Against The Darkness (Cimmerian Moon) by A.M. Griffin Read Free Book Online Page B

of my reach.
    “Please,
mommy. Please don’t make me go. I want to stay here with you.”
    She keeps
backing away, even when it seems there’s nowhere else for her to go.
    “Sin, wake
up.”
    “Mommy?”
    She pushes me
down. My shoulder snaps against the tile floor, pain radiates to my back.
    “Please, mommy,”
I cry.
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
     
    “Sinta, Sinta,
Sinta,” a voice calls, working its way through my cloudy mind.
    My eyes fly
open.
    Where am I?
    Shayla’s
crouching in front of my entrance. Her braids are hanging in waves past her
shoulders. “Time to get up. We’re going to eat. Are you hungry?”
    I take a
minute to register where I am and what’s going on.
    Right.
Invasion.
    “Sure.”
    In case aliens
come upon us, we stay close to our shelters, ready to scramble into them to
hide. But aliens don’t come and neither do any of our other classmates.
    I can’t say
that I’m on my A game. I spend the day in a fog, not wanting to think about
leaving any of our classmates behind. Mia and I pretty much stick together.
Shayla and MJ keep to themselves as well. Wade spends his time making spears
and other items he says we’ll need for later. Ian doesn’t leave his shelter
unless he has to pee and, when he does, he makes sure to let everyone know that’s
the only reason we’re seeing him.
    And Ms.
Burgess, well, I think she’s having the roughest time of us all. She does
everything she can not to stay still. She seems to be a blur, scouting our
surroundings, watching out for other students, helping Wade make spears, getting
the wood together or checking on our shelters. She does all of this, but I
think all she probably wants to do is sit down and cry. But I know she won’t,
at least not in front of us.
    We wait until
it’s late into the night, when it’s the darkest, and take turns bathing in the
lake. The girls go first. We’ve had to stay covered in blood for the entire
day, pretending that it’s not on our clothes…or our skin. We use our hands to
wipe away the blood and filth that’s caked on us and in our hair, but without
soap I still don’t feel clean. We do the same for our clothes, vigorously
rubbing them together in an effort to get out everything, but again, without
soap the stains are set.
    I don’t know
if I’m more miserable going into the water than I am coming out. We can’t hang
our clothes out to dry for fear of what might pass by and find them, so we
wring them out as best as we can and put them back on, only to lie on top of
the dirt again. My only consolation is that I’m not sticky anymore and even
though the blood stains are still on my clothes, most of it has been washed
off.
    The next day
is just as foggy as the first. I’m awake but not really. I’m aware of everyone
around me, aware of what they say, what they do. If anyone asked me to repeat
back what they said, I could do it, just like a parrot.
    But I’m numb.
    I want this to
be a dream.
    I don’t put
too much into anything because I believe I will wake up at any minute. I am not
sleeping on the ground in a fort made of sticks and twigs. I am not rationing
crackers and water.
    I am not
separated from my mother, my father, my life.
    I know I’m not
the only one feeling this way. Everyone is pretty much going through the
motions, talking minimally and only when needed.
    Ms. Burgess
stays busy by organizing us. She still hasn’t said anything about what
happened. She seems to only have a couple of things on her mind; waiting for
the aliens to move out of the area and taking care of us. We accept this as her
role even though we all know how well that had worked out for the children that
had been killed—or left.
    Wade keeps us
all alive.
    Two months ago
he had been an overweight kid who hardly talked unless spoken to. But now he is
the glue holding us together. He tells us which berries are edible, which
leaves aren’t bitter and what animals he would catch and kill if he
could. But since we can’t eat raw meat, the