nightmare

Nicole and I were staying with my parents in Texas. Austin was sick, but my parents couldn’t take him to the hospital because the health care infrastructure had been taken over by a group calling themselves (simply enough) the Organization. My mom did her best to take care of him, and his situation seemed stable. We assumed he would be able to wait a few weeks for a military action to sort out this mess with the Organization. As the days wore on, the news reported that the Organization’s reach was spreading. They captured residential lots for use as barracks and weapon storage. What they didn’t capture, they ransacked. All of the food, water, and valuables were stolen from countless homes in the vicinity of the hospitals. It was a terrorist attack on a level the country had never seen. We decided to build a secret basement beneath our home. Although building codes prohibited the construction of basements in Houston, the area beneath our house was suited to that, so we didn’t have to worry about any serious health issues – at least, that’s what my dad thought. I wasn’t so sure. He finished digging it out in two days, and we moved a good portion of our food down there. We left enough food upstairs that the Organization would just take it and ignore the possibility of people hiding under the kitchen tiles. It wasn’t long before the Organization made their rounds… We could only get the news by radio now, and many of the standard broadcast stations had been knocked out, so much of what we listened to came from other people like us living in secret in their own homes. The airports were under the Organization’s control now. Everything seemed to be getting worse, and Austin’s condition wasn’t getting any better.

A few days after the Organization stopped running in and out of our house, my dad and I went outside to check out the area. It was spooky how normal everything looked. The streets were empty, of course, but the houses all looked fine on the outside. We went door to door trying to find anyone who had hidden themselves properly. We found a couple of corpses, but I tried not to dwell on it. I didn’t know any of these people, anyway… We found one family that did the same thing as us. Their basement area was a little larger, so they invited us to come stay with them. My dad wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but we agreed to attend a party. When we got back, we told the rest of the family all about it. We went back to the larger hideout the next evening to try to enjoy ourselves for the first time in a while. Unfortunately, a passing truck under the control of the Organization stopped in front of the house. The driver picked up the music playing in the basement from his vehicle. Before we knew this had happened, the driver called a couple of loading trucks to the scene. They infiltrated the house, broke up the party, and captured everyone as prisoners.

We were loaded one by one onto the trucks with our mouths gagged and our wrists bound. I thought it was dumb of them to leave our ankles untied, but when they closed the back of my truck and locked the door, I realized there wasn’t much we could do to escape. I had to sit in pitch black darkness for the whole ride. I wasn’t even sure where we were going… After the first few turns, I was lost. Maybe in Illinois, I could’ve followed the trail better, but I wasn’t familiar with this area. I knew Nicole wasn’t on the same truck as me… It didn’t seem like they were shipping women anywhere different from the men, so I was relieved at least by that much. I had even less of an idea where she had been sent, though. The truck stopped at another house, and they loaded some more people onto the truck. It was becoming crowded in the cargo area, but they didn’t care. We were just merchandise to them. I supposed we would probably end up doing slave labor for the rest of our lives.

By the time we reached the next stop, I realized the knot binding my wrists was loose enough to wriggle out of. I freed myself and cautiously undid the knots binding the men on my left and right. We left our gags in so the Organization wouldn’t notice we had untied our wrists. It worked like a charm. We could undo the knots just as well in pure darkness as in blinding light, so it didn’t matter that we had to work on them en route. We had most of the prisoners free by the third stop – and that was way more people than they were ready to deal with. We had to leave some of them bound, but we were able to rush the soldiers in charge of the loading process and take their guns from them. Only a few people died. Someone else killed the driver of the truck. We were the only truck on this street, so there was no one else to challenge us. Everyone scattered, and so began my long journey across the country.

I found out they had taken me over the border into Oklahoma. I figured it would be fastest to make my way back to my parents’ house from there. I didn’t have a car, and besides, the roads were dangerous with the Organization about. It seemed they were no longer content with just taking supplies. They needed an army of slaves for something. I didn’t intend to trust my fate to chance again. I walked from Oklahoma back to Houston, sneaking into restaurants when necessary to supply myself with water and food. I kept away from the major roads when I could and made short work of crossing them when I couldn’t. I don’t know how long it took me, but I made it back to my parents’ house. I was a little disappointed to find that I was the only one who made it back… None of my family members were in the same truck as me, so I hadn’t been able to free any of them. I didn’t check the other house to see if those people had made it back. Their hideout had been compromised. Although ours was empty, at least I figured it was secure. I stayed there for about a week to give Nicole time to find me. When she didn’t show up, I put a backpack of supplies together and took to the wilderness again. This time, I headed for Illinois.

Traveling during the summer was rough, so I was grateful when things began to cool down. It meant that I had taken a long time to cross the country, but I hadn’t been counting the days, anyway. I was too worried about what might’ve happened to Nicole and my family to think about something as abstract as time. Eventually, I made it to the edge of Chicago. A big storm blew in from the west, and the whole area quickly flooded. I jumped on the back of an Organization truck when the driver wasn’t looking and rode it into the suburbs so I wouldn’t have to spend so much time in the pouring rain. It pulled off into someone’s backyard, so I took the chance to hop off the truck and continue on foot. As I passed a house, I saw a television on inside. I wondered how long it had been playing… There didn’t seem to be anyone in the room. The TV played an episode of the Fairly Oddparents in which Timmy Turner gained the power of invisibility. He tried to save a girl on a motorcycle from the Organization, but he was unable to do anything. They threw her on a train and took her away. I couldn’t help noticing I was in a similar situation…

I had to wade through three feet of water to get across Nicole’s street. Her house was empty. Her garage was empty. All of the canned food was gone, and it basically looked like no one had been there in ages. I noticed that Cleo was also gone… I figured she had decided to fend for herself if she was still alive. Since there was nothing for me to find in Chicago, I decided I might as well go back home and prepare the house for my family’s return – if they ever returned. The trip back took even longer than the trip there; I had lost much of my motivation. The winter months weren’t so bad since I made it far enough south to avoid most of the snow. The new year arrived, then spring, then summer, and I finally made it back to my parents’ house. When I went inside, my heart sank. There were people everywhere. I immediately assumed they were with the Organization and threw up my hands in surrender. It wasn’t worth fighting anymore, I decided. If they were going to kill me, whatever… I didn’t want to live in fear like this anymore. Then my eyes narrowed. Nomad was with them. Nomad wouldn’t join the Organization. I noticed many of them had weapons strapped to their bodies. Some of them – including Nomad – had war paint on their faces. These were rebels preparing to stand up to the Organization. They laughed at my surrender and pointed me to my mom and sister. I was shocked by how similar Chelsea looked to my mom. It had been a year since I saw them, and Chelsea changed quite a bit. I hugged each of them several times. By this point, I was already in tears. Just finding one of them would’ve been enough to make the past year of running worth it.

I headed straight for the secret room, hoping to find my dad and Austin. My mom grabbed my hand before I could reveal the entrance. She hadn’t told the rebels about it yet, and in case one of them really was working with the Organization, she didn’t want them to know. She said she didn’t know if my dad was awake right now, but he would come talk to me soon. I sat down with them in the kitchen to wait. My mom explained that she and Chelsea had been separated from my dad and Austin early on, but they were reunited at the start of winter when they made it back to the house. She spared few details of their experiences… The Organization was trying to construct something to control the minds of the human race, but the details of this weren’t exactly clear. I made a mental note to ask Nomad about this later. Within half an hour or so, my dad walked into the room. He had a pistol on each side and wore a bulletproof vest. I felt small compared to him. It was obvious he’d been through a lot in the past year. I hugged him several times, too.

Immediately, I asked him about Austin. I hadn’t seen him in the building anywhere. I assumed he had just been in the basement or something. My dad put a hand on my back and led me outside. Because of his silence, I already knew what had happened. The tears started flowing. He took me to a little garden beside the house. The plants were artificial, and they had words written on their leaves. There was a little piano in the back for some reason with certain keys marked. It was a memorial for Austin. I knelt in front of it, wondering what I should do. Praying didn’t seem right, but what else was I supposed to do in this situation? My dad read the memorial leaf by leaf, but I couldn’t understand any of it. The whole thing seemed ridiculous, like he would tell me at any moment that Austin was actually just sleeping in the basement. That was just a hopeless wish, however.

“How long has it been…?” I asked, covering my eyes.

“Since November,” he replied. “We couldn’t get him the help he needed. The winter was too much for him, even here.” I could hardly breathe. My only brother was dead, and I never got to say goodbye. I knew how my dad felt about his brother’s death. Was this normal, I wondered? My thoughts raced out of control. I wondered if I would ever see Austin again… Probably not, I decided. There was nothing left of him. I knelt there for several minutes in grief before I could even move. I knew the Organization could come by at any moment, though, and if they saw us here, they would want to search the house. For the sake of everyone inside, I sucked up my tears and went back inside. I sat down on a bench in the basement to be alone while I tried to grasp everything that had happened. All the time lost, all the families torn apart… It was all because of the Organization. My immediate family gathered in the basement to try to cheer me up.

“When I saw Josh was here, I thought he was going to tell me he brought Nicole and two kids,” my dad joked. Clearly, this didn’t help much.

“I haven’t seen Nicole since the party,” I choked. It took me a few times to get this out. I went through my whole trip in summary, stopping whenever the horror of Austin’s death or the year without Nicole gripped me. When I finished telling the story, everyone seemed to agree that I should try going back to Chicago and finding Phil. He might be doing secret work for someone in the city, my dad suggested. I couldn’t imagine anyone having a stable job with the country in its current state, but it seemed remotely possible that he could be working in secret. In that case, he might have a place for Nicole and her family to hide. Knowing Nicole had to turn up somewhere, I agreed to give their idea a try. They probably wouldn’t see me again… I could come back and find all of them dead. We went outside for some reason and sat in the backyard. The sun was already setting, so it was too late for me to leave. I would have to stay for the night. After I finished talking to my family, I turned back to the house. A number of the rebels were staring at me. As Apheri appeared at my side, I put my hand on her black hilt.

“The Organization will pay,” I whispered.