by Kyle Andrews
She told him to sleep. She promised that she would stay alert and give him plenty of warning if anyone came knocking on doors. But Collin couldn't rest. Sure, he could close his eyes. He may have even drifted off for a few minutes here and there, but his dreams were too hectic and violent to be restful. He would wake up after ten or twenty minutes, and spend the next half hour trying to start the process all over again.
Every sound in the room caused his eyes to shoot open and his hand to reach for the nearest weapon. He didn't have many options, as far as weapons went. So every time he reached, he grabbed an aluminum water bottle off of the nightstand. When it was full, it might have served him well. Now empty, it was probably too light to do any real damage.
He felt like he'd left a part of himself out on the street, running and fighting for his life. He couldn't snap himself out of it. There was no reason to believe that anyone knew where he was or that they would come looking for him. If they did, there was a crawlspace in the closet that once served as a clubhouse for Sophia's kids. He could hide in there and nobody would ever find him.
There was no reason why he shouldn't have felt at least a little bit better in that safe house, but that part of him was still running. Maybe it always would be.
Once the sun came up, Collin began pacing back and forth. He didn't leave the bedroom. He told himself that he didn't want to bother Sophia any more than he had to. The truth was that he wanted as many doors between himself and the outside world as he could possibly get.
The blinds were closed, only allowing a bit of sunshine into the room. Every few minutes, he would go to the window and look down at the street. He was expecting to see police and HAND officers gathering, planning their attack. But each time, he saw only a quiet street. Somehow, life was going on.
Sophia left him alone for most of the day. He assumed that she thought he was sleeping, and that she was kind enough to let him. He liked her. In some ways, she reminded him of his mother—aside from the fact that his mother was a loyalist and Sophia was a hardline rebel. Maybe they weren't that much alike really. Maybe it was the apartment, or the bedroom. Something about that place made him nostalgic, even if he couldn't put his finger on it.
He wanted to go home someday, to see his mother and his sister again. He always hoped that when this was all over, he would be able to, but it was beginning to seem like he would be dead long before this fight was over.
At three o'clock, there was a knock on the bedroom door. Before he had time to answer, the door opened and Sophia poked her head in. She said, “All that pacing's got to make you hungry. Get out here and eat.”
“Thank you, but I'm not hungry,” he replied, turning back to the window and looking through the blinds.
“The only way anyone's going to know you're up here is if you keep sticking your nose between those blinds,” she scolded. “Now, get your skinny ass to the table and eat something. Don't make me tell you again.”
He kinda loved her. Even when she was giving him a hard time, she sounded like the kindest woman in the world. He could imagine her in the kitchen, baking cookies and reading stories to children. Maybe in another life. In this world, baking wasn't something that normal people did. The likelihood of kind old women being given the supplies for it were nonexistent.
He followed her out of the bedroom and to the kitchen table. It was an old table, scratched and stained. The chair that he sat on wobbled back and forth.
Sophia carried a plate to the table and set it in front of him. On it, there was a cold meatloaf sandwich, with ketchup and leftover home fries. He was expecting a can of pasta at most. This was like a feast for him.
He looked to Sophia and said, “I can't take this. It's too much.”
“The meat is from a can, if that makes you feel any better,” she smiled.
“The potatoes...”
“Are from the Garden.”
Somehow, black market fruit and vegetables always seemed to taste better than anything that was issued by the government. It could have been the way they were grown, or the chemicals that weren't present. But more than anything else, they tasted like rebellion. It would have sounded silly if he ever tried to explain it to anyone else, but the day Colin took his first bite of Freedom-grown food was the first day that he truly felt free. That never wore off.
“You didn't sleep very much last night,” Sophia said, taking a seat across from Collin. She let out a sigh when her weight was finally off of her feet.
“My mind wouldn't stop. I'm sure it'll be okay soon enough.”
Collin took a mouthful of potatoes. They were fried in butter, perfectly crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. His entire mouth was tingling with that first bite.
“How's your arm?” she asked him.
“Sore, but manageable.”
“So, you can't sleep, but it's okay. And you're in pain, but it's manageable. That doesn't sound like you're in good shape to me.”
Collin smiled, “Honestly, I've been better.”
“Me too.”
He gave her a questioning look, though he didn't want to push her into discussing her own issues. He hated to be a burden. People couldn't afford to take on any extra responsibilities, and he wouldn't force Sophia to adopt his problems. As soon as she said those words, he began to plan his departure from the apartment.
Sophia leaned back in her chair and told him, “My feet are sore. My legs make this annoying popping sound every damn time I stand up. My back hurts. My eyes... I wouldn't know where to begin telling you all the issues with my eyes. I'm telling you, living a long life sounds a lot better on paper than it plays out in reality.”
Collin picked up his sandwich and told her, “You could always make an appointment to see a doctor.”
The comment made Sophia laugh, even as she winced with a fresh pain and put her hand on her neck. She said, “I'll get right on that.”
He smiled as he chewed on his sandwich. It was the lightest moment that he'd had in days, but it didn't last long. A glob of ketchup dripped from his sandwich. When Collin looked down at the red sauce that splattered across the white plate in front of him, images of the bleeding police officer in the alley crashed through his mind. He couldn't take his eyes off of it. He couldn't stop himself from remembering the smell of the air after he fired those shots, or the sound of the officers shoes twisting on the pavement. It was as though it were all happening again, and he was powerless to change any of it.
Once he managed to put the sandwich down on the plate, Collin couldn't imagine picking it up again. He felt sick. All he wanted to do was get outside to the fresh air and run.
Sophia leaned forward and put a hand on Collin's arm. She said, “Breathe through it. Just get through it.”
He tried to listen to her. He took deep breaths and fought to regain his composure. He wanted to put those memories behind him once and for all, but he couldn't. Knowing that he had killed other human beings was not something that Collin was prepared to handle. He never thought that he had it in him. He didn't want to believe that he was capable of being the type of terrorist that the news was always rambling on about whenever they reported a story about his people.
“Talk,” Sophia told him.
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“You can choose to ignore it now, but eventually this will catch up to you. Pretty soon, it won't be one issue, it'll be a hundred.”
Collin didn't respond.
“You know what they're calling you on the news? They're calling you a murderer. They're calling you every evil thing in the book,” Sophia let go of his arm and sat back in her chair. “They're talking about the cops you attacked on the highway. They're talking about the ones you killed in the alley. They're talking about the bloodbath in the subway. You're a rabid animal that needs to be put down, they say.”
Collin shifted his eyes to meet hers, terrified that they might be right. He knew that his fear was written all over his face. He wasn't sure what he was anym
ore. He wasn't sure what he was capable of. And here she was, reading off the list of his nightmares and telling him that the whole world knew every detail. He felt naked in front of the entire country. Exposed in some way that he couldn't even comprehend at the moment.
Sophia looked at him with narrowed eyes and continued, “They say you're a mastermind behind the Hate operation. You bomb buildings and target children.”
That wasn't true. He was a book runner. He was nobody, and Freedom didn't bomb anybody. They were lying.
“Forty years ago, I had my boys running around, causing all kinds of trouble. I had my husband. We were a family,” Sophia told Collin, keeping those narrow eyes on him. He could see the hatred behind them as she continued, “I was pregnant. A little girl. I was going to name her Lily, because lilies were my mother's favorite flower. The smell of those flowers always brought me back to my home, when I was very young. My first memory was of my mother, arranging a vase full of lilies and singing some old song that was playing on the radio. That was before any attacks. Before anything collapsed. Before the restructuring.”
When Sophia spoke of her mother and that memory, her eyes softened, just a little bit. For a fraction of a second, Collin could have sworn that he saw the little girl that she used to be.
Sophia went on, “I was over the moon when I found out that I was going to have a girl. My husband couldn't wipe the smile off of his face. He always wanted a daddy's girl. But then I went in for a routine exam, just to have everything checked out.”
The hatred came back to Sophia's eyes in full force. She told Collin, “They told me that my little girl was activated.”
She didn't need to explain the term. This was how the government referred to the people whose genes had been altered by the bio-weapons in the grain and water. Everyone was a carrier, but those who were activated were deformed. Their lives were painful. Their organs were overrun by tumors. They suffered brain damage. And somehow, exposure to an activated person could cause a reaction in the dormant toxins that every citizen carried. Hundreds of people could be activated before the situation could be contained.
There were horror stories, especially from those early days. They were passed around from Freedom member to Freedom member, in hand-written journals, talking about the measures taken to contain those outbreaks.
“I didn't know what was happening,” Sophia told Collin, looking him straight in the eyes, fuming with anger. “They pulled me away from my husband, into some locked-off corner of the hospital. They pumped me full of drugs and treated me like an animal, before they finally... What was that term that they used?”
Sophia looked away for a moment, trying to remember the exact phrasing. She then turned her eyes back to Collin and said, “They 'terminated the threat.'”
Collin put a hand over his mouth.
“You can imagine my surprise when I found out that there was no bio-weapon. No toxin. No activation. No deformities. Just lies,” Sophia growled that last word.
“So, I want you to hear me very clearly when I say what I'm about to say,” she told him. “The first blood shed in this war was not shed by those police officers that you shot last night. It wasn't from the victims of a horrible outbreak. The first blood shed in this war was from innocent people, like my daughter. Pawns in their little game. You are not a murderer, Collin Powers. You are a casualty. We all are. So eat your damn sandwich.”
13
It was dark outside, when Amanda came home. She barely got her jacket off before she fell into a chair and closed her eyes, putting a hand over them.
When Libby heard her mother come into the apartment, she went to check on her. Upon seeing her mother, she started walking around the room, turning off lights.
“Thanks, Lib,” Amanda said, letting her hand fall to her side, while keeping her eyes shut.
On top of everything else that her mother was going through, she sometimes got migraines. She could force herself to work through the stabbing pain in her head and distorted vision, but as soon as she got home, she was useless.
With the stress of work and of feeling as ill as she did, Amanda was suffering from far more migraines than usual. This added even more stress and perpetuated the cycle.
Soon, Amanda would curl up on her bed and fall into a deep sleep. Libby always thought of this sleep as a resetting of her mother's brain. It was nearly impossible to wake Amanda from this sleep, but when she did wake, the pain would be gone.
“Don't go to sleep yet,” Libby ordered, rushing back to the kitchen, where she started scooping canned pasta into a bowl. She hurried the food back to her mother and squatted beside Amanda, holding out the bowl. “Eat before you pass out.”
“I can't,” Amanda argued, turning away from the food.
“C'mon, Amanda. Eat.”
Amanda cringed and pulled back a little bit more, settling into the chair. Libby grabbed her mother by the shirt and pulled her forward again. She then took a forkful of the pasta and held it to her mother's mouth.
“Eat. Now,” Libby insisted. “You have an appointment tomorrow. You need strength.”
Reluctantly, Amanda opened her mouth and took the food. She then grabbed the fork and started to eat on her own.
“You don't need to do this,” Amanda told Libby.
“Who else is going to?”
Amanda looked at Libby through squinted eyes. She looked thankful and sad at the same time. Then she smiled and said, “It'll be over soon. Tomorrow. They'll take care of me.”
Libby didn't want to say what she was thinking. It would be insensitive to tell her mother that she would be glad to hand the job over to someone else. It was the state's job to take care of sick people, not her's. She was a kid. She deserved to be young for the few years she had left. She should have been at the big game, cheering for her boyfriend and celebrating afterward.
With a mouthful of food, Amanda started to cough. A few drops of sauce managed to escape her mouth and land on Libby's shirt before Amanda could get a hand over her mouth.
Once she swallowed, she said, “I'm so sorry. I just keep making things worse.”
Libby's first reaction was to agree. This was quickly followed by her realizing how stupid it was to feel upset with a woman who was growing sicker by the day. It wasn't just stupid, it was cruel.
“Don't worry about it,” she told her mother.
Amanda went back to eating her food while Libby sat on the floor, quietly waiting for her mother to finish. Her eyes were on the window, wondering what was going on in the rest of the world. Were there parties? Were there still kids having fun?
Once Amanda was finished with her dinner, she moved to the couch and was asleep within minutes. At that point, Libby probably could have invited an orchestra over to practice in their apartment and Amanda still wouldn't have woken up.
Still, she sat in darkness and kept the TV's volume low. She turned on a new family drama called Welcome to Chaos. It was about a big city doctor who was reassigned to a small town, only to discover that the citizens of that town have turned their backs on the government. They no longer took their supplements, and their children were being born deformed. They were forced to live with horrible pain, while the streets of their town devolved into a modern day wild west. It seemed interesting enough, but Libby's mind wandered through most of the show.
After the show, there were a few sitcoms, followed by the nightly news. Libby turned up the volume just a little bit when the latest information on the hunt for Collin Powers came on. The fugitive was still loose. There was a fire in one of the apartment buildings around town, which police suspected Powers set. According to some witnesses, the man seemed to have a thirst for violence. He wanted people to suffer.
Libby couldn't stop thinking about Sim. She hadn't heard from him since school let out. She didn't know how long they were going to keep him out there, patrolling the streets, looking for vandals and murderers.
He was supposed to recite the pledge at the game that nig
ht. She reminded herself of that fact, telling herself that they needed him there. He must have been taken off the streets hours earlier. But she didn't know. She didn't seem to know much of anything anymore.
As curfew came around, Libby heard footsteps coming up the stairs, just outside of her apartment. They continued past her floor and up, toward Uly's. He lived there alone now, ever since his father died. His mother and sisters lived in another building, on the other side of the city. As far as Libby knew, he didn't speak to them very often. Uly's father and Libby's father were brothers. They were close. Amanda met Libby's father when he came to visit his brother and they supposedly fell in love. They were just kids. Then the world did what it does best and families fell apart. Children grew up with only one parent, and the previous generation eventually grew up, grew tired, and died off.
Libby's eyes moved toward Amanda, wondering if she would be next. Suddenly, she felt as though she were living in a memory. Time was a rushing river and no amount of kicking or screaming would stop it from dragging her under. Everyone drowned eventually.
She pulled herself out of that thought and got to her feet. Uly was patrolling with the same group that Sim was sent out with. If he was just getting home, maybe he would know if Sim went to the game.
As she opened the door to her apartment and stepped outside, she found herself walking much more softly than usual. The closer she got to speaking with Uly, the more she remembered the paint on his pants and the questions that she had about him. Part of her expected to find him walking up the stairs with Collin Powers by his side, but she shook it off. The thought was crazy. Uly might have been a pain sometimes, but he wasn't evil.
She approached the stairs and looked upward, catching a glimpse of Uly's legs as he reached his floor and walked down the hall.
