Across the Water

Chapter 2

216 Hours

Nine

I wake up and immediately...I'm choking...smoke drifts up and surrounds me, I can't stop coughing...I get out of bed, but when I open the door a plume of ash leaps towards me, blinding me further. I see flickering down the hall...I hear my mother's voice yelling...yelling and thumping...then silence. I see shadows whipping across the room out of sight... I feel a worse heat than I've ever felt, worse even than that time I burnt myself on the stove. I see flames travelling across the floorboards, mats, curtains, banister. I know I have to leave now, but I can't leave without mother or father or grandmother...I turn the corner but there is no mother and father...only a wall of fire...my only way is out...I can barely see...my feet and eyes are burning...I reach the cool grass outside and I'm crying again...I look up and see flames leap from the window to the trees outside. The sound of my crying can't even drown out the sound of the lapping of the water...

I jerk awake, gasping, my chest heaving and all four limbs struggling against the sheets. Wait. Why am I—Why is the mattress so hard—these aren't sheets. I look around. I'm in a sleeping bag. I'm on the ground in a tent.

Oh.

Then it hits me all over again. I'm at the Settlement. The atom bomb was yesterday and it's all over.

Last night was the first night in the last few weeks where I haven't had the nightmare about escaping the Settlement. But it's the first night in several years where I've had the nightmare about the fire from when I was just a small child. From before the Settlement. From before the test and the orphanage. Before everything.

I don't really understand why this is the only memory from before. I don't remember my name or the faces of my parents. I only remember how scared I was during a fire, and the yelling. So much yelling, but I don't even remember what they were saying, or who was saying what. The first time I had the nightmare, when I was maybe nine, I told Twelve. He didn't seem concerned and told me not to worry about it. But I do. It's always sat there, in the back of my mind.

I sleepily fumble with the zipper on my blue sleeping bag and manage to free myself to stand, but painfully trip on a stack of dirty plastic tubs. These were the tubs Twelve and I hid out here months ago, before we were even on the radar. We knew when we returned for the endgame we would need supplies. I didn't anticipate Lisa joining us, however, which is why I needed to stop for additional provisions.

Twelve and Lisa are already awake when I emerge from my tent. Twelve is draped across a dirty blue tarp in a dramatic fashion, shirtless, with an arm across his eyes to block the sunlight. Typical. I bet he's just loving the attention Lisa's giving him right now. She's flitting around him, washing out the more serious abrasions, applying antiseptic, and fastening the bandages from the largest of the first aid kits that's open at her side. My first instinct is to micromanage, but it looks like she actually has a handle on a basic task for once. I decide to let her do this, especially since someone needs to make food and I'm sure as hell not going to let her. I try to remember that Twelve asked me to be nicer to her.

I haul out the camping stove, screw in the metal propane canisters, and set three metal bowls of porridge onto the burners. I set the stove on the soft mulched dirt of the forest floor that surrounds the Settlement and pray I don't burn the whole place down. My stomach is already rolling at the smell of the propane. I can't even look at the porridge. It looks like it's already been eaten and puked back up. When breakfast is ready Twelve and Lisa grab their bowls and sit next to me by the stove.

It's going to be impossible for me to eat this. I don't even understand why. I can't even look at it without wanting to heave.

I toss my bowl down between them. "Here, you can split mine, I'm not hungry," I say with distaste.