Bullet and a Target

I woke with a start, hot sweat pouring down the small of my back and across my forehead. My eyes shot opened and I found myself enveloped in the darkness. I sat up quickly, kicking the sleeping bag from my legs roughly, only causing my legs to become more and more entangled inside it. Using both my shaking hands I wiped layer of sweat from my face.
The nightmares had not faded. They had just gotten worse and the content had changed. The scenery was always different but the people remained the same. But now, not only did they show faceless soldiers always reaching towards me with ominous hand, Riley had become a star. He was always there, always hurt, and I was always too late to help him.

I glanced around trying to chase the nightmares from my waking mind. Nothing I seen made me feel any better. I was still on the floor of my old tree house, using a tattered sleeping bag as a blanket and a teddy bear for a pillow. Outside I could see a thousand stars in the sky, but no moon. The stars themselves provided enough light for me to see the ends of the trees braches, ominously scraping around the window, and the flattened square where my family home used to be at the base of the old tree.

Sighing I got onto my knees and crawled over to the edge, glancing down. I still don’t know why I expected things to be any different. A thin layer of ash covered the grass, with footprints imprinted all the way through it, from the fires that had once raged through the area. The footprints leading to the tree and away from it didn’t concern me. I knew who they belonged to. The spotlights on the horizon were another story.

I watched them move across the horizon, slowly getting closer. I knew what it was before I heard the familiar rumbling. It was an army truck out on patrol. The army presence was less out here on the outskirts of the city, and within the residential areas surrounding it. They rarely came out this far and when they did they didn’t leave the comfort of their trucks unless they seen something suspicious and we were smart enough not to let them see us.

I lowered myself down carefully as the headlights drew nearer and eventually turned into the street. Since we’d escaped the old hideout the army had been around a lot more, looking for those of us that had survived their rampage. The tree house had remained an open, but a seemingly hidden hideout for us for the time being. I watched the truck come into view from behind a line of trees. There looked to be about five men inside it, I could hear them talking and laughing loudly. Ones hand hung lazily from the cars window, a bottle in his hand. They paid no attention to the world around them.

I pulled back into the small tree house, and curled back up in the corner. It wasn’t much, a single room with an open window and doorway, but it had become our shelter and protection. I wrapped my arms around myself trying to ward off the nights chill. I was tempted to try and go back to sleep but wasn’t sure if it would be possible. Sleeping during the day for the last three days had turned my body clock around.

My father, and only companion, had started going out at night. It was safer to go out under the cover of nightfall. He was venturing around the outskirts of the city searching for food, water and anything else he deemed necessary for our trip. So far he’d managed to collect a backpack full. It was currently stored in the far corner of the tree house, untouched.

We, or dad, had recently come to the decision that it was time for us to leave the city and move on. We didn’t have much else of a choice, we were too well known to the army. I was known as an escaped criminal and my father was known as a traitor. He had been a leader in one of the biggest rebellion groups in the area. Until the army had hunted us down and attacked. My father and I had been lucky to walk away unscathed, some had not been so lucky.

“Grace?”

I sat up quickly, causing my head to spin, and crawled over to the edge one more time. Below, at the base of the tree, stood my father. He was a tall man, a laborer, with dark hair that was starting to Grey around the sides and the blue eyes I had inherited. In his hands he held a dark blue duffel bag. He lifted it up to me and I took it by the fraying handles. Roughly pulling its weight into the small room. It was getting heavier by the night, tonight had been a good haul.

My father followed the bag up soon after. Exhaustion lined his aging features. His face was still scratched and bruised from the attack but he was healing quickly. If they hurt him he never showed it. Typical of my father, he showed no weakness around me but over the years I had learned to read him. I picked up our only bottle of water that wasn’t packed away and handed it to him. He took it gratefully.

“Find much?” I asked as he drank.

He pulled the bottle away slowly, a few drips of precious water falling from his lips.

“I found some more food,” He told me. Tightening the cap on the bottle. “And a few other things we may need. No water though. The cities run dry.”

“What else did you find?” I asked curiously.

“Some bandages,” He replied. “A few small things, a knife and what-not, a map.”

“A map?”

He didn’t answer me at first, reaching for the bag beside him and rummaging through it until he found what he was looking for. Carefully, so not to rip it, he pulled a thick slice of paper that had been folded many times over. He laid it on the floor and started to un-fold it until it was flat on the floor. It turned out to be a well detailed map of the north-east. He leant back to pull a broken pen from the side pocket of the bag.

“We’re here,” he said marking a spot on the east coast where our city sat. “If we’re leaving the city we need to know where we’re going and how we’re getting there.”

“Where are we going to go?” I asked.

I had no idea where he planned on going. It had plagued my mind since the decision to leave the city had come up. Most of the country was gone, uninhabitable or just plain out of the way. We had no idea where was safe and where was dangerous. There had always been rumours.

Some said California was safe and slowly getting back to its feet, others said it had fallen victim to the nuclear explosion and at Palo Verde power plant in Arizona and was now uninhabitable. We didn’t know which rumours to follow and which to avoid. Our best bet was trial and error, to just plain finding it on our own. But the chances of that were minimal. Especially since we didn’t even know what direction to start in.

Dad stared at the map for a while longer. “Going south is out the question, Washington was one of the first places hit, it’s most likely gone, and I’d rather avoid too many populated areas.”

I glanced across the west side of the map. That was now out only option, unless we wanted to swim.

“West is our best option,” He went on. Following my thoughts. “I think we’d be best to head across the border into New Hampshire....”

“That far?” I asked cutting him off.

He frowned at the map for a minute. “We’re known here and I don’t know how far word travels through the army bases and according to most the people I’ve talked to in the past, we were the best place for miles.”

“So New Hampshire,” I said and he nodded as he studied the map.

“It’ll be a hike but if we take it slowly I think we’ll make it. It’s not going to be an easy trip,” He went on uneasily, glancing up at me. “Do you think you’re up for it?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’ll be just like when we used to go camping I guess.”

A small grin took the aging features of his face. We both had fond memories of camping trips taken throughout the process of my lifetime. We had never traveled outside the north-east part of the country. Dad had loved it, and grown up, around here and refused to live anywhere else. He turned back to study the map once more, trailing his finger across the Western border of Maine, bordering New Hampshire. His finger stopped a green path that showed a national park.

“I think we’d be best to cross the border around here,” He said. “I don’t know what border control is like state to state, I’d rather not risk it.”

I knew border control in and out of the country was extremely strict. Much more than it had even been before. When the war had broken out it had been tightened more and more every day. Until it was almost impossible to make it into the country. Those who tried were usually turned away unless they had a pre-existing citizenship and no ties with an outside country. Almost always, it also depended on whoever you talked to. Some people who did have citizenship, and even a bribe to offer, were turned away because of their ethical background. Bigotry was thriving in this new world, and those with guns and working for the government were usually the worst bigots. Or so experience had shown me.

“How’s your leg feeling?” He asked looking up from the map once more.

I shrugged. “Okay, might need a few more days before I can walk on it too much.”

“I thought so,” He sighed. “That’s fine, it gives us a few more days to prepare everything we’re going to need.”

I glanced at the packed bag behind us, almost full to the brim of all the little treasures he’d been able to find. It was amazing that he’d been able to find so much. The city was slowly starting to run short on resources. The last delivery of food into the city had be approximately a year ago at my count.

Behind me my father started to roll his map back up, causing me to turn back around. I studied his profile. He looked exhausted, his eyes were sunken and his face drawn. I knew this went further than the nights he’d spent scouring the city for supplies. The attack on our group had taken it out of him, physically and emotionally.

He had been one of a handful of men who had attempted to defend us, or hold off the attackers while the rest of us escaped the bunker. As a result of putting himself in the line of fire he was now suffering cuts and bruises to his face and body, a suspected broken rib and a damaged arm. All of which he suffered through without complaint, his priority was looking after me, though I knew it was all bringing him down.

As he always seemed to do, he took the whole ordeal onto his own shoulders, blaming himself for the attack. He believed he should have been able to stop it, or at least been able to save the lives of everyone we had called friend. My father had high expectations of himself and his position, he would carry the guilt of those who died and disappeared for a long time.

“We best get some rest,” He said, fighting back a yawn.

I nodded but did not move for my makeshift bed. I wasn’t tired anymore, I’d slept when I wasn’t supposed to. While my father was away I was to remain alert and watch for danger, allowing myself a head start if someone was to find us.

“You sleep first,” I told him. “I’m not tired.”

He nodded in reply. We were sleeping shifts so that no one could sneak up on us as we slept. One of us was always keeping an eye on the roads and area around our small hideout. My eyes drifted to the doorway as my father slowly made his way to our bedding. Mostly stuff we’d been able to scavenge from the immediate area. It wasn’t much but it provided some insulation and comfort, or other option was the wooden floor.

I scooted closer to the doorway of the cubby and rested my back against the frame of the door. It was strangely comfortable to rest my back against anything these days. Rest was becoming a luxury. I kept my eyes on the horizon, the sun was starting to rise to the north, indicating summer was on its way. I had always looked forward to summer because not only did it mean school holidays, but it meant going to the beach and helping out at whatever factory my dad worked at, at the time.

I pulled my eyes away before I drowned in the nostalgia. Instead I found myself looking at the remains of the city in the distance. I had lived here, in Maine, all my life. Rarely leaving the state, only once in my living memory. This place was all I knew and leaving it behind, even though there was barely anything left still didn’t sit right with me.

The silhouette of the city was something I had seen every day. Even though sections of the city were missing from the skyline I could still remember where every building had sat. Why our state had been bombed, I didn’t know, nor did I know who had attacked us. I just remembered the day the earth shattered beneath my feet, and my life fell in around me. I turned my attention slightly to the east.

There I could see the outline of the shore and the docks and factories alongside it. The industrial-area had once been the life-force of our city, and now it was empty. I could spot the factory where my father had worked last; I could see the docks on which my grandfather and great grandfather had worked their entire lives. And to the far east, I could see the remains of a tall white chimney that still made me smile to myself.

As a young kid I had asked my father what it was for and why it produced thick clouds of white smoke all the time. He had told me it was a cloud factory, and like the typical kid I was I believed him. I had believed everything my dad told me, no matter how absurd it sounded. For years, I had believed that it was a cloud factory. Until my new junior school teacher had ruined the illusion with the truth, informing me that it was actually an electricity plant of some kind. To this day, I wish she hadn’t. Because now of seeing the cloud factory, I saw pollution and the world, for what it really was.

“Dad?” I whispered, scared to wake him if he was already asleep.

“Yes Gracie?” He mumbled.

“Do you remember the cloud factory?”

I heard him chuckle and seen his cheeks pull up in a smile, a real one. “Yes, I remember the cloud factory.”