back.
I hold the gun and stare at blackness, listening to the sound of air moving in and out of my lungs and the pulse beating faintly in my ears. My eyelids grow heavy, but my mind refuses to relax enough to sleep—anxiety claws at my nerves and eats at my belly.
The hours drag by. I find myself looking at Bowen’s watch every half hour. And then every twenty minutes. And then every ten. By the time it is six in the morning, I look at his watch every five minutes, and every time I check, every five minutes that passes, it seems more impossible that he is coming back. I want to scream with frustration.
I lean against the headboard and force my breathing to slow. The anxiety has found its way into my muscles, my brain, even my lungs. But even slowed breathing does nothing to soften anxiety’s fierce grip. I look away from the minuscule glow outlining the window. Dawn means Bowen isn’t coming back. If I refuse to see the dawn, maybe it won’t come.
I sit up tall and hold my breath. The air has shifted, a bare touch of breeze that cools my damp face. The hotel door eases open, slowly swinging wider. Hope and fear battle inside me, mingling with the ever-present panic. I lift the rifle to my shoulder and rest my finger on the trigger, hoping to hear Bowen’s reassuring voice.
A shadow slips into the room, a gaunt wisp of a person, accompanied by the smell of the tunnels. All my hope fades with that smell.
“Arrin? Er—Arris,” I whisper.
“Hurry! And it’s Arrin. I only pretend to be a boy when it suits me,” she whispers, and steps back out the open door.
“Wait! I can’t go. If Bowen comes back and I’m not here …”
“He won’t be coming. Come here and I’ll show you why.”
With rifle in hand, I climb from the bed and follow. The hall is black after the small amount of light from the hotel room. The smell of Arrin is what I follow. When she’s halfway down the hall, she opens a door and the light of dawn stretches into the hallway. Heart pounding, I follow her into another hotel room.
She goes past the bed and straight to the broken window, pointing. I follow her and look. From up here I can see the whole city. It looks perfect, as if nothing has changed. Until I notice the complete lack of human life, complete lack of movement and sound.
A cool breeze flits through the broken window, carrying with it the scent of soil and grass. I fill my lungs with the mineral-rich fragrance and sigh the air back out. Surely I must be dreaming. But then I gag on the smell of Arrin and wonder if I imagined the good smell.
The breeze stirs the air, and I smell green things once more.
“What is that smell?” I whisper, leaning toward the window. Arrin points again. We are close to the wall, maybe two blocks away. And from fifteen floors up, I can see what is on the other side of the wall. My eyes grow wide, and a yearning fills my chest, like my heart is trying to claw its way free.
Patchwork fields of green and gold fill the land inside the wall, where City Park Golf Course and the zoo used to be. Houses and buildings frame the green-and-gold fields. Men and women are walking toward the fields, hoes and shovels over their shoulders, baskets on their arms.
Something flickers inside my brain. A familiarity I can’t explain, the feeling that I’ve been in there, seen the skyline framed by stars. A fleeting image of blue eyes and hushed words fills my mind.
“Now, look down there,” Arrin whispers, shattering my thoughts. She puts a dirt-caked finger to her lips, warning me to be silent. I peer over the side of the window frame and stare down at the shadowed streets and rooftops below. For several minutes I stay there, waiting for something to happen. When nothing does, I look at Arrin with raised eyebrows.
“Look harder,” she says softly, her eyes never leaving the street. I look again, following her gaze. And then I see it. Or them. And I forget to breathe.
They are hiding, squeezed into doorways, lurking in broken windows, crouched on rooftops. And they are men, not beasts, with four thick scars in their forearms—the men Bowen and I saw two nights ago. Some of them hold guns. Knives and