After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Robert DeFranco Read Free Book Online

“Why would I do that? They’re not around anymore.”
    Jaron nodded thoughtfully and sat up, regarding her coolly. His eyes were pale gray, a liquid metal melding almost to silver at the edges. “But do you ever think about what it was like when it was new?”
    Deedra didn’t understand the question. Not really. She supposed that everything around them had once been new, but so far as she knew, that time was so long in the past that no one alive rememberedit. So who cared? It didn’t matter what this building or that building had been like—they were the way they were
now
, and that was what mattered. And how different could anything have been, anyway? A building with a hole in its wall wouldn’t have the hole. Big deal.
    “Pretty close to the way it is now,” she told him.
    He nodded. “Yeah, maybe.” He tilted his head back again and closed his eyes. “Sometimes, if you try real hard,” he said quietly, “you can feel the sun on your face. Even through the clouds.” He paused. “Try it.”
    Deedra leaned back, imitating him. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the sun. It was somewhere past the clouds, of course; just because she couldn’t see it didn’t mean it had gone away.
    Like Rose. Just because she couldn’t see him didn’t mean…
    What was she thinking?
Why
was she even thinking about him? Ridiculous.
    “In the morning, there’s usually a little bit of sunshine,” she heard herself say. “I try to catch it. It’s my favorite time of the day.”
    “Mine, too,” Jaron said, and Deedra couldn’t help but grin. He was right—she could have sworn her face felt a little warmer.
    “It’s just that…” Jaron shifted next to her and she opened her eyes. He’d sat up and now stared off into the distance, his chin propped up on a fist. “Sometimes, I try to imagine the world as a better place, you know?”
    “Like how?”
    “I’m not sure,” he admitted.
    “Well, I don’t know that you can look to the past for that,” she said with a confidence that surprised her. “It was
worse
back then, not better. Twice as many people in the world. Even
more
crowded.”
    “That’s true. But maybe we can build a better world.”
    “Is that what we’re doing in L-Twelve?” She bit her lip even as she said it. You weren’t supposed to ask.
    But Jaron merely grunted. “L-Twelve. You know ours is only one of dozens, right? They’re all throughout the Territory.”
    “I knew that.”
    “But my dad watches mine especially close. Because of me.”
    Deedra nodded in sympathy. Due to their swagger and their quick punishments, she’d always held the Bang Boys—and Jaron himself, truthfully—in a web of interlinked strands of fear and contempt. They were the ones who watched over her and ordered her around. She’d never thought about how they, too, were bossed around by someone higher up than them.
    “‘Meet your quotas, meet your quotas,’” Jaron said suddenly in a dead-on impersonation of his father’s gravelly voice. “That’s all I ever hear. Not ‘How’d it go today?’ Not ‘I hear you figured out some new methods to get more work done.’ Nope. Just ‘Did you meet your quotas? Meet your quotas, Jaron. Meet your goddamn quotas.’”
    He stood up and kicked at a rock, sending it clattering off into the distance, a smallish cloud of dust in its wake. “If
I
were in charge…”
    Deedra held her breath. Jaron was treading close to treason. Magistrates were appointed for life and were granted almost total control within their Territories. She glanced around, making sure no drones were nearby. Of course, one could be just above the cloud cover, recording.
    “If you were in charge, what?” she heard herself say.
    Jaron took in a deep breath. He turned to her and flashed a wide grin. “Maybe we’ll find out someday,” he told her, and held out a hand. “Come on. Rest time’s over, right? Let’s get scavenging.”

    Jaron stopped them by a relatively intact building in