ALLEGIANCE

ALLEGIANCE part 2

RODAN

"Bea, I don't even want to think about this right now!" I yelled, exasperated. "It's only December 2nd and we don't have to reply by the 25th!"

Bea could get on my nerves sometimes. She was a lot like her mother. She was always worried more than she needed to be and her anxiety got the best of her sometimes.

"But Ro, we haven't even given any thought to what side we're going to join yet!" Bea cried.

I stood up and walked out of the house towards the market. I closed my eyes, trying my hardest to envision a world unlike ours. I pictured a city that had clean sidewalks and clear skies. I saw skyscrapers, which had long since been obliterated by the war now. Why were we born into this world? Maybe if we would have been born a thousand years earlier, we could enjoy the technology the Oldies used. How nice it would have been to be an Oldie, to be able to have an iPhone, like the historians described. Hand-held devices that sent messages to others. I'd also heard that you could fly in planes to other countries. Nowadays, the only planes you saw were the ones you ran from for chance that they could drop a couple bombs on your city.

I entered the market and tried to come up with something to buy. I found myself in the nearly empty cosmetics aisle, and immediately spotted a tube of shiny pink lip gloss. This was a rarity. I moved my hand around in my pockets and found two dollars. I grabbed the tube hastily in case anyone else tried to before me, and bought it at the self service machine. I got 10 cents back.

Bea is gonna love this, I thought.

I concealed the gloss in my shirt and returned to the house, then locked myself in my room.

"Ro!" I heard Bea's voice. "Ro, hurry!" She sounded scared.

I leapt up. The door to my room flew open before I even touched the doorknob.

"Ro, Talon has just sent over three bomber planes! If we don't make it down the street to the bomb shelter in the next couple minutes, we're toast!"

I grabbed my bag and Bea's hand and dashed out of the cottage. The slight sunlight that barely existed was now completely covered by the bomber planes. Just as I was crossing the street trying not to run over a little girl that was screaming for her mother, I heard the first explosion.

The ground rocked beneath our feet. I wrapped my arms around Bea and started to run faster. The shelter was just 50 feet in front of us. I pulled harder.

BEA

As Rodan was pulling me further down the street, I turned my head to look back at the little cottage that me and Rodan had bought with our government money when we were just seven. I couldn't help the tears flying off my face as we gained speed toward the bomb shelter.

Before I could catch myself, my foot snagged on a crack in the cement and I was on the ground. Rodan didn't stop and wait for me to stand up, he carried me the rest of the way to the shelter in his arms.

"Can I see your arm?!" The lady at the front desk asked frantically.

Rodan held out his arm, where his identity tattoo was still as dark as the day he was born. I held mine out also.

"You're clear." She said, ushering us down the stairs.

The next bomb shook the whole shelter. I tumbled down the staircase, hitting my head on the floor as Rodan landed on top of me. A sharp pain in my head flared up and my left eye went black. Rodan helped me to my feet and rushed down the next two staircases. The sound of flying rubble everywhere echoed around the basement we were huddled in.

Hours passed. My head throbbed continuously and I kept cleaning blood off my forehead. Every couple minutes, the roof of the shelter would vibrate and I would grip Ro's hand harder. I fell asleep after 15 dropped bombs, and was awoken by Rodan, telling me that Talon's attack on our city was over.

"I never thought Talon would attack us! We're just a little city! It makes sense for them to attack Shai, but not us!" I muttered.

"Bea, shut up." Rodan said.

He was walking slowly in the dark. I couldn't help but wish I would have been around some one hundred years ago when you looked up into the sky and there were these little lights called 'stars'. I would have killed to see one. Now all the radiation and gas from the war blocked out everything in the night sky. It was darker then dark now. And I couldn't help but wonder if our world would ever see light again.