The guidance tour

Deep at the Earth’s core, it is growing. Changing us like never before. Working us from the inside out, the way most work should be done. I know its new. Extremely unpopular, but there’s something enticing about the unknown; about the option to do more and create more. That is why I know what I will choose. The unimaginable power of choice, of change just makes sense for me. I would be so much better.

Maybe...

Hopefully...

Inevitably.

“Vina, you are in dreamland, again. Come on the troops will be marching in here in a day, we don’t have much time.” Not much time, all we do is pack. From one place to the next. Why, run? I know they are ‘helping us’.

The guidance tour.

I have been on this tour since I was eleven years old. Ten years! When it showed up on the news they were in horrid parts of the country telling us that many would not survive the eclipse, that the new age monsters that got left behind were merciless, cruel… my parents only had one ticket for the tour so they sent me.

I cried, I didn’t understand. Then I spent years in a trial by fire. They would wake us up and we would just run away. Location to location, fumbling, panicking- leaving the little lives we had started after each stop. We got smarter, started planning carefully. When the sky gets blue again after months of grey we would hear them, grinding gears and metal on tar. After that, in a day or two they would arrive.

Clear the space of toxic waste left behind, and in a few years, we will come back to the greatest environment known to man. Clean. Untouched. Livable.

Not full of acid rain, zinc houses built and destroyed in minutes. Something permanent.

I crave forever. Not in the ways I thought I would when I was a child – like a princess waiting for her love – I crave forever like a flower in an arid land waiting with baited breath for the streaming showers. I have seen rain that touched the ground and disintegrates it for days, ugly and stripping nature of its greenest grasses, tree bark and its petals.

I grab her hand, “Devine, I think we should find a way to stay this time.” She looks at me, her face convinced. We have had this conversation before. She scans my eyes to gauge my level of seriousness. How would she know, everyone wanted to stay, but we never heard from those who did and eventually we figured the air was too toxic, world too harsh. The military protects us; to go without their protection means we face the monsters and the land and possibly we die. “I would die to stay, to live not just survive. Would you?” I nod vehemently a rather odd smile creeping across my lips considering our morbid conversation.

We didn’t have to say much. We have been feeling it, saying it for a lifetime.

From the times we used to cry for our mothers and fathers worlds away to now when build cities in months and demolish them in minutes. She smiles back at me. There is a siren, a call to start moving. In 30 minutes, everyone from the community will have moved out. Children helped by adults (strangers), angry teenagers running ahead and us, or in this case the rest.

Herds of purposeless young adults chaotic, careless and confined.

Not anymore. Not for us.

We leave the materials we had been planning to pack and instead grab backpacks, which we stock up with food and other necessities. We sharpen knives. I have never held a weapon to someone’s throat. Never made them bleed, had to choose between my life and another’s. This is why people don’t just leave. We know we could never make it in the military. Fighting off the unknown and protecting the rest of the world.

Lost in my thoughts I did not notice Devine leap up, but now I see her in an embrace with some friends and some more than friends. I wont miss that, the overlap of relationships, awkward breakups because you still have to run together and there are barely any other people your age to pass the time with. Maybe we will meet some new people.

There are others staying behind, houses untouched, fires burning, meals cooking. Some laugh as they pass them. They seem foolish when you feel you know what is out there. When you know certain death awaits them, when you know the earth is dying faster than we can travel around it. They say when we leave it restores itself after years, so we don’t plan to just sit and wait. We are still running, but this time in the opposite direction.

“Trying to get rid of me so bad. Huh.” He says it with a smile but Rowan is hurt. I shake my head. My eyes immediately betray me, burning with tears. I turn away quickly. “I didn’t dare ask you to come, though you are tougher than me, smarter, quicker-” “Alright, I’m convinced.”

I start walking and Devine has rejoined us with 3 girls, two of which I know well and her boyfriend. It is surprising he has joined us. He doesn’t quite love her and isn’t committed to her but I guess new is better than the old.

“You two still can’t leave each other alone. I see.” I shrug but the heat rises throughout my body. “It’s the proximity, makes it too easy to fall into old habits.” She smiles “I’ve heard that it’s the opposite, that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Besides, if proximity is the problem why is he following us?” I smile slyly. “Hey, I said we fall into old habits, I didn’t say it was a problem.” We giggle and she rolls her eyes.

The sun begins to set and we pick up the pace trying to find flat ground before nightfall. We are in a valley now, easy targets. It is beautiful though. Not beautiful like a freshly cut lawn, it is wild. Every bush is overgrown and vines around trees. Flowers and weeds intertwine in the cracks and crevices of the tar road. We start to hear the crunching metal on the roads, instinctively we run to hide behind the trees. Half of us spring to the left the other three are on the right. I start climbing up the hills blocking our view. I don’t want to engage, not when I have no idea what to expect.

Devine grabs my arm and I stop to see the three girls across the road leaping back into it and cheering. Rowan tenses behind me, “Let’s keep going. I don’t like how easy we are to spot.” Devine’s boyfriend disagrees and starts climbing down, w can see the girls talking to the militant operation. I haven’t seen them up close in years, in their yellow and black uniforms I almost want to trust them. I start shimmying up again, this time making sure I’m not making any noise. Devine stays still and her man has almost reached the bottom.

“I’m not going back. If you leave now, you leave me forever.” I say sternly looking up to make sure I have not drawn any attention to us. She looks at me sadly, “If I choose him?” I want to shrug, say I don’t care and run but if this is the last I see her it calls for some maturity. “It’s okay. You know that you’ll find me where the air is fresh and the land is free.” I grab her hand before she moves and move down to whisper in her ear. “But I’ll miss you like crazy.” Rowan is already at the top and motions for us to hurry up.

She falters for a moment but to my surprise starts rushing up noisily. I want to tell her to slow down but a short glimpse is enough. The uniforms are now black yellow and red. The red dripping menacingly as they edge closer to her boyfriend. The look normal, like us, why would they harm them?

I don’t have time to ponder this question. The moment we reach the top of the hill, we set off into a sprint following Rowan who is almost a speck in the dusk. She is ahead of me and I cannot catch my breath. This is what they have been hiding from us. As I ran above the valley I can see what is behind the military. Rows and rows of ghastly monsters. Pasty white skin, on all fours like a dog but without the fur and much much larger. Fangs dripping with red – all those people left behind – ready for a great hunt.

“We have to go back! Warn them! The military doesn’t know where we were, there is still a chance!” I am screaming into an abyss. Our people, the only community we have ever known like lambs to the slaughter. I turn already breathless, my thighs burning, knees shaking. Still I turn.

My mind is just pounding, I give myself a minute to stop, stretch, think. I watch them speeding down the hill now. The sky is no longer blue. They don’t stop; they don’t look back.

This time I turn around again, convicted. I run back I know where I will find her, I just don’t know who I will find when I get there. If everything they have told us was a lie and there is no one out there protecting us, shouldn’t we at least protect each other?