Citizen 100

Every war has its casualties. When a quiet suburb is transformed into a prison camp, its occupants must decide what lengths they're willing to go to survive this dangerous new world.

I

When the end comes, it'll be over quickly. No one expects to wake up one dark night being pulled from their beds, not anyone who lives a comfortable life in a relatively safe neighborhood. We're people who work in offices, not battlefields, brushing our teeth and having sex with our partners before laying our heads down on pillows from Wal-Mart. So when the dark hands of war sweep us up, it's a slippery slope downhill from there.

Am I moving too fast? You should know the story by now: The thunder was there, the reports of war machines getting ever closer to our personal lives, but there are bills to pay and mouths to feed. The shields began to go up over the city, and each night we were bathed in a green glow as the great skyscrapers wrapped themselves up like caterpillars cocooning. We exchanged nervous glances and laughed through false smiles at the paranoid city people.

There was no time to run. One evening we all lay down and closed our eyes to sleep, in the next moment the sky was being torn open by noise. Impossibly bright lights flashed outside our windows, as it seemed the whole world was coming down around us. There would be those of us who flee in terror, never to be heard from again, but most of us cried and held each other and hoped it would be over soon.

Day One took away our power and our water, and our family huddled in a basement, too terrified of the surface to venture up. It was only when we were too hungry to think, and do anything except listen to each other's stomachs grumble, that I ventured up the stairs to forage like a beast from his lair.

It was quick, frantic work, as I scurried around like a thief in my own home. Fruits and raw vegetables found their way into my hands, along with cans of Spaghetti-Os and ravioli with labels too happy for the occasion. The destructive noise rattled the windows like a soundtrack to my gathering, and it was only a couple of minutes later that it drove me back to the basement in a frantic scramble. However, we had food, and we ate cold things from a can and drank warm juice from a box.

Day Three, the world stopped screaming.

On the fourth day there was a new sound, almost comfortingly familiar as large machines backed up with beeps among a symphony of hammer strikes and jackhammers. Jaden wanted to crawl up to the surface to take a peek, but I kept him below. The only time any of us ventured up is when I went to get another batch of food.

I was bundled with crackers and cans of tuna fish as my curiosity got the better of me. I shuffled to the window to peek out to get a glimpse of the outside world, fingers brushing aside the curtains, when a face appeared. A dark gas mask took up the view, and I caught a glimpse of two grey eyes before I dropped my foodstuffs and fled, screaming down to the basement.

"Run! Run, for the love of God! Run!"

My wife and two daughters stared at me with dumbfounded expressions. Jaden's nimble body hopped up and slithered out the small window that led to our backyard. He peeked in at us, and then he was gone.

The sound of breaking glass and cracking wood came from above us, followed by a series of heavy boots stomping around. Garbled words in an unfamiliar language were exchanged, before the basement door crashed open, with bulky figures in dark suits and heavy masks piling down the stairs. One of them raised a rifle at me.

"You there, Citizens, come with us for processing."

I lunged at the intruders, intent on protecting my family from these faceless men, when was a pinching against my chest. I only had time to think oh s**t they shot me before electrical shocks went through my body, and I collapsed to the ground.

II

I played with the yellow band around my wrist.

There was a woman sitting across from me, separated by an ocean of an oak desk. She seemed to be the scholarly type, with thick black glasses and her hair in a bun. She might have been attractive at some point, but at some point in her life, half her face had been burned off, leaving only twisted scar tissue in its wake. Her name was Doctor Aqua. She was my Processor.

"Good afternoon, Citizen. I'm going to need to ask you a few questions, then you'll be released and free to return to your family and home. That sounds nice, doesn't it?"

"Where's my family?"

"Oh, they're being processed, just like you, sir. Don't worry, you'll all be reunited before you're returned home." She smiled pleasantly, "Now, if you could just fill out this form�"here's a pen�"that would be great. However, if you are unable to understand English, we also have forms available in Spanish, Dutch, Russian, French, Japanese, Chinese�""

Form after form was presented to me, until they all ran together in a blur of ink. They asked me strange questions about my diet and how much exercise I required per day, asked about tattoos and dyed hair. They wanted to know about allergies, STDs, my health insurance, what kind of car I drove. It had no rhythm or reason to the sequence. By the time I was done, my hand was cramped and I had a splitting headache. Doctor Aqua took the last form with the same pleasant expression.

"Well, that should be it now." Without a glance at the forms, the doctor stamped a card and passed it to me. "Show that to the guards and they'll let you pass. Have a pleasant evening, sir."

I tottered out of the chair on stiff legs, wandering into a hall filled with people who stared at their feet. I looked down at the card in my hand. Doctor Aqua had stamped PASS on the card. However, next to the Name slot was not my own.

It was CITIZEN-100

III

Lilith was curled against my side in our bed, her light hair tickling my face every time she moved. We were silent for a long time before she spoke.

"Do you think we'll ever see Jaden again?"

I licked my dry lips, "I hope not."

She flinched against my side, her voice hurt and teetering towards anger like an uncertain toddler, "Why would you say that? He might die out there."

"He's a smart boy, and he practically grew up in those woods, remember? He'll be okay… maybe someone will find him and take care of him." I couldn't hide the uncertain edge in my voice though, and Lilith rose to her feet, walking to the window. Evening light flooded in.

"It's not that bad though, right? I mean… we have a roof over our heads, and they feed us."

I rose to my feet, "If you can call that nutrient slop they give us every day 'feeding'. I feel like we're just cattle waiting to be slaughtered."

"Don't say that."

"Sorry." I slipped over to her and took her hand in mine. Our gaze stayed out on the street before us. It was empty, except for bits of discarded trash dancing in the wind. No one drove because there was nowhere to go anymore. The overseers, or zookeepers, kept us in here tight. The first few weeks they went about building a fence around our whole subdivision "to keep out those who would think to harm our Citizens", one of the workers told me when I asked about it. No one was fooled by this line, but there was nothing we could do to stop them, or get out before the fence was completed.

Once it was done on Day Thirty-Six, I spent many evening pacing its perimeter. Dozens of pylons had been set up around the neighborhood, and between them a barrier would form, glowing a faint pink color, normally you could touch it and feel it's warm and power purring beneath your hands. The fence was a fickle beast though, and it could glow red and give you a jolt if you lingered too long.

As an added bonus, watch towers were set up along the fence, and the resident snipers would eye you carefully as you wandered by. I began to give them nicknames, like Bug-Eyed and Gold Digger (I thought this particularly clever, as the keeper was always digging in his nose for treasure). As days became months, suspicious looks became apathetic nods in my direction.

For a while, things were as normal as you could expect. Then, on Day 106, the others arrived.

IV

They came out of the Processing Office in a slow trickle, sometimes alone, others in twos or threes. Whole families came out, looking around with dazed expressions. There were children, the elderly, the black, the white, the poor and the rich. The residents of the neighborhood stood around, eyeing the newcomers and talking in quiet groups.

"What do you think, Hundred?" Citizen-018�"Christopher Brown�"asked me. Though using each other's Citizen numbers started out as black humor to begin with, it had slipped into our everyday language. There were still neighbors of mine whose real names I hadn't learn yet.

"I was thinking… that there're more families here than there are empty houses."

Christopher chewed on his bottom lip, "Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. S**t… I'm not giving up my house."

I shoved my hands into my pockets, "I don't want to either… but do you think we're going to have a choice? Despite what the zookeepers would like us to think, we're not free citizens, we're not going to be able to turn them away."

Christopher cursed me then cursed the neighborhood before stomping away, his face growing redder by the minute. I stung him because he knew what I had said was true. The other Citizens liked to pretend they were not actually prisoners in their own subdivision. That was their choice.

My family went home soon after that exchange, quietly relieved and tortured by the fact that Jaden hadn't been part of the new group. It was only a few minutes later that there was a knock on the door, and I opened it to find a young couple looking back at me with a ticket in their hand. Despite the wedding rings on their fingers, they looked barely old enough to be out of high school, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the girl was pregnant.

"I'm uhm… I'm Brad Cason." He stuck out his hand, nerves making it shake. He was tall but lanky, his hair crudely cut by a pair of dull scissors only recently. "This is my…"

"M'name is Jessica." She finished for her husband, a light southern accent in the girl's words. "This is supposed to be the house we were to go to, right baby?" She was a pretty girl with a bad complexion, incredibly short next to her husband.

"Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Look." He offered me the card. I took it and glanced at it before stepping aside to let them in.

We fed them nutrient slop (the real food was long gone by now) as Lilith made them a place to sleep in Jaden's old room. It killed us both to have to do this, but his room wasn't… being used at the moment.

"This is the right thing." Lilith whispered as we climbed into bed, hands pawing until our arms were looped around each other. "I mean, they're so young… where did they come from, you think?"

"I dunno, probably found in the city or something." I kissed my wife's forehead, "We can ask them in the morning, though. Get some sleep."

"Yeah…" She shivered a few times against my chest, then was still except for her breathing. I was drifting off, to the edge of a dream where there was a grassy field and black mask, when I was woken up by muffled sounds from Jaden's room.

What was wrong with my boy? I opened my mouth to say something to Lilith about it, when my brain finally kicked on and I remembered where I was, and who was in the next room.

I listened in silence as the young couple made love, sick rage boiling up inside me. They would have sex in my house in my son's bed? I wanted to get up and go in there, bash in their skulls until Jaden's bed was soaked in blood, I wanted to break them apart for putting this extra burden on us.

The tide that threatened to engulf me broke as I thought about how young and scared they were, and my wife's words bouncing around in my head. I slumped back down into my bed, pulling Lilith closer to me, and for the first time since this whole mess started, I sobbed.

Tears were still drying on my cheek when sleep pulled me under.

V

Day 121 brought unexpected violence.

I was sitting on the porch and watching my wife tend to her little garden in the backyard. Brad and I had found some old vegetable seed packets in my garage while we were looking for some tools. When I showed them to Lilith, her eyes came alive, loving the idea of having fresh food for once. She set about at once, and the subsequent weeks she spent her time trying to coax tomatoes and eggplants into life.

Our leisurely afternoon was interrupted by the sound of thunder, giving both of us a start. I looked up to see a cloudless sky, when Jessica came slamming out the backdoor with wide eyes.

"Did you two hear that?"

"Sounded like thunder�"" I began, when two more thunderclaps erupted in quick succession. I jumped to my feet.

"That was gunfire!" Jessica yelled.

"Who would have a gun? They confiscated all of them during the processing." I thought out loud as I ran through the house. I stopped at the window, dumbfounded. Lilith gasped at the sight.

In the house across from us, the windows had erupted outward. Worst than that, a dark hair man hung halfway out, his back blasted open to expose his spine. When the two girls appeared to take a look, I made Jessica take them back upstairs.

"Jesus… that's Citizen Eighteen's house." I whispered.

There was another flash then a roar of thunder reached us, as if Christopher Brown's house as having its own private thunderstorm. We could only stand and watch, with Brad joining us at some point to watch the carnage.

The front door slammed open and a young Hispanic woman�"who I recognized as Citizen-245�"came running out, waving her arms and screaming: "Help me! Oh god, he's going to kill me!"

Behind her came Citizen-018, his face red, his shirt already stained in blood and gore. He held an old .45 in his hand. He screamed something, before raising his gun and firing at the young lady. Citizen-245 danced as blood flowers bloomed against her stomach, with the final shot going through the back of her head and dropping her dead.

As fast as Citizen-245 died, a drop ship came screaming down and landed with a hard thud in the middle of the street. The black masked soldiers piled out�"about six of them�"with rifles trained on the gunman. A terribly loud voice boomed from the drop ship.

"CITIZEN OH-ONE-EIGHT DROP YOUR WEAPON AND STAND DOWN FOR APPREHENSION."

"F**k you!" Christopher screamed, but he threw his gun aside anyways, dropping to his knees and setting his hands behind his head. "F**k you and your whole goddam prison!"

The squad moved in and dragged Christopher to the drop ship, up the ramp, and out of sight. It was the last time we would ever see him. I wasn't sure whether to be alarmed or relieved.

Sometime afterwards, another drop ship landed, this time filled with a clean-up crew to drag away the dead bodies and begin repairs on the house. As morbid as it seemed, it had to be fixed up for another family.

With nothing left to see, we turned away to resume our lives. Brad lingered behind for a moment, and when I asked him about it, he said:

"You know, I'm pretty sure that drop ship had been hovering up there the whole time. Why did it wait 'til that girl got killed before it came down?"

For that, I had no answer.

VI

Day 218.

Our house is filled with screaming and bodies run back and forth. My suspicions had been right: Jessica was pregnant, and while she had done her best to hide it, the final trimester had caught up with her, and her belly hung out like an overfilled blimp. However, she had gone into labor too soon, and now she was spread out on our dining room table.

"Amy, get me some more warm water, hunny." Lilith said softly, the only one of us probably not on the verge of panic right now. One daughter scurried away, while Jennifer stood next to Jessica with wide, startled eyes.

"Has anyone been able to contact Them?" I looked around.

Brad shook his head, "Phones are still out… I…"

"Go there then! Run to the Processing center! Go Brad!"

"But I�""

"We'll take care of her," Lilith took Brad's arm firmly as I took over wiping Jessica's brow. She whispered a few words to him, and he nodded before taking off out of the door.

"Jesus, hunny, do you think we'll be able to do a home birth?"

Lilith frowned, "I hope not, but I doubt They'll let us out to go to a hospital. We don't have a choice… you know that."

"Do you think Brad will be able to get anyone to come?"

"I don't know… I'm not even sure I want anyone to come. You know what I'm saying?"

"Yes, the thought makes me uncomfortable too�""

Our conversation ended when Jessica started to whimper again, arching her back from the pain, "Ahhh, s**t, it hurts!"

"Shhh, it's okay sweetheart, that's normal." Lilith ran her fingers through Jessica's hair.

We sat with our eyes tilted down, listening to Jessica's little gasps for breath, in between asking for her husband. I wanted to say something�"anything�"that would help comfort her, but my tongue was sitting useless and dead inside me. When I thought I could take no more, and rose to walk to the kitchen, Brad came banging in through the front door, drenched in sweat.

"They're sending a medical team!" The young husband seemed fit to burst with triumph, "They're going to help her deliver her baby!"

Lilith and I shared a look, part of us was relieved to have this burden in someone else's hands. The medical team came several minutes later, in a drop ship that set down in the middle of the street. They came in white suits, followed by the black-clad soldiers. The medical team loaded her up on a gurney, whispering words of comfort, as she was rolled out of the door. When Brad tried to follow them up the ramp, he was shoved roughly back.

"You will remain here, Citizen-Three-Oh-Six." A masked soldier boomed like the voice of God, but Brad took another step forward.

"But that's my wife! I have the right to stay with her!"

"Stand down, Citizen!" The voice barked, rifles coming to the ready.

I thought Brad was going to lunge at the soldier�"gun or no�"but instead he stepped off the ramp and watched as the drop ship lifted off. Once it was well out of sight, he started back towards us.

"Brad, I'm sorry�"" I began.

"Please… don't… just don't talk to me right now." Brad whispered, before slipping back inside.

VII

Brad Cason became a ghost of his former self, a dead man whose body hadn't gotten the memo. He wandered around the house or around the neighborhood, his expression blank, returning to the house only to eat before walking once more. It seemed as if he never slept.

As the days became weeks, we knew Jessica wasn't coming back, but none of us could find the courage to say it out loud. Lilith tended to her garden, I read and walked the fence, the girls built things, and Brad wandered around the neighborhood.

While we occupied ourselves and waited in vain for Jessica to come back, I noticed that our food was getting more and more scarce. What used to be two or three boxes of rations per family was suddenly one. Armed with a basket of vegetables, I set out to find out.

After offering the bribe to Bug-Eyes, he was more than happy to spill information. I found out that drought was causing a strain on the food supplies, so even the nutrient gray glop we got was being limited, and with the soldiers still fighting across the country, whoever was in charge felt the war effort was more important than some prisoners in the middle of nowhere.

I returned to the house, disheartened by this news. When I told Lilith about it, she cried a bit.

"At least we still have the garden, right? We'll be okay." I whispered, holding her tight. She smiled a bit through her tears and nodded.

VIII

On Day 301, Brad Cason hung himself.

IX

"You've got to be kidding me!"

Citizen-087�"a balding man with a too-large nose and bad teeth�"shook his head as we jogged down the sidewalk towards the Processing center. "Nope, the first ones are coming out now."

"We barely have enough to feed ourselves week-to-week. How do they expect us to take on another two hundred Citizens?" I shoved my hands deep into my pockets, shaking in bitter anger.

"I don't know. We'll think of something."

I nodded but didn't say anything, watching the slow trail of new Citizens wandering into our neighborhood. They were noticeably dirtier and thinner than previous occupants, and many looked out at us with open disdain as they passed. I noticed a greater number of yellow and orange bands on the new occupants, and tried to swallow the lump in my throat as I saw the red bands. Citizen-012�"a younger man named Clive�"wandered up to us pale-faced.

"S**t, Hundred, have we ever had red bands in our neighborhood?"

I ran my fingers through my hair, watching the procession, "I don't think so."

"Think they're rebels?" Citizen-087 piped in.

"Were rebels, if they were that to begin with. It's either that or convicts. Given a choice, I'll go with Johnny Reb." I finished cautiously.

"At least they got their hearts in the right place," Citizen-087 agreed.

Seeing a fresh face or two was nothing special in our small subdivision. A month or so ago we had gotten an old fellow named Franklin�"Citizen-389�"who moved into Brad and Jessica's old room. However, this was the first time we had gotten a large influx since Day 106. Our population would double overnight, and yet rations were still being cut my half. It made my stomach sick to think about it.

"I'm not letting more people come into my house" I growled, "I got my girls to think about, and I sure as hell don't like all these strangers in the same town as them, much less the same roof."

Citizen-087 put a hand on my shoulder, "Easy, Hundred, no one is asking you to do that yet. Remember what happened to Christopher Brown, eh?"

I shook him off and shoved my hands in my pockets as I stalked away, thinking about Christopher Brown, and more importantly, what I would do if someone came knocking at my door.

When the inevitable knock did come, I had an aluminum bat in my hand when I answered the door. I was hoping I wouldn't have to use it, but I didn't have any allusions to the lengths I would go to protect my family�"

I first saw the little girl. Her face smudged with dirt and grime, her once-pretty dress torn. She was barely older than my own daughters, and I already knew what I would do when I looked up at the mother.

The mother was exhausted, with dark crescent moons under her eyes. Her hair was cropped short and spiky, and she wore a leather jacket that was a few sizes too big. She was a tough chick back in our old world, but now she seemed as frightened and uncertain as her daughter.

"Hey, I'm Lynn Cunningham. This is my little girl, Sunshine."

"Your daughter's name is Sunshine?" I asked as I let them in, before turning and calling up the stairs: "Lilith! We have guests."

X

We were hungry all the time, now. Even with the garden, having to feed two more mouths with the rations our household was given was not enough. I was only walking every other day now, to try and preserve some calories. Lilith tried to expand her garden, but there weren't enough seeds to fill all the dirt.

Sometime, about Day 332, someone raided the ration truck as it came around, and we found ourselves nearly a week without anything to eat except tomatoes from Lilith's garden. After that, the truck was escorted by an armed guard, and we found ourselves oddly grateful to our zookeepers for the protection.

Crime was steadily on the rise, as people were getting more desperate for food and shelter. I was not the only one who was going to resist having another family in my home, and there we several dozen families who wouldn't allow a red band to stay in their house. These red bands began to form their own gangs, knocking off houses for ration boxes and�"in one extreme case�"killed the families inside to squat for a few days before the squads found out.

Suddenly it wasn't safe to go outside, and every day we cursed our captors as we gazed longingly outside. The only place we were willing to go out was the backyard, since it was fenced it and the garden was out there.

It was during this time of lawlessness that women and girls started to disappear, stolen in the night without a single cry of alarm, leaving behind crestfallen husbands, boyfriends, and fathers. We chalked it up to the red band gangs and went about our lives.

What else could we do?

XI

On Day 412, they took Leann, her daughter, and our girls.

We heard nothing during the night, not even a shuffling of feet on carpet. When we woke on the morning of Day 412, they simply were missing from their beds. Gone, as if they had never existed in the first place.

We were crushed, and Lilith wouldn't get out of bed afterwards. She would lay there for hours on in, staring up at the ceiling, watching the fan make its relentless rotations on the ceiling. I tried to get her to eat, but she would wave me away and go back to her gazing.

Me? I looked for them. I spent every waking moments walking around the subdivision�"damn the red band gangs�"and looked for any trace of my little girls. I knocked on a hundred doors, peered through a thousand windows, but I never found them. Each night, with my feet blistered and sore, I would return to my home and sleep like the dead.

I repeated this for weeks, until people were tired of me banging on their doors, and I had even spoken with the very gangs I believed had taken them. They knew nothing. No one knew anything about any woman of any age, only that they were disappearing.

Three weeks after their disappearance, I lost Lilith.

I woke once more in the quiet morning, but realized there was something different right away. My wife, after almost a full month in bed, had finally climbed out of it. I was almost pleased by the notion, that she could get through this, we both would get through it together. I needed her badly right now.

I called her name as I rose to my feet, dressing myself as I shuffled to the bathroom on sore feet. It was there I found her.

She had sliced her wrists up and down, several times, and left herself in the bathtub so her grievous wounds wouldn't clot in the water. I climbed in after her, sloshing murky pink water in every direction, whimpering like a dying animal.

I held her, but she was already gone, her body cool to the touch. It was there I sat, with my dead wife in my arms, for hours before Franklin finally found us.

"I… I'm so sorry, I don't know what else to say." He whispered, as I slowly pulled myself from the bathtub.

"You don't need to. Can you help me bury her?" I felt like I was going to faint, with gray spots pressing in all around my vision, and leaned against the wall to steady my uncertain legs. "Damn this place."

Franklin held my arm to steady me, and after I was better, we picked up my wife's body and took it downstairs, ignoring the water dripping everywhere. The old man glanced at me, as if he wanted to say something, but before he could spill his thoughts we were on the back porch, watching some thief rummage through our garden.

"Set her down here." I said with as much calm as I could muster. Without a word, Franklin helped me lower Lilith. With that done, I was screaming and grabbing the thief from our fence as he tried to scramble over it. He was down on the ground, and my fists were machines, pounding his face and nose, ignoring the blood as it splattered against my knuckles and wrists, punching until everything ached and the thief had stopped squirming minutes ago.

Franklin grabbed me and pulled me off, and it was only then I realized I was uttering my wife's name over and over, like a chant, as if I said her name enough times it would bring her back. I looked at my raw hands, this blood sacrifice for my wife, then whined and rubbed them into the grass.

It was a long time before I stood up again, and Franklin watched me cautiously. "Are you okay?" He asked tentatively.

"No… I'm not going to be okay for a long time."

XII

Four hundred eighty-seven days in this place…

I found out the truth.

It came from a guard I had nicknamed Ogre�"a huge, smelly beast of a man with a terrible under-bite. I traded him some peppers from my garden, and as he chewed on them he told me everything I wanted to know. By the time I had walked away, I was pale and sick to my stomach, both of which he found hilarious. The neighborhood continued to buzz around me as I tried to process everything he said.

We were cattle, things to be farmed by our conquerors. Where ever Ogre and his buddies had come from, people had stopped giving birth to girls. Whether this was some kind of genetic defect or whatnot, no scientist knew. At first, the UN had opted to give aid to the dying country, but it was obvious after some time it would only be a matter of time before the last woman passed away.

The things they tried at first are perhaps more horrifying than what they were doing to us. Rationing women the same way you would ration food. They would make them give birth over and over for years until they died. Using a lottery once the women got scarce, to see who would be able to pass on their genes. But soon, everyone capable of carrying a child was either dead or past their prime. Despite everything, from gene therapy to importing women, it was clear the country had met its end through an evolutionary fluke.

That was when a new religious movement had swept up the nation. Clergymen crying out this faith from every corner told them that their land had been cursed by God, and that their only option was to find a new home, with new plots to plant their seeds. Even the government was swept up in a righteous fervor, and crossed massive oceans to step on our shores.

So far, with faith backing them, they have conquered so much. Even with pockets of resistance and remnants of a tattered government fighting tooth and nail, these zealots are winning their war. They win, they set up their prisons and harvest the women, then move on.

I stopped because my head was spinning around like a top, and I stared at my feet, wondering if I was going to vomit on them. Before I could though, there was a roar of a great beast behind me, and the warm hand of God scooped me up and flung me forward. I saw the sidewalk rushing towards me.

Then darkness.

XIII

I awoke to the world coming apart.

Explosions erupted from every directions, sounds and air pushing at me from every side. I spit a bloody tooth from my mouth, tasting the salty copper on my tongue. I stumbled up on unsteady feet and looked around my neighborhood.

The once scenic subdivision had become a battlefield. Bodies had been tossed about like discarded playthings, their blood and organs smashed out by the rough hands of a child. They were an assorted mess of black masks and Citizens. I began to step over these people I knew well as I walked through my neighborhood. I came across bodies I was unfamiliar with, however, and hunkered down to look.

They were painted in alternating colors of green and black, their clothes a ragged mess of patched together cloth, augmented by pieces of military-grade hardware: Grenades, rifles, ammunition. I saw a ration bar sticking out of a pocket, and before I could stop myself, I was opening it up and chewing.

I could smell burning gasoline and wood. Smoke filled the air like a smothering blanket. My gaze turned outwards to the woods, and I realized that the gate was down for the first time since it had been activated. I was free to leave if I so chose to. Instead I kept walking, until I came to an intersection in our subdivision, watching a gunfight take place between the black masked soldiers and the dirty soldiers. They leapt behind cars and took cover behind trees.

I was standing in the middle of the street as bullets flew around me in every direction, willing one to extinguish my life. Everything felt too slow, and I could feel the killing shot barely down on me like a hungry monster, ready to grant me my wish. I closed my eyes…

…and was hit by a flying body.

I landed on the asphalt hard, letting out a cry as my head slapped against the blacktop. I opened my eyes to see one of the ragtag fighters looking down at me, his eyes a mix between fear, angry, happiness. I recognized those eyes, as I had looked into them every day for thirteen years.

Despite everything, the pain, the loss, I could feel life returning to my old body.

"Jaden?"

XIV

The fires burned well into the night, jumping from house to house like angry fireflies. Ashes danced up into the sky as if to get away from the burning rage. Gunshots erupted throughout for hours, as fights raged all across the neighborhood. The screaming of drop ships overhead drowned out the world. I wondered briefly if it was theirs or the rebels, but I was too tired and sore to look up.

Jaden and I had slipped away from the fighting to get a moment of rest, and he offered me half of his ration bar. We stood side by side and watched the sunrise. My son had been quiet for several minutes now, after I had explained what happened to the rest of our family.

Finally, he broke the silence: "This war is going to go on for a long time."

"I know." I didn't know what else to say. My son had become a man and a stranger in the year and a half we had been apart.

"Will you stay with us? With me?" Jaden looked into my eyes. "Until we see this through?"

I thought about Brad and Jessica Cason, and Christopher Brown, and Lilith, and Jennifer and Amy. All the faces I had recognized laying on the asphalt yesterday. I thought of all the other families in all the other houses in all the other prisons just like mine. I thought about my son, and what he had to endure to survive.

"Of course."

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. How do you feel about the plight of Citizen-100 and his family? Does it leave you sad? Or do you hope they one day seek revenge on those who did them wrong?