Molly - Part 4

Chapter 2

THE CITY

"I don't think he heard us."

Oscar looked over his shoulder. The smoke was coming.

Dirty faces looking through the hole and behind them smothered in smoke were conscripts, those of bad-fate.

She touched his face, rubbing her thumb against his skin.

"I love you, Oscar."

It was all he needed to hear.

Now in the sky there was a change. A small light, blinking at odd intervals. Oscar had chosen to ignore it as best he could--satellites didn't save people. But it was hard not to notice, to look.

"Fifteen years come and gone and look what we got," Garret said. Life in the eyes despite age, decay. "Not a penny. This is how it is. Least now the cops aren't on our backs."

"Garret, christ," Bella lamented, covering her face with a cut hand.

Garret's eyes narrowed.

"I'm trying to warn ya--it's not over. Whole world doesn't just go up and keel over."

"Garret, I'm serious: shut up," Freddie snapped.

Maybe in the past the old man would have thrown up a hand and a scowl and that would be the end of it but this time Garret only kept staring.

"We all need sleep," Samantha said. "Come on."

The families filtered out, Garret clicking his teeth before getting up and going into the apartment complex behind him. So high they took away horizons. Blocks, littered with black panels. This was their jungle and Oscar knew it well; in a way he'd been born here.

She took his hand and held him close. Her lack of hair only added to the beauty, that sharp stare that pierced his soul.

"I want to go home."

"Me too. But you know we can't."

She nodded, putting her forehead against his.

"You need to be strong, Sam."

"I will."

He smiled. "Thank god."

"Oscar."

It was Van, carrying his rifle in one hand, the hilt against his shoulder. Samantha patted his shoulder then walked away without looking at Van once.

"What are we doing here, Oscar?"

"Are you trying to put every monsieur on our backs?" Oscar said, ignoring Van. "You come here, waving your gun around, shouting all the time--are you listening to me?"

Van closed one eye and looked down the scope of his rifle. The stem flashing neon-green light, then settled.

"Kenya was ten years ago now, Oscar," he said. "We're on our own. We gotta play by the rules; the rules out here."

"You're crazy."

"Absolutely. We all are. We've been breathing in the shit, yeah?"

The fog closing in. His feet taken by the white.

"We gotta go out there and get them. Make them afraid. This is how it is."

"You don't know anything about anything, Van."

He began to walk away.

"Van."

Nothing: just an empty corridor that might have once been a lobby carved out, the walls of the connecting buildings far apart.