by Simon Curtis
“Well, what are we going to do?” I ask, pulling my arms through my hoodie as I follow her to the door.
“We’re going to find out which of the two they are. Then either kill them before they can kill us, or kill them for being fucking idiots.”
The door clicks shut behind us.
• • •
The elevator doors open to the cavernous marble lobby with an echoing chime. A couple in formal evening wear sits on one of the large, velvet lounges off to our right, sipping champagne and tipsily cooing into each other’s ear. I watch them with caution as we make our way out of the hotel.
The humid night air still sizzles with the heat of the day. Azure swiftly leads me down the sidewalk, but she doesn’t need to. I already know—feel—exactly where the Flare went off.
We turn left out of the hotel and silently make our way, walking as fast as we can without running. There isn’t a single person on the street besides us. Every step we take echoes off the buildings. If someone is waiting to kill us in the shadows, they will definitely hear us coming.
My heart is pounding. I worry my heartbeat is echoing louder than our steps.
Azure turns left in between two tall brick buildings. The alley is narrow and pitch-black.
We’re getting close.
We approach the end of the alley where it opens onto another street, and stop. We toe the line where the light from a streetlamp cuts the shadows, and watch.
Directly across the street from us is a Greyhound station, awash with buzzing halogen light. The building is surrounded by a dark, open parking lot on all sides.
If it is a trap, it’s in the best possible location in the entire city. A bright, isolated island in the middle of a dark lake.
I wonder how they will kill us. What will happen to our bodies.
Azure watches the building.
My heart feels like it will explode. Whoever was trying to call for us is right there. Right across the street.
Azure steps out of the shadow and heads straight for the station.
I take one last look back over my shoulder, across the dim, orange glow of the empty street, and follow Azure into the harsh fluorescent light of the station. A few plastic benches are occupied by sallow-faced zombies. Meth has a way of turning her prey into walking dead, and bus stops in the Midwest are usually filled with such corpses. When you grow up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, you recognize them instantly.
A man with bloodshot eyes and fake gold chains hanging from his neck sits between two women. He holds one of each of their legs firmly in his hand and gives me a look as I walk in. One of the women grinds her jaw as her leg shakes uncontrollably, while the other nods in and out of consciousness. He watches my face and slides his hand up the semi-unconscious woman’s leg invitingly.
I quickly avert my eyes and see them: A young woman with long, thick black hair and chestnut skin stands in the corner. Her bright brown eyes lock on to me with the intensity of a hawk. A guy sits next to her on one of the benches, the glow of a laptop screen reflecting off his face. With broad shoulders and a square jaw, he looks tall and physically imposing even while sitting. His eyes—almost painfully blue—flick up to mine from the screen, and I look away. Azure seems to take no notice as she approaches the ticket window and presents a credit card from her back pocket.
“Two for Little Rock, please.”
The girl’s eyes bore into me from across the room. She places a hand on the guy’s muscled shoulder as she notices Azure.
“Declined.”
The woman behind the glass slides Azure’s card back toward her apathetically.
“No, it should work. Try it again.”
The girl from the corner approaches as Azure slides her fingers through the opening of the glass at the bottom toward the credit card machine.
“Do you need a ride?” The girl’s eyes now lock on to Azure, who fixes her gaze in return.
The woman behind the glass rolls her eyes and goes back to the screen of her phone.
“It depends where you’re going,” Azure says, studying the girl’s face.
“West.” The girl’s eyes shift to me. “We’re heading west.”
The guy in the corner snaps his laptop shut and shoves it into his bag.
Azure is locked in a staring contest with the girl—both of them stand firmly, bodies tense. I suddenly get the feeling they’ve met before.
The guy stands and slings his bag over his shoulder as he approaches. He’s a lot taller than I thought.
“We need to go,” he says to the girl. “Now.”
“We have some company,” she replies sternly.
His eyes quickly drift over Azure and land on me. “Nice.”
“Let’s go,” Azure says as she heads toward the glass door in the back of the lobby.
We follow her out the door and down the steps.
The guy and girl lead the way to a lone black Jeep parked about fifty feet from the building. Three black SUVs appear down the street, heading right for the Greyhound station.
“Fuck.”
The guy clenches his jaw and hops into the driver’s seat as the girl dashes into the front passenger side.
“Get in.” Her voice comes out as a hiss. “Hurry.”
We slam the doors shut just as the Jeep lurches forward and pulls out of the parking lot. The girl and I turn to look out the rear window.
My pulse races. These are the people. The people with the guns. There are more of them this time. I stare, waiting to see if the headlights turn to follow us away from the Greyhound parking lot.
We all watch.
The headlights of the SUVs turn in the opposite direction. The street behind us is dark once again.
We all let out a collective breath. I feel the pump of my blood begin to normalize once again. I realize I’d been clinging to the seat so hard my knuckles have turned white. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
We’re all right.
As we cross an intersection, bright headlights blare into the windows on both sides of the Jeep.
“Drive!” the girl shouts as the guy slams on the gas.
I turn to look out the rear window again and see a line of SUVs following right behind us, engines roaring.
Our speed continues to rise as we tear through a red light.
“Get down,” Azure says calmly.
The first bullet hits the back of the Jeep, near the rear window.
I comply.
Another gunshot. This time the rear window shatters.
I feel the wheels leave the pavement momentarily before landing with a jarring bounce at the bottom of a small hill. The Jeep swerves left.
I peek. The SUVs swerve too.
Gunshots continue to fire behind us as we speed onto a long parkway running parallel to the river.
Seventy-five miles per hour . . .
Eighty miles per hour . . .
Eighty-five miles per hour . . .
The girl in the front rolls down her window as she slides two large silver handguns from her pockets. The echo of the tunnel we’ve just entered fills the car as she turns around and in a single, fluid movement thrusts half her body out the window. She keeps her legs inside, wrapped around the headrest of her seat as her anchor.
She raises the guns and fires.
Each loud clap resounds painfully against my eardrums, still sensitive from the night before. I want to see what’s happening, but I can’t fully raise my head. I’m terrified that another bullet will come tearing through the window. Through my skull.
I hear a loud crash behind us and look up to see the guy reach over and pull the girl in, hanging on to her tightly as he swerves a hard left again.
“That should give us a second,” the girl says as she reloads each gun. “We need to get to the interstate. Now.”
“Working on it.” The guy’s eyes remain locked on the road.
I notice Azure taking all of this in with an unfazed air of indifference. We are
being chased down the road in a firestorm of bullets, and she barely even seems effected.
I feel the Jeep lurch harshly to the left, and this time the speed picks up quickly.
We’re on the interstate.
I finally raise my head fully and turn back around to look.
The headlights are still right behind and gaining the difference between us.
Another gunshot.
I throw my head back down between my legs and silently beg for this all to be over. I’m terrified and can’t fathom how the ones in the car with me have spent so much time running from these people. I’ve never known fear, real fear, until this moment.
Another gunshot.
I peek up enough to see that we’re on a bridge, crossing the river. The SUVs are almost upon us.
I look and see the odometer about to hit ninety-five miles per hour as bile rises in my throat.
“See you on the other side,” Azure says, leaning up from her seat.
I look up in horror as she jumps out the back window.
My ears hear only air, gunshots, and roaring engines as I scream her name. This is the woman who saved me, who was going to help me. She isn’t supposed to go like this. I turn and watch her body tumble out into the dark.
The glaring headlights blind me as I watch Azure’s silhouette effortlessly plant her feet and lock into her landing like a magnet snapping tightly into place. She raises a hand and engulfs the two westbound lanes of the bridge in a crackling, electric-blue wall.
The SUVs crash into the veil and explode upon impact. Flames rise high in the warm night air. I watch in horror and awe as it all registers.
“See you on the other side.”
I feel foolish for thinking she’d meant anything besides the other side of the bridge.
The guy pulls the Jeep over, and within a few seconds Azure pops back in.
“Nice work.” The girl in the front nods in approval.
“Go.” Azure ignores the girl’s compliment. “We need to get as far away from here as quickly as possible.”
The guy steps on the gas in compliance.
“More of them will come for us,” Azure says, gazing out the window. “They’re probably closer than we think.”
The wind whips through the hole where the rear window once was, and I can see the soft, pulsating glow of the blue patch of skin underneath her fluttering bangs. I see the sadness creep back into her eyes and wonder if she is thinking about all those who just died, all the lives she just claimed in a single, brief, electric flash, or if something else haunts her.
Lightning flickers in the distance and splinters across the sky.
I slowly catch my breath and try to shake my nausea.
I hope she’s wrong about the Sheriffs being close behind, at least for tonight. But I know she isn’t.
The hunt is just beginning.
IT
I don’t want to do this.
She sat in the plane, fidgeting in her straps. She always hated how tight they were, how they chafed her neck. Most of all, she hated how there were no windows. Hated that she was never able to see the land they flew her over. She knew the plane flew up into the clouds, but she was never able to see them. Surely it would be an amazing sight to behold, surrounded by clouds and sky, all the world below her.
She’d lost track of how many times she’d done this now. Since she’d come of age, it felt like every other week she was reading a memo at lights-out, instructing her to be ready and waiting for transport at 0400 or 0500 or whatever other insufferable hour. She never knew where they were going, or why. She just did as she was told.
The moments before takeoff were always the most maddening. Questions that burned in her mind at night before she fell asleep always fizzled to dying embers during the waking hours, but at times like these, fastened in the big, windowless aircraft, with the straps so tight they cut into her neck, it took every fiber of her being to not scream “Why?”
Her entire life was a never-ending series of unanswered questions. She’d learned long ago how to pacify her mind, how to calm herself down until she forgot to ask the questions in the first place. The earliest bits of her memories, stitched together like a shoddy quilt, never seemed to hold any answers at all.
Most of her memories were white—white walls, white surfaces, tables, doors, linens. It was as though she’d been born into a void. There was never a mother in these memories, or a father, for that matter, but she did remember the caretakers. Some of them at least. She remembered the one with the white hair and the white mustache who gave her blocks of all sorts of shapes and sizes—all white—and asked her to fit them into assorted holes. She always accomplished this so easily. His face remained ever expressionless as they whittled the days away—him presenting her with new tasks disguised as toys, which she always navigated successfully on the first try. He’d watch her and then write his notes in his white notebook. She couldn’t remember what color the ink was. It was probably white.
He’d take her to the commissary, where they would eat from white trays, alone. She was always alone with the caretaker, wherever she went.
The programs began soon after that. After the days of the toys, the games, and the tests. Long days spent in front of a screen, learning about science, math, and language. The caretaker would come in after a time and ask her questions about what she’d seen. She always knew the answers. He’d write his notes and leave.
During recreation they began showing her other programs—violent, bloody ones about history and war. She learned why America was so important, how good she was, and that anyone who served her should be proud. They always called America—a country, incapable of feeling, breathing, or even living at all—“her.”
But for as long as she could remember, the caretaker had called her “it,” as though she were a thing, incapable of feeling, breathing, or even living at all. She was a little girl though.
Why would America be “her” and she only ever be “it”?
She never understood.
Every day, recreation was devoted to the programs. Looking back, it wasn’t recreation at all. Not really.
One time, just one time, she was allowed to watch something different. Something other than the endless programs depicting an entire history of war and the myriad ways mankind enjoyed destroying itself. She had a new caretaker. A woman this time. She’d been there for about two weeks and one day, during recreation, the woman came into her room, put her finger to her lips, and pulled out a colorful box that held one of the shiny discs that played the programs. This disc didn’t play one of the regular programs though. This one was bright and loud and exuberant and colorful and completely, utterly mesmerizing.
It was like nothing else she’d ever seen.
In it, a group of talking animals, who weren’t real animals, plotted to escape their prison. They were “animated,” her caretaker told her, and they weren’t in a prison, but a “zoo.” The animals laughed and played and eventually made their way to a faraway island where they ate strange fruits and never cared or worried about anything ever again.
This program—this strange, vibrant one—changed her life that day.
She never saw it again after that, and never saw the woman who showed it to her either. It didn’t matter though. One viewing was all she needed to let it replay in her mind over and over again.
Animated.
The word haunted her like a demon for years after the woman disappeared.
They weren’t real. They were animated.
She’d lie in her bed at night and wonder if she was animated herself. She’d been told she wasn’t real. She knew it from the day she was able to know anything at all. If she were animated, like the loud animals, then maybe one day she could escape and find an island of her very own. She’d even eat the strange fruit, as long as she could get there someday. She would be so . . . what was the word?
Happy.
• • •
A few years later she was finally
introduced to the others. There were several, but she was only supposed to interact with three of them. They had more caretakers now—sometimes several at once—all throughout the day. She loved the company, loved being around new people.
The new children didn’t take to her in the same way though. She could feel herself smile and hold out her hand in the method of greeting she’d been trained in, and while the others always held their hands out, their faces seemed to shrink back. Anytime she said hello, the eyes she was trying to make contact with would flit around, search out anything to look at besides, well . . . her.
The other three, the three she was to be the closest with, were the very worst.
When she first met them, the two boys hid behind their caretakers and the girl, the first girl she’d ever met that was close to her own age, screamed. The little girl clung to her caretaker as big, wet tears streamed down her face. All she could do was scream. Finally one of the boys, with bright red hair and matching spots all over his face—freckles—came forward and held out his hand.
She didn’t know what to think back then, but she remembered to this day just how much it meant to her that he was able to see past the other little girl’s horror and shake her hand.
It was the first time she’d ever felt like a “her” and not an “it.”
• • •
Their learning time was spent together from that moment on. The four of them, two boys and two girls. Eventually, the other girl stopped being afraid of her, which made her happy at first. In time, however, she realized that the other little girl had merely replaced her fear with loathing and would never truly be her friend.
One night, after lights-out, she heard a noise in the hall. She got up from the hard, white bed and went to the door. She pressed a sequence of buttons on the little screen that controlled everything in the room—she’d figured out how to manually override the systems long ago—and slid the doors open a bit.
The dim hallway lights revealed a man sliding open one of the doors across the hall from her room. The girl with the yellow hair lived in that room. She’d only ever seen her a few times at the commissary and had never spoken to her, but she knew that’s where she lived. Her long golden hair made her recognizable.
