up beside you?”
“Clean,” he said. “You don’t stink tonight … it’s nice.”
He started laughing before I could retaliate, and I just settled closer to his side. “You don’t smell so bad yourself.”
The woman quit singing, and the couple had long since disappeared. T’s hand began moving again, but his fingers were tight, his mind elsewhere.
“Do you think they’ve come looking for us yet?” I asked.
He nodded.
“You don’t think they’ll look here, do you?”
He nuzzled his head deeper into my hair. “I’m afraid they’ll look everywhere.”
“These people are innocent. We can’t put them in harm’s way.”
T pulled me tighter to his side. “The Alliance won’t hurt them like they will us. They prefer to pretend these people don’t exist—for now.”
“What will happen when they come looking?”
“First of all, we’ll be gone.”
“Good.”
“Second, these people like the Alliance about as much as we do. They won’t be cooperative. They’ll protect us.”
“How?”
“By saying nothing.”
“We saw those guys shoot Cray in the back. They lack compassion.”
His fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt and my skin tingled, making it hard to concentrate. “You’re right, but they don’t want to stir up these settlements either. They’re not ready to take them over just yet.”
My hand moved to his abs, firm beneath my palm and his strength gave me comfort. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.