Day Zero

She meant every word.

Elle woke with a start. She was sitting upright in the corner of the bakery. Georgia and Jay were in the opposite corner, talking in low voices. Pix and Flash were asleep. She watched them. They were all thin, underfed. Elle wondered why they — out of all the kids at the juvenile correctional facility — had been the ones to survive.

They looked normal enough. They didn’t appear to be hardened criminals. Pix and Flash couldn’t be older than thirteen. Georgia looked to be around sixteen, and Jay was probably around seventeen or eighteen. They looked… tired. Like Elle.

She knew what it was like to be tired.

She toyed with the idea of bringing them home to her apartment, but decided against it. They could easily turn on her. So far, she had survived because she’d been smart. One stupid decision could end her life.

She wasn’t about to start a bad habit now.

She got to her feet and walked toward Georgia and Jay. They immediately stopped talking, piquing Elle’s curiosity.

“What’s up?” she asked.

Georgia hesitated.

“Well. We were thinking,” she whispered. “Maybe since you know so much about the city, you could give us some tips. Like where to find food. We’re starving, Elle. We need help.”

Elle looked at Jay. He seemed frustrated to be asking for help. “We just want to know what you know,” he said, tense. “Where to look for food. What areas to avoid. That kind of thing. It might keep us alive longer.”

Elle raised an eyebrow.

“You want a tip?” she remarked. “Here’s one: get out of the city. There’s nothing here for you. If starvation or sickness doesn’t get you, the Klan will. And if for some reason you avoid all three of those things, you’ve got to deal with Omega. You’re already dead, you just don’t know it yet.”

“But you survived here, shortstack,” Georgia countered. “So can we.”

“I’m lucky.”

“You know what you’re doing.”

“And my life could end in a second! All I have to do is make one mistake and I’m dead.” Elle felt the color rush to her cheeks. “You need to understand that everything in this city is death. Almost every building is full of rotting bodies and most of the food was poisoned when the chemical weapon hit the city. The Klan executes foragers like me on the streets and hangs their dead bodies from lampposts to mark their territory. This isn’t a city anymore, this is a battlefield. And sooner or later, all the good guys are going to be dead.”

Jay and Georgia stared at her, their jaws slack.

Elle swallowed, uncomfortable. She hadn’t meant to go on a rant, but they needed to grasp the danger that the city held.

“If it’s so dangerous, why haven’t you left?” Jay asked, his dark gaze searing into hers.

Elle didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have an answer.

“It’s morning,” she said instead. “I need to go.”

“Elle, please help us,” Georgia pleaded, standing from the table.

“You don’t need my help. You need to get out.”

“But we have nowhere to go!”

Elle lifted her shoulder in a halfhearted shrug, throwing her hood over her head. “Join the club,” she commented.

“Please, Elle. Jay won’t say it, but I will: we need your help, and we’re begging you.” Georgia touched Elle’s arm. Elle flinched. “We haven’t eaten in three days.”

Elle closed her eyes.

She knew what it was like to be hungry. To be starving.

“If I help you,” she said, “then you have to promise to let me leave when I’m done. You can’t follow me.”

Georgia nodded.

“We can do that.” She looked at Jay. “Right?”

Jay stood up and offered his hand. Elle just stared at it.

“You can trust us, Elle,” he said. “We’re not bad people. We’re not here to hurt you.”

Elle dropped her gaze to the floor.

She’d heard people say that before…

She said, “I can show you where to find a little food and water.”

“That’s all we need,” Georgia answered.

Elle wanted to shake her, to tell her NO. They needed to leave the city. That’s what they really needed.

But she didn’t.

Jay stood in the shadows, a muscle ticking in his strong jaw. He looked like he could be twenty years old, but if he had been in a juvenile correctional facility only last year, he couldn’t be older than eighteen.

Flash and Pix groggily awoke.

They’ll have to wake up faster than that if they want to stay alive here, Elle thought. The Klan doesn’t give you time to be lazy.

“First lesson,” Elle said, tightening the straps on her backpack. “Sleep wide awake. The Klan is everywhere, and there’s more of them than us. So. Don’t be lazy.”

“Sleep awake?” Pix echoed. “That makes no sense.”

Elle shook her head.

This was going to be more effort than it was worth.

Nadia’s Market was an organic grocery store before Day Zero. Movie stars and wealthy socialites would shop there, buying bags of lentils and quinoa, and other staples of an elite’s diet. Unfortunately, the organic food didn’t last as long as the processed foods, and that was Elle’s first lesson to the kids.

“The only thing you’ll find in there are jars of almond butter,” she said. “And that’s not a bad thing; I mean, food is food. But you’re better off spending your time searching somewhere else.”

They were standing catty corner to the market. The parking lot was full of rusty, broken shopping carts. A colony of once-elegant penthouse apartments comprised the neighborhood around them.

“Where are the birds?” Georgia asked. Her tall frame was sitting on the curb. She stared at the sky. “There are no seagulls, no bugs. Where is everything?”

“Seagulls are starting to come back to the beach,” Elle stated. “Everything else is dead.”

“Are we breathing poison right now?” Jay asked.

“The probability of that scenario is slim,” Pix piped up, pulling her red beanie around her forehead. “More likely than not, Omega launched chemical rockets at the city that killed the population with Sarin gas. It kills on contact with the skin, but it doesn’t linger in the air.”

“One and done,” Georgia deadpa

Elle nodded.

“Yeah,” she said. “Besides, Omega wouldn’t have come back to the city if they were going to be poisoned by their own weapons.”

“You sure about that?” Jay asked.

“Pretty sure.”

“Maybe we just haven’t been affected yet.”

Elle rolled her eyes. “I would be dead by now if that was the case,” she said. “Come on. Follow me.”

“Three cheers for Follow the Leader,” Georgia drawled.

Elle led them away from Nadia’s Market, two blocks backward. The sky was cloudy today. It looked like it might rain again.

“Where do you live?” Jay asked.

Elle gave him a look.

“Okay, okay.” Jay threw his hands up. “I was just asking a question, kid.”

Elle didn’t like being called kid. In fact, she didn’t like talking to Jay at all. He didn’t seem to relish being given tips by a girl that was about half his size. But he needed her to survive, and that gave Elle a little bit of satisfaction.

“There,” Elle said, stopping. “We’re here.”

They followed Elle into an alleyway. She paused at a garbage can halfway down the street. She pushed it aside, revealing a small door. It was rusty and looked abandoned.

The kids looked confused.

Elle opened the door.It creaked. She stepped down. It was cold and damp. She descended down a flight of steps, stopping in complete darkness. She grabbed a flashlight from her backpack and flicked it on.

“That looks dangerous,” Flash whispered.

He wore wiry round glasses that balanced on the tip of his nose. He pushed them up and looked at Elle. “Is this secure?” he stated from the opening.