J. Mitchell - Midnight City

There was no sign of their mother. Whatever had happened, she was lost. And so were they. Lost and adrift in a world that was nothing like it had been the day before.

Now they only had each other.

HOLT WOKE FROM THE DREAM WITH A START, stared at his surroundings in alarm until he realized he was no longer back there, huddled in the corner of that dark attic.

With the realization came relief. And with the relief, as always, came the guilt. Holt pushed it down and away, as he always did.

They’d made camp in the woods, several miles from the Drowning Plains. Here, the trees weren’t so densely packed as they had been, and the stars twinkled through from above.

They’d run almost nonstop after their escape, the red glow of the flames reflecting off the night clouds above, chasing them until the sun finally came up.

And still, they had run. The strange green and orange walkers were seemingly being overpowered by the unfathomable mass of Forsaken in those ruins, but there was no way to know for sure. They expected the aliens to explode through the underbrush behind them at any moment.

When they could move no farther, they collapsed in the clearing. The sun was high in the sky when Holt, exhausted, finally fell asleep. Now it was night again, early evening based on the moon’s position. He’d been asleep for hours.

Holt lay in his sleeping bag, thinking. The dreams hadn’t been this vivid in years. He’d done a good job of stuffing those emotions away, but both Mira and Zoey’s arrival into his life had clearly had an effect. Now the dreams were coming back, and with them, all the old feelings. One more reason to get rid of them both, he told himself. But those words were starting to feel very hollow.

He looked over at Mira, who lay asleep and curled up protectively around her pack. The red in her hair glistened like copper in the flickering light from the campfire.

“Did you have the same dream, Holt?” a soft voice asked from his other side. Holt rolled over.

Zoey sat cross-legged near the fire, eating jelly beans from a small jar. Max sat in front of her on his haunches, tail thumping the ground like a metronome, watching Zoey’s every move. For every jelly bean stuffed into her mouth instead of his, he let out a small, sad whine.

Zoey had almost as much of a sweet tooth as Max, Holt had discovered, and he’d given her the jar before he passed out. He wondered if she and Max had been eating them this whole time. He wouldn’t put it past either of them.

The little girl tossed Max a green jelly bean. He caught it in midair and swallowed it almost whole. His tail resumed its thumping.

“I give the green ones to the Max,” Zoey said. “I don’t like the green ones.”

“Throw me a red one,” Holt said quietly, trying not to wake Mira. “Or a pink one.”

Zoey frowned, but tossed him one of each. He chewed them slowly, savoring the sweet yet tart flavors. Then Holt remembered Zoey’s question.

“What did you ask me?” he inquired. Maybe he hadn’t heard her right.

“I asked if you had the same dream,” Zoey said. “You always seem to. I think it has to do with the invasion. And with a girl. Always the same girl.” Zoey tossed Max another green candy.

Holt stared at her. “How do you know that?” he asked.

Zoey shrugged. “Just something I see. I see lots of things.”

Holt kept studying the little girl, unsure how to respond. He had grown to believe Zoey was not a direct danger; none of the “powers” she had shown so far could harm him or Mira or Max.

But there was the continued threat of the Assembly.

Three separate factions (that they knew of, anyway) were hunting her. Holt understood now why the Assembly feared the water. He’d seen its effects on them with his own eyes, the inexplicable black rust that consumed them if their machines broke down while touching it. And yet, those same walkers had pursued Zoey into the Drowning Plains, a landscape flooded in water.

Her ability to sense things was important. As was this new ability to read the minds of those near her in some limited way. But were those enough to warrant such an obsessive chase by the Assembly? Was it enough to justify the massive red army they’d seen in the Mississippi River Valley just two days ago?

Holt knew it wasn’t, and that was what really bothered him. It meant they hadn’t seen all of what Zoey could do. It meant there were more surprises to come. And Holt wasn’t a fan of surprises.

He reached for his pack, opened it, and pulled out the one radio he’d managed to take from the drugstore. The loss of that blue bag, stuffed with its priceless treasure, was still an almost tangible pain. He tried not to think about it.

“Who’s the girl in your dream, Holt?” Zoey asked.

Holt tensed at the question. “Zoey, that’s not something I talk about.” He placed the batteries in the radio and flipped it on. There was only static, and he tuned the dials, searching for any signal out there.

“Why not?”

“It just isn’t,” he said more firmly, trying to make his point. And it was true. With the exception of one other person, he had never spoken of Emily to anyone. And he had no intention of breaking that trend tonight.

“Did the scary metal ones take her?”

“Zoey…”

“Was her name Emily?”

“Zoey!” Holt yelled, fixing the little girl with a stern gaze. The sound of Emily’s name was like a slap in the face. The little girl’s eyes bore into him.

On the other side of the camp, Mira stirred, but didn’t wake.

Holt sighed, disappointed in himself. Zoey was just a little kid, after all. A little kid with a front-row look at his personal demons, but a little kid nonetheless. She didn’t know any better.

When Holt looked back at her, her eyes were overwhelmed with sadness, and the raw emotion inside them struck Holt hard. He was suddenly full of shame; he hadn’t meant to be so forceful.

“Zoey, I didn’t mean…,” he began, starting to get up.

“I can feel how much you hurt, Holt,” she said. The words froze him in his tracks. “You hide it, real far down, but it’s there. You never let it get better.”

Zoey voiced the observation with the same level of confusion as she would if she was asking why Holt wouldn’t remove a knife stuck in his chest. Holt stared back at her, unsure what to say.

“Why don’t you let it get better, Holt?” she asked in her soft voice.

It was a question Holt rarely allowed himself to ask. Mainly because he didn’t like the answer.

“Because, Zoey,” he said slowly, his voice barely louder than the crackling embers of the small fire next to them, “I’d have to feel it all over again. And I don’t think I’m strong enough for that.”

The sadness and pain slowly drained from Zoey’s face. “Maybe that’s because you’ve been alone too long.”

When Zoey looked at him, she looked into him, below the surface. In a world where Holt had let very few people get close, that kind of look was rare. Perhaps the intimacy he felt with Zoey came merely by virtue of her strange powers, her inexplicable ability to automatically know what he felt… but did that make it any less real?

The radio in his hands suddenly came to life. The signal wasn’t strong, and it was full of static, but it was a signal. Holt looked away from Zoey and tuned it in as best he could.

Classical music, punctuated by bits of static, filled the forest clearing.

The sounds of a hundred stringed instruments floated around them like individual pieces of air. Holt watched Zoey’s eyes widen at the sounds. She’d probably never heard music, Holt realized. It was a relic now, after all, a strange, forgotten remnant of the World Before.