Free The Canyon: A Short Story (Voices of the Apocalypse Series Book 1) by Simone Pond

The Canyon

    I STARE AT my daughter and try to keep from counting her worry lines. Only fifteen years old, yet her eyes are weary and worn. My dear Lillian. She’s seen things, way too many things for someone her age. How am I supposed to tell her that everything’s going to be okay when it’s so far from it? Nothing is okay––not if we stay here in Los Angeles. We need to get out of here before the final phases of the Repatterning wipe us off the map. I’ve already lost a son to the war that doesn’t exist and had to bury my youngest daughter and husband in the backyard. There’s not much more to lose, except my dear Lillian. We’re all that remains of our family and friends. I must be strong. We will not become victims of this hellish genocide.  
      Lillian sleeps curled next to me in the queen-sized bed I used to share with my husband before the vaccine took him out. Her little ragamuffin of a dog, Rags, nestles against her belly to keep her warm. We haven’t had electricity for months, and the early spring weather has been brisk. Sleeping next to each other has helped. What’s worse is our food supply is dwindling. We continue to scavenge nearby houses in our Santa Monica neighborhood, but most places have been cleaned out. The grocery stores and convenience stores were ransacked a few months earlier when people got scared enough to leave town. They grabbed whatever they could and took off. I don’t know where they were going; most cities are in the same horrific shape. At this point, no place is safe––except maybe the woods. The Repatterning has done an astounding job of destroying the better part of civilization. We didn’t leave before things got worse, because like everyone else, we thought the changes were for the greater good. The majority of people who stayed in Los Angeles, hoping the bad times would pass, have since died from the vaccination. Lillian and I weren’t around the day the “health officials” showed up at our house; we were busy riffling through our neighbor’s pantry. My husband and youngest daughter weren’t so lucky, though. They got needled. Then they died.
    “Mom,” Lillian whispers.  
    “Yes, sweetie?”
    “Aren’t you going to sleep?”
    “I will. I’m just thinking.”
    “About what?”
    “Go back to sleep, Lil. We need our rest.” I fake a yawn and adjust my pillow, hoping she’ll close her eyes so I can concentrate.
    “But that’s all we do is rest.”
    “Shh, go back to sleep.”  
    I stroke her brown hair, the thinning strands twining around my fingers. She looks malnourished and sickly. I feel like an awful mother for letting my daughter get so rail thin. There’s still life left in her, but we can’t go on like this much longer. Obviously, if I don’t do something soon, I’ll be putting another child in the ground. I can’t let the elites win. They’ve been feeding us bull about the Repatterning for too long. My son, Robert, warned us, but that didn’t help. He was dragged away by the Planners, under their Executive Order of Conscription. Now they’re talking about relocating the few remaining survivors to those Emergency Crisis Camps, which are really death camps. The whole thing has been an enormous crock of shit. I can’t go back and fix anything, but I can plow ahead and find a way to save us.  
    ###
    In the morning, I’m weak from lack of sleep. I stayed up most of the night reviewing the list of survival items my husband had put together before he died. Scribbled at the bottom of the list is a contact name: Joe Darkly. Though I don’t recognize the name, I trust my husband knew what he was doing. Before he got sick from the vaccine, he had been gathering intel and making contacts in the underground. We were waiting for the right time to leave, but we waited too long. That decision proved to be a mistake, one I won’t make again.  
    I caress my daughter’s pale cheek. Rags is up and licking my hand, excited to start a new day.