thousand ants. The soldier’s hand clamps down around my wrist hard enough to pin me there while he replaces the van’s cuffs with zip ties again. Where is he? Is he all right? Anything could be happening—he might slip away completely, and neither of us would know—
I’m choked by my own helplessness. I have nothing to pour my anger into, and it just feeds itself, until I practically push my escort out of the van, which earns me a stern look and a sharp tongue cluck, like I’m a dog getting my behavior corrected in obedience class. We’re under an overcast sky thick with steel-spun clouds, but I have to squint against the pale light. I swallow back the familiar wave of nausea that comes with too many nerves stewing in too little sleep, searching for Lucas.
Then I hear it.
It is a sound that lives inside me, vibrating at the edge of seven years of memory. The low hum turns me inside out in a second, and it happens so fast—my lungs constrict painfully, my vision tunnels on the tangles of barbed wire. The air shivers with electricity. Green trees—even the smell of the air and wet earth is the same. The fog hides the body of the camp, but I know it must be there. The electric fence—
Thurmond.
They brought me back—the electric fence in front of me is quivering with laughter—thought you were gone, did you, thought you got away—I recoil hard enough to trip up my escort and nearly bite my tongue off. Blood fills my mouth. Why are they doing this? Why—
I squeeze my eyes shut, open them, squeeze them, repeating it until the throbbing in my temples finally calms.
Not Thurmond.
Mia is talking to me, eyes wide—I don’t understand how I’m looking up at her until I see that I’m on my knees, that I’ve tripped and fallen. It takes two men in uniforms to get me back up.
One of them, his blue helmet gleaming from a light mist of rain, squints at me, his eyes as dark as his skin. “—won’t hurt you, won’t hurt—”
The drumming in my head gets louder as the darkness at the edge of my vision clears, expanding so I can finally take in the real scene in front of me, not the nightmare my mind decided to terrorize me with.
There is an electrified fence. I didn’t imagine that, at least. It stretches across the four lanes of empty highway we’re standing on, and disappears into the damp, spring-rich forests cushioning either side of it. There are trailers everywhere, but two enormous concrete buildings have already been erected on either side of the road. Construction workers in bright orange vests are building another section that will bridge them together over what looks like it’ll be some kind of tollbooth, or security checkpoint. National Guardsmen with blue bandanas tied around their upper arms are overseeing the work, hovering around as if they’re unsure what they’re supposed to be doing.
The asphalt is cracked and scattered with rotting leaves and tire tracks as we weave through the concrete barriers they’ve erected to slow down approaching cars. To our right, two soldiers in blue helmets are covering up the WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA: WILD AND WONDERFUL sign with one that reads ZONE 1 SECURITY CHECKPOINT HAVE PASSES READY.
Wild and wonderful. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry.
I should have paid better attention to the news reports about how the peacekeeping force was dividing the country up into four zones for better management—I do kind of remember hearing that West Virginia would be the western barrier and Virginia the southern barrier for Zone 1. It includes all of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Which would make Zone 2…the southern states, including Texas. Zone 3 would be the middle slice of the country, from the Great Lakes through Kansas, and everything west of that would be Zone 4.
They think it will be easier to manage the populations and rations this way, controlling the flow of both, telling us what to do and what’s right. But dependence won’t outlast desperation. I think they are building dams that will never withstand the hundreds of millions desperate for clean water, food, and work.
“Where is the boy? The one who was with us?”
He shakes his head, leading me through the construction, the deafening whine of drills and jackhammers hidden by work tarps. A shower of sparks falls from where the welders are binding the bones of the structure together