Emmy's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Emmy waited until Mendez bent over the jeep's back seat with a crate of cans, and Riley crouched by the rear tire checking the strap. She had one shot. The camp where the light took everyone was less than a mile back through the ruined town, and every hour she stood here loading someone else's supplies was another hour her friends went colder in the ground or wherever the Vael had put them. She was twelve. Her hair was black and blue and stuck to her neck with sweat. Her shorts were stiff with dirt. She had been sleeping in ditches for days, alone, because she believed some of them had to have made it, and no one else was going to go look. She slid behind the fuel drum and ran. Mendez shouted her name before she cleared the first collapsed wall. She heard the jeep cough to life, tires grinding grit. Emmy dropped low and cut sideways through a gutted storefront. Riley's voice came sharp over the engine, calling for her to stop, saying it wasn't safe. Emmy kept moving. She knew the shape of these streets better than they did. She squeezed through a gap between two leaning slabs and held her breath while the jeep rolled past the mouth of the alley, slow, searching. Mendez's face was tight above the wheel. Riley scanned the rooftops with her gun braced against her shoulder. Emmy pressed flat against the concrete until the engine faded. She hated the way her chest hurt. Mendez had been kind to her. Riley had given her half a protein bar last night without making a thing of it. But they wouldn't take her back to camp. They'd said so. She ran the rest of the way with her shoes slapping loose grit. She climbed a rise she remembered and came down the other side, and there it was. The fire pit was cold. Stones still ringed it in a neat circle. Sleeping bags lay open around the ash, green and red and yellow, exactly where people had crawled out of them. A mug sat tipped on its side. No bodies. No blood. No packs taken. Everything left the way it was the second before the light came. Emmy stood at the edge of the ring and could not make herself step in. "Hello?" Her voice cracked. She tried again, louder. "It's me. It's Emmy. If anyone's here, come out." Wind moved a corner of the nearest sleeping bag. That was all. She walked to the fire pit and put her hand flat on a stone. Cold. She called again, turning a full circle. She called every name she could think of. She called until her throat scraped. No one answered. No one was here. No one had been here for a long time. Emmy sat down in the sand beside the dead fire and understood that wherever her people had gone, they had not come back, and the trail she had crossed the whole town for did not start here.