Boondocks

Chapter 44: The Light

CROC

Willow cried as we left. She fell to her knees on the deck of the ship and sobbed, gut wrenching sounds that sliced my heart in two and made each half battle the other. One wanted to stay, to ignore responsibility and do what was easy. The other half turned dark, pumping rage through my veins. I shouldn't need to do this. She shouldn't need to constantly fear that more Officials will arrive. Julia shouldn't be gone.

I focused on the anger, stoking it like a fire, letting it fuel me forward so I wouldn't turn back. We traveled for hours through the dark woods, guided by Cecil's compass. I'd never seen a town in real life, but what I found was nothing like the pictures I'd seen in books.

Savannah reminded me of Pappy. Not his smile or his words or any of the things he taught me. No. Savannah was the bones he left behind: vacant, lifeless, decayed. It was the shack before Julia came, overflowing with garbage, covered in grime, cobwebs, and dust. It was the shadow of someplace where people had lived. Mothers and fathers and babies. Pappys and Julias. All gone. All killed. All turned into snacks by a predator. I cracked my knuckles, rolled my neck. My muscles wound like a snake, twisting, tightening, preparing to strike.

I was a predator too.

The walls were coated in scribbled words, reminding me of the board Julia had hung in the living room when she was teaching us to read. But there was no lesson here, only pleas for help and forgotten resistance. I imagined this were my home. That the swamp was suddenly over-run by a gluttonous, bottomless beast. Then I remembered that it had been, and too many members of my family were now buried along the bank, mound upon mound of upset ground. But we'd fought back, and they hadn't beaten us.

How many battles had this place won before it ultimately fell?

The town ended like the canal, opening up into a vast stretch of land. We continued forward up a hill, growing increasingly lower to the ground the closer we got to the lights shining in the distance, until we were laid flat on our stomachs, taking it in.

The Greater Good killed everything it touched. Even the Earth surrounding it had rotted. The grass was gone; the dirt was dry. Dust twisted in the air like smoke, rolling with the rhythm of the wind. Each time it blew, I caught a whiff of their scent. A toxic soup made of all the worst ingredients: putrid, festering, rancid. It singed my nose, burned my throat, then hit my lungs like sharp stones. They weren't just killing people; they were killing the mother. They were a disease, and if the canal was her heart, then this was her body. That was why I couldn't feel her here. The swamp wasn't different because it was changed; it was different because it hadn't been.

My jaw clenched, hands fisted. Pappy had tried his best to keep me away from them. He'd done what he thought was right, but nowhere was safe so long as they kept spreading. I couldn't help but feel like my whole life had been leading me to this moment. That maybe I'd needed to be alone, so she could raise me, and I could know her. So she could teach me and make me strong. So I could save her.

They weren't invincible. In the distance, their buildings stood behind a wired fence, and towers rose around their perimeter, casting beams of light so bright it was like the sun shone only for them. All proof that even the beast had reason to fear the dark.

"Croc," Merle hissed.

I blinked, snapping out of my thoughts.

The men had gathered closer together, and they were staring at me. Merle motioned with his chin toward where Reggie and a group of others were huddled around Tex. I crouched and hurried over, and Tex glanced at me as I joined the group, his lips thin. "Nice of you to join us," he said. "There are six towers, and two suits in each one. Two of ours need to sneak up and take them out, before they can sound the alarm." He looked around the group. "Everyone think they can do that?"