Chemical Dreams

The Factory is on the move again.

Two hundred children being led across the United States with guns trained on their hunched backs. To where? Nobody knows. The few people left in the towns they pass through know better than to question the armed men who lead the group. It is better not to know what they plan on doing with all those children. Where they are taking them.

Sola Ray has been with the factory for a long, long time. She doesn't know a thing of life outside the chain link fences and buzzing florescent lights. When she and the other children are gathered up and marched across the country, they are told it's for their safety. That they are being brought somewhere better, that they ought to respect the soldiers who escort them and keep their mouths shut.

But things start to get out of hand. Every day they are forced to walk a little farther, they are fed a little less. More kids have been shot for trying to escape than Sola can count on both hands. Something is wrong. The days are hot and endless, the nights are fearful and short. Disease spreads like wildfire, a fever burns under the children's skin. Sola Ray is beginning to fall behind.
One day, when the soldiers aren't looking, Sola and a group of kids successfully slip into the withered fields of corn without being spotted.

Only to find that life outside the Factory isn't what it once was.