by Amber Stuart
The sunlight shone brilliantly in Chal’s face, and she held her hand up to block it out. The buzzing was coming from miles away, but Chal recognized the plane’s motor for what it was immediately.
Where Chal had lived in Catalonia there had been a perpetual state of tension, with mortar fire raining down upon the roofs from the northern edge of the nation. Rogue French militia had taken it upon themselves to retake Catalonia by whatever means they could. Catalonia’s response was mostly diplomatic, and mostly ignored. France was one of the only other non-Digital states in that Eurasian district, and they had much more of an army than the newly incorporated Catalan nation-state.
The buzzing continued to grow, and Chal felt the blood drain from her face. Her skin was like ice even in the hot desert sun. The pinpoint of dark on the horizon was so faint that she could hardly see it. She closed her eyes. No. No. This wasn’t happening.
Not again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She had been playing in the bedroom with her sister when the sirens sounded.
Her sister was younger than her by half, for she was a proud four years old and her sister just two. They were playing at paper dolls, she remembered. The girl’s face had nearly faded away from young fingers touching the colors, and the tiny tabs for all of the dresses were either torn or so bent that the outfits seemed to hang on by some kind of magic, or will. Marie’s fingers were still too infant to grasp the dolls without tearing them, but Chal would hold the dolls in front of her sister, dancing them in the air. There was a low buzzing in the air, but Chal did not notice it until she held up a doll in front of Marie and saw a hundred black birds flying from far away in the sky.
Birds? Birds didn’t buzz.
Her vision shifted from the doll to the window and beyond, and then Chal realized that the birds were not birds.
The air raid signal sounded.
Its howling twisted nasally up until it resounded through the room at a high pitch. Chal could hear it echoing through the narrow streets, the sound bouncing off of the plastered walls across the city.
The planes were growing bigger already in Chal’s vision. She stood and took two steps toward the window, walking right past her sister. Pure curiosity had seized her. She would come to know the feeling well over the next few years, but this was the first time she felt it and it seized her with a terrible purpose. It was a blinding curiosity that stormed through her, leaving her vision focused on the sole thing she cared about at that instant. This was the budding of her intellectual career, the very tiniest sliver of that emotion which would come to dominate her life. This was the instant Chal let her curiosity reign over her whole being, regardless of consequence.
It was perhaps the instant she most regretted.
***
“We have to hide,” Alan said. The buzzing in the distance was unmistakable now.
Chal froze, paralyzed. It couldn’t be happening to her again. The terrible sense of dread rose up in her heart. Now that the buzzing noise was in her ears, it was all she could do not to panic. She felt like running, making a mad dash for it. But where would she run? Her eyes darted around.
There was only low brush, a handful of scattered rocks and boulders. Nothing that she could run toward. The dunes would have been worse, but here she felt the agonizing indecision more acutely, for she could see farther in every direction and see there was—nothing. Tumbleweed and playa. It was hopeless. Chal’s breathing grew shallow, and she noticed her body’s response to the surge of adrenaline—tension, fear, a burst of energy that impelled her to action.
And no action that would save her. No action that would save Alan.
***
Chal felt rather than heard the lumpen apartment’s door slam open and before she knew what was going on her heart began to pound.
“CHAL!” Her mother’s voice sounded from the hall. Chal opened her mouth but found that she could not speak, not even to cry out. The most basic word, the first word she had learned—mama—was nowhere to be found in her brain.
No matter. Her mother was in the doorway. Wind blew through the room. The front door, always kept carefully closed because of the draft, had been left wide open, and the paper dolls blew across the floor. Chal sank to her knees, placing her hands on the floor as though she could hold the world together from falling apart.
One doll blew straight under the bed, where Chal saw that Marie had crawled to hide. She was all the way in the back, her hair matted to her face with tears.
Marie was crying, and Chal was confused—had she always been crying? When had she started? Then Chal realized that it was the sirens that had drowned it out. Her sister’s cries matched the siren almost exactly in a higher register, and the two howls rose and wound together in the room so that Chal felt like her ears were being pierced from the inside.
Her mother screamed at her to run, run to the kitchen. Her face was white with fear. Chal had always imagined her mom as a perfectly omnipotent being, able to protect them from any danger, and the expression on her face now was so horrific that Chal felt the tears come to her eyes too, as if her mom were yelling because of something she had done and not because of the black birds that were no longer birds but planes in the sky.
***
“Come on!” Alan’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts. He had grabbed her arm and was pulling her toward a cluster of boulders that lay a couple hundred yards away.
“It’s no use,” Chal said. “We can’t hide.”
“We have to try,” Alan said. She saw the fear in his eyes, but above that there was a calm confidence.
“They’ve already seen us,” Chal said, her eyes glued to the horizon. The plane was just a speck in the sky, but she knew the kinds of technology they had.
Alan peered at the plane.
“No. Look at the way it’s moving,” Alan said. “That’s TFR.” Chal looked up as they continued to make their way toward the boulders. The speck was moving slightly up and down on the horizon. The buzzing was growing louder.
“What does that mean? TFR?” she asked.
“Terrain-following radar,” Alan said. He was already moving toward the denser part of the chaparral plain, breaking off branches. “It works by sending the signal toward the ground instead of forward, so that the plane can track the terrain and hug it closely. It’s to avoid detection.”
“And they don’t want to be seen,” Chal said. The territory close to the Mexican border was volatile, and a rogue aircraft could set off a frenzy of diplomatic threats.
“Won’t they see us with the radar?” Chal asked. She was tense as a jackrabbit who had just heard a loud noise, ready to leap out in any direction.
“It’s unlikely that they are using a phased array,” Alan said. “Not too many planes have those installed.”
“How do you know this?” Chal asked. They were at the boulders.
Alan shrugged. “I don’t know what I know,” he said. “Hell, they might have implanted false information and I wouldn’t have a damned clue, though I don’t know why they would have. But I know that it’s got to be a single radar.” He threw the branches in a heap and went for more.
“Why?” Chal asked.
“Because otherwise they’ll catch us,” Alan said, a wry expression painted on his face.
***
“Marie! Marie!” Her mom had heard Chal’s little sister crying under the bed, had zeroed in on the noise of a crying child in that supernatural sense that all mothers seemed to have. Even with the sirens blaring.
Chal was in the doorway and turned back to see her mother on her knees, reaching out under the bed to Marie. Her arm could not reach all the way to the back of the bed where Marie was huddled, crying. She had caught the paper doll in her hand and was clutching it in her chubby fingers, crumpling and tearing the paper.
“Go! Run! Go to the kitchen!” her mom screamed again, pointing. Chal tottered to the doorway and stopped, looking back only once
. Her mom was trying to pull the heavy bed away from the wall and Marie was still crying.
“Go! RUN!” her mother screamed, pulling all the while at the bed. The heavy feet scratched the wood floor, leaving a deep white groove where it scraped the planks. “Marie! Marie!”
Chal turned and ran.
***
Alan pulled up an armful of brush. The nettles pricked at his arms and Chal winced as she saw the trickles of blood that ran over his skin. She bent to help him, although she did not know what they were doing. The buzzing was getting louder and louder, and the spec k in the sky was distinctly a plane now. Chal watched its path. It seemed to be moving in a broad curve, still bobbing up and down to maintain a constant distance over the low-lying terrain. Then it hit the playa and the bobbing stopped, the plane over flat ground.
“Get down,” Alan said. “Put your head down.”
Chal obliged, huddling next to the boulder that was not more than a foot taller than her when she squatted. Some cover.
Alan pushed the brush close to her body, then placed another armful of brush on top of her, directly over her head. He was moving carefully, deliberately, but his actions were growing quicker as the plane approached. The buzz was loud now, loud enough to distinguish the type of plane from the sound of the motor.
“Come on,” Chal whispered. She was frantic, her heartbeat racing in her chest. Alan pulled the remaining brush over him as he knelt down next to Chal.
“It’s fine,” Alan said, huddled next to her. She could feel his breath on her face. As she breathed, dust and dirt crumbled and fell off of the branches onto her face.
“It’s fine,” Alan repeated, and she couldn’t tell whether he was talking to her or to himself.
“We’ll be fine.”
***
Her mom had yelled at her to go and hide in the kitchen, for it was the only room in the house that did not have windows. She had run barefoot over the cold red clay tiles—very cold, she remembered, and felt a chill of goosebumps move over her skin even now—and hid underneath the sink, the only cabinet that wasn’t completely full with boxes of papers and plates.
She had bent down and wedged herself deep into the cabinet. She closed the cabinet door behind her, her childish mind believing in her panic that a quarter inch of brittle plywood would save her, that anything could save her. If she could not see the dangerous world outside, how could it see her?
It was dark and damp under the sink, and it smelled like Sunday mornings when her mother would clean the tub and the rest of the house, and Chal would sit on the floor and watch Marie and keep her out of the cleaning supplies. Sometimes her mom would give them bowls with a bit of flour, and then they added a bit of water and played “cooking” for hours on end. Chal would be the head chef and Marie would be her assistant.
There was a roaring that grew louder and louder, she could hear it coming over the sirens. Explosions rocked the buildings nearby, the sharp cracks echoing through the streets on the wake of the siren’s wail. Chal covered her ears, her eyes clenched shut, hoping that she would wake up at once and it would have all been a dream, but no, the roaring was so loud that it vibrated the cabinet doors and Chal bit her lip and tried not to cry.
Then there was a loud CRACK and the building shook with a deep rumble. The siren wound down, sounding almost like a plane flying away until only a faint hum of it could be heard. There was a pause where perhaps it was silent or perhaps it was simply the ringing in Chal’s ears that blotted out any noises of doors being closed or opened, of people walking around, of the world outside. Only one sound made it through the noise in her ears, and it was a sound that Chal would hear over and over again in her nightmares for the years to come.
She heard her mother scream.
***
“Try not to move,” Alan said. “It’s a good chance their radar is just picking up motion and heat underneath. They might miss us completely.”
Chal tried, but she could not help her body shivering. It was dim under the layers of brush, sunlight coming in through the cracks of the branches. The buzzing was so loud that Chal felt they would be spotted for sure. She closed her eyes and began to pray silently for the second time in as many days.
The plane was close, so close. The roar built and built in her ears until it was so loud she thought she couldn’t take it. Like a quail being flushed from the bush, Chal wanted to leap out of her hiding place and run, run as far away as she could.
Then she felt Alan’s hand take hers, and she twined her fingers into his, gripping them tightly. She had to be quiet, had to hide, had to be safe. A tear made its way slowly down the side of her cheek, but her body stopped shivering. It was so loud.
***
The small girl inside the cabinet held onto her knees and tried not to cry. A rush of air carried the smell of smoke and dust under the cracks of the cabinet door.
The world was gone, Chal thought. She would open the cabinet door and there would be nothing left, just a stark black nothing of universe. There wouldn’t be an apartment, not a brick left on its foundation, not a flake of plaster. Her head had begun to buzz with an insistent dread, and no matter how hard she pressed her hands to her ears it would not go away. The whole world would be this, a dark eternal roar.
She didn’t know how long she sat underneath the sink, smelling the dusty air. It might have been only seconds, or it might have been ten minutes. All she knew is that one moment she heard the buzzing of the gnats inside her head, and the next the buzzing had turned off, like a switch flicked down. Her mother was still screaming. Some of the cleaning supplies had fallen over and Chal could feel the powder soap all gritty under her bare feet.
Her mother’s cries subsided into great moans, and Chal pushed the cabinet door open. There was light outside, still—light, even after all that noise and tumult. More light, in fact—it was brighter than normal, and as Chal tiptoed out to see what had happened she was struck by the brightness, causing her to raise one hand over her eye in an oddly adult gesture.
The building had been hit. The sunlight which poured through the window cheerily on normal days was brighter because the window was no longer there. Half of the wall had been destroyed by the blast. The bed had splintered and rubble was strewn across the entire floor. Chal stopped as soon as she saw her mother.
For an instant, Chal thought that the moaning person kneeling on the floor was a ghost, so covered in dust was her mother that she looked white as a spectre. But as she continued to keen, Chal realized that she was bleeding from many places on her body—her leg, her cheek—and ghosts don’t bleed. Then her mother heard Chal, or just sensed that she was standing there, and turned.
Tears had streaked the dust on her cheeks, and the tears continued to stream down her face. Chal was struck by this, even as she saw that her mother was holding Marie in her arms, and Marie wasn’t moving.
***
“Marie,” Chal whispered. The roar was over their heads, blindingly loud, and then it was moving away. Chal held her breath as it passed overhead, her eyes tightly closed. She felt Alan’s hand, warm over hers, squeeze tightly as the plane went by.
They sat like this for another few moments, waiting. The buzzing of the plane eventually subsided into a faint hum and then nothing.
Once it was clear the plane was not returning, Chal exhaled and let a shudder sweep through her body. She had been sweating, she realized, a cold sweat that had worked its way through the light fabric of her clothes. Her fingers were damp against Alan’s palms, and she pulled her hand away in a dazed kind of embarrassment.
“Chal?”
Chal wiped her hands on the leg of her pants. The pants were dirty, though, and only got Chal’s hands dirty. She rubbed them against each other so that the dirt rolled up with her dead skin cells and fell off.
Dead skin cells. Part of me.
Chal kept rubbing harder, trying to get every speck of dirt off of her hands. They were so di
rty. She was still rubbing when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Chal?”
She stood up cautiously, shaking the dirt and leaves off of her shoulders. Her eyes darted over to the horizon where the plane had disappeared.
“Do you think they’ll come back?” Chal asked, trying to hide the quaver in her voice.
Alan shrugged. “No idea. If they did come, it would probably be by ground, not air. Or else helicopters.” He scanned the horizon and she looked nervously up with him.
“Are you alright?” Alan asked.
Chal opened her mouth to say that she was fine, that everything was fine, but the only sound that escaped her lips was a low whimper. Then Alan’s arms were around her and she was sobbing against his chest, her entire body pouring out her sadness and fear in an uncontrollable flow of emotion.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know who she was sorry for, Alan or Marie or herself. Alan didn’t ask her to explain. He just held her tighter.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“How far are we from the town?” she asked.
Alan and Chal consulted the map. They stood shoulder to shoulder, peering down at the coordinates on the folded sheet of paper.
“Not far. We’ll reach it today,” Alan said, pointing to their location on the paper. “Let’s go.”
They began to walk, as they had been walking for what seemed like forever. Now that they knew the end was near, it seemed a bit easier to move one foot in front of the other.
Chal looked up. The sky felt infinite above her head, although she knew that of the whole earth the atmosphere was merely a thin layer, like plastic wrap over an orange. It seemed as though she would never be able to get home, wherever home was. Ahead of her loomed the vast mountains that guarded the playa with its end unseen within the dusting of the horizon where everything was just a light fuzz of vision. Behind her the dunes.
Though the mountains were growing only imperceptibly in her vision, she was startled whenever she looked behind her and saw the dunes farther and farther away. She seemed to be walking away from something without ever walking toward something else. That was the desert.
