Page 18 of Everything Under the Sun

“But why’d they shoot them?” Sosie said. “You said they only killed the old people back in the town—why would they kill Fernando and Ms. Mercado? Ms. Mercado was even younger than Daddy.”

“I don’t know.” I could not look away from the body of the woman who had been my neighbor—I imagined that being me lying there. “Maybe they fought back. Maybe they refused to be taken.” The more I thought about it, it’s what I believed. Fernando and his mother were the type: they wouldn’t go down without a fight. They were a lot like my father, and I knew in that moment, that was what got him killed, too. He must’ve been watching us from the window when we ran out the back door. I pictured him standing there with his shotgun, ready to shoot anyone who tried to follow his daughters into the forest, standing his ground inside the house to protect what we owned—James Fenwick was a captain going down with his ship after he sent his daughters out with the life raft.

“We have to keep moving,” I said, pulling on Sosie’s arm. “We can’t linger here.”

We hurried past the bodies, out of the small clearing and back into the cover of the trees.

An hour later we came to a dirt road.

“We can’t take the road,” Sosie said. “We’ll be in the open.”

We crossed it quickly, shooting through the woods to the other side, and kept walking as fast as our battered feet would take us.

We walked all day and into the early evening; my feet were so shredded that I forced myself forward with a terrible limp, every step sending a searing, rippling pain through my soles and up the back of my legs. It hurt so bad I bit back the pain and pressed on when all I wanted to do was fall down, strip the damn boots off and toss them into the fiery pits of Hell.

When night fell and we had gone on as long as we could, we collapsed next to a toppled tree, where we slept.

I dreamt of my mother, not a nightmare this time, but a dream: We sat at the kitchen table having breakfast; the smell of freshly-cut grass came in through the open window. I looked toward the sliding glass door to see my father walking behind the push-mower, the early morning sun beating down on his dark hair. Sosie came into the kitchen wearing makeup for the first time. I gawked at her, my nose crinkled as if there was something on Sosie’s face other than makeup.

“Hello? Hellooo!” I heard my mother say, and thinking it a strange thing to say, I looked over at her.

My mother smiled and waved a hand back and forth in front of my face. “Yoo-hoo! Hey! Wake up!”

I grew more confused.

I glanced over at Sosie who sat chewing on a piece of bacon; it didn’t seem she’d heard Momma.

“Hey!” Mother said again.

My head snapped around in my dream just as I woke up from it.

A group of men stood over us as we lay together next to the dead tree.

“Ah,” said one man, “there she is—thought you’d never wake up.”

It took me a moment to realize it had been their voices I’d heard in my dream.

Sosie screamed. I was too paralyzed to scream. We tried to crawl away. “Nooo! Ahh-nnnnhh!” I cried, as a pair of heavy hands hooked around my waist from behind. Pain shot from the tips of my fingers and into my wrists as I dug deeper into the earth, clawing frantically for anything that might keep me from being taken.

Sosie was lifted into the air by another set of hands, white hair whipped about her face.

“Thais! Thais! Thais!”

“Leave her alone!” My own voice deafened me temporarily; I felt my ears pop. I swung my arms and legs at whatever I could, but all I struck was air.

“Calm down—Jesus Christ,” said one man.

Blood sprang up in my mouth as my teeth clamped down on my captor’s arm.

“Wild bitch bit me!” he said with laughter.

I kicked and screamed, flailing my flimsy arms wildly around in every direction, hoping to hit something hard enough he would drop me. Still no such luck; I was like a deer in the mouth of a lion.

“Don’t hurt my sister!” Sosie cried out. “Please don’t hurt her!”

“Drop them,” I heard a gruff voice say.

It took a moment, but the man holding me finally did—literally—drop me; pain seared through my hip when I hit the ground. Sosie fell next to me. I grabbed her close, and then froze in an instant when a gun cocked next to my head.

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