The Unaffected

➠3.2

later that day Matt tells us all to come outside. We're going to start soldier training.

Ella looks at me. "I suppose this is necessary, but I hate physical exercise."

I laugh. "I enjoy it. It distracts me. I like distraction."

"You'll like me, then," Nick calls. "I'm very distracting."

Ella smiles as I grin at him. "You two are funny," she says. "I like watching you; you remind me of what life could be like, with jokes and smiles. John does that too. I was never good at making people laugh."

"Well, we're together now. Maybe someday we'll all be happy and comfortable."

"I honestly don't want much," Ella says. "I just want to live a life not being hunted, or cold, or hungry. It would be nice, I think."

"Don't we all," I say, sadly. I don't remember having a normal life. Just running. Running, and never stopping.

✶

Later at dinner, Katelyn decides we should share what our lives were like before. "We'll feel more like a team this way," she says. "And there's only one way we're going to win this war; solidarity."

I nod. "Who wants to go first, then?" I ask. I don't, particularly. I don't like talking about serious things.

"I will," Ella says. "I like talking about myself." We all smile.

"I was with a very small group. None of us were older than ten, except me; I left when I was fourteen. We got in danger frequently, and I'd eventually accepted the fact that I'd probably be caught sooner or later, once we started to hear a about the "abductions". Then one day, they came when we were sleeping. The aliens did that a lot then. We should have been on guard, but we were so young; we didn't know any better." She looks at the ground, and blinks quickly. "But they took me. No one else in the group was an Unaffected, so they left them alone; I suppose they knew that they'd inevitably die in a few years anyway. But when I woke up, I had a headache, and I was in the cell with Tom, who didn't talk to me except to explain what had happened. John joined us a month or so later. He kept us happy, and so I was glad of his presence." John nods. "I have that effect on a lot of people."

"Before that, though," she continues, nodding at John, "I used to live in Russia, but then I made my way to England with three other children. Two of them died, one killed by aliens and one of exertion; she was only little. The third was my older sister who'd been taking care of us. She's dead now, too. She'd be twenty-one now. But anyway, I stayed with the group we ended up in for eight years. I was the oldest of us, in the end, as you know. I worry about them. I hope they're still alive."

She looks down. "That's all, though."

That must have been hard, I think, sharing that all with us. I'm not sure i want to. I don't know these people very well, yet. But Katelyn's right.

"I'll go next," John says. "So. I was six when the apocalypse happened, in South Korea. I have a little brother, who I took care of. He's four years younger than me. I left him, when the aliens took me. I worry about him every day.

"But, we found our way into a group who had gathered quickly. Almost every kid in our town was part of it. At first I found it exciting, being a six year old, but then I realized what was happening. I stopped talking for a long time, with everyone except my brother. A lot of the people in the group died, but it stayed mostly the same the whole time I was with it, which was until the aliens took me. I was being stupid, that day. I was showing off to a girl I took to see their base, and I got too close. They saw me. And they didn't see my marks. So they took me. I couldn't speak English when I came here, so the aliens stuck a translator chip thing into my brain. How they work is they dissolve and spread around your brain, sending waves or something as a translator, and now I'm fluent in pretty much every language they know of, and I feel like I'm speaking Chinese. They give them to their soldiers, too. Anyway, that's all."