Flicker by Anya Monroe Read Free Book Online

lungs with the fresh air, and as I do it’s impossible to not feel some of the euphoria Mom’s experiencing. I wonder how the others could think drinking the tea would be better than at least attempting to see if the air was breathable, livable. If death is coming either way, I’d rather die like this, with my face turned towards the sun.
    Mom tosses me the apple. I catch it with my still-gloved hands. Bringing it to my lips, I take a bite of the first fresh fruit I’ve ever eaten. A laugh manages to escape my lips, as I taste a juiciness I’ve only read about. The skin is crisp from the mid-morning air and calling it perfection would be an understatement. I understand why the cowboy’s horse ate them with one fell swoop. I would shove the whole thing in my mouth too if I could.
    “Good, right?” Mom takes a bite from hers. “I can’t believe this tree, with this goodness, has been outside all along. I can’t believe Jordan wasn’t at least willing to try before….”
    I can’t either. Never having tasted the forbidden sweetness of the apple, I had nothing to compare tasteless soy shakes with, but everyone lying under the apple tree knew. That amount of willpower terrifies me. I don’t know if I could believe anything with such passion.
    “So what happens next?” I ask, biting to the apple’s core.
    “Next we pack and leave. There’s nothing left for us here but ghosts and bad memories.”
    “Where will we go?” I’ve never walked farther than a hundred feet in any direction from our compound. The idea of leaving it has never entered my mind. Off the compound has always meant death. Now there’s a possibility of life beyond the apple tree.
    “We’re going to find The Light.”
    “The group the cowboy mentioned last night?”
    Mom nods.
    “But why would you trust him? He was cruel in how he treated Dad!”
    “Cruel, perhaps, but also right, wasn’t he?” She tilts her head towards the apple tree on the other side of the house. My stomach crawls thinking how the entire time our men stood outside with the cowboy they already had their plan for later that evening. What they planned on doing to me, without my consent.
    “Do you know who they are, The Light?” I ask.
    “I heard of them before the blackout, they were a religious group. No one your father or I would have associated with took them seriously, but they had these places on different islands, called their Refuges, where they met for worship.”
    “Were they powerful?”
    “They were a joke, but they were Preppers, like us. They believed something about waiting for the darkness to come to bring the light. They were on the news sometimes because their Refuges were pretty remarkable. When we started prepping, your grandparents would throw fringe groups like them in my face whenever I talked about our hatch and the compound. My parents compared us to The Light, saying we were crazy for what we built.”
    “And were you? Crazy for doing this?”
    “Not crazy for building. You’ve heard the cowboys, the blackout happened. It wasn’t some Mayan-calendar end of the world scenario like we imagined, but still, the world, as I knew it is gone. If we hadn’t built this compound we would be gone too.”
    Ironically the compound ended up killing most of us.
    “But there’s more to it, Lucy. When that boy started talking last night, about the prophet, it clicked. You need to go there, you need to show them your hand.”
    I scoff, pulling up long pieces of grass with my still-gloved fingers. “I don’t want to show anyone anything.”
    “Of course we’ll be cautious, we’ll get a feel for the place before we do anything compromising, but think about it, Lucy, you have a light, they are The Light. It might be the reason.”
    “The reason for what?” I narrow my eyes, missing her meaning.
    “The reason for all of this.” She spreads her hands out, clearly clinging to this idea.
    “I don’t need a reason.”
    “I do.”
    Her words quiet