Afterland

by Masha Leyfer

  Desmond sighs. "Sure."

  "Why did I join the Rebellion, then, if it doesn't help defeat the CGB?"

  "I wouldn't know," Desmond responds quietly.

  "On second thought, why I joined is irrelevant. Why did you join, if you don't believe the Rebellion helps defeat the CGB?"

  Desmond shrugs and turns away.

  "I had nothing better to do, did I?"

  "Hmm," Kristina grumbles. "What about you, Molly? You brought this up. Do you believe in this crap?"

  "Well, I...yes, I suppose I do."

  "Why?" Desmond asks.

  "I don't have anything else to believe in. I guess I'll believe in this. Mike once told me that everyone has to choose something to believe in, because if we spend our entire lives in doubt, we'll never accomplish anything. So this is what I choose."

  "Fair enough," Desmond says after a pause.

  "Do you not believe in this?" I ask cautiously.

  "I believe in death," he responds. "Death is the one thing you can always rely on."

  I nod slowly.

  "Fair enough."

  __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

  We ride until Mike stops his snowmobile and signals the rest of us to hop off as well. We hide our snowmobiles in the woods and begin to jog towards our destination. During lunch, Mike had told us to hide in the nearest bushes and await further instruction. Half of us will go in—that's me, Nathan, Mike, and Smaller Sally—and the rest will stand guard outside at four corners of the building—Kristina, Emily, Rebekah, and Desmond.

  We run out of the forest and down a mountain. We continue jogging for half an hour through what looks like it used to be a nice suburban neighborhood. We run over cracked roads, already partially consumed by growth. A lamppost lies across the street. None of the houses are completely intact. Windows are broken, doors are ripped off their hinges. Everything looks abandoned and forgotten. The entire neighborhood exudes nothing but emptiness and the weight of a world that could have been.

  Our footsteps echo in the empty streets. I look over my shoulder uneasily. It seems that eyes are lurking in every corner. I hunch my shoulders, trying to make myself smaller, but I feel too large. too exposed. I am eager to get out of here.

  Finally, Mike gives us the signal to halt. We stop in front of a large, derelict building and disperse through the nearby bushes. Kristina, Desmond, Emily, and Rebekah take their places around the perimeter. The rest of us stay near the front. I give the building a closer look. Of everything we’ve seen in this town, this looks the most abandoned and the most dank. None of the windows remained intact. Shards of glass abundantly littering the ground are the only thing hinting that the building ever owned windows in the first place. The roof is caved in in several places and even from this distance I can smell the rot inside. The leftmost corner looks like it has been obliterated completely. Only a pile of rubble remains in its place.

  We crouch in the bushes, waiting for a signal to move and taking it all in. I find myself becoming increasingly nervous to go in. I didn’t feel safe on the streets. Now I feel directly under attack.

  After what seems like an eternity, Kristina appears from behind the building, holding out a thumbs up—the universal symbol that all is well. Mike nods at us and we stand up and go in through a small side door—or rather, what used to be a side door. Now, it is just a frame with a flickering red EXIT sign on the inside and a small pile of dusty bricks at its base.

  We file in, guns loaded and at hand. If the outside looked abandoned, the inside looks even more so. Most of the lights are shattered and shards of glass and plastic lie on the floor. The building has clearly been in hasty use recently. All of the rubble is swept to the sides and the lights that are still intact are on and humming.

  Rooms are spaced at equal intervals throughout the hallway. I glance inside one of them. Chairs and tables are overturned. Ripped paper covers the floor. Our country’s flag hangs in tatters on the wall.

  We keep walking in silence. The air is very dusty and very little light is permitted through the windows. I don’t feel safe. I grip my gun for comfort and try to stay out of the light. Nathan glances over at me. I catch his eyes and nod nervously.

  He doesn’t like this place either.

  We keep moving. Everyone is quiet. There’s something about this place that warns you not to speak. The muffled shuffling of our footsteps and the creaking of our jackets seems too loud, too out of place.

  The hallway seems to continue forever, but it finally comes to an end. We breathe out a sigh that is equal parts relief and nervous anticipation.

  I look forward. The final wall is dominated by a giant flag: a black cross on a white background. The flag of the CGB.

  We all stop, but still no one speaks. Carefully, Mike steps into the last room. We all follow suite. I grip the gun tighter. This room is dustier than the rest of the building, but at least it is illuminated by the dull sunlight clawing its way in through what’s left of the window. As we move, the dust rises and most of us find ourselves suppressing coughs. I walk over to the back wall. I run my fingers over the surface. They come off white with dust. It takes me a moment to recognize it for what it is: a chalkboard. This had once been a school. I become sick to my stomach. Of all the places that could have been used as a meeting place for destruction, why did it have to be a school?

  Mike clears his throat. The quiet sound echoes so intrusively in the empty room that all of us turn around. He takes out a bag of small cameras and hands us one each. We move out into different rooms. I place mine into a crack in the back wall of this room, near the chalkboard. It is still uncomfortably silent. The only sounds are the scuffling of our feet and Mike mouthing, quickly, quickly. After a minute, everybody crowds back around the doorframe. I catch Nathan’s glance again. He wipes his palms on his pants. He looks uneasy. He can feel it too. Disaster is in the air.

  After all four of us are back, Mike begins to mouth, Let’s-

  He is cut off by gunshots.

  All of us fall to the floor as thirteen years worth of dust and disintegrated chalk rise into the air. The bullets continue and the air right above our heads explodes with metal. I press my face to the floor and gasp in a choking mixture of fear and disbelief. A machine gun. We’re being shot at with a machine gun.

  Everyone begins coughing. The bullets keep getting lower and lower. I can feel the wind from them getting stronger and stronger. My veins clot with fear as death shoots right past my ears.

  Dear god, please don’t let them go any lower, I don’t want to die, please, please, I don’t want to die…

  Then, as suddenly as they started, the bullets stop. None of us dare to move or even breathe. We wait for what will happen next. From the murkiness, we hear a careful clicking sound—the shooter reloading.

  As one, the Rebellion begins to rise. We are driven by fear, not logic. We shoot out of the blind instinct to live. The sound of dozens of bullets fill the air. I can’t see much through the dust, but I am certain that we killed the shooter. There is no way anybody could have survived a shower like that. However, when the bullets stop, instead of the silence we expected to hear, we hear running.

  “Let’s get ‘em.” Mike’s voice responds with the first words we’ve heard in this place. Everybody breaks into a sprint, driven by the adrenaline that bubbled up inside of us as bullets flew past our ears.

  Through the dust and gloom, the shooter remains a dark figure at the end of the hall. We keep running, slowly closing the gap between us. The figure turns around to shoot, but before it can press the trigger, Emily and Rebekah run up behind it and tackle it to the ground. They grab its hands and pull it up. The rest of us point our guns at it. I find that my hands are shaking.

  This was too close a run in with death.

  I grip the gun tighter and push my fears aside to inspect the figure closer. It is a dirty, unshaven man. His hands are course and his face is scarred. I judge him to be in his late thirties, but the dirt and scars on
his face age him. He is wearing a bulletproof vest and a strange type of helmet.

  He was ready for us.

  He was prepared.

  We weren’t. We were just lucky.

  Mike approaches him.

  “Who are you, then?” The figure doesn’t answer but spits at Mike’s feet.

  “Murderers, killers, criminals,” he says. Mike’s expression turns steely and he looks the man in the eyes. The man stares straight back, matching Mike’s gaze. There is so much hatred in their eyes that I’m afraid the air between them will ignite.

  After thirty seconds, neither of them has broken contact.

  “Rebekah, you have rope?” Mike says quietly, still not breaking eye contact. Rebekah hands him a meter of rope. Mike ties the man’s arms behind his back, still staring him in the eye.

  “Wait for me here,” he says. “I’ll be back within half an hour.” He takes the man’s hands and walks out. I lower my gun and take a small step back. The five of us who are left exchange a glance and watch Mike leave. Everyone is concerned. We can all sense that Mike knows something that we don’t.

  After Mike leaves, the rest of us walk out of the building. Nobody wants to stay here. We walk out to a clump of bushes several hundred meters away from the building. Desmond and Kristina join us.

  “What happened?” Kristina asks. “All we heard was gunshots.”

  “We’re not exactly sure,” Smaller Sally says. Her voice is different than it usually is. More closed. “Somebody tried to shoot us, I think. But...but he didn’t, and to be honest, I don’t think he ever actually intended to kill us. We were in a very vulnerable position, but he aimed above our heads, did you guys notice that?”

  The rest of us nod uneasily. My mind begins to clear up a little and I realize that she’s right. The man could have killed us easily, but he didn’t. Nobody says it out loud, but we all think, We’re missing something.

  “I think he was waiting for you,” Desmond says. “Did any of you see anyone go in?” The four who were stationed outside shake their heads.

  “He was ready for us,” I say. “The vest and the helmet, did you guys see that?”

  “But what does that mean?” Rebekah says quietly. “How did he know? Why didn’t he kill you? He must want something.”

  Everybody shrugs and I feel the air grow heavier. Not knowing makes everybody nervous. Nothing about this raid—I’ve started calling it the chalkboard raid in my mind—seems right.

  I feel that all of us want to say something, but nobody wants to break the silence. The power of the school extends even over here. Besides, what would we say? What would it do?

  But the silence seems even heavier than words would and after several minutes, it grows so heavy that it is impossible to lift. Still, nobody speaks, almost as if the silence is a law of nature that can’t be challenged. I grip the gun even tighter, if that is possible. My knuckles turn white and my fingers grow stiff. I try to t

  I could have died, I think. I could have died, right now, I could have just stopped. This could have been it, this could have been it, this could have been it.

  My gun shakes in my hands and I can’t stop it. I feel repulsed holding it.

  I pulled the trigger. I sent bullets at a living human being.

  What was I thinking?

  In the heat of the moment, there was no other option. I had to save my life and the rest of our lives.

  But at the expense of another life? I remember Hopetown’s gate. Who doesn’t matter. How many does. I have never felt more insignificant than I do at this moment. I rock back and forth on my toes and try not to think about it.

  I left Hopetown for a reason. I don’t want to return to the same methods of brutal survival.

  It doesn’t matter, I think, It’s okay, but my mind changes it to you don’t matter. And it’s not okay.

  But at the same time that I am shaking from how insignificant I am, I am shaking from how much power I hold in my hands. I hold the power to take a life, to end someone. And other people hold the power to end me. That terrifies me. I don’t feel in control of my life or my power. The arbitrariness of life freezes my fingers in their place. I could die simply because I happened to be in somebody’s line of fire. I could kill someone simply because they happened to be in mine. How much do we really mean if all that dictates our life is coincidence?

  Before I can think of an answer to the question, Mike comes back out from the road. He is alone.

  “What happened to our friend there?” Emily asks.

  “He was harmless.” Mike says tensely.

  “Are you serious, Mike? He tried to shoot you down.”

  “It’s long to explain. He made a mistake. He’s against the CGB too.”

  “Yeah? How do you know he wasn’t lying?”

  “He proved it well enough. He thought we were agents of the CGB. He was waiting for us—them, I mean.”

  “And you just let him go?”

  “I wasn’t going to keep an innocent person.”

  “Yeah? Innocent?” Emily raise her eyebrows and I can tell that she is suspicious, just like the rest of us. Mike can be hard to read, but this time, there is no doubt. I can see the lie burning in his chest. I wonder if everyone else can see it too.

  “Yeah,” Mike says, ending the discussion. “Now let’s get back home before someone else tries to kill us.”

  CHAPTER 18

  We ride back in silence. Nathan volunteers to drive this time and I concede. My gun feels heavy at my hip. I wrap my arms around Nathan’s waist, happy to be squeezing something that’s alive instead of an instrument of death.

  We don’t stop on the way back, riding straight to camp. The sun sets about an hour before we make it back. We navigate by the light of the moon again. The entire ride, I feel uneasy and shaken. I breathe out a sigh of relief when we make it back to camp and the familiar warm embrace of the fire. The remaining few members of the Rebellion greets us with enthusiasm, but I can tell that they can sense our uneasiness. Before anyone can ask about it, however, Big Sal steps out.

  “Everybody get your cups before tea gets cold.”

  What a wonderful woman.

  I think she can sense the pulse and breath of the Rebellion better than any of us and she can tell that nobody would benefit from discussion of the raid. So, instead, we all pull out our cups—those who stayed at camp from their belts and bags, those who went on the raid from their tents—and Big Sal distributes tea. I accept my cup and sit next to Nathan.

  We take a sip in unison and I let the hot tea dispel the fear in my bones.

  “I think you gave me bruises,” Nathan said. “You squeezed me so tightly, I couldn’t breathe half the time.”

  “Oh my goodness, sorry!” I say. I touch his shoulder, as if trying to brush off the bruises. “Sorry, I didn’t mean too. Are you all right? Sorry.” He smiles.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m exaggerating. I don’t actually have bruises. And I don’t mind, to be honest.”

  “Oh. I was nervous,” I explain.

  “Me too,” Nathan says, his tone growing darker. “Something doesn’t seem right about this.”

  “Have you ever been mistaken like that before?” I ask quietly.

  “No, but, I don’t know how else it could have been explained. Because Smaller Sally was right. He could have killed us but he didn’t. He must have realized he was wrong and then...I don’t know. Why? Do you think Mike is lying?”

  “No,” I lie. “Have you ever been able to tell when Mike isn’t telling the truth?”

  “No,” Nathan admits. “Never have been.”

  “Oh.”

  Then Nathan can’t see what I can. Mike was lying. I’m sure of it. And I have to find out why.

  We sip the tea in silence for several more minutes. I look into the darkness inside my cup and get the empty feeling in my stomach again that I always get thinking about death.

  “Nathan, do we even have a plan? I mean, we were so unprepared. We just hoped
that everything would work out. Is that how it’s always going to be? Do we even know what comes after this?”

  “There is a plan for what comes after,” Nathan says. “Have you ever heard of the Fallen Angels?”

  “No.”

  “They’re a very powerful, very dangerous, and very secretive….I don’t want to say organization, because they’re not concrete like some of the other ones are, they’re more of a network. They have roots everywhere and they know everything. They control most of the land in the country that isn’t occupied by the CGB, and they have influence even in CGB towns. Almost a decade ago, when the Rebellion was becoming an actual group and the Fallen Angels were already the most powerful organization in the country, my mother made a deal with the Archangel Julius, who was their leader at the time. The Fallen Angels want the CGB gone, just like we do. The deal was that, in return for their protection, we would fight the CGB in a three step plan called the Tertiad. Part one is general sabotage, which is what we’re doing now. Part two is attacking the base. Part three is overthrowing the leadership of the individual towns. After that, the Fallen Angels planned to establish a new government of their own. Supposedly, we stay under their protection as long as we don’t rebel against them. They, on their part, have some pretty strict rules imposed on them about what kind of government they can run. That deal is the reason that nobody has ever bothered us.”

  “So we’re just puppets?” I ask in shock. “Everything we do is controlled by the Fallen Angels?”

  “No, it’s not like that. The three part plan was always our plan. The only real condition that wasn’t in our original plan is that we don’t rebel against them.”

  “But-”

  “You can’t have war without alliances, Molly,” Nathan says.

  “I suppose not,” I grumble.

  So I guess there is a plan.

  Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better.

  If us being shot at is part of a plan, what comes next?

  “We could have died today,” I whisper. “Both of us. All of us. Do you realize that?”