A Touch of Truth

by Bella Forrest

  After reaching the other end of the bridge and gliding out into the open, I really wished that bridge had been wider. This river, although less so than the roofs of the buildings, was still uncomfortably exposed to the sky. We were moving along swiftly but still, it would not be very difficult for hunters to spot us.

  It seemed that Orlando was sharing my thoughts as we both glanced up at a chopper circling a cluster of skyscrapers in the distance. For now, it was apparently preoccupied and there weren’t any other aircrafts around that we could spot. We had to hope that we could slip by inconspicuously, and the hunters in the chopper would remain distracted by whatever it was they were doing—or watching—over there.

  I was actually surprised by the steadiness of the raft, how it supported all of our weight. But that was the best thing I could say about it. It was wet—horribly wet. The river water washed over the logs, drenching my feet and making me feel even colder. At least we’d packed waterproof overalls, which saved us from getting completely soaked to the bone by the rain pounding down over our heads.

  The journey was also slower than I would’ve liked it to be. We got stuck occasionally, and other times the current was too strong and we had to pause by the edge for a while before continuing.

  I could not say how many miles we had traveled, but we’d made a fair bit of headway down the river by the time a second helicopter came into view—flying closer to us than the other we’d spotted. It was hovering over the buildings, several miles away, but it looked like we were in danger of it turning toward us.

  “I think it’s time to get back to the bank,” I said, eyeing it.

  Neither of the siblings were happy about the idea, but Orlando, using the long stick, navigated us to the river’s edge. I clambered onto the bank with Maura and then the two of us helped Orlando drag the raft out of the water.

  Trees lined this part of the river. We found a trunk to lean the raft against before making our way to a bus shelter on the road. We sat down beneath the covering on a plastic bench. Orlando reached into his backpack and pulled out the map which he’d kept in one of the waterproof containers. He spread it out. “Hm.” He studied it for a couple of minutes before folding it up again and replacing it. “Right. I think I know the best route to take, though I hate these parts. The closer we are to the shore, the more likely we are to run into trouble.”

  We left the bus stop. Thunder broke out overhead, and I caught a flash of lightning. It had been raining nonstop ever since we’d left Maura and Orlando’s loft, but this was the heaviest rainfall we’d experienced so far. A severe wind lashed us.

  “Augh,” Maura moaned. “I hate this weather.”

  In spite of all three of us beginning to shiver, we plowed on for several miles. We came across more Bloodless in the streets but thankfully, Orlando’s blade wheel was still holding up well, and he could deal with them on his own. After three hours, Orlando suggested that we stop for a short break.

  “I’m starving,” Maura agreed.

  I was also feeling exhausted. This damp weather, even though I was covered in plastic and wore a mask over my head, had a way of penetrating to your bones.

  Orlando seemed to already have a clear idea where we ought to stop. He wasn’t gazing around at the buildings wondering; his eyes were trained ahead. He led us directly to the end of the road and then stopped outside an old church—a church that was still beautiful even despite its disrepair. Although many of its stained-glass windows had been smashed, its thick stone walls were intact, and to my surprise, so was the heavy wooden door.

  “We’ll go in here,” Orlando said.

  He gripped the door handle and pushed it open. We stepped in cautiously and found ourselves looking around a derelict, yet hauntingly beautiful chapel. Pale orange light trickled through the tinted panes that remained intact surrounding the engraved, concave ceiling. Swaths of deep green ivy spilled in through the lower, glassless windows, and trailed down the walls to touch the dusty, stone floors. Faded rosewood benches lined the church, some upturned, others almost too perfectly in place. Pigeons fluttered in the church’s heights, soaring from one broad balcony to the other. Their flapping and soft cooing were the only sounds to stir the eerie silence.

  The air in here was chill, but at least it was mostly dry. Orlando closed the door behind us as we removed our masks. We moved slowly to one of the benches and sat down. Maura dug a hand into her backpack and withdrew a can of lentils. She cracked it open and began pouring the contents into her mouth directly—as though she were drinking a soda—since none of us had brought spoons.

  I pitied Orlando as he pulled out a can from his own bag. Being in charge of the blade wheel, he was constantly carrying around a heavy remote. Plus, he’d been the one with the strenuous task of navigating us down the river. He must have been starved, too.

  I supposed that I also ought to eat something. Although my stomach was aching, it was hard to tell whether that was from hunger or just from the sheer angst I had been in for the past… I had lost track of how many hours by now. Probably a mixture of both. I opened one of my cans and began to munch.

  Orlando was the first to finish. He placed his empty can in a plastic bag and replaced it in his backpack. Then he stood, his eyes traveling around the church. He began to wander along the aisle, toward the other end of the chapel. I glanced furtively at Maura as he left us. She was watching him.

  It felt like Maura and I had gotten off to an unnecessarily bad start and I didn’t like the undertones of tension that existed between us. But I didn’t know what I could do—if there was even anything that I could do—to solve that. Now wasn’t the time to be worrying about that though.

  I refocused on my lentils. I had only eaten half, but I was not hungry anymore. Still, wasting food would be a mortal sin in this city, so I forced myself to finish them.

  Maura had finished her food by now. She leaned back on her bench, her legs stretched out, her eyes half closed, relaxing.

  I looked around for Orlando. He now had reached the end of the church and, to my surprise, was kneeling before the altar. Orlando hadn’t exactly struck me as the religious type.

  I stood up and made my way to him, my footsteps echoing off the stone. Orlando had one hand over his heart as he knelt. I didn’t want to disturb him. I took a seat on the bench behind him and admired the painted apse.

  After five minutes or so, Orlando stirred. He rose to his feet and turned. His expression was stony, his eyes a tad glazed. He sat down next to me on the bench.

  “Are you a Christian?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Can’t consider myself one,” he replied hoarsely. He cast a glance back at Maura, who was still resting. He joined me in gazing at the altar. “I’ve never been a person of faith… At least, not until I murdered a man.” His fingers locked, and he cracked his knuckles. “It’s not something you can easily forget,” he went on, “You know? Not something you can just will to the back of your mind. No matter how much you try to tell yourself that it was self-defense, or that it was justified somehow… the guilt doesn’t go away.”

  I nodded, unsure of what to say, or whether he expected me to say anything at all. Somehow, I doubted it.

  “Hey, you guys going to come back here?” Maura called, apparently rousing from her half-slumber and interrupting her brother’s and my awkward pause.

  “Yes,” Orlando muttered, barely loud enough for her to hear.

  The two of us returned to her. She was already replacing her backpack over her shoulders. “We should probably keep moving,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Orlando agreed again thickly, before donning his own backpack.

  The sudden slamming of a door made us all jump. Our first instinct was to look behind us—to the main entrance—but there was nobody there.

  “Who are you?” A man’s voice echoed through the chapel. It came from behind us, but above us. Our eyes shot to one of the balconies. A couple was gazing down at us, a man and a woman. They had sh
ort-cropped hair, the two of them, and they were pale, just like Maura and Orlando.

  Orlando grabbed Maura’s and my hands and backed away with us toward the exit. I caught a glimpse of Maura’s hand sliding over the gun in her belt.

  “Who are you?” Orlando shot back.

  The man grabbed the woman and disappeared. Orlando and Maura exchanged glances. We were about to leave when footsteps sounded on a staircase and the couple emerged on our level. They walked toward us cautiously. I realized now how terribly thin they were—even thinner than Maura and Orlando. They had black shadows beneath their eyes, and looked on the verge of starvation.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, eyeing Maura’s gun and Orlando’s wheel of death. “This church is our shelter.”

  “And it has been ours for the past half hour,” Orlando replied. “But we’re leaving now.”

  “Do you know why we’re here?” the man asked, desperation in his tone.

  “No,” Orlando replied, drawing us closer to the door. “I don’t know why we’re here.” He gripped the handle and pulled.

  “Wait!” the woman pleaded, rushing forward and pushing the door shut. She clutched Orlando’s arm. “Please, help us. We just woke up a couple of days ago. Found ourselves in this hellhole! Our heads shaven. No food. Nothing to defend ourselves with. Please!”

  He withdrew from her, shaking her aside. “It’s every man for himself around here,” he said coldly. “You’re going to have to make your own way. Find your own food, your own weapons, just like my sister and I did. Consider yourself lucky you have each other.”

  “We can’t go out there!” the man exclaimed.

  “We’ve tried already,” the woman gasped. She looked on the verge of tears.

  I couldn’t help but feel moved by the state of these two people, even though they were total strangers. I thought about the canned food that I had in my backpack. Did I really need all that? I had felt full after just half a can of lentils. I’d had to force myself to finish the rest. I was sure that I could spare at least one tin. That would be better than nothing for them…

  I slipped my backpack off my shoulders and planted it on the floor. But as I unzipped my food compartment and dipped a hand inside, Maura and Orlando turned on me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Maura hissed.

  Orlando stooped down to me and gripped my arm, stalling it in place. His deep, dark eyes dug into mine as he uttered a single word. “Don’t.”

  I did realize that this wasn’t exactly my food to give. So it was a bit presumptuous of me to offer some to these people without asking for permission. I glanced apologetically toward the couple… in time to see the man stoop for a broken bench leg and bring it hurtling forward to strike Orlando in the back.

  “Orlando!” I screamed, instinctively lurching for him. I careened into him in time to send him flying out of the way. The two of us went crashing to the ground, myself on top of him.

  A gunshot sounded.

  “No, Maura!” Orlando bellowed, deafeningly loud in my ear. He shoved me off of him and leapt to his feet. But by the time he did, it was too late. Maura had already shot a bullet into the shoulder of the man, and as she tightened her grip on the gun, she was clearly about to end him.

  Orlando threw himself at her and gripped her wrist, forcing the gun from her hands before she could fire the final shot.

  She struggled to grab the gun back. “He would have killed you if he’d gotten the chance!” Maura yelled. “All of us, for our supplies!”

  Orlando, breathing heavily, turned to face the man who was lying on the ground. He was groaning in agony, clutching one shoulder, with his partner bending over him and sobbing.

  Orlando’s eyes returned to Maura and he replied through gritted teeth, “Not. In. Here.”

  She looked like she was going to continue arguing, but he didn’t give her the chance. He stooped to pick up his wheel and backpack again, and handed me my bag. I glanced worriedly at the injured man. Their chances of survival had looked practically nil to begin with… now, with him injured, I wondered if they’d survive the next few hours.

  But it seemed that this was life in Bloodless Chicago.

  Every man for himself.

  “Let’s go,” Orlando grunted, herding his sister and me through the door. “We’ve dishonored this place enough.”

  Grace

  “Take that as a lesson not to feed people around here,” Maura said to me as we marched on through the rain, away from the church.

  “When people get this desperate, they’re like wild animals,” Orlando explained in a low tone.

  Still feeling shaken by the ordeal, I tried to turn my thoughts to other matters. Lake Michigan. A phone. I’d had enough of all of this. I just wanted out of this nightmare. Oh, how I wished that it really was all a bad dream. My chest ached as I thought of home. The Shade. My beautiful, safe island. My family. My friends. I felt like an idiot for ever leaving… and yet I hadn’t been able to fight the urge. Once I had gotten a whiff of Lawrence and Georgina’s mystery, I’d just had to follow the trail.

  They don’t say curiosity killed the cat for no reason, I thought to myself, grinding my teeth. What a stupid, stupid cat I am.

  All of us fell silent for the next hour as we continued through the city. We passed a few more small groups of Bloodless—about three or four at a time—which weren’t too strenuous to get rid of, thanks to Orlando’s trusty wheel. I could still hear helicopters overhead, but this part of the city had more trees, and I was less concerned about being spotted from the air. Orlando kept stopping every now and then to consult the map to verify we weren’t traveling off course.

  When he estimated we had about thirty minutes left before approaching the IBSI’s fences that bordered the shore, we all stopped short. My worst fears came to pass at the end of a long boulevard.

  Tanks. IBSI tanks.

  They were positioned at the cross section of our road and the next. And there were hunters out of the vehicles—covered in armor and carrying heavy weapons. My heart was in my throat as we leapt behind a tree to hide. I prayed that none of them had spotted us… or detected us.

  Oh, no. Orlando had warned me already of the dangers.

  So far we’d had to deal with our fair share of Bloodless, but had been lucky enough to not be targeted by any gangs. But now… these guys. I would take the gangs any day over these men.

  “What do you think they are doing?” Maura breathed so quietly, I could barely hear her.

  Orlando shrugged. “This area by the shore is always more populated with IBSI members. Should hardly be a surprise to come across them now.”

  We peered out cautiously through the leaves of the low-hanging branches. We could see more from this angle, low to the ground, than when we had been standing on the sidewalk. I spotted about ten hunters gathered in the middle of the road—they were easy to recognize, because they all wore the same thing… but now I spotted one other man, too, who wasn’t dressed in uniform. He was dressed in worn, mismatched clothing, the type that Maura and Orlando sported.

  “Oh.” Orlando let out a breath. “Th-That’s Paul. Paul Stokes.”

  “Who’s Paul Stokes?” I asked in a strained whisper.

  “Are you sure?” Maura asked Orlando fearfully, bulldozing over my question.

  “Yes,” Orlando hissed. “Can’t you see?”

  Maura’s eyes narrowed, then her jaw dropped. “Oh, my God. Yes. That’s him.”

  “Who is Paul Stokes?” I urged.

  “He’s a gang leader,” Orlando whispered. “One of the worst.”

  “The worst,” Maura breathed. “His gang is the largest and most brutal of all of them.”

  “What’s he doing talking to the IBSI?” I wondered.

  “Your guess is as good as ours,” Orlando replied.

  “Whatever they’re doing,” Maura said, “we need to take a different route. I don’t feel like sitting around here much longer. Ugh.” She gestured
to our backsides, now covered in muck and rainwater from dropping down on the damp soil that lined the sidewalk.

  Orlando pointed to our right, to a crack between two buildings—an alleyway, only wide enough for one person to enter at a time. Orlando, positioning his wheel sideways, went first. Then Maura and I darted after him.

  “How are we ever going to get around them?” Maura whispered. “We don’t have a clue what we’re doing, do we? We don’t know how to even reach the fence, let alone the shore.”

  Orlando didn’t respond and neither did I, though I was sure that we were both sharing Maura’s thoughts. Reaching the end of the alleyway, Orlando looked left and right and then nodded to us, indicating that it was safe to step out.

  “I think what we need to do now is figure out where the IBSI’s posts are along the fence,” Orlando said. “Obviously, those are going to be the hardest to penetrate.” He gazed around at the buildings on this road. “We need to climb to the top of one of these buildings and get high up again. I reckon from there we’ll be able to make out the fence. I’m sure we’re close enough—”

  Orlando stopped short, his eyes falling on his sister. She had moved a few feet away from us, toward a lamp post, and was staring at it, open-mouthed. She was looking at a sign. A sign that made my skin erupt in goosebumps.

  I staggered closer to it with Orlando, gaping. Barely believing my eyes. Praying and wishing that somehow this wasn’t real. But it was.

  I was standing face-to-face with a photograph of myself, or rather, a screen capture. I was in a familiar place—in one of the hallways of the IBSI’s Chicago base—and I was frozen in a running stance, my right foot forward, my hands chained in front of me. My sweaty, panic-stricken face had been zoomed in on, my every feature clearly visible.

  Above the photograph read the bold red words:

  “WANTED.

  Contact your nearest IBSI scout with any information.