Tails

My eyes struck open at the pulse of the Signal, like a weak electric current jolting through my arm.

My cartridge was almost empty again.

Rolling out of bed, I hurried over to our stash to replace it.

“Don’t worry I’ll get it...” She always said that.

“Here, Mom,” I responded, grabbing her forearm to remove the empty vial for the new one. “We don’t have that many left. Stop stealing them.”

“Stealing what,” she rolled her eyes, snapping her arm back under the covers. “I’m not the one gone all night doing God knows what.”

Even if I had had the energy to reply, she had already passed back out. The first kick of the carts was always an intense one, especially if you’ve been self medicating.

I rolled her on her side, carefully placing her locket so that it sat upright beside her. I opened the heart-shaped necklace for a moment. A photo of a tinier me sat inside, holding onto a happier, younger her.

She knew I was out making exchanges for vials. She knew we only had three left between the two of us and that she had dosed herself with the last four. She also knew that both our respirators were low. I grabbed my bag, checked my cart, and made sure I had all my Outgear ready. After securing the traps I made my way out.

I could tell I was late getting to my spot by how spiked the air was. If I had left earlier the skin under my unarmored clothes wouldn’t burn this much. There was only one dose left of AntiX for the burn -- I have to save it for the way back. Just in case.

“Fe! Come up!” a hand reached down from a passing truck. I grabbed it and pulled myself up to meet the voice.

“Muñeca” I gave her a hug, “Are you going into the Outskirts?” I asked, slipping her a peak at my inventory for the day. Mainly vintage tech that Thrillenials liked to show off to their friends as conversation pieces.

“I was thinking of heading back to the Center to recharge,” she slapped her respirator, “things are getting real light around here -- sales, stock, and air.” I hadn’t seen her worried like this in a long time.

“We always find a way though, right?” I put my elbow out for her to tap. She shoved it out of the way and we laughed. It’d been a while.

We started to come upon the Center, feeling an immense heat from above before we turned the corner.

“TURN BACK!” Muñeca’s voice cracked as she screamed out to the driver. He couldn’t hear through the bullet-proofed shield. “TURN BACK!” She slammed the rear windshield of the truck.

I grabbed the roof, swung myself over to the driver side window, and slammed it as hard as I could. As I went to bang at the glass one more time I caught a glimpse of the driver through the tinted, dirty window. I looked at Muñeca and saw she had realized he had ‘timed out’ all on her own.

We grabbed our things and jumped.

As the driver turned the corner a ball of glowing, magenta flames came and swallowed the vehicle whole. Inside, the man’s body was just sitting in place, as if he were driving through a light rainshower.

“You make it?” I asked, pulling Muñeca up by her pack.

“Yeah… How many is that now?”

I pulled out a counter and clicked, “that makes 57 so far this month.”

“I guess we just have to count on those exchanges.”

“How much time do we have before…”

“Not much,” she said, pointing at the sky. The magenta flames roared high into the dark clouds approaching. “We have to go -- now.”

The spiked air was getting worse, I could see it starting to eat away at our clothes. I glanced at Muñeca and saw the sores starting to form on her torso.

“I wish I could offer you the AX…”

“I’ll be fine.”

We found out the hard way that she was allergic to it. One of the only people in the Fringes who’d die with it -- and without it.

We finally made it to our usual spot. When we were short for time like this we would combine our inventory to make the exchanges run more quickly. She needed air and I needed carts.

“Here they come.”

A horde of hooded, cloaked, and masked silhouettes rolled in front of our setup like a train. They all spoke at once.

“Smartphone, tablet, Echo, smartphone, tablet, Echo…”

My Signal started to pulse at the same time the thunder started to growl in the distance. As soon as the horde left we split up our earnings and looked for the nearest ride out.

“There!” Muñeca pointed to a passing bike. You could always tell when they were timed out by their vacant stare and their blinking arm. Some ran out of time, some just gave up.

I pushed them off and slowed down for Muñeca to get on. My Signal was still pulsing.

“Muñeca!” I felt the weight of her on my back, her hand slapping my face. I grabbed a change of air and a cart from my bag and handed it to her. I heard her cough as her supply recharged.

“Arm,” she gasped, quickly inserting my new cart.

“A little close if you ask me,” I said, eyeing the clouds behind us.

“No one asked.”

With the clouds fading farther behind us and the safe zone nearing, we rode to the sound of the motor and the ground beneath us turning under the tires. I could already feel she was going to ask.

“How’s your mom?”

“The same,” I grunted from inside my mask, “And yours?”

“Gone now.” I felt her get heavy. There was a lot I could have said, but none of the words felt right. I felt my fingers wrap around the handlebars a little tighter.

“So... what now?”

“When you’re ready we should find a place farther away from the storms. They’re only going to get worse.” She was right.

This time last year they came only half as often and not nearly as strong as they did now. When we were small they were almost non-existent. I remember my mom telling me stories about before. How storms were things to do with seasonal weather and people would go out just to feel the sun on their skin. Now all there was was radiated chemicals and overexposure.

“Where would we go?”

“I heard about a place three or four days from here that’s just out of reach from the storms, with a wider safe zone. I’m not sure about how far exchanges go there, but it beats getting eaten up by this hell on a regular basis.”

“Or we could go to the City.”

“Ha, I’m not that desperate yet.”

No one from the Fringes had access to the City. The only reason anyone from our place would wind up there was to give themselves back to the system. In exchange for their bodies they wouldn’t need to scavenge for carts and air or run from the weather. There were only rumors about what exactly happened once you got inside. No one we knew that went in ever came back out. I’d just want to go and see what water felt like.

We both looked across the horizon toward the cityscape. The clouds resting around the Prism that protected its people. It reached up into the ether and gave off its own light, making the land near it seem soft and welcoming.

“Heads or tails?”

“Heads we travel, tails we try the City.”

“Together.”

“Always together.”

Once we reached the safe zone at the Fringes I pulled over. We hopped off and she took out her bottle cap. Both our hands cupped over our fortune telling piece of metal, we whispered,

“One… two… “

Then a flash of light blinded us -- a crash -- and a ringing in my ears.

“MUÑECA! MUÑECA!” I screamed into the bright void, reaching out my arms to find her. I felt her hand for a moment but it was gone the next. I got on the ground to find a landmark to steady myself. Finally my hand hit her boot and I grabbed onto it. Her foot slipped out and I was left holding on to just a shoe. Still blind, I shuffled around the ground frantically, my knees splitting open as I went. All I could feel was endless rock, sand and dirt as the sounds of her struggling and muffled cries faded into the rumbling of the furious skies.

When my eyes finally acclimated I stood up and saw the landing marks of the City vehicles in the distance. No. My bike had been destroyed and our gear was missing. I turned around to see our home engulfed in magenta flames. The Fringes was gone.

“MUÑECA!” I called her name but I already knew she wasn’t in there. I knew they were all gone.

I tried to run in to find my place, to look for them, but the flames burst and pushed me back, singeing my arms and my mask.

I walked back to the landing marks, just beyond the ruins and collapsed. Laying in the dirt, my Signal pulsed again. As I reached out to look at my arm I saw Muñeca’s bottle cap sitting beside me. I dug my fingers in the dirt to pick it up as it lay, but something else had been buried just next to it. As I lifted my hand the dirt fell away.

The bottle cap, its splayed open underside faced the sky, and my mom’s heart-shaped locket sat in my hand vibrated from the Signal’s pulse.

I could hear the magenta flames from the City cruisers roaring behind me, and in the distance the distortion of them over the horizon, moving the earth beneath them in the heat. I opened the tiny heart to see a smiling, tiny me and a younger, happier mom.

As I shut the locket I stood up and started to walk toward the City.

“Tails.”