by E S Richards
Looking down at him Zahyra mused over how peaceful he looked. He was still fast asleep, a miracle considering Grayson’s erratic driving since Zahyra had told him they were being followed had managed to wake up many of the other children, who were now rubbing their eyes in annoyance, not yet realising the reason why the bus had started to career out of control. Glancing out of the window again Zahyra realised there couldn’t be more than five minutes until the convoy was on top of them. It was now or never.
“Hey Ash,” Zahyra nudged her brother, “I’m sorry, but you need to wake up again.”
“What’s going on?” Asher mumbled, clearly slightly annoyed with his sister that he’d been woken up again so quickly.
“I’m really sorry bud, but listen to me,” Zahyra paused, taking in a deep breath and preparing herself for what she was going to have to tell her little brother. “We’re being followed,” she blurted out, “by advanced mutants.”
Asher’s eyes opened wider than she’d ever seen them before, instantly recognising the magnitude of what Zahyra was telling him. He sat up in his seat abruptly, jerking around against his newly acquired seat belt.
“Look, Ash, I really need you not to panic, and listen to me. I’ve got a plan.”
Asher slowly nodded, indicating for Zahyra to continue, but fear had already started to consume his face.
“In a couple of minutes, this bus is going to be stopped. What I assume are Gen 3 and 4, maybe even some 5’s are going to board the bus. When they do, we need to make sure they see us as important and valuable people. No…” Zahyra paused, “Mutants. Important and valuable mutants – okay?”
Asher nodded again, tears starting to fall from his eyes. Zahyra leant over and wiped them from his face.
“You need to be strong bud,” she said sweetly, “you’re not ten yet, so you haven’t been branded. You need to pretend that you’re angry and aggressive. A big scary mutant, okay?”
“But, I’m not…” Asher started in retort.
“I know, I know. But you have to make them think that you are, if they think you could be a Gen 3 or above, then you’ll be a lot better off.”
“What’s gunna happen to you though?”
“Don’t worry about me Ash, I’ve got a plan for me too, okay? You just need to be strong, and know that even if we get separated for a little bit, I will find you. You’re not going to be alone.”
With this Zahyra checked out of the window once more gauging the distance between her and the approaching mutants. No more than ninety seconds until they caught up she thought. Wrapping both of her arms around her little brother she pulled him in close for a hug, breathing his smell in deeply and resting her chin on top of his head. The fact that they were effectively getting raided again only a few hours after they had been forced out of their camp was unbelievable, but Zahyra couldn’t let Asher see any weakness in her now. She had to believe her plan would work, if the mutants thought her and Asher could be useful, they’d be a lot better off. It just had to work.
Staring straight ahead, now with one arm around her brother and one bracing her against the seat in front, Zahyra started a mental countdown in her head. Then all of a sudden one of the SUVs from the convoy rammed into the side of the bus, sending everyone who wasn’t strapped in or holding onto something flying out of their seats. Asher gripped onto his sister even harder, and a number of the smaller children started to cry, screaming for their parents in the dimly lit and seemingly unstable shuttle bus. At this point Zahyra let go of Asher, encouraging him to hold onto the window frame and seat in front instead and twisted around in her seat to get a better view of the convoy that was now driving parallel to their bus, on the opposite side to where Zahyra and Asher were seated.
Was Grayson going to stop? As she heard the sound of the bus engine revving she knew he was going to try and outrun the convoy. It was very determined of him, she thought, but also very, very stupid. Knowing the bus would never escape the mutants Zahyra had to go and talk some sense into the driver. He had to pull over or everything would just get so much worse for everyone else later down the line.
“Stay here,” she whispered to Asher as she started to climb out of her seat, “and remember what I told you, tough guy.”
The look on her little brother’s face was one of disbelief as Zahyra stood and started to walk to the front of the bus. However, she couldn’t have taken more than a few steps when one of the SUVs hit the side of the bus again and she was thrown to the floor.
Staggering to her feet she knew she had to get Grayson to stop right now so righted herself against one of the seats and began to walk forward once more. Taking tiny steps to try and control her balance she edged her way down the bus towards the front and was almost there when two SUVs simultaneously hit the bus, one from behind and one from the right hand side. Zahyra was thrown up into the air, her arms reaching out for something to grab onto. The bus started to tilt over to the left and with the sound of breaking glass and an immense shooting pain in both her head and her right shoulder everything suddenly went dark.
Chapter 3
When Zahyra woke, the sun was just beginning to rise in the distance. She shivered on the ground and then instantly winced in agony as a blinding pain coursed through the back of her head. Dazed and confused she looked around where she’d found herself, her brain taking a moment to remember what had happened and then suddenly, like a wave, it all returned to her.
The bus she and her younger brother Asher had been travelling on lay on its side about ten meters away, most of the windows shattered. The scene was still and vacant as a picture. Zahyra figured she must have been thrown from the bus, explaining the crumpled state in the sand where she lay. Her head and right shoulder were in unspeakable pain, causing her to think she’d either landed awkwardly, or been thrown through one of the buses windows, or both. Pushing herself up into a sitting position with her now one good arm she also realised her right shoulder was bleeding, so tore a strand of her sweater away from itself and wrapped it tightly around the gaping wound in an attempt to stop the flow of blood. Looking down she noticed drops of her blood lay drying in the sand beside her.
She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious for, but as it was just starting to get light she could guess it had been at least a couple of hours. Sitting on the cold sandy ground, it took Zahyra a few minutes for her head to stop spinning so she could begin to properly assess the situation and figure out what to do. Then, with the black specs in her eyes subsiding and her vision finally returning to full strength she realised that around the bus lay about eight other bodies, all motionless and silent.
As quickly as she could she clambered to her feet and ran over to them, thinking of course that they too had been knocked unconscious by the crash and would be starting to wake up again soon. However, as she neared the first body she sank to her knees in disbelief. It was a young girl, no more than five years old, and her throat had been slashed open leaving her to bleed out on the ground. Her long blonde hair was matted with blood and her bright blue eyes were still wide open staring directly at Zahyra. A cold, dead stare.
Zahyra wretched at the sight of the poor girl, turning away and fighting back the tears already forming in her eyes. All the while she coughed aggressively, struggling to try and hold back the bile that was rising up in her throat. The mutants had clearly killed her, but why? She was so young and hadn’t even been branded yet; this was just another example of the cold-blooded murder that Zahyra had witnessed the night before. Suspecting the worst, but knowing she had to check each body, Zahyra slowly made her way around the bus, checking everyone for the slightest sign of life.
But with every new person she saw their throat had been cut in the same way, leaving absolutely no hope for survivors. Most of the victims clothes were thick with blood, the expressions on their faces those of shock and terror. All of whom had boarded the same bus she had, with the same intention: get to the safe haven. Yet all of them had not even made it half way
(of this Zahyra was unsure, in reality having no clue how close they had come, just knowing it was not close enough).
Falling unsteadily to the ground, her legs giving way beneath her Zahyra began to openly cry. Not a sweet, feminine cry she’d often tried out to get her way when she was younger, but a real, gut-wrenching cry. She cried for all the children who had sadly lost their lives just hours ago and she cried for the life she’d had to leave behind at her camp as well. For a life that she now realised was never going to go back to normal. Zahyra could not fathom why the mutants had performed such a cruel execution on so many young girls. Then she paused, stalling her tears for a moment. Realising that in fact each of the victims lying around the bus were the girls who had been on board with her. None of the boys were anywhere to be seen, which sent a shiver down her spine and she gulped back the realisation that Asher was equally nowhere in sight. She’d lost him. Him and all the other boys – she had absolutely no idea where they’d been taken.
Devastation tore through her like a blade, filling her with more pain and anger than she’d ever experienced before. She was now completely alone and she had failed everyone. She had let Asher down: she had no idea where he was or what was happening to him. At nine years old he’d lived a very short and sheltered life, but Zahyra couldn’t even begin to imagine what sort of things he’d experience at the hands of the advanced mutants. The Gen 4’s and 5’s were known everywhere for simply being cruel, evil mutants. They often harmed just for sport, as was evident by everything Zahyra had experienced over the last twenty-four hours. Asher was only a little boy, he wasn’t strong, nor was he very brave either. He was clever, but Zahyra knew there was a difference between coming up with an idea to build a camp wall and coming up with an idea to escape a gang of aggressive, advanced mutants.
As she sniffed through the tears she prayed he’d remembered what she had told him about being strong. She prayed he’d use his intelligence to find a way out of whatever situation he was now in. But most of all she prayed she would find him. Then, taking a deep breath she vowed to do that very thing. She would find her brother.
Another realisation then struck her as she sat on the hard ground staring at the sea of death that now surrounded her. Every girl that had been on the bus with her was dead, none of them spared despite how old or what level of mutation they carried. One of the older girls Zahyra recognised from their camp, Thorn, she’d been called, and had often shared the same lessons that Zahyra herself had been taught by the elders. She was a Gen 2 mutant; one of the highest ranked in their camp and was only a year younger than Zahyra herself. She knew Thorn had planned to leave the camp when she turned sixteen, she was strong and clearly able to do so. But even she had been killed. Zahyra instantly knew then that by being thrown from the bus her life had been saved. If she’d been found alive on that bus there’s no doubt the mutants would have murdered her, so the dumb luck that she was thrown out of it, probably before any of the mutants noticed her, had entirely saved her life.
Upon accepting this sheer stroke of luck Zahyra began to shake uncontrollably. She had been so close to death this time, so close in fact she had physically stared it in the face in the form of Thorn, and the other dead girls lying around her. Last night in her camp had been more of an escape for her than a brush with death, but the events that had transpired in the early hours of the morning had truly been playing with her life. But she had survived, she thought. She had survived and she had to keep on surviving, if not for her then for her brother and mother as well. She had to survive.
Repeating this mantra to herself in her head Zahyra took a deep breath and checked the wound on her right shoulder once more, before slowly climbing back to her feet. Her head was pounding like a set of steel drums from the impact where she had smashed through the window, or hit the floor, or both, and she had to grit her teeth and hum quietly under her breath to try and avoid thinking of the pain. Her injuries were bad, but at least she was alive. At least she could do something to get Asher back.
Knowing she had to now be more resourceful than she’d ever been, Zahyra cast her mind back to the survival lessons she’d been taught in her camp. She knew how to hunt for small animals, like rabbits and young foxes, but didn’t imagine she’d see many animals like that out in the desert. She knew how to get water from cacti, so that was something at least, and she knew that was all she truly needed to survive. She also knew how to make a fire, but looking around the wasteland she was in she saw nothing that could be used as dry kindling, nor any shelter she could make a fire in. At least it rarely rained out here, she thought, so when she did finally come across some form of kindling it would be dry.
Thankfully, Zahyra also knew that daylight was the safest time to be out in the desert lands, with the mutants hunting at night and eating and sleeping through the day, using the cloak of darkness to their advantage when they sought to find and destroy less developed mutants than themselves. But even though the hours of sunlight were short, the sun would get hot, and Zahyra knew she needed to find water and anything else she could use to help herself survive for as long as possible. Trudging over to the wreckage of the bus, she started moving the broken seats aside to see what she could salvage. There had to have been some sort of supplies on board, although she deemed it likely the mutants would have taken them rather than just leave valuable things behind. Any kind of supplies had to be hard to come by in this wasteland.
After about an hour of searching the bus, Zahyra had been able to find two bottles of water and half a loaf of now stale bread, clearly given to one of the children by a parent before their departure. To her horror she had also discovered the body of Grayson, the bus driver, who appeared to have been killed during the impact of the crash. He was slumped in the footwell of the drivers seat with a nasty head injury that looked to be the cause of his demise. Another body belonging to a boy was also crushed between two seats at the back of the bus; he looked roughly about twelve or thirteen years old and Zahyra breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed his eyes were closed. The vacant stare from the first murdered girl she had found was still etched firmly into her memory. With great remorse Zahyra slid the boy out of the jacket he was wearing and tied it around her waist, knowing that any extra clothes could save her life if she couldn’t find shelter when the desert got cold at night.
Finally, as she was just about to leave the bus having scavenged all that she could find, a glint of metal caught her eye in the foot well of the drivers seat next to Grayson’s body. Peaking her curiosity and knowing that she had to check everything in case it could be of some use to her, Zahyra knelt down next to the dead bus driver and started to try and push him to the side. Using all her strength she managed to roll the heavy body over, leaving him looking even more pitiful, curled up deeper into the bottom of the bus. But thankfully, her efforts were not in vain when Zahyra realised that glint of metal was a small knife Grayson had been hiding in his boot. Withdrawing the weapon, Zahyra ripped a strip of cloth from Grayson’s t-shirt and fastened the knife around her waist next to the jacket she’d taken from the dead boy.
Now armed with all the supplies she could find – save for checking the pockets of the dead girls who lay outside the bus, something Zahyra just couldn’t bring herself to do – she was as prepared as she ever would be to begin her journey to find her brother.
The sun had now risen, so Zahyra knew she had about an hour of sunlight before it went behind the clouds that now hovered above every landscape, a prolonged aftermath from the nuclear devastation over a hundred years ago. Then there would be another couple of hours of sunlight in the afternoon before night fell. The days were extremely short now, especially during these colder months, with only about eight hours of light – and half of them being like a midday dusk, thanks to the ever-present clouds that mapped out the skyline.
Looking around the bus, the tyre tracks from the mutant convoy were still visible in the sand, which appeared to have turned around and retreated the same w
ay it had come. Zahyra knew this was the way she would have to go too, if she had any hope of finding her younger brother. Following the tracks with her eyes she saw they led back to the mountains, what she had originally believed to be the source of the dancing shadows a few hours ago. The mountains were now her destination, which Zahyra was at least grateful for, as they would provide her with shade and shelter as she got nearer to them.
The only building she could see was a ramshackle shed a number of miles away in the direction the bus had been heading, with what looked like old tanks outside it – so perhaps an old gas station from The Before Time. Realising she could see for miles in each direction Zahyra thought of this as another one of the small benefits of her situation: she would be able to see anyone coming from a way off, meaning she could make a plan for how to deal with it. Although, she then thought, it also meant that anyone else around could see her coming from a way off, and make a plan for how to deal with her. Knowing this Zahyra shuddered, but she also knew she had no choice, she was going to do this whether it was a wise decision or not, although in reality she knew it wasn’t much of a decision to make at all.
With a deep breath and one last look around the area Zahyra steeled herself and set off into the distance. She was alone and frightened of what the desert would bring, but not without a purpose. If it was the last thing she did, she would keep her promise to Asher and she would be with him again.
After an hour of walking in the blinding sun, the midday dusk was finally beginning to provide Zahyra with a little bit of shelter. She had long ago eaten the half loaf of bread she’d scavenged from the ruins of the bus, and had almost finished one of the bottles of water as well. She normally spent most of her days outside, relishing the few hours of daylight the world now got, but even she had never experienced the heat of the sun like this. Her mouth was constantly dry, her eyes stung from squinting into the distance and her feet were starting to form blisters from walking on the uneven, sandy ground. Luckily, by her estimation she was about half way to the closest mountain and could still see a rough imprint of the tyre tracks the mutant convoy had left behind. She wasn’t walking directly along the tracks however, just in case another vehicle was suddenly to appear on the same route.
