by T A Williams
“The Chinese left a few weeks after they took you. One moment they were here and then one morning they were gone. They just picked up and left. Whitford is still running Centralia; they are doing a lot better now that the Chinese are gone. Margie is doing well. Her father, Malcolm, passed last year. We think it was a heart attack, but she is doing all right. She met a guy in Centralia and I think it’s getting serious.”
Alec couldn’t say anything. The world was slowing down but his mind was still focused on the one person who was no longer there.
“We are self-sufficient for the most part. Between the fruit trees, the livestock and the fields, we have more than enough food. We just found a trading partner in Columbia.” Trevor grew quiet when he noticed Alec’s mind was somewhere else. “But we can talk about that later.”
“I’m sorry. I…I’m just hungry.”
“I understand. Breakfast should be ready in ten minutes or so.”
Alec nodded and sat there in silence.
“Sorry for the bad news. Are you going to be all right?”
Alec took in a deep breath of the cool morning air and focused on the soft, cool bed. “Yeah, I just need some time but I think everything is going to be all right.”
Ally
She sat atop the crumbling concrete roof of what had once been a gas station but was now nothing more than another empty building in a city filled with thousands of them. In front of her was her safe zone, a place where the remnants of the old world could gather in peace and attempt to live the closest thing to a normal life as possible. The people walked about in patched-up clothing with make-shift carts and backpacks, trading goods and supplies. Amongst them were a few men with patches sewn onto the sleeves indicating they were Peacekeepers, normal men who were appointed by the military to watch over and protect them. Ally watched the people going about their daily activities. Some of them she knew by name; most of them she knew by what they traded. Ally took in a deep breath of the cool morning air and climbed down from the roof and entered the safe zone.
Ally weaved through the throngs of people, nodding toward those who wished her a good morning. As she walked through the marketplace she stopped at a clearing overlooking an overgrown basketball court and watched as three young girls played with an old jump rope. The girls were no more than six or seven years old and they wore handmade dresses that fluttered in the wind as they took turns on the jump rope. As she watched them play and laugh she felt sad, but wasn’t sure why. Part of her wanted to run over and join them but she knew she never could and felt a pang of anger that she even wanted to.
“What are you looking at, Ally?”
Ally jumped and cursed herself for allowing Coby to sneak up on her. The young boy gave her a mischievous grin as he realized what he had done. His curls hung over his face and she noticed that the baby fat was beginning to disappear from his face.
“You’re lucky I didn’t sock you in the face,” Ally said with a smile.
Coby looked over at the girls playing with the jump rope and wrinkled his nose. “Who plays with jump ropes?”
Ally looked beyond Coby and saw Dena approaching, carrying a basket full of clothing. Dena was good with a needle and thread and had parlayed that talent into a steady gig patching up other people’s clothing.
“Coby bothering you again?” Dena asked as she sat the basket of clothing down at her feet.
“Always.”
Dena looked the girl over. “You eaten anything yet today?”
Ally nodded yes.
“You working again today?”
Again Ally nodded. The military forces had set up a base a few miles from the safe zone and had sent out various squads to hunt down the last of the Chinese Army as well as to assist in bringing civilians to safe zones. For the last few weeks she had begun delivering messages from the military command to the various squads out in the Wasteland. In return they provided her with supplies that weren’t available anywhere else such as legitimate meds, military rations and high quality fabric for Dena.
Dena’s face tightened. “All right, well as always, be careful.”
“I will,” Ally said as she gave Dena a quick hug. She knew how Dena worried and how she would rather Ally learn to sew alongside her, but the woman didn’t voice her concerns. Ally gave Coby a shove. “See you later, freak.”
“Later, weirdo.”
Ally gave Dena a wink and took off at a jog. She ran through the streets and under the fence separating the safe zone and the Wasteland. The farther into the Wasteland she got the quicker the streets turned from empty rundown buildings to blocks of nothing more than rubble. The Chinese had bombed Los Angeles and reduced the majority of it to ruins. Now it was filled with starving animals, leaderless Chinese soldiers and desperate civilians looking for food and supplies. The Wasteland was forbidden and unsafe for most people, but Ally wasn’t like most people.
As the sun continued to rise into the sky high she continued her jog through the destroyed streets until her nose picked up something. Instantly she stopped and her hand instinctively went up toward her nonexistent bow, a weapon she had lost when she had been caught out in the Wasteland when an earthquake struck. Instead she pulled out a bowie knife from her waist, a weapon she had found out in the Wastes and one she was trying to get used to. Her ears picked up nothing but the smell was one that her nose recognized, death. Ally’s feet avoided the debris and everything else that could emit noise as she crept around a half-collapsed brick building and finally saw where the smell was coming from. The bodies were laid out next to a half-charred tree. Ally stayed alert even though the smell indicated the bodies had been dead for a number of days. She started to approach and then stopped. The first body was a woman, the second was a child. The dirt around the bodies was dark with their blood, and their clothing and backpacks were strewn about the area. The woman’s body looked to have been tossed aside as if she hadn’t been killed at that spot, merely moved there. The child was on its side with its arms outstretched toward the body of the woman, as if its last act was reaching out to its mother. Ally looked away, afraid of seeing the face of the child. They had been robbed and killed.
Ally turned around, hoping to find the person or persons who did this. She wanted to see their faces. She wanted them to try and do the same thing to her. She didn’t have her bow but she could still protect herself. No one was around. The only sounds were the bird calls in the buildings around her and the rustling of the breeze. She gave the bodies another glance, knowing there wasn’t anything she could do for them now, then she turned and continued toward the military camp.
Alec
The wooden handle felt strange in his hand and using the cane to walk felt even stranger, but he had to admit it worked. Trevor had one of the villagers create it for him and at first Alec had felt insulted that they believed he needed it. He felt something else when he finally accepted that he did need it. Alec walked along the dirt path, doing his best to focus on walking and pretending that it wasn’t a chore. Unfamiliar faces walked around him, some staring, others ignoring. The place had been his home but he wasn’t sure what it felt like now.
Alec continued down the dirt path until it ended and he was on the grass. He continued plodding through the grass and into a grove of trees that blocked out the sun until he found what he was looking for. There had been more gravestones added in the back but at the very front were the graves of his father and his little brother Joseph. Alec stopped and placed his weight on the cane, trying to catch his breath. It had been so long. So long since he had been home and even when he was here it had been too long since he had taken the time to come to this place. Alec bent down to his knees in front of the graves and sat his cane to the side. Carefully he plucked out a few weeds that were growing around the headstone and tossed them to the side. He let his hand linger on the dirt just above Joseph’s grave, knowing what was just below the surface.
“I’m back,” he said softly. “I’m sorry it has been so long.”
He sat there, unsure of what to say but wanting to say more. “Ben is still alive; I know Ally is too. They are still out there, but I won’t be able to find them. The world is too big and I’m-” Alec’s body ached, his mind felt slow and he dreaded the walk back up to the house. “I’m not strong enough. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Alec flopped on his butt and stared up at the treetops. “At first I moved forward by trying to find Ally, then when that failed I focused on trying to build something here. When I was captured it was the drive to survive that pushed me forward. I don’t know what is supposed to push me forward now.”
He heard someone approaching and he turned to see Mason. Part of him was irritated the man had followed him out here, the other part was relieved that he was being saved from himself. The man walked past him a couple of steps and stopped by Jack’s grave.
“He was a good man,” Mason said.
“Yes, he was.”
Mason was quiet for a moment, then he came over to Alec and stared down at the graves. “How are you?”
“Just paying my respects.”
“How’s the cane?”
“A constant reminder of how limited I am,” Alec said. “But it’s doing its job.”
There was a moment of silence and Mason let out a chuckle.
“Mind filling me in?” Alec asked.
“I thought Ben was hard to talk to,” Mason said as he squatted down next to him. “When I first got here I could tell he was fighting an army of personal demons but getting him to say a word about it was next to impossible. You all share that trait.”
That didn’t sound like the Ben that Alec remembered. Ben had always been happy and out running about and playing pretend. Of course, that was before they had lost their father and Joseph. As soon as that happened Alec had run off to find Ally. Alec thought about how much he had changed in that time and it dawned on him that the person Ben was now was probably nothing close to the person he had once known.
“What are you feeling?” Mason tried again.
“I don’t really know,” Alec said truthfully. “I spent so much time and energy trying to escape I never thought about what would happen next. This place has changed so much.”
“You don’t know where you fit in?”
“I guess. I just don’t know what happens next.”
“You heal,” Mason said. “Both physically and mentally. You heal and build your strength back up.”
“And after that?”
“There won’t be an after that if you don’t get better. If you don’t allow yourself to heal, you aren’t going to be worth anything to anyone.”
“What about you?” Alec asked.
“Same thing.”
“And after that?”
Mason sighed and sat up straight. “I’m going to find your brother. I’m going to find Ben.”
A glimmer of hope flashed in Alec and just as quickly he knocked it away. The world was too big. “And how would you find him? How long ago were you two split up?”
“He may not be in New York anymore. He probably isn’t, if I’m being honest with myself, but I know he’s still fighting. I’ve been part of the military for a long time and once I meet back up with a squad I should be able to track him down. I’ll let them know about where we were imprisoned and then I will find him.”
Alec just stared at him, not sure of what to feel or say.
“I agree the world is a big place but despite that I ended up in the same cell as you. Don’t give up hope, Alec.”
Alec turned back to the gravestones and despite everything else, he smiled.
Ally
Ally stood on the roof of the building overlooking the road and fidgeted. Her hands were sweaty and she felt her heart beating in her chest. She had tied her hair into a ponytail and caught herself checking it again, making sure there weren’t any loose strands of hair. A military convoy was coming to their safe zone but that wasn’t what was making her nervous. Maclin was going to be with them. She had met the young soldier when his squad was ambushed in the Wasteland and had helped him. Since then he had become the closest thing to a friend she had. The sound of the vehicles reached her ears before they came into view. Her stomach tightened and she climbed off the roof where Dena, Adam and Coby were standing. They were going to meet him, he was going to meet them.
“That them?” Adam asked, his glasses glinting in the sunlight as he craned his neck around.
“How many are there?” Coby asked, hopping up and down. “Do they have a tank? I want to see a tank.”
Maclin had told her they would be coming and to alert everyone so they wouldn’t be frightened. She had asked him why they were coming and all he could tell her was that they were taking the first step in rebuilding America, whatever that meant. An envoy of vehicles, all but one of them Humvees, and over a dozen strong, came into view. The only non-Humvee vehicle was in the middle and was a large black SUV with dark tinted windows.
A murmur rose from the group of people waiting for the envoys to arrive. An old bearded peacekeeper a few yards away smiled as he saw the vehicles approaching and looked like a kid about to meet his hero.
“Look at those guns,” one of the people said.
“Do you think they have supplies?” asked another.
As the envoy approached the peacekeepers spread out and directed them into the safe zone while ordering everyone else to get out of the way. The vehicles drove past slowly and the soldiers waved down at them as they passed. The vehicles drove into the center of the safe zone where the SUV stopped in the middle and the Humvees surrounded it and a stream of soldiers all got out. They were armed but their guns were at their sides. As Ally approached she saw Maclin as one of those soldiers. He got out of the Humvee, his green eyes glinting in the sun, and scanned the area. When his gaze fell on her he smiled and nodded, then went back to scanning the area.
“There he is,” Ally said, pointing to Maclin. Dena and Adam followed her finger and nodded, but they were more focused on the black SUV.
The passenger door of the black SUV opened and a hush fell over the area. The first thing Ally noticed about the older woman that stepped out the vehicle were the grey streaks that ran through her dark black hair. The second thing was the worn gray jacket that she wore over a dark faded shirt. The woman was in her fifties if not sixties with pale freckly skin, and as soon as she stepped out of the SUV she began waving to everyone standing about.
“That’s her,” Adam said to Dena.
“Who is she?” Coby asked, trying to peek around the crowd.
“That woman is the President of the United States of America.”
The convoy had stopped in the middle of their safe zone in the parking lot of an old strip mall. The peacekeepers had built a three-foot high platform and the soldiers led the woman to the platform, where she climbed onto it. She looked over the top of them, still smiling.
“I understand that while most of you have heard of me, none of you know me.” Despite being out in the open on a windy day, the woman’s voice carried to all of them. “My name is Sylvia Carter.” A few people cheered. “I won’t pretend to know what you all have been through. I have been to many safe havens like this one and I have talked to hundreds of people and every single one has endured countless tragedies. Yet despite what everyone has gone through, one fact remains: you are still here.”
The memory of her family and everyone she had ever felt close to flashed in Ally’s mind and she pushed it out just as quickly. As the group of people broke out in applause, Ally carefully pulled away from Adam and Dena. She stepped out of the crowd of people and stood on the opposite side of the street.
“I’m not going to pretend that I am the leader you all elected; as I said, none of you know me. I wasn’t elected; I wasn’t the first in line to take over if something happened. I’m about as low as you can get in the presidential line of succession. Nevertheless, when this country fell into chaos and we were invaded I was called to step u
p and protect this country, and that is still what I am doing today.” Carter looked down and seemed to collect herself. “I’m not going to lie and say that things are going to get easier any day soon, but I promise I will work to make sure that tomorrow is easier than today. That the world that your children inherit is better than the one you are living in now.”
As the crowd once again erupted into applause, Ally turned her back on the whole thing. She didn’t have time for promises or hope. She had been taught that you have to learn to take care of yourself and shouldn’t depend on anyone to provide for you. As the woman continued to talk, Ally walked away. She didn’t understand why people felt like they needed to follow someone. In her experience people were barely able to take care of themselves, let alone other people. Ally found her way to the old crumbling gas station and climbed onto the roof. There she found her sleeping bag and the wooden remains of her many unsuccessful attempts to build a new bow. She would give the woman her time to talk and when it was over she would be able to introduce Dena and Adam to Maclin. As she went back to work attempting to create a replacement bow, she could barely make out the words of the woman on the podium.
Time passed, how much Ally couldn’t be sure, as the frustrating task of trying to create a bow made time irrelevant. She would have continued working but she heard rustling from the far side of the gas station that caused her to pause. She made out footsteps and then the sound of a bag being dropped on the ground. One of the main reasons Ally chose this particular rooftop was because it was secluded and people rarely traveled this far on the edges of the safe zone. With a soft huff she sat down her latest attempt at a bow, walked over to the far edge of the roof and peered over. Next to the defunct gas pumps was a man dressed in the same faded and worn clothing that everyone else wore and at first glance he didn’t seem out of the ordinary, but Ally could tell something about him was different. He moved with purpose. The man was facing toward where the woman on the platform was talking but he was rummaging through a long bag that was placed on the ground next to him. After a few seconds he pulled out a long rifle with a scope attached. It was a type of gun she had never seen before. Ally didn’t take her eyes off of the man as she unhooked the knife from her side. The man laid down on the ground with the rifle pointed down towards the woman speaking and that was when Ally took action.
