us in both directions, but the truth is, I felt completely safe the whole way.
The crossing itself was a piece of cake.
I don’t know how long we walked. A couple of minutes maybe. But eventually we came up on the other side. I saw some shrubs, a patch of starlit sky, and then we were out, standing on the grass.
We had arrived in Free America.
But it was not the joyful homecoming I’d expected. I looked around. Something was wrong. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. But what was the problem? What was wrong?
There was a street off to our left and abandoned buildings, shop fronts mostly, on the other side of that. A cold breeze blew dust across the pavement. I heard moans in the distance, and even though all else seemed quiet, my gut told me we were in real trouble.
Jessica stepped into the street, looking back toward the quarantine wall.
A Quarantine Authority truck rolled down IH-10, moving slowly.
It came to a stop.
“ Oh no,” Jessica said.
“ What’s going on?” The truck was maybe a hundred yards away, which was close, but in the dark, I thought there was a chance they hadn’t seen us.
The truck started to pull away, and I thought: Good! Yes. Keep going.
“ Jessica,” I said, “they’re leaving!”
She turned to me and shook her head. “We have to get out of here,” she said.
“ But they’re driving off.”
It was true. The truck was accelerating away. It went down the highway a few hundred yards, and then suddenly its brake lights came on and it veered off the main lanes and back towards our position.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The truck bounced over the median, crossed a parking lot, and then accelerated down a surface street that would carry it around behind us.
“ How did they...?” I asked.
“ Hurry,” Jessica said. “Across the street.”
“ Where?”
“ Those buildings.” She pointed to the shop fronts across the street. “Hurry.”
I ran.
I made it all the way across before I realized Jessica was still standing in the middle of the street.
“ Jessica?”
“ You need to go,” she said. “Get out of sight.”
“ What are you doing?”
“ I can’t go with you.”
The truck was getting closer. I could hear its engine pulling hard. And something else. Voices, the sound of boots on the pavement. Men running. Someone shouted orders.
“ Like hell. Come on, Jessica.”
“ No, I can’t.”
“ What do you mean you can’t?”
She looked utterly deflated, miserable. “I can’t go with you.”
I could make out individual voices now and the clatter of equipment and guns. The soldiers were seconds away.
“ But Jessica...?”
“ That world doesn’t exist for me anymore. It’s all changed. I’ve changed. You can’t go home again. Isn’t that what you said?”
“ Jessica, I – ”
“ Don’t,” she said. “There isn’t time. I can’t go with you, and I can’t go back. But you need to hide. Now!”
The truck came roaring around a corner halfway down the block. I was out of time. I had to act. There was a narrow alleyway between two buildings a few steps away. I backed into it, into the shadows.
Out in the street, Jessica stood her ground.
From my research on the Quarantine Authority I knew they’d have helicopters over the area in just a few minutes. They’d have heat sensing cameras and all sorts of sophisticated people-hunting equipment to bring into play, which meant I had only seconds to get away.
But I couldn’t look away from Jessica. Quarantine Authority troopers bore down on her, yelling for her to get down on her knees, while the truck skidded to a stop on the other side of her and hit her with a super-intensity floodlight.
I anticipated the gun shot, but when it came, I flinched just the same.
I turned and ran, tears streaming down my face, and as I slipped away into the night I realized the woman had given her life for my escape, and I never even knew her last name.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe