Fire Eyes

by Adam Bender

  “Has the photo gone out?” I ask him eagerly.

  He looks confused. “The photo?”

  “Of Fire Eyes. Of what I did on the roof.”

  The priest looks up at a black glass bubble on the ceiling. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I’m only halfway through my lasagna when the Guard return to my door. It’s time.

  They take me to a boxy room and have me stand on a wooden stage in the middle of a circle. There’s a film crew and a woman in a mauve business suit practicing vowel enunciations. One of the soldiers pulls down a long rope from the ceiling and tightens the noose end around my neck. He drops a black bag over my head and the world goes dark.

  The smooth and controlled voice of the reporter leaks through the canvas. “We are live in the Capitol where a graffiti scoundrel is about to be dropped for heresy and treason—”

  I suppress a laugh. Graffiti scoundrel. I like that.

  “—is named Ignatius and is responsible for desecrating many public locations with heretical graffiti. Before his capture, the nation witnessed Ignatius’s last work, the fiery symbol of the Heretics displayed on the gleaming chrome body of the....”

  The reporter doesn’t continue, and it’s pretty clear someone’s told her to shut the hell up. It’s because they don’t want her talking about my greatest success, and I can’t stop laughing. My eyes burn red fire through the death mask. The whole nation saw my work! They’re going to remember me forev—

  Continue the adventure in WE, THE WATCHED

  Hey, this is author Adam Bender! Thanks so much for reading my short story. “Fire Eyes” is set before the events of my novels WE, THE WATCHED and DIVIDED WE FALL. If you liked what you read, I encourage you to continue the dystopian adventure there!

  Please click to the next page for a sample of WE, THE WATCHED.

  1

  AWAKE

  The light is blinding. I shake off the sweat in a shiver. A million needles stab, and something is hammering and pounding away above me. I roll into the cool shadow of a towering tree.

  Stop. It’s just a nightmare. I’m still in bed; just need to open my eyes. Just get them open and this will all be over.

  My neck itches—a tick, maybe. I picture the insect’s dark head sinking into my skin, its abdomen ballooning red. I sit up fast, scratching all the way. As I gasp for air, my eyes absorb row after row of gray wood.

  I thrash about, a futile attempt to improve the reception. Nothing makes sense; all I get is static and a strengthened headache. The woodpecker hacks away.

  Oh my God—it’s not a dream. I’m in a forest.

  I close my eyes and let a warm breeze brush through my hair.

  “Think, damn it,” I breathe at last. “How did you get here?”

  My clothes are damp and feature spots of mud, but nothing is torn. Stranger still, my body aches, but my skin shows no signs of cuts or even bruising. It’s like I just up and decided to spend a night in the woods—but forgot the tent and sleeping bag. Was I drunk? I can’t remember anything about last night.

  Frantically, I search my pockets. No wallet, no keys, no cell phone… only thing in there is a crumpled-up brochure.

  “You have to be kidding me,” I groan, tossing it on the grass.

  Unless…

  I snap up the ball of paper, carefully unfurl it. Emblazoned across the top are miracle words: National Park Visitor’s Map. Better, someone’s drawn two circles with a marker—one around the end marker of a trail and the other around a station labeled MONORAIL. I must have used the map to get here. But why?

  Sitting isn’t doing me any good, and the headache’s starting to subside, anyway. I’m sure things will come together as soon as I get home—if I can find it.

  Shut up, you couldn’t have honestly forgotten—

  No, I didn’t forget. I couldn’t have. I’m just disoriented still. This is what happens when you sleep outside on the grass all night. I don’t know what hallucinogen I did last night before coming here, but I’m never doing it again.

  Okay, so where’s the trail?

  I stare into the wilderness. Could I actually have taken a trail to get here? Was I too wasted to remember anything, but sober enough to stick to a path?

  Wait. Is that—?

  The tree on the other end of the clearing—something’s scratched into its trunk. I stagger to my feet and limp the rest of the way. My socks squish.

  Graffiti—some idiot decided to take a pocketknife and carve the numeral 7. The whole thing is senseless and illogical, but it confirms civilization is nearby. I squint into the vegetation and pan slowly, left to right. My eyes land on a path—overgrown with weeds, but a path nonetheless.

  ●

  The density of green is overwhelming. And the birds—the damn birds are everywhere, all singing for mates. Too bad I’m not here on a hiking trip.

  What the hell is wrong with me? I’m lost in the woods, don’t have the slightest idea why, and what do I do? Make jokes! Make stupid jokes! If I’d just focus, I might be out of this mess already.

  ●

  A new sound: trickling water. I dash for the source and almost run right through a stream. Splashing and guzzling ensues.

  The ripples fade. I don’t recognize the youthful eyes staring back at me, but a touch confirms the gaping mouth and patchy beard are my own.

  The bushes on the other side of the stream rustle and snap, and two large deer tiptoe out into the open. They stare at me, bodies frozen stiff. I take one more hit of the cool liquid and rise to my feet. “Enjoy,” I say with a wave toward the water. The doe, apparently alarmed by my suggestion, turns around and bolts back into the shrubbery. The buck continues to stare.

  I force a grin. He runs after her.

  Oh God—now I’m talking to animals. If I don’t find humans soon I’m probably going to end up completely insane. But all I can see is the green and all I can hear are the birds. Who’s to say I actually woke up in the place circled on the map? I could be anywhere. Is this really even a trail?

  Shut up. Keep going. Follow the trail.

  ●

  Winged insects hiss in my ear and bite my arms and face, apparently attracted to my sweat and extreme body odor. The further into the vegetation I push, the more the bugs seem to attack, the more they foil my pitiable attempts to distract myself from the present.

  This is insane. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know how I got here... I don’t even recognize my own face!

  I can’t afford to rest, though. I have to keep going until I find somewhere I can get help and sort things out. I’ll be okay if I just keep moving.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have got going so fast—should’ve looked around where I woke a few minutes more. I might have found some answers right there. God, why didn’t I think of that? Maybe I should turn back.

  No, right now, all that’s important is survival. I should probably call it a miracle I woke up at all. I might have been on the brink of death. And if that’s true, I’m not going to waste a second chance at life scrounging around for hints to my past. That’s like—I don’t know—selfish or something. Screw that.

  This is way too much like a dream. Why can’t I just open my eyes?

  ●

  My eyes lift to the horizon and swerve nearly 90 degrees with the path. It turns away from a strange blue patch of light—a surreal end of the forest. Curious, I drift off the beaten trail and through the thin layer of trees.

  The cliff drops more feet than I have time to estimate, but below and far beyond is a shore-side metropolis. The skyscrapers and white-speckled ocean are as familiar as déjà vu, but I can’t attach a name to the picture. My eyes ride an ivory-toned structure from the city edge back to a large, tin-roofed building about a mile below.

  The monorail station. The map was right.

  ●

  I return to the trail, trot along it with renewed energy. The path slopes down the mountainside. I glance up at the su
n to get an idea of the time, but dark clouds have invaded the sky.

  My mind replays the awakening, the futile scan for meaning. I scream wildly. A bird returns the cry.

  Calm down, damn it. Take things one step at a time. Just make it to the city and the haze will clear. You’re hungry and aching—of course you can’t think straight. Of course you can’t—

  My surroundings snap me back into the present like a well-timed slap to the face. The path has opened up into a field—no, a cemetery. Cold fog seethes around the graves and down my spine. The stones all have the same stark contour, but they’ve chipped individually with age. A granite soldier watches over them, a menacing hawk perched on one outstretched arm. Below his boots are words: These soldiers gave their lives for Unity. They will be remembered for Heroism in a time of Great Civil Strife.

  I glance upwards, freeze under the hawk’s icy stare.

  The train station can’t be far. This is a graveyard; there’s got to be at least a parking lot nearby. If I can find that, I can find the train.

  I pick a random direction and move on. Every advance through the white curtain reveals another hundred tombstones, and the taste of stale death comes with each breath. It’s irritatingly quiet—even the birds have shut up. I need to get out of here.

  I’m running. My ankle screams, the world blurs, and I’m face-first in the dirt, caught in death’s shadow. Something cold licks my neck—my eyes bolt skyward and watch several hundred liquid daggers scream into my face. I scramble to my feet and sprint through another marble row.

  The storm grows torrential, and the rain’s static drone amplifies my lungs’ wheezing. My legs give out just as I reach a crumbling flight of stairs and a war-torn chapel—shelter. I keel over and spit thick yellow mucus into the grass.

  ●

  The chapel’s rotten doors are two times my height and at least ten times my age. I push hard and tumble through. The fall sets fire to my arms and legs, pierces them with jagged shards of red and yellow. The windows blew out long ago—all the color’s dropped to the rock floor. I clench my teeth and tug at the glass.

  The old church smells of mildew and I can see why: without glass, the rain comes through the windows in buckets. I lumber down an aisle that zigzags between twenty-or-so off-kilter pews, and find a seat somewhere the middle that’s as far from the water as I can get.

  God—what happened to this place?

  I pull out the map and trace my path to the cemetery with a spare finger. The monorail isn’t far. As I figured, there’s a parking lot nearby, and the train station looks like a quick jaunt from there.

  The glossy paper reflects a blinding lightning flash into my eyes. Stupid storm. Why did this have to happen now? Dramatic effect?

  Suddenly, my right sock is wet and sticky.

  Oh, my ankle’s bleeding. Great. Must have cut it when I fell down. Probably aren’t any tissues in here.

  I bend over, use my hand to press my pant leg against the wound. Hope this helps.

  It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

  I tug at the map and scan it for any additional information about my whereabouts. But there’s nothing—just a big forest called National Park.

  My stomach rumbles. When was the last time I ate? The pain seems to intensify the more I focus on it, and the more I ache, the more attention I seem to allow. I can feel acid in the back of my throat, demanding.

  “You know what?” I say aloud for whatever reason. The train station is probably sheltered, too. There’s no point wasting more time here. Anyway, I’m already wet and gross. I’ll get myself cleaned up when I make it to the city.

  A peculiar quiet takes hold of the church the second I stand up. I glance up at the window. The storm is over—or at least slowing down for the time being.

  “Please, don’t start up again,” I pray as I reach the stairs back into the graveyard. There’s still a sprinkle, but it’s a vast improvement from five minutes ago.

  My ankle burns with every step, but I grit my teeth and limp through the graves like a zombie. Several hundred tombstones later, I find more cracked marble steps. They descend into a parking lot.

  ●

  I scratch at a red mosquito bite. Too bad I didn’t wake up next to a can of repellant.

  The lot is empty, but a large yellow sign with the word MONORAIL and an arrow gives me direction. One marker leads to another. This one’s vandalized with the word SUCKS, sprayed in red over a crossed-out RAIL. Once I get over the cleverness of it all, I continue on through a giant, grass-covered metal pipe. I plod into the dark and dank passageway; it twists a few times before finally opening into light.

  The monorail station stabs through the pastoral beauty of the land. Only the unkempt ivy twisting over its dark metal surface keep the structure rooted in the forest. Jet black stairs climb from the earth into the blue sky just beyond, but their entrance is gated and watched by a blank-faced man standing erect in navy blue uniform.

  “Good afternoon,” he greets. “Put your arms in the air.”

  I follow his advice and he starts patting down my shirt.

  “You don’t look well. Why are your clothes torn?”

  “I tripped, fell through some bushes.”

  “You’re early. The train won’t be here for another two hours.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  He stares me cold in the eyes, calculating. Then with a quick turn he pulls open the gate.

  The steps clank under my feet and the wind whistles loud in my ears. A whirring camera attached to the overhang meets me at the top and then swivels away. The station is as empty as the parking lot. The only sign of life comes from some stenciled graffiti on the wall, an eerily realistic jet black silhouette of a man with fiery red eyes.

  I slump against the wall and gaze vacantly at a tight entanglement of trees just beyond the tracks. I’m awake.

  Get the novel free!

  Break through the government propaganda and avoid surveillance cameras in WE, THE WATCHED. Told from the unique first-person perspective of an amnesiac, this acclaimed dystopian novel places the reader in the shoes of Seven as he struggles to go unnoticed in a surveillance society and discover his true identity.

  Seven enters a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution. Seven’s amnesia gives him a blank-slate perspective that helps him see through the propaganda, and he soon gets involved with a group of rebels called the Underground. But this same perceptive power could get him into a lot of trouble with the government police force known as the Guard.

  The debut novel by Adam Bender exposes a current political issue in an exciting science fiction adventure, carrying on the tradition of dystopian classics 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, as well as more recent blockbuster novels like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

  Also by Adam Bender

  DIVIDED WE FALL

  The war has come home. The mission has failed. Agent Eve Parker just wants Jon back.

  Eve must arrest her fiancé after he loses his memory and becomes a revolutionary named Seven in a fight against the government. However, when she learns more about the President's plan to broaden citizen surveillance, she begins to question just who is right.

  Seven runs, but in his flight realizes he still has feelings for Eve despite his amnesia. Unable to escape his past, Seven determines that he must come to terms with the man he was if he ever wishes to win freedom.

  Divided We Fall, a sequel to We, The Watched, takes place in a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution.

  About the Author

  Adam Bender is an award-winning journalist and author of speculative fiction that explores
modern-day fears with a balance of action and romance.

  Adam has written two dystopian sci-fi novels about government surveillance: WE, THE WATCHED and DIVIDED WE FALL. He will soon release an epic new western about gun issues, THE WANDERER AND THE NEW WEST. In addition, Adam has adapted We, The Watched into a screenplay.

  As a journalist, Adam has reported extensively on technology and the international debate between personal privacy and national security. He was a senior journalist for Computerworld, Techworld and CIO in Sydney, Australia, and covered US politics on Capitol Hill for the esteemed Washington trade journal, Communications Daily. Adam has won awards for his articles from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Specialized Information Publishers Association.

  Despite how this all might appear, Adam is generally a rather modest and amiable fellow. Please subscribe to Adam’s newsletter for updates on his creative writings.