Against The Darkness (Cimmerian Moon) (5 page)

It shouldn’t
be a problem with just seven of us.

“Even so, I
hate us being out in the open.”

“It’s our best
hope right now. That area has plenty of trees for cover. We can build shelter
and blend in with the surroundings.”

I nod,
affirming what Wade said. “It’ll be perfect.”

“We thought the
last place was perfect,” Shayla mumbles.

There were
forty people hiding in some woods by a residential area, I want to tell her.
That’s not perfect. That was a disaster waiting to happen. I clench my jaw
tight to stop myself from pointing out the obvious.

“What about
food?” MJ asks. He puts up his empty hands. “When we left, we didn’t have time
to get to anything, food or water. We had to leave everything, even our backpacks.”

Crap.

Wade pulls his
pack off his back and rummages through it. “I have a flashlight, four bottles
of water, two sleeves of crackers, a lighter and Swiss army knife. Sin,” he
says, looking over to me. “What do you have?”

I don’t have
to pull my bag off to recite its contents. “Two bottles of water, one sleeve of
crackers, four slices of bread and I have my knife tied to my sweats.”

“Awesome. We’re
definitely prepared to head back to Michigan,” Ian says.

“What did you
bring?” I ask him, since he’s still being a smartass.

He glares at
me before turning the other way.

“Let’s get
going. Our circumstance isn’t going to change by just standing here,” Wade says.

We let him
lead the way with Mia and I following close on his heels. Shayla and Ms.
Burgess are at our backs and MJ and Ian are behind them.

We move
silently through what used to be the residential areas. Everyone is on edge,
watching out for aliens that could come out from behind trees or what used to
be buildings or houses. We also keep peering up, watching for their ships.

Under the
cover of night, we go through the few houses that don’t threaten to topple on
us. We search for anything that will help us survive. We don’t find any more
bottled water, but we are able to find a lot of canned goods and, luckily, an
opener. We load what we can carry in three plastic bags. We don’t take so much
that the bags will slow us down and only take what is needed.

By the time we
get to the lake, its well into the night. We scout out the best possible spot,
somewhere with trees thick enough to hide us. Once we find our hide-out, Wade
directs us to gather all the wood we can find.

After watching
him make a stick shelter that’s only two feet high, we set out to make our own.
We each pick spots along the lake, under a tree, and position the openings so
that we can see at least two other shelter entrances. We don’t talk about what
happened—about how we think everyone else is dead. We hardly talk at all,
besides to help each other find sticks and build the hobbit huts that we’ll live
in for the next two days.

It’s past ten
p.m. before we’re finally done and it’s so dark we can barely make out what’s
around us. We’re tired, mentally and physically. There’s nothing left to do but
to rest and think about all we’ve lost.

I crawl
backward into my shelter. I won’t be able to sit up. I’ll hardly be able to
turn around or shift my position. It’s long enough so that I can stretch out. I’m
so short that my shelter won’t appear out of place against the bank of the lake.
The guys had to make theirs shorter, and have to sleep curled up.

Once I’m fully
inside, I glance over to Mia’s shelter. We made ours facing each other. I rest
my face on my hands and she does the same, watching me too. I watch her until her
eyes finally close for the night. When I’m sure that she’s sleep I roll over
onto my side. This position is just as painful as lying on my stomach. Trying
to
get comfortable on the cold ground with only a few tufts of grass sprinkled in
among rocks, dirt and twigs is the least of my worries.

Right about
now is when I again start to
have my recurring wish for the gift
of foresight. But I’m sure everyone in the world has probably wished for the
same thing. At least then there could have been some kind of planning. The
military could have been ready for the aliens’ arrival and mounted an attack.
Not only that, but the government could have organized some kind of evacuation.
Although I don’t know to where exactly.

How do you
evacuate an entire country?

At any rate,
the gift of foresight would have helped us all. Maybe, with it, my mother
wouldn’t have forced me to go on the stupid field trip. I remind myself how I’d
begged and begged her not to make me go.

But I bet she
regrets it now, especially since I’m almost a thousand miles away from her
during the worst possible time.

I know what
I’m doing and I try to hold onto the feeling for as long as possible. If I’m
mad at her then I won’t miss her as much.

Just as I have
that thought, my eyes begin to water. Being mad at her usually doesn’t last
very long at all. I can’t make it. For all it’s worth, I know she’s regretting
she ever made me go and she’s missing me just as much as I’m missing her.

I sniffle back
the trickle of liquid that’s making a trail from my nostril and across my cheek.
Tears fall in fat drops from the corners of my eyes. I’m crying so softly that
I doubt anyone can hear it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I’m in my
kitchen. My mother’s favorite color—yellow—tints the walls. Stone carvings
of suns, large and small, with a cartoonish artistic flare, are on the walls.
My exams are hung on the refrigerator with magnets, displaying the A’s and A+’s
as though I’m in elementary. My mother stands in front of the stove, her back
to me, and she’s cooking.

I inhale
deeply. It’s an omelet. Glancing down, I see I’m sitting at our round, four-chair
table. There’s a white ceramic mug in front of me. I pick it up and sip at its
contents.

Coffee.
Ummm
.

She doesn’t
let me drink coffee often, only for special occasions. I don’t know what’s so
special about today, but I don’t ask her. I sip away, savoring the taste and loving
the way it feels going down my throat and hitting my stomach.

She hums a
song as she begins to scoop my omelet onto the plate, using a spatula. The
smell of eggs, cheese, ham and onions waft my way.

Grumble,
grumble
, my stomach growls.

She turns,
holding the plate overflowing with a fluffy omelet. Steam rises off the surface.
I lick my lips in anticipation. She’s smiling as she walks to me. The closer
she gets the better that omelet looks and smells.

Grumble,
grumble
, my stomach growls so hard this time it hurts.

She stops in
front of me and I wait for her to put the plate down, but she just stands there
smiling at me, holding onto it. Not being able to stand it any longer, I reach for
it, but before I can grab it, she pulls away abruptly.

“Mom?”

She’s still
smiling, holding the plate out of my range. “This isn’t for you, baby.”

“But…” I glance
from her to the omelet and then back to her again. “Didn’t you make that for
me? I’m so hungry.”

“This isn’t
for you because you have to go.”

“Go? Go
where?”

“To band
camp.”

Panic rises
like a storm within me. I can’t go to band camp. There will be an alien
invasion and I’ll be separated from her. She might die…I might die.

“No, no, no,”
I yell, reaching out for her. But she keeps stepping back, holding up the
plate, with that crazy smile on her face. No matter how close I get to her she
stays out of my reach.

“Please,
mommy. Please don’t make me go. I want to stay here with you.”

She keeps
backing away, even when it seems there’s nowhere else for her to go.

“Sin, wake
up.”

“Mommy?”

She pushes me
down. My shoulder snaps against the tile floor, pain radiates to my back.

“Please, mommy,”
I cry.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Sinta, Sinta,
Sinta,” a voice calls, working its way through my cloudy mind.

My eyes fly
open.

Where am I?

Shayla’s
crouching in front of my entrance. Her braids are hanging in waves past her
shoulders. “Time to get up. We’re going to eat. Are you hungry?”

I take a
minute to register where I am and what’s going on.

Right.
Invasion.

“Sure.”

In case aliens
come upon us, we stay close to our shelters, ready to scramble into them to
hide. But aliens don’t come and neither do any of our other classmates.

I can’t say
that I’m on my A game. I spend the day in a fog, not wanting to think about
leaving any of our classmates behind. Mia and I pretty much stick together.
Shayla and MJ keep to themselves as well. Wade spends his time making spears
and other items he says we’ll need for later. Ian doesn’t leave his shelter
unless he has to pee and, when he does, he makes sure to let everyone know that’s
the only reason we’re seeing him.

And Ms.
Burgess, well, I think she’s having the roughest time of us all. She does
everything she can not to stay still. She seems to be a blur, scouting our
surroundings, watching out for other students, helping Wade make spears, getting
the wood together or checking on our shelters. She does all of this, but I
think all she probably wants to do is sit down and cry. But I know she won’t,
at least not in front of us.

We wait until
it’s late into the night, when it’s the darkest, and take turns bathing in the
lake. The girls go first. We’ve had to stay covered in blood for the entire
day, pretending that it’s not on our clothes…or our skin. We use our hands to
wipe away the blood and filth that’s caked on us and in our hair, but without
soap I still don’t feel clean. We do the same for our clothes, vigorously
rubbing them together in an effort to get out everything, but again, without
soap the stains are set.

I don’t know
if I’m more miserable going into the water than I am coming out. We can’t hang
our clothes out to dry for fear of what might pass by and find them, so we
wring them out as best as we can and put them back on, only to lie on top of
the dirt again. My only consolation is that I’m not sticky anymore and even
though the blood stains are still on my clothes, most of it has been washed
off.

The next day
is just as foggy as the first. I’m awake but not really. I’m aware of everyone
around me, aware of what they say, what they do. If anyone asked me to repeat
back what they said, I could do it, just like a parrot.

But I’m numb.

I want this to
be a dream.

I don’t put
too much into anything because I believe I will wake up at any minute. I am not
sleeping on the ground in a fort made of sticks and twigs. I am not rationing
crackers and water.

I am not
separated from my mother, my father, my life.

I know I’m not
the only one feeling this way. Everyone is pretty much going through the
motions, talking minimally and only when needed.

Ms. Burgess
stays busy by organizing us. She still hasn’t said anything about what
happened. She seems to only have a couple of things on her mind; waiting for
the aliens to move out of the area and taking care of us. We accept this as her
role even though we all know how well that had worked out for the children that
had been killed—or left.

Wade keeps us
all alive.

Two months ago
he had been an overweight kid who hardly talked unless spoken to. But now he is
the glue holding us together. He tells us which berries are edible, which
leaves aren’t bitter and what animals he would catch and kill
if
he
could. But since we can’t eat raw meat, the animals scurrying past us are off
limits. The smoke would lead the aliens right to us. He explained a way that we
could slow cook them by burying them in the ground, but even that was risky. So
while he schooled us on what we could eat we all listen, licking our lips and
forcing down canned green beans.

The only two who
seem to be in their own little world are
MJ
and
Shayla. They can’t separate from each other. They weren’t a couple before all
this happened, but it appears as if they are now. When we were back at school,
MJ
had dated Kiera.

Shayla was
from the same projects as
MJ and they hung out a lot, but I
thought as just friends. I never saw an
inkling of anything more.
But that isn’t the case now.

I leave my fog
long enough to help Wade and Ms. Burgess with the spears. He has me find sticks
taller than I am and, using my knife, shave the tips into nice points.

As day two
fades into night, I begin to think that no one else has made it. No one
survived the alien attack but us. And that thought weighs my heart down like a
stone. All those parents who will be waiting for their kids to return. Who will
tell them what happened?