by Amber Garr
“Still an ass,” I grumbled.
“We have to move,” David said. “We’re going over that embankment and we’re going to disappear into the trees on this side of the compound.”
We all looked toward the main building on the opposite edge where most of the fires burned and the fighting still raged. I spared a glance at the gates we’d driven through, only to find them bustling with solders. Where had they all come from?
“Stay close and stay low. Don’t fight unless you have to. Got it?” David looked pointedly at each of us, waiting for signs of agreement. Satisfied with our silent responses, he let out a long breath. “If we get separated, circle around toward the cabin. Remember that intersection about a mile back?” We all nodded. “We’ll meet there.”
I swallowed the lump of fear trying to hold me down. Shifting our positions so that we faced our destination, David counted down from three. At one, we all jumped to our feet and took off at a dead run. My mother hobbled as fast as she could, my dad giving her extra help.
“Hey! Stop!”
I turned in time to see five soldiers scramble together and take off after us. They had to run around several piles of debris, slowing them down but not deterring them. We continued up the embankment, slipping in the dirt and screaming out in frustration.
“Come on!” David yelled at us. He’d reached the top but looked frantically past us to the men gaining ground. Lunging forward, David yanked Mary up beside him, with Zach and I just a few steps behind.
My mom fell hard, face smashing into the ground, my dad barely staying on his feet. “Mom!” I yelled out.
“Go, I’m good!” she shouted back, not once stopping to nurse her wounds.
“Come on, Vee,” Zach said next to me. “They’ll be right behind us.”
I tore my gaze away from my parents in time to see that the soldiers had narrowed the gap. One of them met my stare and quickly jerked to a halt. Swinging the gun around from his shoulder, he aimed it right at my head. “Stop!”
I froze. Unable to make my body move in any direction, fear paralyzed me in a way I’d never experienced before.
“Hands up!” the soldier yelled at me.
I felt a hand tug at my shirt. “Take a few slow steps back and then run,” Zach whispered into my ear.
“You too! Hands up!” A second soldier had spotted Zach, who now also had a gun pointed at him.
“Do as they say,” David shouted, but I noticed him trying to conceal the shot gun behind his leg.
“Dad?” Zach asked, and we both looked at him for some answers.
His dad winked and let his eyes travel to the forest behind us for the briefest moment. He was up to something but I had no idea what it could be.
“All of you, stand up and raise your hands.” By now we had a row of government pawns lined up like a firing squad in front of us. And yet the freedom of the dark forest continued to fuel our resistance.
“Now!” a soldier shouted.
My mom cried, her shaking hands rising slowly in the air. I wanted to run to her side but feared that would earn me a bullet in the head. So instead I met her frightened gaze and tried to send her a silent hug.
I felt Zach push one of his knives into my back pocket before he lifted his arms. My steak knife was still firmly in my grasp, but I didn’t want the soldiers to see it.
Their steps grew more hesitant the closer they got but their aim never wavered. Would they really shoot us? We were only there because we’d wanted some water. No, we were getting water for another facility. Had Richard known what would happen to us? Did he know that our parents would be forced to enter the draft?
“Now, you don’t have to make this hard,” the first soldier was saying. “All we need you to do is come over here so we can take you to a safe place—”
“Everyone down!” A new voice from the forest behind us interrupted the soldier’s empty promises. And for whatever reason, we all listened without hesitation. I covered my head and crouched low as Zach’s arm sheltered my back like a protective cape.
A chorus of gun fire erupted from behind us and I screamed. I’d never heard so many bullets being fired at once. The crack of the ignitions sliced through my ears like knives and pounded against my skull like a hammer. I tried to cover my ears, but my body wouldn’t listen to my commands.
A group of people, people like us, burst from the forest. With weapons in their hands, they screamed like psychotic banshees. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but as they raced toward the soldiers keeping us at bay, I marveled at their bravery.
“Zach and Vivienne, come here!” David shouted at us and I turned my head to see our parents huddled together and waving us toward them. But then my attention focused on a large, muscular man standing a few feet away with a sword in his hand. And this wasn’t just any sword—it looked like something straight out of a medieval battle scene.
The man saw me watching him and cracked a smile. Missing a few teeth and covered in hair, I didn’t know if I should be frightened or amazed. Bullets whizzed by his head but he didn’t flinch until one hit him in the shoulder.
I cried out, but he just looked straight ahead to the last soldier standing. Fumbling with his gun, the young man’s eyes widened when he noticed the burly man racing toward him. In slow motion, I witnessed the scuffle unfold.
“Vee,” Zach tugged on my arm, trying to pull me away. But I was too transfixed.
The sword-wielding man lifted his weapon high over his head when he got within a few feet of the soldier. At the same time, the click of the gun coming back together and the grin on the soldier’s face made my stomach plummet. Just as the burly man started to swing, a shot rang out through the air, and his head jerked to the side. The sword met its mark, slicing into the soldier’s neck deep enough to cut into an artery. He screamed out in pain while the large man fell in silence. The giant body bounced when it hit the ground, and then slowly started to slide down the embankment next to the soldier, whose cries for help went unanswered.
I felt nothing.
“Vee!” Zach pulled me back so hard it knocked me off balance. “Let’s go.”
I noticed the knife in my hand, amazed at how inefficient it suddenly seemed. Without thinking it through, I shoved it into Zach’s face. “Take this.”
“What?” he said. “Stop, come on. We have to go. We can go with them.”
“With who?” I asked, then followed his gaze. A woman and a man were ushering my parents into the woods, a third man waiting for us to follow him.
“They’re deserters.”
“Deserters?” Nothing seemed to be absorbing into my brain right now.
“Yeah, that’s what they said. Come on,” Zach sighed with frustration. “They’re here to help us and that’s all that matters.” He yanked me up to my feet and I let him.
“Here,” I said again. “Take the knife. I’ll be right back.”
“Vee—”
But I ignored Zach’s pleas as I scrambled down the blood-stained hill toward the two men who’d just killed each other while I watched. Something inside me shut down when I saw all of the blood and brains scattered about the ground. It didn’t make me sick. It didn’t make me sad.
It only made me angry.
Bending forward, I picked up the sword. It was heavier than I thought, yet the metal seemed to mold to my hand the instant I touched it. Zach continued to yell for me, and somewhere in my subconscious mind, I knew we had to run. But the glistening metal called to me and I promised the man that I’d do him justice by this sword.
As another group of soldiers spotted us in the distance, I snapped out of it and sprinted back up the hill. Zach looked at the sword, looked at my face, and shook his head. He gestured for us to move forward and disappear into the forest in front of us. And after only a moment’s hesitation, I followed.
That damn broadsword slowed her down. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds and now V
ee had added about a quarter of her body weight at a time when she needed to run faster than she ever had before.
“Come on, Vee!” I shouted over my shoulder. The voices of the soldiers in the distance had not gotten any quieter, yet their bullets seemed to be hitting the ground much closer to our bodies than before. Vee made a noise when she tripped over a rock, and I slid in the dirt in an attempt to stop my momentum. But my left foot slipped out from under me and I crashed to the ground, landing on my hip and almost stabbing myself with my own knife.
“Well that would have been awesome,” I groaned just as Vee caught up to me.
“Come on! Get up!” she screamed in my face, attempting to pull me up. “Why are you stopping?”
“I was waiting for you!” I yelled right back.
The air cracked really close to our heads and we turned just in time to see pieces of the shattered bark flying out behind us. “Jesus, would they really kill us?” I asked.
“I don’t want to find out,” Vee said. We started running again but didn’t really have a sense of where we were going. “Where are they?” Vee finally shouted after hurdling a downed log.
“I haven’t seen them. I think they—”
A giant, gladiator of a man jumped up from behind a tree and both Vee and I screamed. He looked like one of those fake wrestlers. On steroids. That just ate another person.
“What the fuck?” I said under my breath.
But the man didn’t speak and instead shoved me to the ground and then pushed Vee down on his other side. He stepped forward without looking in our direction. The little bit of light that pushed through the thick canopy caught the reflection of something in his hands. His fingers clenched and unclenched around the object, and just as a soldier lifted his gun to fire, the man threw his knife.
I didn’t see the soldier fall, but I heard the thump on the ground. And then I heard Vee scream.
“Come on!” her dad shouted, apparently surprising her. “What are you carrying?”
“It’s my sword,” she said. Looking over at me, she reached out to beckon me forward. But then someone shouted and a giant weight smashed me into the ground.
The dirt exploded where the man had just been standing, his body protecting mine like a human shield. He smelled like soil and sweat, and now I distinctly noticed that he only wore a tank top with his cargo pants.
“Vee!” I shouted, but wondered if anyone could hear me under the massive pile of human flesh.
“Stay down,” the man said. “Her dad has her. We need to run.”
“Well, no shit,” I mumbled and I think I heard him chuckle.
“On my count,” he said. A second later, he jumped to his feet and yelled, “Now!”
Wondering how he classified that as counting, I followed as close as I could, jumping over rocks and dodging tree limbs like they were an opposing football team. I mimicked every move the giant man made, running along the same invisible path.
Up ahead and off to the side, I thought I spotted my parents. Their forms blended in and out of focus as they passed by the trees, but seeing the way my dad helped my mom confirmed that it was them. They ran behind a petite woman with bright red hair, calling out after her whenever she got too far ahead.
“This way,” my escort shouted just before jumping down over a three foot drop off. He flew through the air like he weighed absolutely nothing. I landed hard, turning my ankle but biting back the pain. It’s just like a game, I kept repeating to myself over and over. Only this wasn’t a game. Real people were getting hurt here. Real people were dying. And over what? I still didn’t even understand exactly what we were running from. Or where we were headed.
I spared a quick glance behind us, only to see four soldiers take the leap over the embankment we’d just cleared. They’d gained some ground. As I was trying to figure out how they caught up so fast, the man I’d been following grabbed my shoulder and tossed me further down the hill and into a dried up ditch. He glanced at me briefly before disappearing in the opposite direction.
“Seriously?” I grumbled. But as the soldier’s footsteps and calls to each other increased in clarity, I shoved my head down into the ground and hoped that my dark clothing helped with the camouflage.
“Which way did they go?” one shouted.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw them run over here—” His movement was cut off by a large arm jamming him across the throat. The solider gagged and coughed, rolling around on the ground like he’d just been shot. Nothing cohesive came out of his mouth.
My escort jumped forward before the next closest adversary could take a shot at him. In one swift punch, he dropped the young soldier. He never even had a chance. The third guy was in the process of aiming his gun, when the giant man kicked out to the side and knocked his rifle away. Stunned and scared, the soldier attempted to pull out his revolver strapped to his hip. But again, the deserter was faster. He grabbed the barrel of the gun and twisted it away at the same time his fist made contact with the left side of the soldier’s face. And when he didn’t go down, the deserter yanked the gun away and slammed it into the soldier’s head, knocking him out instantly.
All of this seemed to happen in slow motion, yet only seconds had passed. I saw the fourth soldier lift his gun and reacted without thinking. Jumping from my ditch, I screamed out in warning and tackled the man to the ground. His gun fired, sending a bullet high into the closest tree. We landed hard on the ground, my shoulder taking the brunt of the force as I executed a perfect tackle. Perfect for the field anyway. But my guy wasn’t giving up so easily and a moment later I felt a sharp pain in my groin. The agony raced up my stomach and quickly paralyzed my entire body. I’d been hit there before, and every single time, it hurt like fucking hell.
I rolled to my side, in too much pain to care what happened next. The soldier stood and aimed his gun at my head. “I should kill you,” he sneered. His foot made contact with my ribs and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will away the throbbing ache.
“Maybe next time,” my deserter friend said just before knocking out the last of the government minions.
Through a haze of pain, I looked up at the man who’d just saved my life like twenty times and smiled. “That is such a great action hero line.” The words made me cough and my rib cage screamed as if shards of glass shot out from the tender spot.
“You need to learn how to fight,” the man said. He offered his hand and helped me off the ground.
“I know how to fight,” I spat back. The man raised a brow and I dropped my embarrassed gaze.
“You’re trainable,” he said with a small smirk. He waited until I was standing on my own and not hunched over anymore before continuing. “Come on. We need to keep moving.”
“I’m Zach by the way.”
“Max.”
We began our descent deeper into the forest, and the sounds of gun shots, screams, and explosions started to fade into the distance. After several minutes, Max slowed us down to a fast jog. I was once again thankful for my athletic training that allowed me to keep up this rather inhuman pace.
“Who are you guys?” I asked Max’s back.
He spared a quick glance at me before turning around again and knocking tree branches out of his face. “I guess we’re called deserters,” he said.
“But what were you doing there? How did you know we’d all be in trouble?”
Max grunted something that sounded like a laugh. “We weren’t there for you,” he huffed. “See?”
He pointed off in the distance to the right. Four people jogged in front of us, carrying a weighted down blue tarp in between them. With the way they moved, I guessed that whatever was in the middle had some weight to it.
“We were on a supply run,” Max continued, and a few seconds later he stopped jogging. While he walked, I caught up to him so that I could hear his story. “But we didn’t know they’d already started the draft up here.”
“Up here?” I
asked, trying to keep up with his long strides.
“We used to raid a supply center about twenty miles south of here, but that one turned into a capture center about a month ago.”
“A capture center?” I shook my head at the term.
Max huffed. “Or a recruiting center. Whatever you want to call it. Either way, it’s the place where you go to work for the government against your will.”
I turned his words over in my head. “But I thought the draft just started?”
This time Max actually laughed. “Oh no. It’s been going on for years, but it just hasn’t reached this part of the country yet. They’ve been forcing people into the factories out west for at least two years.”
Trying to comprehend his very different take on our history, I stopped moving. “Didn’t everyone out west migrate east?”
Max nodded. “Those who didn’t get caught.” He waved me forward. “Keep moving.”
I watched the blue tarp dash around trees and bounce up and down. “What are they carrying?”
Max followed my gaze. “Water, bottles, and probably some weapons.”
“I saw the man with the sword die,” I blurted out for some reason.
Max’s shoulders tensed and he snapped his jaw back and forth. I instantly regretted the words. “Hoyt was a good man,” Max whispered. “He will be missed.”
I almost said something about Vee taking his sword, but I couldn’t get the words out. And then we heard footsteps off to the left and all coherent thoughts fled in a streak of fear.
“Max?” A redheaded woman emerged from behind a thick stand of brush and jogged over to Max. She wrapped her tiny arms around the giant man, his hands pulling her tight.
“Zach!” My mom shouted at me, stumbling over her feet and dragging my dad behind her. I ran forward and hugged them both tighter than I ever had before. “Oh, Zach. We were so worried.”
“What happened to you guys?” I asked, faced smothered against my mom’s shoulder.
“I don’t even know,” my dad said in between his panting breaths. “We just started running, but when we noticed you weren’t behind us, we tried to go back.”