Summer liked to look at the stars that were no longer hidden by light pollution in the new crispness of the night air. It was late, but Summer found peace staring up at the infinite sky. The events of The Invasion had destroyed what used to be the ways that one found meaning through structures of careers, education, or even simply relationships. It was comforting to look up at the vastness above and imagine that maybe there had been other people in history that also felt insignificant in the world.
Summer heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Bridger approaching.
“We’re getting close to the mountains.” Summer offered after he had stood next to her for a time.
He grunted but made no further comment.
“Meet me in my tent after the others have gone to sleep.”
“Why?”
Bridger seemed to have a way of saying the unexpected.
“Just do it.”
Summer went to bed and waited until she heard the soft coos of sleeping breathe inside of her tent. She quietly stood up, making sure to not step on anyone as she got out. Bridger’s tent was about twenty feet away from hers, and she saw a light coming from inside. She crept over to it and stood outside the door.
“It’s me.” She called softly.
She saw Bridger’s frame inside, and suddenly, the flap was flung open, and he pulled her inside. His hands began to move along the curves of her body as he fiercely kissed her neck and face. Summer was shocked for a moment before she pulled away in protest.
“What are you doing?” She saw his eyes still sizing her up as she tried to look at him in the eyes.
“I want you, Summer. I can’t contain it anymore.”
He pulled her to him, but she pushed back, causing him to pause.
“You hardly know me. We’ve barely talked, and honestly, I don’t think I have the energy to start something like this. We need to focus on surviving.”
She turned to exit the tent, but Bridger’s voice stopped her.
“I’ll leave.” His voice was low, but he pronounced the words with slow precision. Summer kept her back to him but didn’t make a move to open the door.
“I’m the only one keeping you and your family alive.” Bridger continued. “Do you think that hasn’t taken a toll on me? I can take care of you, but I need something in return. You really don’t have a lot to offer at this point and, looking at it from an outside perspective, it’s really the least you could do.”
Summer turned around angrily, but Bridger was right behind her. He grabbed her face and kissed her hard, pulling her away from the door.
“I don’t want to do this.” Summer objected, though her hands no longer pushed against him as he unzipped her coat and threw it off of her.
“It’ll be easier for both of us if you don’t think about it,” Bridger replied and continued to press her body against his as he lowered them both to the ground.
Summer knew she had no other option. His words had made her weak with their threatening meaning, and she couldn’t help but think about what would happen to them if he abandoned them, or even worse, what he could do to her family if she made him mad. Her body was limp as he continued to move his hands down her stomach and legs. She closed her eyes tightly when she felt his hand pull down the zipper that started at her neck and ran down the prison’s jumper that she was wearing, as if her mind could block out what her senses could not.
Chapter 3
Summer waited until she heard the heavy breathing of Bridger’s sleeping and then fled out of his tent before the sun could show where she had been. She returned to her own tent and laid in stunned silence as her brain and her body felt equally numb. Though her eyes were shut, she felt the stirrings of her family as they awoke with the light of morning. She waited until they had all left before she got up herself, but she refused to face the confused and concerned looks of her mother and brother as she left the camp and removed herself from their sight. They were somewhere close to the Rockies at that point, and the landscape consisted of rolling hills. It was almost soothing to feel her muscles struggle against the pull of gravity as she mounted one hill and to feel the wind backing her as she descended another. The morning was turning into a beautiful day with clear skies and a vast horizon of light. There were fairy-like clouds that effortlessly moved across the blue backdrop behind them. The perfection of the day mocked her as if to say that nothing else could share in the misery inside of her.
She tripped at the beginning of the downward slope of a particularly tall hill, and she reached out to stop the fall with her arms. Gravity, however, seemed to finally seek its revenge against her resistance and she went plummeting down the hill rolling over herself until she landed on top of a patch of yellow wildflowers. She pushed herself up onto her knees and stared at the imprint that her body had left in the tall grass and now smashed flowers. She reached for her blonde hair and lightly began to run her fingers through it, searching for blades of grass and pieces of dirt that had tangled themselves in with her descent.
She looked around and found that she was in a whole meadow of flowers that were all the bright shade of yellow. This cheery imagery reminded her of something she would have seen on an idle screen of technology before The Invasion had happened and destroyed the ability of such luxuries. Yet, the sight of these delicate flowers existing together in blissful anonymity to the rest of the world made her feel something she could not define. They did not seem to tease her with their existence like the bright sky or the warm sunlight. Instead, they seemed content to let her stay there with them in whatever way suited her.
She laid back down, careful to keep in the lines of her fall’s imprint so as not to disturb any more of the sweet yellow creatures. She stayed there for a long time looking at the flowers from different angles and staring at the different parts of them from their stems to their tender petals that could be crushed or caressed by any force of nature that presented itself to the meadow.
Summer had never liked the smell of flowers, which had made for repeated jokes by the people who used to be her friends back when irony was still funny instead of bitter.
“But your name is Summer.” Her girl friend with the smart smile laughed out. “Isn’t that the season of flowers?”
She had laughed about it back then and quipped back that it was disappointing for something so beautiful to end up just smelling like pollen. Thinking back on it, Summer recalled that the disappointment had been fueled by the television shows she used to watch as a little kid when she got home from school and both her parents were still at work. The characters always smelled flowers, and in their world, they smelled as pretty as they looked. It was an unpleasant surprise to find out that was not true in the real world.
Summer remembered the first time a boy had bought her flowers. It was the night of the homecoming dance at her high school. Summer had never fit in very well and made a better friend than girlfriend during her adolescent years. Her two best friends, Lucy and Desiree, had been asked to the dance, but Summer hadn’t been asked by anyone so she found herself alone in her bedroom that night. Her mom was working another late shift, and her younger siblings had gone to a friend’s house. She wondered if any of them even knew that the dance was that night.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang, and Summer swallowed the last bite of her Hershey bar. She walked downstairs and hesitantly opened her front door. There was no one there, and, annoyed, she was about to slam the door in front of her when she noticed something sitting in between the screen door and the open space where the front door had been. She looked down and saw a bouquet of flowers. She picked them up, confused but curious, and read the card that presented one simple word on the paper.
“Trevor.” She had read.
Trevor was her best friend and was the only one at high school who she felt actually understood her. She had told him yesterday about not going to the dance. He had already asked s
omeone to the dance and must have dropped these off before he picked up his date. The bouquet that Trevor had got her was full of vibrant reds and sunset oranges, but it was the highlighted yellows that brought back the memory to her now. She had kept the flowers during the rest of her high school career, hanging them to dry so they could stay in her room. Now, looking out at the range of flowers all around her, she thought it was a strange thing that cutting flowers used to be a romantic gesture.
She remembered learning about the idea of natural selection in her biology class, where only the strongest and brightest were supposed to survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. Yet, she had been convinced that those flowers that Trevor had brought her were the most gorgeous flowers ever to have graced the soil of the Earth. But they had not survived to live on. They had been plucked and taken away from the environment where they could have spread to become a meadow, like the one she was now laying in. However, she was no longer thinking of Trevor’s flowers, but something else entirely.
The thought came to her that maybe natural selection only applied to nature that was left untouched by mankind. Mankind takes the best of nature and uses it for their own selfish purposes. The flowers that are the most remarkable are the ones that are chosen to die. Summer sat up in a rush and angrily stared at the meadow and the delicate, petite blooms all around her. She stood up and briskly walked back up the hill. Whatever happened to her, she promised herself, she was not like those flowers in the meadow.
Chapter 4
2 YEARS LATER
Summer gazed across the expanse of the winter desert searching for any clue of human life. She had grown accustomed to shunning the evidence of other humans since it usually meant meaningless waste left by those who scavenged or no longer cared. Or even worse, it could mean potential threats to steer away from. Yet, this search was different. She knew what she was looking for and her eyes shifted back and forth systematically going over areas of land, looking for a long train of travelers. The Caravan was their only hope.
When she had still been in the concentration camp, she had heard rumors of a group of people who had banded together and were hiding somewhere in the mountains. She had a hard time believing in such fairytales until one day, not soon after Summer had gotten to the camp herself, a new bunch of prisoners were crowded into the prison. Two of the women from that group were assigned to sit next to Summer and in the few minutes after their shift ended, Summer caught bits of conversation that confirmed that they were trying to reach the Caravan when they got caught.
Then, a year after Summer’s group escape from the war prison, they ran into another small posse of people. Summer was cautious of them, considering their last encounter with strangers, but Bridger was in the camp this time and it was only three couples and a few children who seemed to offer no real threat.
“We’re close to the Caravan.” One woman announced, holding a child whose head was perspiring greatly and who was obviously sick.
“How do you know?” Summer asked, feeling skeptical after hearing the same trope for so long.
“Their tracks. A group that large can’t hide from plain view forever, though they are meticulous about remaining unseen so the Invaders don’t even know that they exist.”
Though Summer still had her reservations, she followed a couple from the group as they led her to the tracks that they had seen. To her unbelief, Summer found that they were right. The tracks had been hidden expertly, yet a large path had been made that revealed the foot prints and wheel marks of a party far larger than Summer had even imagined when she had heard of the Caravan. She rushed back to their campsite where the woman was nursing her sick child.
“How many people are in the Caravan?” Summer bursted as soon as she found the woman again.
“There are hundreds of them.” The woman confirmed Summer’s estimates. “And they’re a strong group. They know how to survive. Apparently, it started out as the population from a small rural town who pooled in their resources and made a pact to protect each other, but since then many more have joined them. They train each other to be self-sufficient and not only do they have vehicles and supplies, but weapons, so if they were ever caught by any Invaders they could hold their own.”
Summer’s eyes gleamed with this information that seemed like a pot of gold in a mine that had gone dead months ago. She hurried to tell Bridger and her family what she had just learned and everyone became excited, though Bridger seemed a little resistant at the thought of other people being around. They spent the night with the strangers who had told them about the Caravan, but the next morning the group stayed behind since more of them seemed to have gotten whatever sickness the child had. Bridger led the way as Summer’s family took the path that the Caravan had left for them to follow. They traveled for several days and Summer could almost feel the proximity of the band of travelers they were chasing as their tracks became more visible, indicating that they were close. However, rain began to fall after the second day and it brought with it the first chill of autumn. Meline began to cough regularly and it didn’t take long before Bridger’s head began to perspire just like the sickened child’s forehead. Soon, everyone in their group was sick beyond belief and they set up camp so that they could rest inside their tents until the ailment had run its course. Yet, after two weeks of stagnation when everyone was nearly recovered, besides Meline, Summer went outside her tent to discover the tracks that they had followed had been wiped away with the falling rain. The path to the Caravan was lost.
That had been fifteen months ago. Summer had stopped counting the years but had meticulously tracked the months that had passed since The Invasion. She could handle thinking about time in that way, because it allowed her to plan without expectations for the future. Her imaginations of restored order or normal life had long since gone away as civilization began to erase itself from the areas all around her. Yet, now her eyes searched with the determination of cold desperation as her body remained absolutely still, so as not to give away the purpose of her searching.
“The Caravan could save us.” She thought to herself.
It was really the only plausible solution at this point. She could lead her family through any kind of terrain, Bridger had taught her how to hide from gangs that were much larger than their group, and her small axes holstered to both of her sides could be handled with skill and speed. However, Summer knew there were variables not even she could counter and needs that she could never meet. Plus, the idea of finally being free of Bridger’s control filled her with a wild kind of hope that was all she could cling to at times.
The Caravan was the answer to everything. She had heard rumors that exaggerated or denied the actual size of the expedition, but at any rate, a band of people that size was an oasis in a desert of isolation.
Summer sighed. Oases belong with atmospheres of mirages, and her brain had started to create those mirages by itself. There was nothing out there but snow and a few small winter animals that couldn’t even provide a hunter’s full meal. As she scanned the horizon, the flat stretch of land made it clear that they were alone. She stood on the highest peak south in the area, and looking down, saw her family was just packing up and getting ready to move onward.
She remembered she had one more task to do before the morning escaped her and hurried down the other side of the mountain where a small stream had not yet been frozen and was still trickling down. There were a few scraggly trees that had grown in response to the presence of water, and the stream gently sang as it glided down its course. Summer heard a different sound that was more welcome to her ears than any song of nature. The chime of a bell haphazardly sounded in the early morning air.
Summer slid down the remainder of the hill and silently but briskly walked to the place where she had set her traps the night before. Sure enough, the rope that was hung around the strongest branch of one of the trees was being razed back and forth against the white bark, ma
king the bell in the middle ring with the motion. Summer did not expect to catch any large prey in such a desolate location, but the small animal at the end of the rope surprised even her.
A fiery red and black coat covered a sleek, but abnormally skinny body, and the cries of a fox were sharp but short as it tried to free its hind leg from the tight lasso. Its bushy tail flicked back and forth in anger as it tried to jump with its remaining three legs while the caught leg was lifted in the air by the rope.
The pelt of a fox made for an extra layer of protection against the ever-increasing cold and Summer pulled out her left ax, with her eyes never leaving the animal. The fox had grown even more frantic when she had first approached, but after having to again unsuccessfully struggle with the rope that held it fast, it had become still as if accepting its fate. Cautiously, she moved closer, but the fox did not move away. Instead, it let out a whining yip as its piercing green eyes watched her movements with silent intensity.
Summer raised her ax and swiftly cut the rope off of the branch. The fox bolted to try to reach the other side of the stream, but Summer’s hand had already closed around the rope and pulled it back. The fox tripped as its back paw was jerked from its movement and when it fell the light layer of snow on the ground mixed with the bristles of its coat. It yelped and looked back at Summer with a look that could have been defined as a glare if it was human. Summer pulled from her pocket a small piece of jerky and held it up in the air so the scent could travel. The fox sniffed the air energetically and licked its mouth, revealing sharp, dagger-like teeth. Summer threw the jerky to the fox, and in a flash of speed, it had snatched it from the ground and tried to dart away again.
Sin: A Survival Romance Fiction (Her Story Trilogy Book 1) Page 3