The Wanted

Bracing myself for the explosion, I squatted down with the bound soldiers.

I knocked into the female soldier, and she grunted but made room for me next to her.

I looked sideways at her curiously. “Why did you surrender so easily?”

She frowned, her face creased with confusion at what her mouth was about to say. “We were taught to use force when necessary, to be unforgiving in the face of defiance. But this… not one of us wanted to be a part of this.” Her eyes were distant as she stared over the wall to some unknown point.

My heart picked up a new, frantic rhythm. “Part of what?”

The bomb detonated, making words impossible. I covered my ears as the wall split open and debris spewed across the ground.

But then the ground shook under our feet. It didn’t just rumble. It quaked. Metal creaked in agony and screams. Screams came from everywhere, like the Rings were acting as a megaphone, amplifying peoples’ pain for the whole forest to hear. This wasn’t just our blast. Something had happened inside.

ROSA

The ground hummed like the leftover sounds of a twanged rubber band, a sharp vibration that traveled up our legs and into our mouths. I swallowed. A puff of dust like two giant chalk dusters being smacked together appeared several hundred meters down the street. A rumble made us stop and attempt to brace ourselves against… nothing. The earth started to shift under out feet. I stopped breathing, willing myself to be weightless, to take my sister and the others and just float away.

The noise was alien, a loud pop! And then screams. Endless screams.

I turned to my mother as the ground tilted down. “We have to get to the gate,” I yelled, though she couldn’t hear me.

She was frozen, listening to the mouths screaming in wide-open horror, feeling the earth destabilize. I shook her shoulder violently. “Move. Now!” She nodded minutely and shuffled towards the gate.

A bin rolled past me on its side, tumbling and clanging down as we ran up a sudden incline. I couldn’t look, but I could hear the sliding, the metal creaking and fighting against gravity, and thousands of people holding on and losing. Somehow, the world was crumbling, the roads were tipping, and everything and everyone was fighting against slipping into the ground.

We were so close now, the black gate shone like a dull beacon. Freedom. Locking us out of freedom. Hundreds of people were cramped around the locked gate. Ring Two was the Ring for young families. There were children and young people, clinging to each other in fear. So many tears and cries for help, even the sound of buildings being crushed and smashed against each other couldn’t drown them out.

We thudded against the edge of the crowd. There was nowhere to go. People were wedged against the locked gate like scavengers, beggars. I looked through the bars and more people crowded on the other side, hands reaching through the gaps, fingers grazing against desperate fingers. I turned around and wished I hadn’t. Two houses on opposite sides of the street had collided and had momentarily jammed the mechanism that was pulling the floor out from under us. Once they fell, we would fall.

My mother reached forward and tapped a large man on the shoulder, her voice loud and strong. “We need to get the children over the gate first.”

The words spread like a secret and soon, everyone was saying the same thing. Parents locked their arms together as the ground crumbled not fifty meters away.

I looked to my mother as she stepped back. Grabbing at her, I missed her shirt by an inch.

“No. No. Don’t give up. Mother, please!” I croaked.

She shouted out to those closest. “Please help my daughters.”

Someone took my arm and pulled Gwen, Rosa-May, and me up over the heads of the people. They’d formed a human hill and children were being passed up to the gate and over it. Gwen grabbed the hand of a small boy and hoisted him over the gate in front of her. Denis had two children under each arm and he used his taller frame to hoist them higher. My eyes frantically searched for my mother as I reached the points of iron. On the other side, people had stacked tables, chairs, whatever they could find, to try and breach the gate. Now that most of the kids were over, adults were following. Mother’s face was determined. She tracked me with her eyes, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I saw her working her way closer. She was going to make it.

The buildings streaked against each other, a shrieking, shredding sound as the walls tore open like a paper bag. The ground rattled, and the mound of people slipped. I slipped. My hands gripped tighter around my screaming sister. Someone above shouted, “Throw her over.” A man, standing atop a pile of broken, teetering furniture, his hands just grazing the top of the gate. I put both hands under Rosa-May’s butt and pushed with every ounce of strength I had. She tumbled through the air and landed on the man’s chest.

She was safe. I got her out. My lips pressed together to suppress the panicked howl I wanted to loose. I spun around to tell mother, but she was lost in the sea of slipping, desperate people. People who were now truly panicking. People I was standing on top of.

The houses finally gave way and smashed against each other, a large section of wall shooting up like a buoy released from deep underwater. I clung to the gates as it sailed passed me and hit the wall to my right. Gwen and Denis stood on the other side, their hands wrapped around mine. My face creased with exertion, my breath stinging like pins in my throat.

“Just jump,” Gwen screamed over the crashing. But I wasn’t a grasshopper like her. I wasn’t strong enough. I held fast, unwilling to let go as the world suddenly dropped beneath me. Someone grabbed my leg like it was a rope. My limb stretched and strained as I wound my arms around the gate bars and locked them together, my skin tearing as the weight dragged me down the rusted iron. The person slid down, pulling my sock and shoe with them. My leg felt like it would pop from my hip socket at any moment but then my shoe slipped off my foot, and the weight was gone. My floor of people was gone.

She was gone.

A tight sob caught and made a nest in my throat. One I would never dislodge.

I closed my eyes tight. If I looked? If I watched the source of what was ringing and slicing at my ears? I might as well let go.

The camera above me zipped and focused in on what was beneath me.

I clung ten feet up a gate with nothing but air below me. A neat circle of metal lined the crumbling dirt like a cookie cutter. Water rushed below, the screaming had stopped behind me, but was only just starting on the other side of the gate. On the safe side, where children had watched their parents disappear into the ground.

My arms pulsed. I couldn’t hold on much longer.

I’d lost my mother.

Lost her.

Rosa-May’s screaming pierced my ears and I opened my eyes, searching for her in the crowd. People were ru

I’ll keep her safe for you, Mother. I promise.

My thin knees pressed between the gaps of the bars, the cold, and the pain of everything trying to engulf me like the yawn of a lion. Slowly, my body slackened. My arms couldn’t hold on any longer. My fingers loosened. Gwen stood beneath me, screaming, with a small child clutching her who looked just like me but with warm brown eyes. I couldn’t even see Denis.

“Here.” A warm voice, so familiar it was like a blanket thrown over my shoulders. It was a ratty chair I sunk into, arms I sought forever. “Rest your knee on my shoulder.”