The Sun Dwellers

Peering through the yellowish haze and dust particles, A

A

She steps over the arm, takes aim, and puts a bullet into the back of the guy’s—who’s still clutching the steps like a lifeline—head.

It’s not anger or revenge or even her survival instincts that prompts her actions—no, that’s not it at all. She does it to end his suffering.

Chapter Ten

Three dead, one unconscious. It could have been worse. It could have been them.

Although A

“You okay?” A

“My ankle’s feeling a bit better, I should be fine,” Maia says, glancing down.

“I don’t mean your ankle.”

Maia looks up, makes eye contact for a second, but then returns her gaze to her feet. “Oh.”

“Look, I know that was…violent back—”

“I’ve seen plenty of violence in my life,” Maia interjects. “It isn’t that. You did what you had to do. It’s just…”

A

“I froze,” Maia says. “I couldn’t have done what you did. I was scared and I just froze up. I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not. What you did, it was incredible.”

“Violence is never incredible,” A

“Then how do you act when the time comes?” Maia’s question is a simple one, but something tells A

“Everyone’s different, but what I do is think of all the people who are counting on me to come through for them, the people I want to see again, and I do everything for them. When I threw that grenade I was thinking of how brave Adele is, going to the Sun Realm. When I attacked that guy, Elsey was in my head, how if I didn’t knock him out I might never see her sweet face again.” In any other circumstance, tears might fill A

“But…I don’t have anyone,” Maia says.

“You have me,” A

She climbs the last two steps, gun drawn, her finger tight on the trigger. Adele and Elsey, and now Maia, swim through her thoughts as she prepares for war.

Chapter Eleven

Each footstep coincides with the slam of her heart against the inside of her chest.

Being outside the cellar again feels strange. She was so certain its four walls were the last she’d ever see, but now, by a stroke of luck or pure will—or fate perhaps—she has a second chance to make her daughters proud.

To her left she spots a threesome of hunting sun dweller soldiers; in their crimson uniforms they look like three smudges of blood on a backdrop of smoky gray. She ducks behind a crumbled wall before they turn her way. Beside her, Maia says, “They’re everywhere. How will we get past them all?”

“We will,” A

She skates along the wall, the barrel of her gun seeing everything her eyes do, her head on a swivel, her anger rising with each piece of rubble she steps over. Any fear she felt upon ascending from the hell of the cellar is gone, wiped clean inadvertently by the bloody rags of a warring and oppressive government.

Leaving the cover of the wall, she cuts between a pair of crumbling houses, darts across what used to be a residential street, and slips behind another house; this one is still standing, save for its roof, which looks as if it’s been pummeled a dozen times by a wrecking ball. She hears voices nearby.

After glancing at Maia, who seems calmer since leaving the cellar, she heads toward the sound, hopping a wall and galloping across another rubble-strewn backyard. At the next wall she pauses, and then, upon hearing voices, motions toward the other side of the wall: soldiers beyond, her finger says.

She creeps along the wall, moving in between two houses, then hops the wall, immediately flattening herself on the stone sidewalk next to the neighboring house. Maia land softly behind her. The sounds are close—just behind the house.

They tiptoe along the house, until they’re close enough to make out what the voices are saying.

“On your knees!” a deep voice bellows.

“This is our house. You have no right to do this!” a man says.

“Please, Bear, do what they say,” a woman pleads.

“You should listen to your wife,” the deep voice—a sun dweller soldier most likely—advises.

“Marley, these people, they think they can push us around because we let them. Well, no more. I won’t get on my knees. I won’t!”

Thud! A groan of pain. A woman’s scream. “No, no, no! Leave him alone!” Thud, thud, thud, thud! “Stop it! Stop kicking him!”

The sun dweller soldiers are distracted by the beating they’re giving some poor moon dweller. A

The fourth soldier stands nearby, supervising. The commanding officer. He’s smiling. Someone needs to change that.

A

Seeing Maia nod in understanding, she darts out from cover, veers to the right—the distraction. Before anyone sees her, she’s upon the first kicking soldier, pistol whipping him in the back of his head with her gun. The next red-clad bully is too busy stomping on the helpless i

A