Rising From The Ashes

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

My little, Kaydance! If you read this some day know that I love you so! Just be safe, my little one. Be safe. ( The final entry)

Security didn’t exist in a world like mine. Words were so easily twisted, promises so easily broken. I didn’t know what to believe any more. So, the Officials had lied. The population on the other side of the wall wasn’t a bunch of maniacs. So, my mother had lied. She wasn’t my mother, Catherine wasn’t my sister. Nothing I ever knew to be true was any more. And strangely enough I wasn’t falling apart.

I had come to terms with the Officials’ lies long ago. My mother’s, though, were a new wound, still fresh and open. Yet it was a wound, that if left alone, would heal. I knew that she loved me. I had always felt separate from Catherine anyway, although I was secure in the relationship that we had now. So, in a way it was almost as if I had expected something like this. And I was okay.

The worst part was knowing that I had a father out there somewhere. Well, if he was still alive. I’d probably never know what had happened to him or even exactly what happened with my mother. And I didn’t really know who these people even were, what they looked like, anything about them. The only thing that tied me to them was blood and yet maybe this was a more powerful bond then I had thought.

If they were both dead already then it would be one thing. Yet how could I be sure that my father had been taken care of as well? He very might still be out there somewhere and I didn’t see anyway I would ever be able to find out. It was in moments like these that I wished Cameron was around. He would know what to say or come up with some crazy plan to track my father down. I probably wouldn’t let him go through with it, but it would be nice nonetheless.

The part of the story that equally excited and terrified me was how they had escaped into the forest. If the story was true then there were people out there, people who had survived on their own, away from the Officials. My own parents had managed to find a place out there away from the city. Of course, they didn’t last there very long, but the idea of escape was tempting to me. I liked the thought of having some place else to go, of this life I was living now not being my only option forever. Even if I would never set foot outside this place, it was still comforting to know someplace else existed.

Since I had found out the news, things were the same and yet they weren’t. Nobody treated me differently yet the feeling had changed. Maybe it wasn’t so much this particular secret that had changed things, but the whole of them in general. After my mother and I had our conversation, we found Catherine and sort of let everything out into the open. There had been so many secrets for so long that it didn’t feel right to be so honest. It was almost like I feared my mom would use what I had learned against me. Yet in reality she was as much against the Officials as I was. This might have been the strangest thing of all because in our house we had always been supportive of our government, like most families, yet none of us had been supportive of it in awhile, if ever, and now this was out in the open. It felt good to be all on the same side for once.

And since we were on the same side there was no reason I shouldn’t ask the question that had been weighing on my mind for quite some time. Getting up the nerve to do so proved much more difficult then I thought, however. I was scared to know the answer more than anything, regardless I knew I had to ask.

“Mom?” I approached her hesitantly. One look at my face and dread filled her eyes. I wondered what it was she thought I was about to ask because I was almost sure it wasn’t whatever I was actually going to.

“Yes?”

“Is there any way…I mean would it be possible…um, for you to check to see if, uh, a particular person was infected?” I asked and then sucked in a breath that I held in my cheeks while waiting for her response. She knew what I was referring to by infected and it definitely wasn’t what she expected. I think I actually saw relief on her face.