The Seekers

Every so often they came marching in, silently, with their thick black boots clanking against the fallen signs and scattered metal left there after The War. The others didn’t mind their presence, but every time they came, they leave with a small group of young boys and girls, ranging from the ages of seven to ten. We didn’t know where they took them and I was always told that they were good, that they took care of the children and raised them to be strong and healthy. Everyone was under this impression and I believed this story too. That was until my parents went missing when I was ten. Ever since then I knew there was something insidious and sinister about them, about their ominous silence, about their covered faces, hiding any emotion. They are the Seekers.

About twenty years ago, a war happened when all of the lands of the world started fighting with nuclear weapons. This is why the area we live in looks strange compared to the pictures my mother and father used to show me. The stone fragments we call homes used to be large buildings, and the cracked, mud caked streets we walk on used to hold cars, I have seen one before but it doesn’t work. Dad said the nuclear radiation from the bombs cause all the electronics that weren’t destroyed, to power down. They also taught me what the world used to look like before I was born, how kind people were, what jobs people had, something called a television, modes of transportation and so on. According to them, the world was divided into seven continents, and you could go over the ocean to somewhere far away in another land, which held other places called countries. But, some of those countries were against one another, allies began to form and break up, people started to fight, and that is why the world had a nuclear war with itself, leaving us to fend for ourselves in total chaos.     

After The War, people believed that there had to be order, so they established a government, and system where everyone was given food and discipline. Mom said that the system only lasted about three years because riots started breaking out. That’s where the Seekers came in. Their plan was to take the young and help them grow strong so the upcoming generations would prosper, but they only took the younger ones. So now everyone thinks they will save the children like me, the ones who were born into a place of destruction and poverty. But, I don’t believe it, how can I? How can I think that people who come in black, holding guns, not saying a word, how could anyone believe that they are the saviors to our predicament? Yes, and even if they have saved people, no one ever sees the children they take. Ever.

I piece through all my thoughts while sitting in my bed, my head propped up against the cold, stonewall. It was The Day again, the day that five people were randomly selected to be Seekers, though you didn’t know you were one until it took over you, controlled your actions, your mind, everything. It was almost like you weren’t you anymore, the feelings you felt, the memories you had slowly fading away. Then a few days after, you would become the controlled, unfeeling, insensible vessel’s we call Seekers. The only way you know somebody’s a Seeker is if they have a small blue cyclone on the back of their neck. Nobody wants that mark.

Sometimes I think that that’s what happened to my mom and dad, but they’re probably dead. The thought of them makes my throat start to close and it feels like a rope is slowly getting pulled tighter and tighter around my neck. I feel tears welling into my eyes, daring to spill over, but I quickly blink them away.

I look down at my dog, Finn. He looks back at me, eyes twinkling with anticipation, as if he is afraid to become a Seeker too. Then he looks through the little cracked hole in the wall I use as a window. Night is falling. I feel my stomach drop as I silently reassure myself that it won’t be me. It can’t be me. It will never be me.