Arena One: Slaverunners (Book #1 of the Survival Trilogy)

T W O-3

Bree’s eyes open wide as she reaches out. “Are you sure?” she asks. “Shouldn’t we save it?”

I shake my head. “It’s time to treat ourselves.”

Bree doesn’t need much convincing. In moments, she eats it all, sparing just one more heaping for Sasha.

We lie there, propped against the couch, our feet to the fire, and finally, I feel my body start to relax. Between the fish, the sap and the jam, finally, slowly, I feel my strength return. I look over at Bree, who’s already dozing off, Sasha’s head on her lap, and while she still looks sick, for the first time in a while I detect hope in her eyes.

“I love you, Brooke,” she says softly.

“I love you, too,” I answer.

But by the time I look over, she is already fast asleep.

*

Bree lies on the couch opposite the fire, while I now sit in the chair beside her; it is a habit we’ve become accustomed to over the months. Every night before bed, she curls up on the couch, too scared to fall asleep alone in her room. I keep her company, waiting until she dozes off, after which I’ll carry her to bed. Most nights we don’t have the fire, but we sit there anyway.

Bree always has nightmares. She didn’t use to: I remember a time, before the war, when she fell asleep easily. In fact, I’d even tease her for this, call her “bedtime Bree” as she’d fall asleep in the car, on a couch, reading a book in a chair—anywhere. But now it’s nothing like that; now, she’ll be up for hours, and when she does sleep, it’s restless. Most nights I hear her whimpers or screams through the thin walls. Who can blame her? With the horror we’ve seen, it’s amazing she hasn’t completely lost it. There are too many nights when I can barely sleep myself.

The one thing that helps her is when I read to her. Luckily, when we escaped, Bree had the presence of mind to grab her favorite book. The Giving Tree. Every night, I read it to her. I know it by heart now, and when I am tired, sometimes I close my eyes and just recite it from memory. Luckily, it’s short.

As I lean back in the chair, feeling sleepy myself, I turn back the worn cover and begin to read. Sasha lies on the couch beside Bree, ears up, and sometimes I wonder if she’s listening, too.

“Once, there was a tree, and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come, and he would gather her leaves, and make them into crowns and play king of the forest.”

I look over and see that Bree, on the couch, is fast asleep already. I’m relieved. Maybe it was the fire, or maybe the meal. Sleep is what she needs most now, to recover. I remove my new scarf, wrapped snugly around my neck, and gently drape it over her chest. Finally, her little body stops trembling.

I put one final log on the fire, sit back in my chair, and turn, staring into the flames. I watch it slowly die and wish I’d carried more logs down. It’s just as well. It will be safer this way.

A log crackles and pops as I settle back, feeling more relaxed than I have in years. Sometimes, after Bree falls asleep, I’ll pick up my own book and read for myself. I see it sitting there, on the floor: Lord of the Flies. It is the only book I have left and is so worn from use, it looks like it’s a hundred years old. It’s a strange experience, having only one book left in the world. It makes me realize how much I’d taken for granted, makes me pine for the days when there were libraries.

Tonight I’m too excited to read. My mind is racing, filled with thoughts of tomorrow, of our new life, high up on the mountain. I keep running over in my head all of the things I will need to transport from here to there, and how I will do it. There are our basics—our utensils, matches, what’s left of our candles, blankets, and mattresses. Other than that, neither of us have much clothes to speak of, and aside from our books, we have no real possessions. This house was pretty stark when we arrived, so there are no mementos. I would like to bring this couch and chair, although I will need Bree’s help for that, and I’ll have to wait until she’s feeling well enough. We’ll have to do it in stages, taking the essentials first, and leaving the furniture for last. That’s fine; as long as we’re up there, safe and secure. That is what matters most.

I start thinking of all the ways I can make that little cottage even safer than it is. I will definitely need to figure out how to create shutters for its open windows, so I can close them when I need to. I look around, surveying our house for anything I can use. I would need hinges to make the shutters work, and I eye the hinges on the living room door. Maybe I can remove these. And while I’m at it, maybe I can use the wooden door, too, and saw it into pieces.

The more I look around, the more I begin to realize how much I can salvage. I remember that Dad left a tool chest in the garage, with a saw, hammer, screwdriver, even a box of nails. It is one of the most precious things we have, and I make a mental note to take that up first.

After, of course, the motorcycle. That is dominant in my mind: when to transport it, and how. I can’t bear the thought of leaving it behind, even for a minute. So on our first trip up there I’ll bring it. I can’t risk starting it and attracting all that attention—and besides, the mountain face is too steep for me to drive it up. I will have to walk it up, straight up the mountain. I can already anticipate how exhausting that will be, especially in the snow. But I see no other way. If Bree wasn’t sick, she could help me, but in her current state, she won’t be carrying anything—I suspect I may even need to carry her. I realize we have no choice but to wait until tomorrow night, for the cover of darkness, before we move. Maybe I’m just being paranoid—the chances of anyone watching us are remote, but still, it’s better to be cautious. Especially because I know there are other survivors up here. I am sure of it.

I remember the first day we arrived. We were both terrified, lonely, and exhausted. That first night, we both went to bed hungry, and I wondered how we were ever going to survive. Had it been a mistake to leave Manhattan, abandon our mother, leave all that we knew behind?

And then our first morning, I woke up, opened the door, and was shocked to find it, sitting there: the carcass of a dead deer. At first, I was terrified. I took it as a threat, a warning, assuming someone was telling us to leave, that we were not welcome there. But after I got over my initial shock, I realized that wasn’t the case at all: it was actually a gift. Someone, some other survivor, must have been watching us. He must have seen how desperate we looked, and in an act of supreme generosity, decided to give us his kill, our first meal, enough meat to last for weeks. I can’t imagine how valuable it must have been for him.

I remember walking outside, looking all around, up and down the mountain, peering into all the trees, expecting some person to pop out and wave. But no one ever did. All I saw were trees, and even though I waited for minutes, all I heard was silence. But I knew, I just knew, I was being watched. I knew then that other people were up here, surviving just like us.

Ever since then, I’ve felt a kind of pride, felt we were part of a silent community of isolated survivors that live in these mountains, keeping to ourselves, never communicating with each other for fear of being seen, for fear of becoming visible to a slaverunner. I assume that is how the others have survived as long as they have: by leaving nothing to chance. At first, I didn’t understand it. But now, I appreciate it. And ever since then, while I never see anyone, I’ve never felt alone.

But it also made me more vigilant; these other survivors, if they are still alive, must surely by now be as starving and desperate as we. Especially in the winter months. Who knows if starvation, if a need to fend for their families, has pushed any of them over the line to desperation, if their charitable mood has been replaced by pure survival instinct. I know the thought of Bree, Sasha, and myself starving has sometimes lead me to some pretty desperate thoughts. So I won’t leave anything to chance. We’ll move at nighttime.

Which works out perfectly, anyway. I need to take the morning to climb back up there, alone, to scout it out first, to make sure one last time that no one has been in or out. I also need to go back to that spot where I found the deer and wait for it. I know it’s a long shot, but if I can find it again, and kill it, it can feed us for weeks. I wasted that first deer that was given to us, years ago, because I didn’t know how to skin it, or carve it up, or preserve it. I made a mess of it, and managed to squeeze just one meal out of it before the entire carcass went rotten. It was a terrible waste of food, and I’m determined to never do that again. This time, especially with the snow, I will find a way to preserve it.

I reach into my pocket and take out the pocket knife Dad gave me before he left; I rub the worn handle, his initials engraved and the Marine Corps logo emblazoned on it, as I’ve done every night since we arrived here. I tell myself he is still alive. Even after all these years, even though I know the chances of seeing him again are slim to none, I can’t quite bring myself to let this idea go.

I wish every night that Dad had never left, had never volunteered for the war at all. It was a stupid war to begin with. I never really fully understood how it all began, and I still don’t now. Dad explained it to me, several times, and I still didn’t get it. Maybe it was just because of my age. Maybe I just wasn’t old enough to realize how senseless the things are that adults can do to each other.

The way Dad explained it, it was a second American civil war—this time, not between the North and the South, but between political parties. Between the Democrats and Republicans. He said it was a war that was a long time coming. Over the last hundred years, he said, America had been drifting into a land of two nations: those on the far right, and those on the far left. Over time, positions hardened so deeply, it became a nation of opposing ideologies.

Dad said the people on the left, the Democrats, wanted a nation run by a bigger and bigger government, one that raised taxes to 70%, and could be involved in every aspect of people’s lives. He said the people on the right, the Republicans, kept wanting a smaller and smaller government, one that would abolish taxes altogether, get out of people’s hair, and allow them to fend for themselves. He said that over time, these two different ideologies, instead of compromising, just kept drifting further apart, getting more extreme—until they reached a point where they couldn’t see eye-to-eye on anything.

Worsening the situation, he said, was that America had gotten so crowded, it had become harder for any politician to get national attention, and politicians in both parties began to realize that taking extreme positions was the only way to get national airtime—what they needed for their own personal ambition.