Authors: Masha Leyfer
I think about what’s coming. Every beginning starts with an end. This may be the end of the CGB, but it will be the beginning of a war, however brief. And with the beginning of a new era, comes the end of ours. The Rebellion lives as long as the CGB does. Without it, we are nothing. By ending the CGB, we end ourselves. What will we do after the war ends? We have learned to fight. We never had time to learn how to live.
“It was you, then?”
I spin around, my hand at my knife. It is the Kerman father. He walks quietly. I didn’t hear him come up. Now that I am facing him, he closes the distance between us.
“Well?”
“Sorry, sir. It was me...what?”
“It was you who broke Nathan’s heart.”
I tense up and tighten my grip on my knife. What does he know? What can he see?
“Don’t worry. He hasn’t told me anything. I can see the heartbreak on his face. And I can see the way he looks at you.”
How does he look at me? What does the Kerman father see that I don’t?
“It’s okay. I’m not blaming you,” he says.
“I...Um, wait, sorry, what?” Mr. Kerman’s sudden gentleness unnerves me. Does he want something from me?
“I’m just glad that he’s found somebody to love. And I’m glad that there’s somebody out there that loves him as much as I do.”
I want to reply that I don’t love Nathan, that I turned him down, that you said it yourself, Mr. Kerman, I broke his heart, but the truth is, I do love Nathan, if not in the way he hoped. There is more than one way to love. There is more than one way to live. More than one way to learn.
“Tell me, Molly, do you think that I’ll ever be able to reconnect with my sons?”
“I think so, sir. You all need time to heal. Tell them how much you care about them. Talk to them. They’re waiting for you. They’re waiting for their father.”
“I’m not the father that they remember, and I’m not the father that they want. I’m not the father they deserve.”
“That’s okay. This is a different world. It requires different people.”
“You’re a good girl, Molly, you know that?”
“Um….Thank you sir.”
“Make sure to get enough sleep.”
“Um….I will. Thank you.”
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
He disappears into the forest. I stare after him, thinking about Nathan, and Mike, and their father, and how no matter what the future looks like now, tomorrow, we are leaving home to change that.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Tuesday night, we all go to bed early. We’re leaving late on Wednesday so that we’ll be at the base in the middle of the night. I can’t fall asleep for a long time. The stress of the impending task combined with my usual restlessness forbids my eyes from shutting. I expect that most of the Rebellion is sleepless tonight. We’re all nervous and excited about tomorrow’s raid. Tomorrow, as Mike said, is the beginning of the end.
I toss around in my tent, imagining what the end means, imagining what life will look like after the end, imagining all the ways in which tomorrow’s raid can go right
—
and even more ways in which it can go wrong.
Finally, my worry drains so much energy, that even I can’t resist the temptation of the night’s gift, and I find myself drifting into restless oblivion.
My sleep is haunted by dreams of the raid. Mostly, it is just vague explosions, but one in particular stands out to me. I dream of the base as a giant metal house that looks very powerful and yet simultaneously very fragile. I hold a bomb in my hand. I am almost about to throw it when somebody walks out of the door. It’s an agent of the CGB, but he is also somebody else, somebody that I know in the dream but not in real life. People have a way of doing that in dreams
—
being two people simultaneously and being the sole reality of the dream, even if they are actually just a fantasy.
“Don’t throw the bomb,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask. My voice is steely and unfeeling.
“Because then I’ll die.”
“So? Why do I care?”
“Because you are still human.”
“No. Not anymore.” And then the bomb explodes in my hands, engulfing both of us in flame.
I wake up in a cold sweat.
It is early, before the sunrise. I shiver a little in my tent and try to let go of the feeling of unease that my dream has left with me. I don’t want to dream again, so I pull on my boots and a coat and slip out of the tent. The morning air is crisp and clear and stings a little going through my nose. There is just enough light spilling over the horizon for me not to trip as I wander through the camp. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I wander aimlessly out of camp and through the woods, looking up at the transforming sky. Suddenly, I walk into something. I exclaim in surprise, and since the unidentified object exclaims in return, I assume it isn’t a tree.
“Molly?”
“Nathan?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing up?”
“Couldn’t sleep. You?”
“Couldn’t sleep either.”
“Nervous about the raid?”
“Yeah. You too?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m nervous about the future in general,” I admit. “About what the world will look like tomorrow.”
“Hmm. Yeah.”
We are both quiet for a moment.
“Even though they’re the CGB, they’re still human,” I say quietly.
“Hmm?”
“We’re bombing real people today, Nathan, doesn’t that bother you?”
“It does.”
More silence.
“It’s cold,” I say randomly. Nathan puts his arm around me, pulling me closer.
“Better?” I put my head on his shoulder.
“Better.”
We stand like that for several minutes, unmoving and unspeaking. It begins to snow lightly. I catch a snowflake on my tongue.
“The first snow,” Nathan says, almost in surprise. “That’s a little early. I hear it’s a good omen.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s to success.”
“That’s not what I thought.”
“Yeah? What did you think?”
“Better not to invite the devil,” I say, but what I think is, who’s next?
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
At five o’clock in the evening, Mike gathers us all together. Everybody stands in a circle around the fire, guns, knives, crossbows, explosives tied to our waists, stuffed in our pockets, tied around our necks, weapons taking every available space and robbing us of all of our energy. We belong to these machines of war, forcing us to do their bidding.
To kill, to maim, to fight.
The fire in front of us casts dark shadows on our faces and we look more like ghosts of a forgotten war than human beings who still have lives to live. We have become machines of war, and we have to be made of steel strong enough to withstand the burning hope for tomorrow and the icy guilt over yesterday.
“Gang,” Mike says, addressing our steely faces. “Today’s the day. Today we
will
triumph. Today we
will
claim victory. I believe in every single one of you. I believe in every single one of you and I believe in our victory. Even if you don’t believe in it, remember that somewhere out there, an entire world is counting on us. An entire world believes that we will win and that we will end their suffering. We are fighting for the entire world and we
will
win. Today is the day that that happens. Today is the day we take down the CGB. Today is the day we change the world.”
We all listen, wanting to believe him but afraid to. The silence is the heaviest I’ve ever heard.
“Guys,” I whisper. “Even if...even if we don’t triumph today, even if the world stays the same, even if some of us...Well, in any scenario, I want you to know,” my voice fills with emotion. “I want you to know that you’ve changed
my
world. You’ve already made a difference in this bleak hellhole we call home, and I just want to say, thank you. Thank you so, so much. It’s been an honor.”
More silence.
Many look at the ground, or the distance, or anywhere
away.
I look at the faces standing around the fire. Anna, her face grim and set. Mike, showing no emotion. Nathan, whose love I declined. Big Sal and Smaller Sally, standing next to each other, identical expressions of grim determination set on their cheeks. Rebekah and Emily, a storm brewing in one’s eyes, a fire in the other’s. Hannah, energy tingling on the tips of her fingers. Matt, who looks more serene than anything else. Desmond, a look of deadly poison in his eyes. Kristina looks ready, like she was born for this. Nicholas looks ready too, like he was born to die for this. All of them are so young. Big Sal is the only one who’s even reached thirty. For any of us to die now would be...the word that comes to mind first is unjust. We still have entire lifetimes to live, but here in the post-Blast world, our lives don’t belong to us anymore. We are trapped within the boundaries of our own survival and the best we can do is make our survival bearable.
So this is what I’ve chosen to make survival bearable. To fight. There’s no backing out of it now. It’s too late to stop. But not too late to make it worth it.
“All right, gang,” Mike whispers. “Let’s move.”
We get on our snowmobiles, two to a vehicle. I ride with Anna. I drive. We ride for a long time, nobody saying anything, just a silent procession of rebels going into the unknown. We stop halfway. By then, it is almost eleven at night. We quickly eat and drink a healthy dose of tea. The world is dark and cold, but we don’t start a fire. We don’t want to leave any trace of our passage. It’s less because we’re afraid of pursuit and more because we’re afraid of what we’re about to do.
We continue. Anna and I switch so that she is driving. We ride for five hours more. My body goes numb with the perpetual movement.
Soon enough, we reach the suburbs. I wonder at first why they are uninhabited, but it doesn’t take long to find the answer. Everything is still covered in ash. Buildings lie in ruins and those that are still standing look like they would be knocked down with a shove. This was too close to the eruption to remain habitable. I wonder if anybody who lived here before the Blast survived, or if they were all sealed in their homes and choked to death.
It seems to me like it was the latter. These cities are uninhabited, but they are not empty. These are the cities of the dead, filled with shadows of the past, echoes of a thousand last moments. The air is filled with regret and jealousy, and I can’t help but feel guilty for being alive.
Why them and not me?
What did I do to deserve life more than the people who didn’t have my chance?
Nothing. It was just a coincidence. Just chance. Just a small geographical difference that was enough to determine fate.
I try to remember if I was ever here before the Blast. We must have been. Supposedly we didn’t live that far away, but I can’t remember. It must have been far enough since we survived.
Although our town filled with ashes, too.
My mother used to say that the capital was the most beautiful city in the world. Now, it’s just ruins, and not beautiful ones at that. Some ruins speak of a history rich with culture. Looking at them, you can hear the languages that were spoken there, see the people that lived hear, sing with the voices that used to unite in a chorus, walk in the footsteps that were left behind. But these ruins speak only of war and destruction. Looking at them, you can see the bombs drop onto the volcanoes, hear the blunt echoes of muffled screams, and see the thousands of arms clawing for another chance to live.
I don’t remember the capital before, so I have nothing to compare it to. Maybe someday, there were languages and songs here too. I’ll ask somebody who remembers if I get back. When I get back.
We stop at the two mile mark, hiding our snowmobiles in an abandoned building. My feet find their place back on solid ground. We are in the center of the capital. It must have not snowed here like it did back up North. Everything is dry and dirty. We step out of the building and walk through the cracked streets. The only sound is the wind.
The base of the CGB is at the bottom of a hill. It is rumored to be a meteorite crater, but I’m not sure if that’s true. We walk quietly, keeping to the back alleys. The capital crumbles around us. I hear the familiar patter of rat feet and try to imagine how this city could ever have been beautiful.
The entire city is silent. It seems that even the birds decided not to rise. By my estimate, it’s around one past midnight. All of the streetlamps are on, giving the city an eerie sort of illumination. I wonder how much electricity the lights eat. It must be a lot. I haven’t seen normal streetlamps since before the Blast and I realize that I don’t miss them at all.