The back of the open ended cargo truck smelt of burning rubber and petrol. The winter night blew through the cabin, slicing between our crammed bodies. The sun had fallen, swallowed by empty midnight skies.

A non-descript member of the team sat opposite me, and another to my side. Some of the men chatted under the cough of the engine. I focused on my breathing, not letting nerves, or the bumpy ride that tore waves through my stomach, to get the better of me.

The three hour drive had been tedious, and it had allowed for more than enough contemplating of my decision making skills. At the same time, it seemed to pass by in seconds. The uncharted dry lands, nor the clustered stars, were enough to distract me from what loomed. As the truck slowed to a silent stop, I knew I wasn’t ready, and that I probably never would be.

I was at the end of the bench, and one of the first to have my boots on the ground. I was horrified by the fossilised track that lay to our left, it ran for miles in front of us extending into blind darkness. Bodies began to file from the three trucks, movement polluting the still night.

Reaves sent two of his minions off on a task, before he came for me. He crossed his arms.

“Please tell me this is a gas stop?” I tested against his concerning straight face.

He pointed down the track, “Forty minutes that way you’re going to see the spot lights, another twenty and you’ll hit the first wave of guards.”

“And then …. Boom?” 

“Boom,” He agreed, before he pulled two flat blocks from his pack, two timers on top.

“Attach the timers before the guards, hide them in your palms, press the red button before you throw them. They’ll detonate on impact. Make sure you’ve got some form of cover. And, for the love of God don’t drop them.”

Taking a deep breath, “Piece of cake,” I assured.

 “Good luck Ash,” Reaves finished, his dark eyes moulding to reflect a regarding kindness. Maybe we were friends, on some sort of messed-up level.  

“Thanks Boss,” I nodded, brushing back my hair before I turned to the track.

I ignored the hustle around me, my thoughts stolen by the arising line of rickety timber and iron. A lone silhouette was the last barrier between me and my path. The explosives were weighing down my hands like lead, my palms sweating.

I paced closer, Elek steady in his oblivious stare, resistant to give in to the thought that he had lost, and I was going through with this. For the briefest second my eyes closed, he was going to let me pass him without a single word.

And he did.

I stopped a few metres after him, my feet dragging through the dirt, “I don’t have a choice,” I said to the black sky.

“We always have a choice,” his cold voice wagered.

“I’m doing this,” I finalised.

“Then I’m not going to watch you stain your hands with blood.” His tone was adamant and cemented.

“It’s not an easy position to be in is it?” I spat, turning to stare at his back, my eyes blurring with a film of tears. Tormented and tainted memories boiling to the surface.

How many times had I watched my brother do the same? For food, or shelter, to prove ourselves, to keep our façade as humans. I was yet to forget the many times I pretended to be asleep as he came home from a shift, or job for a local gang we were passing, needing to pay off, scrubbing his skin for hours trying to remove the stains of red that I would later find in his jeans and sweaters.

He didn’t turn, his body rising and falling with tempered breathing.

I swallowed a chuckle, I shouldn’t have expected anything more.

Gripping one of the C4 blocks in either hand, I left behind the three trucks, a scattering team preparing for ambush, and my brother.

Like the drive, the track was unending but before I knew it, all that was behind me was unfolding depths of black. This journey however was much more unsettlingly. Every step echoed through the open plains, the winds toyed with my nerves, skittering animals keeping me on edge.

I was alone.

A second sunrise began to dilute the darkness, as I got further through my journey. At that point I ditched my pack and I pushed the timers into the packs of explosives, burying them gently in my palms. In the next twenty minutes I was going to be staring chaos in the eye.

The beaten up car bodies started, piled along the track as a blockade, and a pretty convincing one if you asked me. These had been stripped clean of their interiors. No one drives cars anymore, no one has the petrol to power them. Unless you’re part of the government, the collective, or a rival gang in the city, you probably haven’t seen let alone ridden in a working vehicle for at least five years.

The air started to grow heavier. Whispers and shuffling breaking and filling the silence. Game time. I dropped to my knees, dirtying my skin and drawing lose my hair. If I was going to do this, I was going the full mile and I was going to make sure it went off without a hint of trouble.

I then slouched through the dirt in a crawl, careful of the explosives in my curled up hands.

Chaos turned out to be a black Texan with an oversized rifle.

I’d heard him behind me, halting before approaching, his breathing hitching before he called, “Hold it, or I’ll blow your head off Baby-cakes.”

I collapsed into myself, faking a cry of exhaustion, “Please, I need water!”

“How the hell did you get out here?” he asked, bewildered, as he circled me to the front. He wore torn jeans and a faded flannel shirt.

“I was dropped off in the forest. Please, help me.”

“By who?” he demanded, unbelieving of my story.

“I don’t know some gang men,” I answered, burying my head lower as I pleaded by his feet.

“Are you a dancer?”

My head shot up, my stare icy, “No.”

He reacted to my insult with a raise of his eyebrows, and a nod as he said, “Girl you been hangin’ out with the wrong crowd.”

“Please, I just want to go home,” I cried, returning to my self-pitying victim act.

The man filled his cheeks with air, before he dramatically let them deflate, contemplating what he would do with me as he turned his rifle between his fingers. “Alright get up, I’ve gotta bring you in.”

I staggered to my feet with accentuated effort. He shuffled behind me, poking me in the back with his gun as he said, “Walk.”

I did as he said, heading closer to the spotlights and their watch towers, pacing figures moving in the fields of light, “Where are you taking me?”

“To my boss,” he answered shortly, persistent with the dig of cold metal in my back.

“What is this place?” I queried, a few minutes later, hesitant to push too deep.

“It’s a revolution,” the man smiled, as we continued to move down the car-lined track.

“That’s a dangerous word,” I replied. Speak of revolution, and of resistance, it was a matter of treason, unspoken of. I’d heard whispers amongst packs of travelling elementals, taunts of overturning the dictatorship scrawled over the walls of desolated buildings. But that was it, it was a silent war. 

“We are takin what’s ours and distributing it to the wider community. I got two boys, and for the first time in three years they’ve gotten vaccines and two meals a day. We aint against the government, we’re against a gang.”

“You should move to the city if you want more supplies,” I suggested, impressed by his commitment to the cause. Thinking he could overthrow the collective, the largest networked gang in the country, was a pretty big thing. I didn’t know if it made him brave or just stupid.

“Girl we’ve come from the city, the UN pulled out after Europe went nuclear, there are lots of desperate people there and not a lot of good going on.”

My stomach tightened at the news, so many travellers headed for the cities for help, they were beacons of hope for those who had be travelling for years. Whole states had gone dark since the uprising, people were crossing borders by foot looking for a chance of security. If the cities were nothing but hordes of people clawing at survival, I didn’t know what hope was left for humanity.

You can’t survive a marathon if fate keeps moving back the finish line.

I scoffed, pretending that this wasn’t news to me, “So you’re going to steal it from someone else?”

“Who decided what’s on that train belongs to one gang, some rich white man? No, I aint believe in it, what’s on that train is for all not for the Collective,” he argued, preaching more to himself than me.

We were at the beginning of their set-up, as we stepped into the light the whole ground of men seem to awaken.

“Rodney, this is why we don’t put you on patrol!” One of them cooed.

“Damn, I’m thinking we should put him on more often,” another hollered, dozens heading towards us, as we halted.

Silhouettes were approaching from every direction, but my mind wasn’t focused: not on their faces, or positions, or on the steel watch towers who’s lights now beamed towards us, spotlighting us. But, on the story that haunted my conscience. These were not criminals looking to cause trouble, well Rodney wasn’t. They were desperate. What right did I have to decide who got those supplies, what right did I have to kill so that I could take them. What right did I have to kill a father who was only doing as I had been for the last decade: surviving?

I thought on my feet, leaping at the last chance I had to savour any humility I had left. Once more, faking my exhaustion I collapsed to my knees, Rodney stepping forward to help me up. I grasped his arm for support, feeling a crowd enclosing, I pulled him close whispering against his ear. ”If you want to ever see your sons again then you turn and run the way you came. If you make any trouble then I will kill you.”

His frame stiffened and his heart beat raced. He knew to take me at my word. In the new world when people threatened your life, you very well believed they would come through on it.

“We have nowhere to go,” he panicked.

“I’ll come find you, you can come back to where I’m from, we have food.”

“Are you a Marshal?” he followed.

“When I say, run,” I instructed, ignoring his question.

“Share the goods Rodney,” one of the enclosing guards yelled, a mile out.

At least a dozen men were sauntering over, not with concern but with intrigue. I turned back to face them sizing up the crowd; twenty five men, another four on the towers.

One.

I took a deep breath savouring the last taste of calm.

Two.

I gripped the explosives in my hands, sweat building.

Three.

I whispered behind me, “Run Rodney.”

I heard his footsteps go, confusion stopping some of the guards while a few began calling to him. Thoughts registered, and then the majority began to run towards me.

For the first time in what had been too long I opened the barrier to new sensation. A muscle that had not been exercised in a long time. I let an indulgent and electrifying heat roll over my body: in my bones, through my blood, connecting my nerves.

Dangerous and intense warmth radiated at my fingertips, barely controllable. An irresistible urge prying open the door to a fire that I longed for.

Boom.

Rodney was at least ten feet away, the rest of the guard cohort was running towards me. I threw the packs in front of my body, spiralling them into the distance. Before they left my palms I took a final breath and let my mind open to a part of me I kept hidden from even myself.

Embers popped, my hands glowing orange, wild flames soared as I set the packs alight. A crimson explosion expanded in front of me, as I shielded my body with a separate wall of fire, indistinguishable from the blaze.

The aftershock rippled beneath my feet, the force throwing my body across the wreckage of cars, on top of the tracks.

Silence.

Black.

Chaos.

My blood burned, simmering against my skull with a thumping vengeance. My ears were ringing, noise around nothing but a distant call. My thigh was leaking a searing pain, my back arched as I looked at the shard of car bonnet that protruded from the flesh. Seeping blood stained my pants.

“No, no, no,” I ranted under my breath.

I couldn’t let the collective see an injury like this.

My fingers grasped the metal, my hold shaky. With a tortured grunt I pulled the shard from my leg, feeling the pressure release through my muscle and flesh. I slammed my fist against the dirt, rocking side to side, swallowing the pain.

The explosion had dimmed to shallow grass fires. The rusted mustang I leant against blocked any clear sight. I could hear their footsteps though, I could hear their shouting. Muddled within I heard scattering, cries of confusion, and of pain. They would not recover like I would.

My muscle was knitting back together, but my leg was tender, not ready to be used. I heaved myself to my feet, ripping my jeans above the cut, removing any trace of blood. I looked over the car, at the field filling with new bodies. Smoke rose, fires danced at their feet, bullets were flying, and our trucks were crushing through the brush and towards the epicentre of movement.

We’d done it. I’d done it.

And I felt sick to my core.