Thin Limbs

Thin limbs burst through the high grass. Then came the rest of her out into the clearing, hooded, covering as much bare skin as her stolen rags could manage – may she be forgiven for stealing. The casual film of grime attending her served as a second layer of protection from the lethal UV. The leathery texture of her young skin testifying to its efficacy.

The girl scanned her surroundings and watched the last caretaker droid roll beneath the stone arch and through the reinforced multifilament carbon doors 10 meters away. The large-wheeled droids had just completed their weekly maintenance. The Authority carved out this half-acre perimeter of visibility, itself a soft barrier against the encroaching wilderness.

The dirty bundle knotted tight to her chest squirmed. She held it closer. Her heart knew she wouldn’t make it and her jaw clenched at the thought. But she could see the two soldiers standing guard on the other side. So, she raced for the gate, barefoot and panting, calling out for help. Wheezing through hollowed cheeks, she willed exhaustion not to overtake her.

One of the young men heard her, turning to see an emaciated teen pleading for life, hers and her child’s, as the doors slid closed. She could no longer see him, but he only had to step to one side of the arch to have a clear view. There was no visible gate or wall attached to the arch and from his side he could see the vast stretch of sporadically forested and decaying land nature had reclaimed from a long dead metropolis. The structure, or rather, the assemblage known as the Gate appeared invisible to him because the barrier was a collection of quadrillions of nanos spanning hundreds of miles. From the outlands, a vaguely grey blur obscured the view of the Grid cities. Since you can’t be what you can’t see and they were not wanted as citizens, it was for the best. Those on the Outs were better off forgetting there was anything past what they could observe.

The Immigration guard watched as two huge, ragged fellows bounded through the clearing and blocked the woman’s trajectory. When he saw the Authority drones, he called out to her. She could not tell who was commanding her to get down. She did not see him waving his arms for her to stop as she ran toward his voice when the two hulking marauders charged her. She had only seen the machete hanging from one of the men’s tattered, makeshift belts and heard her infant’s cries when she jostled him as she stumbled, nearly falling to the ground. She didn’t see what made the men shriek in pain or know that they had fallen to the ground. With the door closed, she ran towards the voice she knew was the soldier even though he yelled for her to stop and get down. She called out for him to please help her and her baby.

She knew the guards controlled the Gate. They could open and close it anywhere. She knew someone who had seen them do it for Gate maintenance droids. It's why she’d been able to convince the other girls to escape with her. The guard had to open the barrier for her. She’d planned to convince them, to show them her scars to tell them what the men were doing to them, what they would do with the babies they’d made. Now, she didn't have time. She cried out for him to open the barrier. She put her faith in him, retracted that and put her faith where it belonged – please forgive her for her transgressions - and ran through the opaque blur of the outlands barrier.

She had been directly in front of the Immigration guard, following his voice with hope for safety. And now, he was drenched in her blood and viscera, hers and her child’s. Actually half, to be more precise. The other half of her body lay on the outlands side of the barrier, cleanly coronally sectioned by the nanos, with the scattered remains of all she’d fled with, a metal cup, a piece of flint, a sharp-looking hunting knife. Farther away, in the neatly landscaped clearing, a silver heart-shaped locket.

The Immigration guard watched as two other girls, thin-limbed former captives of the brutes, crept towards the body. A heavily pregnant adolescent, similarly clothed in scraps, inched forward on crusted, cracked soles and a toe missing from each foot. Another survivor with a filthy toddler strapped to her hip shielded her child’s eyes from the gruesome sight with a sun-spotted hand missing at least two fingernails. She turned away tearful and repositioned the folded cloth across her son’s face so he could breathe without coughing and his nose wouldn’t run black mucous again no more.

Several feet away aerial Authority drones held the stunned men in impenetrable microfiber netting and began lifting them away, while two more drones descended to instruct the women to halt. The women did not. They immediately retreated, ducking back into the tall, dry grass and back into the wilds they had hoped to escape.

Though it weren‘t so bad. They had escaped captivity and through the sacrifice of their comrade, rest her soul, kept their lives and their children. The young mother who thought this, though truly sad for her traveling companion, deeply regretted the loss of that good sharp hunting knife.