Kristen Simmons: Three

THEdream was changing. Even asleep I sensed it.

Before, it had been my mother and me, linked arm in arm, drawn down the center of our deserted street by the same violent destiny: home and soldiers and blood. Always blood. But now there was something different. Off. Needling at me like a riddle I couldn’t figure out.

The asphalt was still broken. Our neighborhood waited, silent and haunted, each condemned front door posting the Statutes like a warning of the plague. Above, a pale, flat sky spanned from shoulder to shoulder, and I was alone.

And then beside me, where my mother should have been, Chase appeared.

Not the Chase of now, but the boy I’d met long ago—messy black hair and the curious, daring eyes of an eight-year-old, white socks winking from beneath the jeans he’d already outgrown. He darted down the lane and I ran after him, giggling.

He was fast; every time I swiped at him, he escaped, my fingertips always just inches away from his billowing T-shirt. His laughter filled me with something warm and forgotten, and for a time, there was nothing but joy.

But the sky began to bruise, and the carefree way he kicked a rock down the middle of the road suddenly worried me. He was too young to know what was happening—that this place wasn’t safe anymore. With urgency, I reached for his hand.

Curfew, I told him. We have to get home .

But he fought me.

I tried to pull him along, but it was no use; his little hand was slippery in my grasp. The failing light tightened my fear.

They were coming. I could feel their footsteps inside my chest.

Darkness came, black as coal and just as thick, until I could no longer see the houses and all that remained were the innocent boy beside me and the broken street we stood upon.

A soldier approached, his uniform neatly pressed, his slim, agile build too familiar, even at a distance. His golden hair gleamed, a halo in the moonless night.

I knew how this part went, but my heart still thumped all the way down to my stomach. I tried to push the boy back, to keep him away from the man who’d killed my mother. You will not touch him, I told Tucker Morris, but no sound came from my lips. Still, the cry echoing in my head seemed to infuse Tucker with speed, and suddenly he was upon us, three feet away, aiming a gun directly between my eyes.

I screamed for the boy to run, but before I could turn to do the same, my gaze found the man’s face.

It wasn’t Tucker. Before me was a different soldier, one with pallid skin and eyes long dead, and a hole in his chest that wept blood. One we’d killed to escape the hospital in Chicago.

Harper .

I gasped, tripped, and fell backward. And left the boy beside me exposed to the weapon.

Harper shot, a sound that made the world quake and the street break open. And when it stopped, the little boy lay motionless, a fist-sized hole punched through his rib cage.

I woke with a start, braced to fight. The image of the soldier—Harper—who Chase had shot while we’d been rescuing Rebecca from the Chicago rehab hospital faded, but left a sticky residue, making it impossible to fall back asleep.

My breath evened out, and as it did I registered the sounds of sleep: heavy breathing and the occasional snore. The hard floor beneath my back served as a reminder that we’d taken shelter in an abandoned house, a break from the beach where we’d slept the last three nights. The heavy moon, nearly full, peeked in a glassless window and helped my eyes adjust to the dark. Chase’s space beside me was empty.

I untangled the beach towel from around my legs. Six sleeping bodies were scattered around the room. People like me, who had come to the coast in search of the safe house—the only known refuge for those escaping the FBR’s oppression—only to find it destroyed. By some miracle, tracks had led away from the wreckage and a small team of us had followed them south, leaving those who’d been injured in the attack on Chicago behind. They waited for us in a mini-mart outside the blast radius, vulnerable with only a few healthy fighters to defend them and a meager ration of food and supplies.

It took several beats to shake off the dream and remember that Tucker wasn’t with us, that he’d gone with the carriers three days ago to tell the other resistance groups what had happened to the safe house. They were supposed to make contact once they reached the first post. We were still waiting to hear from them.

No matter how much I wanted him gone, I couldn’t breathe while he was out there, despite the help he’d given us over the past few weeks. At least when he was close I could keep tabs on him. Now it felt like I’d dropped a knife with my eyes closed, with only the hope that the blade wouldn’t land in my foot.

Someone was mumbling. Probably Jack, one of the survivors from the Chicago resistance. He hadn’t been right since the Moral Militia had bombed the tunnels and we’d all nearly been buried alive. His lean body spanned out like a star in the entryway while a guy from Chicago named Rat, every bit as short as Jack was tall, lay on his side just beyond him. Sean had fallen asleep against a weathered sofa, head sagging, palms open on his lap as if in meditation. Behind him, Rebecca curled across the cushions, the metal crutches in her arms taking the place of the boy who so obviously wanted to be there.

Though she should have stayed behind with the injured at the mini-mart, Rebecca had insisted on forging ahead. The pace was hard on her body but she didn’t complain. That worried me. It was like she was trying to prove something.

The other two that stretched into the dining room were from the Chicago resistance, and hadn’t given up hope that their families had somehow lived through the attack on the safe house, that they’d managed to escape and flee south.

From outside came the sound of twigs snapping. I rose silently and wove through the bodies to the open door. The air smelled strongly of salt and mold, both fresh and dirty at the same time. From over the sandbank whispered the ocean, the ebb and flow of the waves, the hush of the long grass between the beach and this decrepit seaside village where we’d made camp. It was called DeBor-something. The “Welcome to…” sign had fallen victim years ago to someone’s target practice; little copper punctures distorted the right side.

Once, DeBor-something had been posh; the gates that blocked out the poor had fallen, but were still there, stacked beside the burned security booth. There had been riots here during the War, like in a lot of the richer communities. What remained of the empty Easter egg–colored beach houses were ruins: scaffolding stretching like burned, blackened fingers into the sky, foundations half-collapsed on their weathered stilts, walls muted by layers of white salt and sand, and gagged by crisscross boards that blocked what remained of their windows. Somewhere close a rusted screen door slapped against the frame.

From the bottom porch step came another delicate snap. It was only Billy, all sharp elbows and shoulder blades, hunched over his knees. He was peeling the bark off a stick, and hadn’t seemed to notice my arrival.

A frown tugged at the corners of my mouth. If Billy was on watch it was near dawn. He’d relieved Chase earlier in the night. But Chase wasn’t here; the towel he’d slept on had been tossed near the window beside a trash bag that held our only possessions—two cups, a rusty kitchen knife, a toothbrush, and some rope we’d harvested from the wreckage.