Free The Girl in the City by Philip Harris

breathing was labored.
    With her father’s injuries hampering their progress, it took over an hour to get to the edge of the rural zone—a journey that would have normally taken Leah half as long. By the time they got outside, the sun was low in the sky, and the air was already cool.
    Leah helped her father sit down on a rock to rest and left him while she climbed a nearby ridge. She could see the Wild Ones’ camps, their fires flickering in the ever-growing gloom. There weren’t any close by, but it was still early enough that there might be people out scavenging. If they ran into a group of Wild Ones, Leah and her father would wish they’d stayed in the City.
    All the camps—at least, all the ones she could see—were to the north or the east. That meant they could move south in relative safety. That was a blessing. It would take them away from the City, towards a forest, and there were a few abandoned farms where they might be able to shelter while her father’s injuries healed.
    Leah took a look back at the City, just a black silhouette against the pink sky. Leah wondered if the story Katherine had told them was really true. Were Transport going to kill everyone? Or had she just wanted the storage module? They’d find out soon enough.
    Leah half ran, half slid back down the slope to her father. He was leaning against the rock with his eyes closed. His hand was clutching his right side, just below his ribs. She knelt down beside him and pressed a hand against his forehead. His skin was hot and slick with sweat, and his face was pale.
    It was then she saw the blood. Her father’s hand was covered in it, and more oozed from between his fingers.
    “Dad!”
    Her father’s eyes fluttered open. He smiled, but it quickly turned into a grimace as his body was wracked with a harsh, rattling cough. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and it came away smeared with blood.
    “Hey there, L.”
    Leah tried to lift his hand from the wound in his side. He winced and pulled her away. “No, L. There’s nothing you can do.”
    “But… she missed.”
    “No, she didn’t.”
    Leah shook her head, and the tears came. “No! Come on.” She stood and tried to pull her father upright, but the pained look on his face made her stop.
    “No, L. You’ll have to leave me here.”
    Leah’s eyes widened. “No! I won’t.”
    Her father gripped her wrist. “You have to, Leah.”
    The tears grew stronger. “But…”
    Blood pulsed from the wound in her father’s side. A dark pool had formed on the ground nearby. Her father gave her wrist a squeeze. “You have to get as far away from the City as you can before Transport set off that bomb.”
    Leah’s father began to cough again. Flecks of blood speckled the front of his shirt. The coughing fit was so strong and so long, Leah feared he might suffocate before he got it under control. When he finally did, he sat there for a dozen agonizing seconds, air rattling in his chest.
    Eventually, he gripped Leah’s hand with both of his and took in a deep, crackling, breath. “Please. For me.”
    Leah wiped tears away from her eyes and nodded. “Okay.”
    Her father tipped his head back against the rock and let Leah’s hand slip free. “Thank you.”
    A curl of her father’s unruly hair had dropped down over his forehead, and Leah pushed it back into place. His breathing was weak, his chest barely moving. Leah reached into her pocket and pulled out the photograph of her parents. She smiled at it, then slipped it beneath her father’s hand. “I love you, Dad.”
    Her father smiled. “I love you too, L. Now go.”
    Leah looked at her father, trying to memorize everything about him. The curve of his jaw. The color of his hair. The dusting of stubble around his chin.
    A fresh wave of tears hit her, and she blinked them away, not wanting anything to get in the way of seeing him. Really seeing him.
    Her father dragged in another agonizingly slow breath. “Go.”
    Leah took her