I slept much better, almost through the night, but was so hungry when I woke up the next morning I knew it was time to risk going to the lake to fish.
“But you don’t have a pole,” Sosie argued. “I don’t want you going out there anyway. It’s dangerous. And it could take hours just to catch one fish. It’s not worth it.”
“I’ll just set out a line from the bank,” I explained. I took the sun-bleached soda can from the bag, pressed my thumb and index finger around the tab, and then twisted it right off. “Daddy taught me how to make a hook, remember?” I flipped the blade from my father’s pocketknife and fashioned the tab into a makeshift hook. “I’ll tie it to something and toss it out and come back. After a couple hours, I’ll sneak back out to check the line.”
BOOM!
The gunshot stripped the rest of the words from my mouth. We looked at each other in a panic. I dropped the knife and the hook and grabbed Sosie’s hand, dragged her back into the cave where we sat against the wall, shaking next to one another. I could hear only Sosie’s heavy breathing, and the furious beating of my own heart pounding in my ears, until another gunshot rang out and drowned it.
“That one was closer,” Sosie whispered through a tear-choked throat.
I grabbed Sosie’s hand and squeezed.
We didn’t move or speak for what felt like an eternity. I couldn’t think of anything other than who’d made those gunshots and from which direction they’d come. Three hours of silence became four hours of only adjusting our positions on the cave floor. Five hours later we were finally talking again, but any sense of safety we had acquired over the days in the cave since we’d fled home, was gone.
“We’re going to find a safe place,” I promised, but I didn’t believe it so much myself anymore. “Tomorrow we leave here and we’re going to find the next town. Daddy said there was another safe town about a day’s walk.”
“B-But y-you don’t know where it is?” Sosie cried into my blouse; I brushed the palm of my hand over the back of her snowy, matted hair.
“I know it’s southeast,” I answered, “but I…”
Sosie looked up, hopeful and hopelessly at the same time.
“You what?”
I don’t know which way is southeast; I don’t have a compass. I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.
“I remember now,” I lied again, and patted Sosie’s head once more. “Don’t worry; by this time tomorrow we’ll nearly be at the other town.”
Sosie fell asleep. As usual, my mind kept me awake, whirling with worst-case-scenarios. Strong? Positive? Hope? I kept telling myself I needed these things, that I was the one in control of my own destiny. But I was afraid. Because I knew in my heart that worst-case-scenarios were all we had left. And so as I lay next to my sister, watching her sleep, I surrendered to weakness, negativity, and despair, instead. I accepted that we would die, and that the manner in which we would die probably would not be quick or painless. As the tears streamed down my face, as I brushed my sister’s dirty cotton hair from hers, as I felt the last shred of hope fade from my heart, I accepted our fate. I accepted that we were the only two good people left in the world, that there were no safe cities, and no one out there who would ever save us from what the world had become.
5
ATTICUS
Lexington, Kentucky | Capital East-Central Territory
The studio-size room overlooking the city of Lexington fell silent as Overlord William Wolf III slammed his fist down on the massive wooden table. He hadn’t said three sentences in the five minutes the debate had been raging among the other men in the room, who lived in this city under his iron thumb, like the other four thousand eight hundred and forty-one souls. His rough-edged face made him always appear as though he were angry; the dog tags he wore around his neck he stole from a soldier he’d killed when seizing Lexington four years ago. He had been respected and feared since that day by almost everyone—except for me. I stood quietly in the room, wanting nothing more than to feel my hands around the bastard’s throat.
Wolf stood from the table, tall and ominous, his massive hands pressed against the wood. Underneath hooded eyes he looked at the men all sitting and standing around the table staring back at him. The room smelled thickly of cigars and cigarettes and corruption. He shut his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply as if the burden of the whole world was on his shoulders and he had little patience for it. He walked to one window then, crossed his arms over his chest and looked out over the city he ruled.
“I want control of Cincinnati before the month is over,” he said with his back to his men, some of which were his best men, out of the two thousand-strong-and-growing army he controlled.
Wolf was only one of many tyrant leaders spread out all over New America, Southern Ontario and Southern Alberta, who vied daily for power in the New World. The majority of the rest of the dwindled population followed: desperate and weak, needing a leader to look up to and fight for. Some leaders were like the David Koreshes and the Jim Joneses: deranged madmen who, like their setups, were as fragile as a grenade with a loose pin. But Wolf was different, the most dangerous kind: an intelligent man who knew how to rule and how to rule well; a tyrant, a fascist, an opportunist, the kind of leader who rises to power and then destroys all who helped put him there. How in the hell was I the only man in the room seeing this?
Wolf turned to the room. “I don’t give a shit about the South right now. We keep working our way north toward the Great Lakes because that’s where the fucking water is. Freshwater is power.”
Brown-nosing Edgar, a portly, balding man, lifted his hand as if he were in class seeking his turn to speak. He wasn’t a soldier, but Wolf kept him around because he was the greediest and sneakiest bastard he had probably ever known, and would lick the mud off Wolf’s boots for the sheer pleasure.
Wolf sighed with annoyance and glanced at Overseer Rafe, a giant man with a shaved head standing to Wolf’s left, my right. They shared a brief, knowing grin.
“Yes, Edgar?” Wolf prompted. He motioned a hand at the plump man, palm up, in a bored fashion. “I always look forward to your input.” The comment was laced with mockery.
A few low rumbles of laughter went around the table.
Edgar stood from his chair, puffed out his dough-like chest, rounded his double-chin as if he were important and said, “I think you’re right, sir. We should head north toward the Great Lakes. The South is farther, and, quite frankly, is a waste of time.” His chubby face was lit by the orange glow of a nearby candle. He tugged the bottom of his button-up shirt as if to straighten it and then sat back down.
Overseer Rafe raised a brow at Wolf.
“Yes, Edgar,” Wolf said. “I thank you for that…obvious observation.”