The rising sun hit his back in such a way that his body cast a sinister black silhouette against the sky.
His face was obscure, hidden behind an untidy fluff of rags and a baseball cap with the bill pulled low over his brow.
Instincts, when you've spent so much time cultivating them, are hard to suppress. For that reason, I jumped to my feet a split second after spotting him.
I hardened my grip against the cold handle of the knife, pulling my hand slightly behind my back so as to conceal it.
He stepped forward, trudging across the silt laden ground swiftly, making no attempt at concealing the fury his body language conveyed.
For a moment, time stood still. Suddenly, the guilt of slaying the creature left my mind completely, and the adrenaline kicked in. Should I have needed to fight, I would have. I would have fought to the death. It wasn’t really a thought process. It was a natural feeling. I felt the urge to grapple and pull and punch until every pore covering him bled.
It was almost disappointing when he stopped two feet away from me, the prospect of physical conflict diminishing. I could feel the fire in my blood dwindle.
The man pulled the stained, thread-bare handkerchiefs from his mouth and hung them loosely around his neck. The absence of gruff facial hair or wrinkles was astonishing. He was the size of a grown man with the face of a boy. I couldn’t even begin to guess his age. He could’ve been a mere few months older than I or he could have been twenty.
I wouldn’t find out until much later…
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, rolling the sleeves of his blue jacket up just past his elbows.
I couldn’t connect the words in my mind to my mouth- I couldn’t make the explanation flow.
“I-, I-, um…” I stuttered.
“Never mind,” he scoffed, shaking his hand at me, “It doesn’t matter. But,” he paused, "you shouldn’t be here. Get lost before you’re seen.”
“Seen?” I found my voice just before he could step forward to shove me away. “There isn’t anyone around to see. I’ve been walking for nearly three days and you’re the first person I’ve come across.”
“Three days!” He exclaimed, raising his voice in surprise. “How did you manage to-” then he stopped.
The sun was high enough now that his features were highlighted, and I could clearly see the shape of his pursed lips, flared nostrils, and brown eyes that were scowling at me.
He looked so… angry.
“Look, I don’t know what it is I’ve done that’s so offensive, but I have a destination.” I said plainly. “If I’m not allowed to go this way, then what route should I take?”
He tipped his head slightly to the side, studying my plain expression.
“And,” I added, casting a glance toward the carcass at my side, “what do I do with that?”
He studied me for a moment, a look of tension creeping slowly back into his pale face.
A thick sigh escaped his lips “Where are you planning on going?” he asked, not sounding too enthralled about hearing the answer.
“The coast.” I announced, afterward realizing how feeble and childishly dreamy my voice sounded when I uttered the words.
I expected him to argue with me, like everyone else- to tell me the coast was a fairy tale, a myth, a legend created to keep the hope alive in the hearts of the youth.
I expected him to mock me, at the least. I thought maybe, if I could just explain my reasoning, he would help me out.
I had already begun constructing my argument in the back of my mind when a faint, gentle smile tugged at his the corners of his mouth.
“I know what you’re going to say, and no. You’re not going to stop me. So either you can tell me another way to get there or-”
“I wasn’t planning on stopping you,” he cut in.
“Well, I’ll be on my way then. I guess you can take that,” I gestured again towards the carcass.
I bent to pick up my bag when his hand caught the strap.
He pulled it up over his shoulder and, catching a glimps of my blade, stepped back.
I clicked it shut and shoved it into my pants pocket hastily, wiping my hand on my t-shirt.
“You look exhausted,” he observed, “come back to my place and we’ll cook your rabbit and you can sleep a while. Maybe a new shirt wouldn’t hurt either.” he smiled at me.
I looked down at the ragged piece of cloth and sighed. Its original yellow was now stained dark orange, spattered with crimson where the blood had hit it. It said ‘I have the body of a god’ with a faint silhouette of Buddha ironed onto it.
It had been Luther’s until about two years ago when he outgrew it, and I really had no desire to get rid of it. But, not wanting to be rude, I accepted his offer and we made our way seemingly aimlessly through the desert.
“I guess I should thank you for finding me,” I said after a few minutes of walking silently alongside him.
“You’re lucky I‘m the one who did,” he said faintly.
This startled me, so I stopped to face him. “What do you mean?” I said, raising a brow.
“I mean,” he began, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back around to resume walking, “that we aren’t the only ones out here. There are others- men that guard the area.”
“Oh,” I said, “and I take it they’re not very friendly?”
He didn’t answer. “Just keep walking. If we haven’t been seen by now, chances are, we won’t. But I’d rather just get done quickly and not take any chances.”
“If you know they’re out here, then why’d you come?”
“They don’t usually patrol on Sundays, and I had chores to tend to.”
“Chores?”
“Collect water, mainly. See if there’s anything worth bringing back to eat.”
“Water…” I repeated dreamily. The word caught my attention, making my blood rush wildly with thirst.
“Yeah, there’s an underground stream not to far from here.”
Then, without warning, he stopped and pivoted, continuing forward without missing a beat.
“Where are you going?” I asked, confused.
“Taking you to shelter before it gets too hot. The chores can wait.”
“But what about the-”
“Water? I’ll go back out during the night and retrieve some. Like I said, it’s not a far journey. In the meantime, though,” he said, unhooking a canteen from his belt buckle, “have some of this.”
He tossed it to me. The sound of the cool liquid sloshing around in the plastic container made me salivate slightly.
“Thank you so much,” I told him, uncapping the canteen. “You’re an angel.”
“No, actually. I’m just Daniel.” he said. “And you are?”

***

“Guys, this is Celia. Make her feel at home. Thank her for this lovely meal she’s so graciously offered us. And, after it’s done cooking, we’ll have a breifing. Joe,” Daniel said, locking gazes with a lanky boy with red hair and glasses, “is going to give us an update on what’s going on back at the home front and…Alyssa?”
“I’ve got the plan, Dan.” she smiled at him, her baby-blue eyes twinkling in the dim light of the crudely-dug basement room.
“Great,” he said, then turned to me. “I’m gonna go find you a shirt. Stay here and…hang out. I promise, they’re all fairly easy to get along with.”
They consisted of seven people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities.
The boy, Joe got up and walked me around the room, introducing me to each and every ‘rebel’. They were all very welcoming.
“This is Walter, but we call him ‘Recon’. He was a-”
“Marine Corps special ops Sergeant Walter Dean McConnell, at your service” The man cut Joe off. His skin was a deep brown color, his black hair and moustache were speckeld with grey, and his smile was very warm. I felt like I already knew him just by shaking his hand.
I got the feeling he was the kind of person that could tell great stories.
Then there was Alyssa, the ‘wo-man with the plan’ as Joe referred to her. She was very, intensely happy. Meeting her made me so nervous, I didn’t even want to know what living with her would be like. They all seemed immune to it, though, and ignored her as she and her blonde curls bounced out of the room to go look for Daniel.
“She’s got a major crush on him, incase you didn’t notice. Thinks he’s old enough for her…or, heck. Maybe she thinks that she’s young enough. I never could figure her out.”
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Heck, I don’t know,” Joe said, leaining into my ear. “Thirty, maybe.”
“Really? I wouldn’t have pegged her for a day over twenty.”
Joe shrugged, leading me across the room to a brown couch where a 40-something man sat, reading a hefty-looking novel.
Joe cleared his throat. The man looked up, waiting silently for Joe to begin the introductions.
“Doc, this is Celia Swann. Daniel found her wandering around out by the Sink.”
(I would later learn that ‘the Sink’ was just an affectionate term for the underground pool Daniel had spoke of earlier.)
The man lowered his glasses and raised his eyebrows at me. His gaze was that of a man who was used to being listened to- one who had once had huge authority that still lingered over even a stranger like me.
“What was she doing out there?” he asked, obviously speaking to Joe, but never taking his eyes off of me.
The fact that he didn’t just ask me personally and couldn’t be bothered to even introduce himself insulted me a bit.
“She claims she’s on a mission to overthrow the British Ministry and has come to recruit us. Isn’t that exciting? They’ve got helicopters and everything waiting for us outside.” Joe winked at me.
Doc didn’t seem to care much about what Joe had told him, joking or not. The man didn‘t seem to have much of a sense of humor. He didn’t ask any more questions, either, before lowering his eyes back to his book, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, and clearing his throat ( a signal for us to leave).
I nearly stomped off, disgusted with the man’s horrible attitude.
“Don’t let Doc bother you,” Joe said, laughing at my reaction, “he’ll become more personable when he gets to know you. He’s funny that way. An old ARMY vet, sort of like Recon. Doc’s just got a harder shell, always talking about how much he ‘hates people’. He lost his daughter when the storm happened. We think that’s what made him so bitter, but…he claims he’s always been like that.”
“And he attends to all of your medical needs?” I asked.
“Well, most of them. Alyssa is a nurse, too. So, we go to her for the minor stuff.”
Well let’s hope I’m not here long enough to have any major medical issues, I thought as Joe wheeled me around, down past the couch to a corner where two kids, a boy and a girl, stood talking.
The girl had about two inches on him, so I was guessing he was about twelve because she looked about my age.
They both had the same dark freckles, light-brown hair, and dimpled, sweet faces. They were obviously brother and sister. A very close pair.
“Corey, Martha, meet Celia, our new roommate. And Celia, meet Corey and Martha.”
“Hi,” Martha said quietly, waving at me.
I waved back and smiled.
Her little brother, Corey, who was almost taller than me, held out a hand.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” He said, trying to immitate an English accent.
I laughed, shook his hand, and he bowed.
“You should stick around a while,” Corey said, “we don’t get much company.” He batted his pretty eyes at me.
“Plus, she’s really hot, right?” Martha mocked him.
Corey turned a brilliant shade of red, and I couldn’t help but feel my own face heat up a little bit.
I gathered that their bluntness was a family trait. Corey’s was just more involuntary.
The last person Joe introduced me to was Greg, a massive guy who looked like he could walk right through a concrete wall if he wanted to.
“Hey there.” he said to me, tipping his head back, what sounded like a southern drawl lingering a bit in his words.
“Hey.” I said quietly.
“When’s breakfast, ‘cus. I‘m starving.” he asked Joe
“‘Cus? Cousin?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Greggy here and I are cousins. Our moms were sisters.”
Both of them lowered their eyes in silent respect.
I lowered mine, aswell. We all let a moment pass, then carried on as if the comment hadn’t even been made.
It was custom, by now, for people to recognize when someone carried the loss of a loved one with them.
It made us respect each other. And, I guess, that is what bonded this small band together was a mutual respect and need for one another.
They were, in their own sense, a family. It was evident.
“It should start here shortly,” Joe replied and just as the boys got into a discussion about comics, which I didn’t read, Daniel entered the room again.
He came over to me and held out a blue cotton t-shirt, much like the material of the one I was wearing, except not as filthy.
“Thank you,” I said whole-heartedly, and a sudden itch to change clothes overcame me.
“No problem. If you walk down that hallway by the couch, theres a lamp-lit room with a desk in it.
You can change there, if you like. Breakfast starts in a few minutes.”

To sum up a rather lengthy explanation which stretched well into the beginning hours of the afternoon, the Suited Men were a force of rash brutality and trickery.
They used these people’s weaknesses to worm their way into a society in which an already helpless lot was turned into little more that peons for what the Suited Men called ‘the greater cause’.
“Whatever it may be, their ‘greater causes’ is turning our people into mindless slaves. I’m not sure how much longer things can go on like this. Every harvest season, they take what they want of the pickings and leave us with the minimum required to survive.” Daniel told me as we sat at a bar, away from the others who were sitting on the floor, playing some game with numbered cards and elaborately decorated chips.
“Can’t you fight back?” I asked him.
“We’ve tried that one,” he said. “What few people we convinced to agree to a rebellion are either dead or holed up here.” His eyes drifted over to the far corner where Martha and Corey sat, huddled together, watching the others as they tricked each other out of mounds of chips, shouting, cussing, laughing with one other.
“Their father, Abel- he was a great man. In fact, he’s the one who suggested we fight back.” Daniel’s eyes dropped to the black granite counter top and he shook his head. “Of course, a few got apprehensive- thought it may be better to leave things as they were. I’m sure they didn’t know what the Suited Men would do…”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Did someone sell you guys out?”
Daniel looked up at me, glaring. “No one sold us out,” he said. “Let’s get that straight right now. People were starving and afraid, and some of them just didn’t want a fight.”
The fury in his voice reflected something deeper. A struggle I could feel in the way he moved and see when his eyes darted around, as if his answers were written in the air around us, waiting to be spotted.
“Sometimes,” he said, avoiding eye contact with me, “I think we should’ve just listened to them in the first place…”
No.
The word danced on the tip of my tongue for a few moments, threatening to escape. I wanted to tell him that he’d done the right thing. That his people weren’t just dogs that could be thrown out to toil for someone else’s indulgence.
But I was a no more than a stranger in that place, intruding on an already fragilely balanced system of existence. I had no right to judge him wrong or right.
I began to wonder how much longer I could actually stay here. A day? Two days? How long would it be before I became a burden for these people who already carried so much on their shoulders?
Sure, I had supplied them with a meal, but that was one meal in exchange for refuge, for survival.
In the grand scheme of things, I wouldn’t have stood a chance without Daniel having found me when he did.
I decided right then and there that the best way to show my gratitude would be to slip away the next morning, waking no one, taking nothing. It’d be as if I was never there, I told myself.
“Dan, it’s three hours until sun down,” yelled Alyssa from across the room, tapping at an imaginary watch on her wrist.
He cursed under his breath and stood up from his bar stool, wiping a trembling hand across his eyes.
“I guess I need to leave now if we’re gonna have water this week,” he said with a sigh. “Corey, you got the jugs all cleaned and ready to go?”
Corey nodded and hopped up from his place by his sister, sprinting to a door at the far end of the hall.
In a moment, he came out, bearing two huge eight gallon jugs.
“Jeez, we used both of those already?” he said. “Joe, Greg, do either of you feel up to helping me lug these things?”
The cousins took one look at each other and sighed.
“I’d love to help, dude, but this tibial fracture’s got me hobbling everywhere.” Said Greg, lifting up his pant leg to expose a basket-ball sized bruise the color of midnight covering his left calf.
“No, that’s okay, man. Just rest up and tag along next time. Joe?”
Joe looked to his tooth-pick sized arms and then to Daniel and shrugged. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but-”
“I can go.” I interjected.
“No, you don’t have to do that. Joe can handle it,” Daniel said, though not sounding completely convinced.
“No, really.” I said, looking at Joe. “If it’s okay with you, I’d love to help. It’s the least I could do.”
Daniel looked from Joe to me, then back to Joe. Contemplating.
“Alright,” he said, holding a jug out to me. “Let’s get going, then. We’ve got things to do and not much time in which to do them.”
I took the jug, which was surprisingly thick and a bit heavier than I had anticipated, and turned for Daniel to lead the way.
We made our way down a dark hallway, to an end door with a picture of stairs on the front.
A heavy metal chain was wound tightly through the handle and around a metal bar bolted to the wall vertically.
“What is this place?” I asked in wonderment as Daniel fiddled with the locks.
“Well, it used to be a drug testing facility. They had all kinds of animals here: monkeys, rats, dogs… hell,” he said, grunting as he jerked the door open, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept humans down here, too.”
“But wasn’t that against the law?” I said.
He held the door open for me and beckoned me through, then began winding the chain around the outside of the door.
“Celia, my friend,” he grumbled, “I don’t think legalities have been much of a concern to anyone these past few decades.”
True enough, I thought, and began climbing the stairs as the lock clinked in Daniel’s hand.
I’m not exactly sure what Daniel and I talked about the first half hour or so of our journey. Maybe we discussed our old homes, our favorite colors, or what we’d do if we ever escaped the wretched desert we were both chained to.
But in retrospect, it’s a large possibility that we didn’t speak of anything. Daniel, I learned quickly, was not a dreamer. He didn’t bother entertaining fanciful ideas of abundance and peace.
He simply wanted to free his people from the Suited Men and regain the independence he’d had before his world was turned upside down.
He, unlike myself, didn’t have a destination. He was a creature of habit, an introspective warrior-type person who knew that there was no sense in hoping for better.
“‘If I desire a better path to go upon, I must forge one myself’,” he quoted to me after I asked him why he didn’t have any dreams of where he wished to be years into his future.
“Oh, so you’re a philosopher?” I tantalized.
“No,” he said, “I’m a realist.”
I shook my head.
“Celia, can I be frank with you?”
“Seeing as you’ve been nothing but heretofore, I see no reason to stop.”
He chuckled, then paused for a moment before beginning. “When I first saw you, I thought you were crazy.”
“Well, you’re not the only one…” I said. And for the first time since I’d started my trip three days ago, I missed Luther.
And I didn’t just miss him, I ached for him. I could literally feel a cold, emptiness in my chest like I’d never felt before, even after my mother died.
I could hear his voice, see his eyes, smell him as his arms closed around me and for a moment, I trembled.
But Daniel didn’t seem to notice, so I carried on… as if the pain I felt weren’t real.
“Seriously, though. I thought you were crazy. I saw your eyes, so wild and intense. I thought maybe you’d just kill me right there, thinking I was a hallucination or something. I’ve heard of that happening often enough around here.”
“Have you got a point to this story, or are you just trying to politely tell me to go be a loon somewhere else?”
“Ha-ha, no. You’re fine being a loon with us. We don’t mind.” he replied.
“Well, thank you. You’re a most gracious and hospitable host.” I mocked.
He stopped again, without warning. And he turned to me and looked me in the eyes, his expression daunting. He wasn’t humored.
“I thought about it, what I saw in your eyes. It was something I’d never encountered before. Determination, I’ve seen. Insanity, I’ve seen. And what was in your expression was some undecipherable hybrid of the two and then some. You have hope that there’s something out there, something that you’ve never seen. You’re willing to bet your life on it. But you’re not crazy.” he said.
I moved a bit closer, dropping the jug to my side. “You’re wondering why I’m going down a path someone else has forged- a path I can’t trust. Because it’s not my own. Because you only trust what you can do for yourself.”
He smiled a bit and picked up my jug. “Precisely.”
“Daniel,” I said as he pivoted back around and resumed walking, both jugs in his hands, “can I be frank with you?”
“That’d be nice,” he said.
“You and I, we’re very different,” I said. “Not because we don’t think differently, but because we utilize our determination in completely different ways.” I thought for a second, trying to regain control of my thoughts.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is,” I told him, “is that just because my reasoning is different from yours, that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. Just because I choose to believe there’s something better out there rather than settle on the fact that I’ll toil my whole life in bitter repetition, doesn’t mean that I’m crazy.”
He was silent, unresponsive. But I knew he heard every word I was saying.
“You have a cause,” I told him. “A respectable one. Your family, loved ones, friends. Everyone you know, you have them to hold onto, to fight for. But me, I have nothing. No one.” I said, the realization coming just moments after the words exited my mouth.
And then I felt it again, that cold, empty feeling. And it overwhelmed me.
“You can stay here and fight, and you can take back your town or you can die trying. And either of those will be your fulfillment,” I said, my eyes damp and itchy. “I have to do this, for the person that I loved. I have to prove to her, to myself that there is something more to this. Or die trying. I don’t have anything else to hold onto.”
His pace slowed, and he lifted his face to a warm breeze that drifted through. A chill went through me and I shivered a bit.
After a while, I realized I wasn’t going to get a reply out of Daniel. I thought that maybe what I said hadn’t made sense to him, that it was too much to process, or that he just had too much other stuff on his mind to care.
But I wasn’t going to hound him for a reply, or beg him to talk to me.
Walking with him was mentally draining enough. He didn’t speak, but somehow I could feel the mood of his thoughts radiating from him, weighing me down in a way.
I couldn’t be in his presence without a million thoughts running through my mind.
Finally, in an effort to stop the incessant headache I’d gotten from the unprocessed emotions sloshing around in the back of my mind, I spoke.
“Do you want me to take that jug back?” I asked.
“Nope, we’re almost there.” he said. And that was all he said.
I sighed, closing my eyes for a while, just following the sound of his footsteps. And then, his footsteps stopped and I opened my eyes.
Dusk was upon us, and the sun’s radiance was slowly fading against the red sky.
In front of us was an outcrop of rocks, like a shallow cliff face, colliding into each other to form a small opening just wide enough for Daniels to squeeze his shoulders through.
“The Sink?” I asked.
“The Sink.” Daniel replied, ducking through the entrance.
He placed his hand on the right wall and grabbed my fist with the other.
The contact startled me, but I didn’t have time to dwell before he was dragging me along the passageway.
It wasn’t long before I heard water dripping, and then we came upon an opening, like a meadow in a forest, but without trees and underneath a huge boulder.
A pool of clear water sat directly in the middle.
“It’s groundwater. Drips through the rocks, get purified, and lands here into the clear pool of clean, cool, hydrogen dioxide.”
I laughed, then fell to my knees, grabbing a jug from Daniel’s side.
We dipped the openings into the water, waiting as the liquid poured into them.
“Have you ever thought about what you’re going to do once you reach the coast?” Daniel asked me as we made our way back down the stone corridor.
I thought about this for a moment, then replied, “No. Honestly, I never thought I’d make it that far. Maybe…if I do make it, I’ll just lay down in the water and die of exhaustion.”
He laughed. “Well, that’s always an option…”
“Have you ever thought about what you’ll do once you purge your town of unfriendlies?”
“Live,” he said. “Just live.”
“Survival is key, right?” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Key to what is the question.”
“Happiness,” I said, in a facetious manner.
“That’s so cliché.” He said.
“What do you have against clichés?” I asked as we exited the cave and I placed the jug atop my head, steadying it with my hands.
“Absolutely nothing.” he said, throwing his jug over his shoulder. “Shall we?”
And we made the journey back to base in the moonlight, discussing nothing until we could see the building as a little speck against the sky.
“When we get back, I want to show you something.” he told me.
“What? Do you have some secret, metal-sheeted ammunitions room I should know about?”
“If I did, why would I tell you?” He said mischievously.
“Good point. What is it, then?” I asked.
“You’ll see.” He said.
And by the time we made it to the front door, I thought my head might implode. My neck ached and my arms were ready to wither up and fall off they felt so dead.
I knew I’d be regretting it when I left in the morning, but in that moment, I was just hoping to make it down the stairs before passing out.
Daniel must’ve been able to tell when he looked at me because he dropped his jug, took mine and placed it on the ground, then handed me the key.
“Here, go unchain the dungeon and I’ll carry these down.”
I nodded, then made my way down three flights of stairs, rubbing my neck.
The chain took and ungodly amount of time to undo. It was tightly wound, criss-crossed and knotted.
If they were worried about intruders, they found a perfect solution.
I was sure the chains could be heard rattling across the ocean.
I was just finishing when Daniel made it down with the second jug.
He looked at the door, then at me with the chain in my hand with a puzzled but slightly amused expression on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he shook his head. “I just can’t believe you were able to undo that.”
I shrugged and opened the door for him. “Crazy people have mad skills.”

“How is it that you all have never been caught?” I asked Martha as we sat in a backroom, waiting for the meeting down the hall to adjourn.
She sat on a couch opposite the chair I lounged in, her brother’s head in her lap. She stroked his hair absentmindedly as she contemplated how to answer my question.
“If I tell you a secret, do you think you could keep it?” She asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Who would I tell?” I asked.
She nodded. “They think we’re dead.”
“Impressive. How’d you manage to pull that one off?”
She averted her eyes suddenly, staring at her brother’s sleeping figure. “My father,” she said.
“Oh,” I replied quietly, but she wasn’t finished.
“It was a pretty clever hoax, actually,” she began, settling back into the rhythmic petting of Corey’s curls. “They’d been having meetings every night possible -my father and the other six. They’d discuss escape plans, just the kind of stuff you’d expect from an underground rebel meeting.” She took a deep breath as Corey repositioned himself.
“My mother is a nurse of sorts. She was assisting with a severe burn injury a few minutes away from our house. Dad didn’t think it was safe to leave Corey and I home alone, so he brought us with him to the meeting. It was supposed to be the second to last before they put a plan in action- don’t ask me what kind, no one will tell me. That’s why I’m not in the other room right now. But anyways, I guess someone tipped off the old guys down at the security post and they came knocking on our door.”
Just then, Alyssa poked her head in through the crack in the door. “If you guys want to come out now, feel free.”
“We’ll be there in a minute,” Martha replied. Then, when the door closed again, she muttered, “I swear that woman is the most conniving, sneaky- oh! She makes my blood boil… Now, where was I?”
“The men came to bust up the meeting.” I told her, snapping my fingers.
“Oh, right,” she said. “Yeah, so. They started banging on the door, and of course we were all panicking. Then all of the sudden, my dad drags the table out a bit, folds the rug over and opens a cellar door in the floorboards. As soon as he got the table back over the rug, we heard the door bang open. There was a quick silence, and then…” she stopped, choking on her words.
I gave her a moment, then whispered quietly, “You don’t have to keep talking about it if you don’t want to…”
She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I’d want to know, if I were you.” Then she continued on with her story, “There was an explosion, the ear-shattering kind. And then there was nothing.”
“What caused it?”
“No one knew. A grenade, probably. They got sick of our scheming, got pissed off because we wouldn’t open the door, so instead of handling the situation with any shred of decency, they just incinerated the place. My father included.”
“Martha, I’m sor-” I began, but she just shook her head again, wiping her eyes on her shirt collar.
“It’s fine,” she said, “Corey and I are safe, and I’m sure he wouldn’t change what he did if he could. But they didn’t come back that night. Once we realized no one was going to be touching that place for a while, we left to come here. And I think, ever since, they’ve been trying to get back. And, well, if everyone thinks we’re dead-”
“That gives you a great element of surprise.” I interjected.
“Not exactly what I was going to say, but yeah.” She nodded in agreement.
We sat silently for a minute. Martha, reminisced through old memories in an apparent state of nostalgia and I, well… I was just trying to wrap my head around the whole situation.
Four days ago, I was just some loner kid who was taking a trip in honor of her dead mother. And now, I was neck deep in a plan to overthrow some cold-blooded government agency and liberate a town full of people I’d never even known existed.
“Any more questions before I go out there and play the silent, brooding type in order to keep from flipping out on over controlling Barbie?”
I laughed. “Just one,” I said. “Why do you think they’ve never come here?”
“Well, I’m sure they checked this place after they moved into our town. But, they’re sitting pretty where they’re at now. There’s no reason to trade that luxury for this beat up old shanty, you know?”
And then she shook Corey awake, helping him sit himself up before we went out into the main room to deal with the rest of the party.
“Yeah, I know..” I whispered, not really caring if she heard me.




***
“Paintings?” I said skeptically, tilting my head this way and that, surveying the pieces of art Daniel had displayed all throughout the room.
“And sketches,” he said, pointing to the left side of the room.
There were probably a hundred of them, mostly landscapes: the outcrop of a forest at dusk, a van Goh style meadow scene, a white-washed country house with a porch spanning the perimeter.
They were beautiful.
“Did you do this?” I asked, turning around to face him.
He raised his eyebrows at me. “I wish,” he said, taking a step forward to get a closer look. “I found them in here when we were combing through the place. Some of the sketches, the portraits of people, were sitting on the counter out in the common area. But other than that, only this room held any other pieces.”
“So I guess people really did live here.” I said, spinning around in awe.
The sketches were impeccably done, with textures and contrasts so realistic I felt I could reach my hand out and feel the flesh of the subjects’ cheeks.
“Look at this one,” he called to me, leaning over a desk with a lamp shining over a piece of light blue paper.
It was a painting, a square about three inches wide. The depiction was an eye, sort of animalistic, with a yellow iris and a crazed glare.
“That’s… scary.” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed, nodding his head. “This whole place is a little scary. It’s like there’s so much left here from before it was abandoned that a piece of the old society still lingers.”
“Like a haunting,” I mused, “but not ghostly, just… a retro ambience.”
“Exactly.”
I traced my finger over the eye, feeling the raised miniscule red veins.
“It’s impossibly detailed,” I said.
“Doc said once that he thinks this was a center for neurological studies. He’d seen once during his time in the military, a surgery that altered some part of the brain -don’t ask me to name it- and turned the patient guy into an intellectual sponge. Doc said he was like a computer, spitting out formulas and mathematical theorems.”
“That’s kind of cool,” I replied, amazed.
“Which is what I thought; but, Doc said no. Apparently it left this guy changed, personality wise. He became manic and eventually too volatile to handle, so they just-” he made a sound with his mouth, running a finger across his throat.
I winced, momentarily picturing the gory scene.
“-eliminated a failed test subject,” I finished. He nodded in response.
“I wonder what else they experimented with,” I prompted quietly.
“Who knows,” Daniel replied. “There’s plenty to play with: the brain, chemical structure, genetic codes. They could create anything out of any human they wanted, if they really wanted to.”
Including a human camera, I thought.






***

I woke up in the middle of the night, a cold sweat pouring down my back, my heart racing from the nightmare I’d just managed to tear myself free of.
I shot up into a sitting position, gasping for air as Martha stirred on the mat beside me, turning over to face the wall beside us.
I clutched my face, trying to muffle my labored breathing as the adrenaline rush subdued. Lying back down, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that something was off. The air in the room seemed too still, too thick to be safe. Unable to put my finger on exactly what felt out of place, I buried the back of my head back down into the ratty pillow I’d been allotted and scanned across the room.
The first thing I checked for was the rise and fall of chests, which seemed to be happening.
So what was wrong.
To the left of me was Martha and to the left of her, Corey.
On the couch across the room from us was Greg, snoring with his foot propped up on the arm rest. On the floor below the couch was Joe.
In the arm chair at the foot of the couch was Doc, and on the floor at his feet was Alyssa, who lay curled around herself in a serene slumber.
By the hallway entrance Recon snoozed propped against the wall.
At first, this seemed normal, and then I realized numbers were off: Daniel was missing.
I got up from my resting spot, careful not to rustle too much and wake the others.
My first thought was to check the Art Studio, as I had dubbed it, but not seeing a light illuminating from the hallway and hearing no noise, I surmised that that would be a bust: Daniel would never leave without good reason or warning somebody first- it would cause too much worry.
I turned to make my way back around the common room to the front door. But as I turned to exit the hallway, a chest got in my way.
I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand. My eyes ventured up to see Greg, eyes bloodshot and lids hanging heavy with sleep.
He looked at me sideways, as if I were an apparition he was trying to convince himself I wasn’t there.
After a moment, I spoke quietly. “Daniel,” I began, but he stopped me.
“I know,” he whispered.
“Do you know where he might be?” I asked.
Greg shook his head.
As I began to try to think of places he might have went, I heard some chains jingling across the room and down the stairs to the entrance.
Greg turned immediately, hobbling through to the entrance. I tailed him, helping Martha up to her feet as she reached for me.
“What’s going on?” she grumbled groggily.
“I don’t know. Daniel’s gone and now there are noises at the entrance door.”
“You two,” Greg whispered harshly. “Quiet.”
He held a finger up to us, grabbing a crowbar from underneath the table and pressing his back up against the corner of the entranceway.
We heard a rustling, the quiet muttering of two voices, then a loud “bang” as something got shoved against the metal door.
“Ah!” I heard a voice cry out.
“Dan?” Greg called out, holding the bar up like a bat, ready to swing.
For a minute there was no reply, but then we heard Daniel’s voice respond hoarsely, calling out from behind the door.
“It’s me,” he affirmed. “Come help me out.”
Greg turned to us, “You two stay here.” he said.
I turned to Martha and then back to him, folding my arms over my chest and nodding.
We returned back to the living room area where everyone was now awake, sitting and waiting to see what was about to come through the door.
“Is it one of them?” Alyssa asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Martha said, and as the door creaked open and they came rumbling in, she added, “but it looks like we’re about to find out.”
Greg and Daniel came hobbling in just as Recon got a lamp and set it on a shelf, lighting up the room slightly.
In their arms they drug a limp body with a bag over his head, arms tied crudely behind his back.
“Somebody gonna grab a chair?” Greg fumed, and I hopped over to the table and drug a wooden chair over, pushing it beneath the guy they were holding up.
They dumped him into it, making sure to tie his hands behind him before unmasking him.
His head lolled about in the dimness, which made him hard to recognize at first.
But as I caught a glimpse of the jaw line, the midnight black hair, I knew exactly who it was.
“Luther?”