by James Hunt
A branch rustled to Wren’s left, and the sudden commotion made her heart leap, but it was nothing but a squirrel leaping onto a tree trunk. She backed up against the fence for support, and gently massaged the wounded leg, careful not to get too close to the cut.
“What are you doing here?”
Wren jumped and screamed, covering her mouth as she backed away from the fence. She tripped over her feet and fell to the forest floor, her back scraping against the rocks that littered the ground. “Who’s there?”
The voice echoed from beyond the fence, and through the cracks between logs, she saw a body pace back and forth. Portions of eyes, a mouth, and cheeks flitted between, looking at Wren on the ground. “I saw you come in.” The man’s voice was hoarse, as if he’d screamed his whole life and now could only bark haggard words. “You’re not welcome in there.”
“The council said I could stay. Whoever you are, you can’t overthrow their decisions.” At least I don’t think you can. From what she’d experienced the previous day, she was under the impression that the council’s word was law.
“Hmph. The council.” The voice spit the words out as though they were poison on his tongue. “You tell me you trust them? Can’t trust them as far as you can throw them.”
“And who can I trust, then? You? It seems you’re on the wrong side of the fence.” Wren pushed herself off the slab of leaves and rocks and took a few careful steps toward the voice, wondering if it was this man who’d caused some of the bullets to be lodged in the wood.
“That’s where you’re wrong, woman. This forest is full of wolves. More so now than ever.”
Gunshots blared to the south, and Wren involuntarily ducked. Her adrenaline heightened, along with her heart rate. She clutched her chest and stumbled backward. Her body broke out in a cold sweat, and flashbacks of the gunfire in Chicago terrorized her mind. She squinted her eyes shut, trying to rid herself of the throbbing visions of the terrorists. Are they here? They couldn’t have followed us. Was that man one of them?
Wren rushed to the fence, her nails digging into the wood as she desperately clawed over the posts, peering through the cracks in search of the voice, but her investigations revealed nothing but daylight and trees. More gunshots thundered toward the front of the camp, and she shuddered. The kids.
Wren sprinted as fast as her legs allowed, using the perimeter to guide her back. Shouts from the camp bounced through the thick trees. When the clearing finally came into view, Wren watched people dash between houses. All of them carried weapons, and once armed, they headed in the same direction. By the time Wren made it within arm’s reach of a woman clutching her child, her mouth was so dry that she couldn’t form the words to speak. After the third try, she managed to croak out words. “What’s happening?”
“An attack on the front gate.” The woman’s voice hid the fear which her eyes betrayed. “Everyone is going to want what we have.” She turned and gave Wren a look that suggested she was a part of the attack, then returned to her cabin with her young boy, bolting the door shut behind her.
The herds of people funneled toward the front gate, and Wren followed. The sight reminded her of an old western. The community members wielded rifles and pistols, a coldness in their gaze that would kill anything that meant to harm them.
With the majority of the crowd gathered by the gate by the time Wren arrived, most of the gunfire had stopped. The guards on duty had their weapons aimed downward toward the outer portion of the fence and were shouting at whoever was on the other end of their rifles. “Turn around, and do not come back here. You’re not welcome. This is private property.”
Wren weaseled her way to the side of the crowd and discovered that she was the only person not armed, and what was more, their side of the front gate had sliding doors built into the steel. Every person stationed at one looked poised to slide it open and squeeze off a few rounds. She moved left, toward the wooden portion of the fence, and squinted through the cracks.
“What do you have?” Edric climbed to the top of the gate, and one of the guards whispered in his ear. Even from a distance, Wren could still make out the scars. He nodded then bellowed down to the unknown persons. “You have sixty seconds to remove yourself from this gate, or we will kill you.”
Wren could only see fragments of the people between the wooden posts, but she was able to make out three cars, all of them old, rusted and worn. Only the driver and passenger of the lead vehicle were outside the protection of their car. “Please, we’ve tried everywhere, but it’s all the same thing. No power, running low on food, water, and medicine.” He pointed a shaky hand to the car behind him. “We have people who are diabetic. We’ll do whatever we have to. Please, just let us in!”
More footsteps thudded toward the gate, and Wren peeled her gaze from the cracks in the fence to watch the remainder of the council march up the front gate’s steps. Iris and Ben were armed, but didn’t add their weapons to the arsenal of rifles aimed at the people below like Jan and Ted.
“Wren,” Nathan said, pulling her away from the fence. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Who are those people?” Wren slid out from Nathan’s hands and repositioned herself back at the fence. A few more had stepped out of their cars. Their faces looked familiar, and she saw a dog in the back seat of the middle vehicle.
Nathan gripped her good arm, yanking her backward. “I don’t know. But they shouldn’t be here.” He was more forceful this time, but Wren refused to leave, and she added a shove into Nathan’s soft chest in defiance.
“Like me?” The retort came out angrier than she’d intended but afforded her the distance to stay out of Nathan’s reach until he was summoned by a few of the other community members.
The driver had moved to the front of his car now, his arms spread wide. “Please, we won’t cause any trouble.”
“You already have!” It was Edric’s voice that boomed down at him as he aimed the barrel of his rifle at the intruder’s head. Nearly everyone else mimicked his actions, with the exception of Iris, Ben, and a few others on the ground.
Wren watched out of the corner of her eye as Iris pulled Edric back, a grimace on her face with every hushed word that escaped her lips, until her whispers roared above the crowd and she shoved the barrel of his weapon down. “Edric, this isn’t the way!” But before Edric could retort, Wren watched another passenger in the front car step out, holding something in his hands, and before she saw what it was, shouts broke out.
“Gun! Gun! Gun!”
Gunfire erupted in the quiet morning air, and Wren covered the back of her head with her hands, flattening herself against the dirt, but her eyes were still glued to the small spaces between the fence that offered fragmented glimpses of the carnage beyond the wall.
The front car was turned to Swiss cheese while the second tried to reverse, but the windshield shattered like ice after the first volley of bullets, and the car veered off the dirt path and crashed into a tree. The passengers in the backseat of the wrecked car fled but only made it four steps before they were dropped by a hail of lead. Each gunshot, each pained final scream, caused Wren to dig her nails deeper into the back of her skull.
Shouts and curses spread through the camp as Wren watched the dust of the third car trail into the sky as it sped down the road, bullets chasing after it, the driver recklessly taking the curves and turns at high speeds, and jumping divots to avoid the deadly gunshots.
“Help.” A bloodied hand followed the weak voice and covered the view from Wren’s position. She jolted backward, and she smacked her wounded arm on the compacted earth in the process. Moans and heavy breaths accompanied the light pawing from the dying man. And before Wren had a chance to see his face, another gunshot dropped the man’s hand. Smoke wafted from the tip of Edric’s rifle as he smiled.
Two hands pulled Wren up, and Nathan dusted some of the leaves off her back. “Are you all right?”
“Those people,” Wren said, turning back to the fence, where j
ust on the other side she knew rested a field of corpses. “Were they from the town we stopped at?”
Wren saw the heavy doubt cloud Nathan’s face as he answered. “I don’t know.”
“You!” Edric leapt the twelve feet from the top of the gate’s walkway and shook the earth upon landing. The crowd parted to make way for him as he beelined toward Wren and Nathan. “They followed you here. They came from the same town you did.” The scars along Edric’s face curved and twisted with his rage, which reached a crescendo when he aimed his rifle at Wren’s head. “You’ve been here for less than a day, and you’ve already compromised our camp!”
Nathan wedged himself between the rifle and Wren. “Edric, we didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Shut up!” Edric flung Nathan aside with one quick, easy swing of his arm. With the barrel of a gun once again close to her head, Wren felt the sudden familiarity of death creep up her spine. A crowd was gathered around them now, and judging from their expressions, most of them agreed with their head councilman.
“Edric!” Iris shoved her way through the crowd, Ben following close behind. She knocked the barrel of the rifle away, and while the woman stood at least a foot shorter than Edric, you wouldn’t have known it by the look in her eye. “You know better than to point a gun at a community member.”
Edric ground his teeth. “She’s not a member, Iris. She’s a leech that Nathan dragged in with him.”
“She is a member of this community now. We voted her in yesterday, or is that thick skull of yours suffering from memory loss?” Iris refused to let up, mocking the man in front of nearly half the community. And while her methods were blunt, they were effective. “And you know the laws of drawing a weapon on a member.”
Wren found herself staring at the spot on the fence where the man’s bloodied hand had blocked her vision. Iris’s verbal assault distracted Edric long enough for Wren to creep toward the fence. She crouched to the same spot as before and peered through the thin cracks of wood. A bloodied arm sprawled out on the ground. Both cars were smoking, their engines shut off. Bodies spilled from both wrecks, the cars riddled with bullet holes and their windows smashed. And there, just a few feet beyond the open and bullet-ridden rear passenger door of the car, was the man who the others had shouted held a gun. But as Wren looked closer at the outstretched hand of the man who’d fallen, she saw no gun, no knife, no weapon of any kind. In place of the pistol they’d believed he pulled, she saw a black phone. It was small and now speckled with the man’s own blood.
“Hey!” Edric pulled Wren from the fence and slammed her on the ground. She scurried backward, and Edric stomped after her, the rifle swinging from his arm. “I’m not done with you!”
“It wasn’t a gun!” Wren blurted the words, and Edric froze. “It was a cellphone. Go. Look for yourself.”
Murmurs spread through the crowd, and Edric’s concrete stance suddenly shifted on quaking sand. Iris stepped forward, and she and Nathan helped Wren up. “Take her inside, Nathan.”
“You can’t—”
Iris held up her hand, silencing Edric. “The laws of leading others here are clear. There will be a trial.” Iris turned to Wren, her mouth downturned. “She will give her defense, and the community will hear her words.” She turned back to Edric. “But in the meantime, I want our people cleaning up this mess. I’m sure it’s something you can handle?”
Edric’s cheeks blushed red. “I want a four-man team tracking down the escaped car. It took heavy fire, and one of the wheels was damaged. They won’t get far.” He brushed past Iris and wedged himself right between Nathan and Wren. “Whatever speech you have planned won’t save you. This is my community, and I’ll be damned if I let you be the one to bring it to its knees.” He stormed off, a cluster of the community breaking off with him, along with Councilwoman Jan. Though, just before Councilman Ted turned, Wren caught him staring at her. His gaze lingered just long enough for her to notice before he quickly joined Edric and the others.
“It’s going to be fine, Wren. You didn’t do anything. We didn’t do anything.” Nathan offered a pat on her shoulder, but Wren’s mind was far from the present moment. She drifted back to just before the gunshots erupted, back to when the man from beyond the fence told her about the wolves of the forest, and she began to believe that there might be some inside the walls already.
Chapter 5
Wren pushed her finger through the clumped dirt on the wooden floorboard as she sat against the rear wall of her “room,” which it didn’t pass for. It was no bigger than a closet and wasn’t long enough for her to lie all the way flat in width or length. The only luxury that was afforded to her was the small window that let her know if it was day or night outside. A comfort she didn’t appreciate until after the second day.
The designs in the dirt next to her were nothing more than simple drawings that her youngest, Chloe, would interpret as houses. It was all she could do to pass the time, waiting for the trial. After the events at the gate, there was a lot of talk about what to do with her and where to keep her. While she wasn’t a part of the discussion that put her here, she was betting her last dollar that she had Edric to thank for her current accommodations.
No news had been brought to her of either Doug, Zack, or her girls since her imprisonment. The only visitor she received was the guard stationed outside her door, who opened the food slot to shove in a tray of rations twice a day, which barely passed as edible. The worst part of the entire ordeal was the smell of her own waste that lingered in a bucket only a few feet away. After the first night she couldn’t hold it any longer and was forced to use the makeshift latrine. The stench filled the small space quickly and by the next day, with the sun cooking the cell, it had festered into something inhuman. While she finished her breakfast, it quickly evacuated her stomach, which only added to the foul stench.
Even now, a day later, Wren’s nose had yet to numb against the wretched waste that was so pungent it permeated the walls along with her clothes and skin. But as bad as the heat, the smell, the pain, the fatigue, the hunger, and the thirst became, she still couldn’t help but wonder about her family. Every drawing etched in the dirt under her finger brought with it a pillar of strength that she clung to, rising above the filth around her. For them.
The lock on the door ground against a key and opened, bringing a burst of sunlight and a shadowed figure that nearly took up the width of the door. “Wren.” Nathan knelt in front of her, his face scrunched as he did his best to hide the obvious disgust at the room’s stench. “Your trial is set for tomorrow.”
“The girls, Zack, are they—”
“They’re okay,” Nathan answered, covering his nose with his shirt. “But they’ve stopped giving Doug his medications for the infection.”
“What?” Wren attempted to push herself up but found that sitting down in the cramped space for the past two days had left her legs weak. “If he goes off the regimen—”
“I know.” Nathan dropped the portion of his shirt covering his face and nose and grabbed her hand, massaging it in his own. “I’m doing what I can, but there are a lot of people here that don’t trust you.”
“One is more like it.” The distaste she held for Edric was almost as potent as the room’s stench. “What am I supposed to do tomorrow? Tell them I’m sorry for something I had nothing to do with? Beg their forgiveness?” Wren shook her head. “I don’t know how you came into league with these people, Nate.”
“These people are the only reason you’re still alive right now.” Nathan took a step back, and Wren knew she’d offended him. “These people worked hard for what they have here, and with everything that’s happening, they have a right to be skeptical of anyone that tries to take it from them.” He thrust his thick finger into his chest. “I’m one of these people, Wren. I brought you here.”
“I’m sorry.” She rested her head against the back wall, her anger dissipating. “I know you’re trying to help. What are they accusing me of?”
“Treason.”
Wren couldn’t hold back the laugh. “Treason? Am I standing on some sovereign land that no one told me about? I don’t remember getting my passport stamped.”
“Wren, this isn’t a joke.”
“Then why is it so fucking funny?” Wren slapped her palm against the floor, the boards underneath offering nothing more than a dull whimper. She clawed her hand into a fist, scraping up dirt, and squeezed until her knuckles flashed white. “These people have my family.”
“Then make sure you tell them that tomorrow.” Nate brought his large paw over and engulfed her fist with his own. He gave it a gentle pat and rose, grabbing the waste bucket on the way out.
“Nate,” she called out after him, the sight of his leaving overflowing the desperate need to speak with another person. “I don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know what they’re looking for. I don’t understand these people or the world they live in.”
Nate gave a light shrug, tilting his head to the side. “They’re just people, Wren. You’ve done what you’ve had to do to keep your family safe. That’s all we’re trying to do here. It’s that simple.” He smiled, and the door shut behind him, and with it went the light that offered her warmth.
With the cell cast back into darkness save for the small window above her, Wren deflated. Done whatever I had to do. Did Nate know? How could he, when he was unconscious in the ambulance after the wreck. I left him to save my children. Left him to die. A stab of guilt knifed its way through the memory of yelling at Doug to abandon Nate as the terrorists marched down the street. She half expected him to be dead when she came back outside, but there he was, still breathing in the back of the ambulance, his face cut and scraped. But alive.
That’s the same thing Edric did at the gate. Was this how it was now? Was this how she was meant to live? Had survival ascended above morality, above laws and ethics? Or had it always been like this, just in a different form? However Wren tried to spin it, one thing became abundantly clear: whoever these people were didn’t matter. They held her children’s lives in their hands. And for better or worse, her husband’s life. The infected wound on her right thigh throbbed, and she placed a gentle hand over the cut. And my life. She would have to make them listen. She would have to make them let her stay.
