Runaway

Nothing made any sense, which Audrey found ironic considering that what she’d been told 3 hours ago was meant to explain everything she'd been questioning since the day she was born. But it still didn’t make any sense. Sure it explained her parent's death and why she'd been separated from her sister. But why was she only finding this out now? And how could such a huge thing just pass unnoticed for so long?

But what could she do now? Now that she knew that she’d have to live as someone else for the rest of her life. It wasn’t like she could go back in time to tell her parents that their love for each other wasn’t worth what they’d go through. It wasn’t like she could have told them that they’d be endangering not only their lives but the ones that they’d bring into the world. So what could she do but run?

Audrey sat there staring blankly into her single suitcase. It was filled to the brim but there was so much more she wanted to take the majority of those things being what she wasn’t allowed to. Pictures, paintings, mementos, anything that could link her to who she really is. But even if your not including those things, how do you fit your whole life into a 2x4 foot long fabric box? She had twenty-four years of memories stuffed into the small apartment she called home and she, by all means, wasn’t ready to say goodbye to any of it. But taking it all with her wasn’t an option. The government could only protect her so much. She had to leave by tomorrow and could only bring a backpack and the small carry-on suitcase that she had been looking hopelessly at for the past 40 minutes. 

She was moving to Mexico to live as Zamora Antonio Amado. It was the second identity the government gave her after her parent’s death. Why Mexico? She had attained her mother’s German blue-green eyes, and her dad’s tan skin and black hair. Mexican was the only nationality she could naturally pass as. But it was also the last place they would ever expect her to be.

She stood up while dumping all her belongings in the dusty blue suitcase out on the floor. All she’d packed was clothing and only now did she notice that out of all her belongings they mattered the least. She looked around her small square-shaped room measuring the value of each item she was allowed to bring. Moneywise and emotionally. And by the time thirty-six minutes had passed, she had finished packing. So she wasted no time and, dragging her suitcase behind her, she left her home of six years and entered the taxi waiting for her. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t risk it either.

In an hour and twenty-three minutes, they’d arrived at the airport and at 8:28 pm, an hour later, Audrey boarded the plane and was on her way to Puebla City in Mexico from Philadelphia as Zamora Antonio Amado. It was a lie if she’d ever said that she wasn’t scared. There were twenty men and women on the flight who were hired to keep her safe, but the moment she left that plane, Zamora would be on her own. 

She’d almost forgotten about her anxiety when the plane landed after fifteen hours in the air and she’d noticed the soreness of every muscle in her body. Almost. Her nails had been chewed on till they began to bleed and she hadn’t gotten a minute of rest. It was almost twelve am Philadelphia time and Zamora was horrified. All she had learned in the past twenty-four hours only really made sense to her now. All the confusion was gone, she was face to face with her ugly reality.

Before she stepped off the plane, Zamora looked back to take one last look at the twenty men and women who kept her safe, saying goodbye to that tiniest bit of security, a feeling she may not feel for the rest of her life. Knowing this, she hesitantly stepped off the plane, but the second she did, she heard a gunshot.

The three seconds she stood there in shock seemed to last for hours, but after they’d passed and she heard a woman’s scream, she did the only logical thing. Zamora ran for her fucking life.

Five minutes had passed before she’d finally made it out of the airport. She silently thanked them for only allowing her to bring such little luggage as she stole a taxi from a woman in her 70s who had been struggling to get her luggage in the trunk. 

As they drove through her new home, Zamora’s vision blurred and she began to cry. She was in her mother’s hometown. Not her birth mother’s but her adopted parents. They were the ones who raised her and saved her from the hole she’d been falling down the day her sister had been taken from her. Zamora owed her life to them, but their murder two days ago had cut their journey together short. And now she was stuck running away from the killers of both her adopted and birth parents. 

After seventeen minutes, Zamora’s painful ride had finally ended and she was standing in front of what would be her home for the rest of her foreseeable future. Reluctantly she stepped into the small two-story house. The cement floor and pink walls made it look like a baby’s room and made Zamora want to cry like one. But she took a deep breath and attempted to become optimistic. 

On the plus side, she thought, they already furnished everything. 

She sighed, lifted her things and went upstairs to her new bedroom where she sighed once more. She sat on the twin bed that had been squeezed into the tiny room and finally began to think about what had happened on the plane.

Who shot the bullet? she asked herself.

It had to be someone who had already been on the plane, but who?

One of my temporary bodyguards?

One of the flight attendants?

The pilot?

“I was the last one off the plane so it had to be one or the other.” She told herself sadly, “Will I have to move again?”

She could have to ask questions for hours, but someone knocked on the door and Zamora was forced to wake up and be on her guard. Because for all she knew, it could easily be the shooter.

Cautiously, she snuck onto her balcony that was conveniently placed on the side of the house on the top floor making it easy for her to sneak a look at her unexpected guest. It was no one she knew but it wasn’t anybody from the plane as well. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a possibility that he was working for them.

She took a deep breath. A very deep breath. Walked back to her room, and pulled the gun she was given out of her backpack and slowly tiptoed down the narrow stairs, heart beating fast. Then, hiding the gun safely behind her back, Zamora Antonio Amado opened the door to the stranger while putting on her best calm face.

“Um, hi… My name is Luis González, I’m your new neighbour!” the 20-year-old claimed with a slight Mexican accent while holding his hand out. 

It seemed convincing enough but she had to be cautious, she reminded herself. If she could act, he, by all means, could as well.

Zamora shook his hand with her right hand while thanking God in her mind for making her left-handed.

“Ah! Nice to meet you, too! My name is  Zamora Amado. Which side is your house on?” She asked, trying her best to act as naturally as possible.

“Right there!” He nodded towards the left. He lived right where her balcony was. A very convenient place to live, she thought.

Perhaps it was unfair for her to suspect someone just for the place they lived in, but she couldn’t risk doing anything that she might regret later.

She quickly wrapped up the conversation claiming that she was extremely tired from her travels and needed to get some sleep. Which was true, just not entirely possible. Remember, Zamora could possibly be living beside a murderer. 

After Luis had left and she’d heard him walking away, Zamora, with her back against the door, slid down to the floor and was now in an intense war with her eyelids. She had not slept in the past 24 hours. She needed sleep. Badly. Even if it was only 2:34 pm Mexican time.

Usually, back in America, the first thing she’d do was make a batch of coffee, but, sadly, she hadn’t thought of bringing her coffee pot. She was going to have to fall asleep. Although she really didn’t want to, Zamora made her way upstairs where she first locked her balcony door and then proceeded to her small room. Shortly after falling onto her bed, she was fast asleep. 

She woke up the next day to what seemed to be sunrise, but what ended up being sunset. It was 4 in the afternoon. She groaned as she got up. Zamora now had to do a full day of errands in the next 5 hours. 

She quickly changed, slipping her handgun into the purse she’d stuffed into her backpack, and left the house to explore Puebla City, her new home. Her first destination being a second-hand store to find a coffee pot.

In three hours and 58 minutes, Zamora had finally bought everything she needed to survive in Puebla. But then again, maybe not. She forgot about her strength. 

She saw her.

She froze. 

She dropped everything. 

She spoke.

“You..?”

Zamora Antonio Amado had many identities, her last one being Audrey Davis. But her original name was one she hadn’t spoken or been called in years. 

“Maya Emil Smith” the words tumbled out of her sister’s bleeding mouth. 

“Sophie Ryan Smith”, the same name she swore to never say again long ago unwillingly left Maya’s mouth. And then she noticed the blood.

“What the fuck happened to you?!” Her whole body was shaking as tears slid smoothly down her face. “Why the hell are you bleeding?!” And as she saw her sister get stabbed in the back by her neighbour, Maya’s questions had been answered.

The government hadn’t yet told her that their father had been born into a cult. She didn’t know how he’d run away with a German exchange student who’d come to be their mother. She hadn’t been given a new identity to make it safe for her to travel. She came here looking for her older sister who she’d been taken away from more than a decade ago. She didn’t know any part of the truth. But yet Maya was staring at the dead corpse of her 23 old sister.

That’s when she was shot. Maya Smith, after having unknowingly lived on the run for 26 was shot in the chest by the “family” of her father. The man who only ran away because he was a 19-year-old boy in love with a girl he couldn’t be with. A girl who would be the cause of both of their own deaths, Maya’s adopted parents murder and now finally her and her sister’s demise. 

Only one singular thought lingered through her mind as Maya was on the sidewalk taking her last breath.

This was the price of being a runaway