Revolution

On my first full day of freedom, I woke up beside Kyer on the beach, deafened by the roar of the ceaseless surf. Every muscle in my body ached, and sleeping had only stiffened my bones. The night before, when we had made our escape from the Colony, we were optimistic about what lie ahead. Hand in hand, we ran up the ramp onto the bridge, our shoes clinking faintly on the metal. As the clouds faded behind us, I had laughed into the sky above, and the twinkling stars seemed to laugh back. We were free. But the bridge seemed to stretch into eternity. Our steps slowed from a brisk run to a trot, then to a jog, and finally to a winded walk. A stitch in my side ached each time I moved my leg, and I pressed a hand under my ribs to try to make it stop hurting. Beside me, Kyer took deep breaths in through his nostrils and out through pursed lips. Our walk lost its vigor, and became a sort of shambling forward motion. Finally Kyer held up a hand. “I can’t…” “We have to keep moving,” I told him. I grabbed his arm and slung it over my shoulders, hoping to help him along, but he was sweaty and hot, and his weight bore me down. “Just a few minutes, Aine,” he gasped. Before I could protest, he sank to the concrete beneath our feet and crossed his legs in front of him, then leaned his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. His voice was muffled when he spoke again. “Give me five minutes, please. That’s all I ask.” I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t tired, too. I was still afraid the Overseer would send Officers after us, but when I looked back the way we had come, the bridge was empty. In the darkness, the clouds covering the Colony seemed to glow with an inner light, creating a grayish bubble at the end of the bridge, but it looked so far away. We’d come quite some distance, and if anyone followed us, we would be able to see them in plenty of time to run. That was, if we could run. We had to get our strength back first. We had to rest. I sank to the ground beside Kyer. His tunic clung to his sweaty back, and when I rested my cheek on his shoulder, I felt his body heat sear my skin. My lungs burned as I gulped in breath, trying to calm down my rapid heart. “Just a few minutes,” I agreed, rubbing my face against his arm, partly for comfort and partly to wipe away the sweat trickling from my brow. Kyer dropped his arm onto my leg and pulled it closer to his in a lazy hug. “We should’ve walked with the girls each week,” he said with a sigh. I frowned. “What do you mean?” “At rec time,” he explained. “The past few years you and I fell out of actually doing anything physical. Maybe a game here and there, but nothing to build up our endurance. We’re out of shape.” “We didn’t need endurance in the Colony,” I pointed out. Kyer sighed again. “I think we’re going to need a lot of it for whatever lies ahead.” What did lie ahead? We had no clue. Below us, I could hear the waves lap against the pilings, but it was too dark to see the sides of the bridge from where we sat, so it felt as if we were in the middle of nowhere. The sky seemed to wrap around us completely—only the stars and a faint sliver of moon gave any sense of up or down. The clouds behind us gave us a sense of direction, if only something to run away from. If we could run. Ahead, there was nothing but darkness. For all I knew, the bridge could stretch around the entire world and deposit us on the southern tip of the Colony, putting us right back where we had started. Or it could end halfway out into the ocean, leaving us with nowhere left to go. When I mentioned this to Kyer, though, he gave a sort of breathy chuckle. “Who builds a bridge that goes nowhere?” he wanted to know. “Maybe it really is destroyed,” I said. “Maybe just not right where we could see it from the Colony. Maybe it’ll get us within sight of an opposite shore and then just end. Then what?” “Then we swim.” Kyer slapped my knee, then leveraged himself on my leg to help him stand. “Come on. Let’s see where this leads. But no more running, or I’ll fall over right here and you’ll have to drag me the rest of the way.” I laughed. “Like I have the energy for that.” Putting our backs to the clouds and all they hid, we continued across the bridge. Our pace was slower than what we had started with, but it would be easier to maintain in the long run. It was still dark when we finally reached the end of the bridge. Kyer was right, we were out of shape. If the Colony ever welcomed us back, I’d have to seriously rethink that long walk across the sea. As it was, the moment we stepped off the ramp onto moonlit sand, I staggered a little ways down the beach and promptly collapsed facedown into the sand. * * * * That was where morning found me. Before I even opened my eyes, I knew my body would protest any sudden movements. Muscles twitched from overuse, and my arms and legs ached from being strained. Swinging that heavy chair at the glass window in the Collection Center might have been the only way we could escape, but I regretted it when I woke. The sand was hard-packed around me and uncomfortable, and the sun was beginning to beat down on the side of my face exposed to the sky, but I wanted nothing more than to lie here another few hours or so, maybe another day or two, however long it took to feel right again. But when I opened one eye and saw Kyer sprawled on his back a few feet away from me, I felt a surge of relief spike through me. I was right, I knew I’d be, because he was still with me, by my side. My chest swelled with emotion, and I blinked back sudden tears. We had made it. We were free. Movement in front of me caught my attention and I focused my gaze closer in, on the sand. There, an almost invisible creature moved with odd grace despite numerous legs. It was a bug of some kind, fragile and perfect, and the first living thing other than a person that I had ever seen. I watched, fascinated, as it crawled over grains of sand that stood in its path like boulders. This close, I could see beady black eyes, and as it moved, I imagined I could feel its multiple legs skittering over my skin. Just seeing it navigate closer to me made my arms and legs begin to itch. With difficulty, I rolled onto my side and absently scratched my wrist where the Colony had implanted an identification tag before I was born. The creature moved on, steady and true. I scratched my wrist again, then turned my head to glance at the spot. My neck protested the movement, and pain behind my right eye blossomed into a dull ache. My wrist was an angry red. My nails had made white claw marks across the skin, and there, at the base of my thumb, a welt swelled like some sort of bite. Suddenly I felt tiny legs all over my body and, headache be damned, I scrambled to my feet. With shaking arms, I pulled my tunic off over my head and looked at my thin chest. The pale skin was pocked with bites, and those little invisible creatures who had looked so magical a moment ago were crawling all over me! “Oh, s**t!” I slapped at my bare chest, trying to rid myself of the parasites. More bit me—I could feel the stings now, the sharp little pricks of whatever they had that passed for teeth, and I danced as I tried to knock them away. My legs tingled, too, so I stripped off my pants and fell over on my side as I kicked off my shoes. “Kyer!” I cried. “I’m being eaten alive!” Beside me, Kyer stirred. Sand crusted his hair, turning the blond curls a shade of white, and he had an ignoble smear of sand caked to the side of his face. He saw me in my underpants, slapping at my arms and legs, and he grinned sleepily. “I had a dream you were getting undressed. What are all those red bumps on you?” “Bites!” Standing, I shook my underpants to free them of any insects, as well, but I still felt as if the bugs crawled all over me. “I’m covered in them. They’re probably all over you, too.” With a jerk, Kyer sat up and slapped at his tunic, then tugged it over his head. He took a quick glance at his bare chest and yelped. “What the hell?” I didn’t bother answering. I dashed for the rolling waves, hoping maybe the water would wash away the last of the parasites and erase the phantom legs I felt all over my arms and legs. Rolling onto his back in the sand, Kyer raised his legs in the air and pulled off his pants, then kicked away his shoes as he raced to join me. The water was cold and bracing, and soothed my skin instantly. I walked out to just beyond the breakers, then ducked down until my shoulders were completely covered. I dipped my head into the water, and when I raised it again, Kyer was splashing towards me. I wiped water from my eyes. He dove under and swam the rest of the way. When he came up, he was right beside me, and he gave me a quick kiss. Water spiked his eyelashes into angles and tightened his curls. “You taste salty,” he said, licking his lips. I felt his hands play over my chest under the water and let him draw me close. “This is just one more thing they lied to us about,” I said. “They always told us we were the only things left alive after the last war.” “If those things are what’s left,” Kyer admitted, “I’d rather we were alone.” With a laugh, I dunked my head and swam toward the shore. The ocean felt wide open all around me, and made me feel dizzyingly free in a way I had never managed to feel in the pool at the Rec Room. When I caught up with the waves, I let them wash me ashore, and Kyer splashed beside me. I felt better now—my muscles weren’t so tight, my skin not as irritated as it had been before I went into the sea. I could no longer feel the imaginary legs of hundreds of bugs scurrying all over me. All I felt was Kyer’s arm across my shoulders, and his breath warm against my ear. “I’ve never really seen you naked before,” he whispered. I let him roll me onto my back, and he climbed above me. He felt hard and unyielding in all the right places, but his lips were still as tender as always when he leaned down to claim a kiss. “You do look good in a pair of wet panties,” I teased. “We could walk around in them the rest of the day, but what’ll keep those things from crawling on us again?” “Our clothes didn’t do a good job of keeping them off in the first place,” Kyer pointed out. He raised himself up above me, hands planted on either side of my shoulders, but there was a sweet ache in my groin where his pressed against mine. When the waves rolled in, cool water runneled around us. When it retreated, I felt it take sand from beneath me, and each time, I sank a little deeper into the ground. Only half-serious, Kyer asked, “What were those things, anyway?” From the beach, someone answered, “Sand fleas.” It was a girl’s voice, and it startled us. Pure reflex made Kyer roll off me in one direction while I rolled in the other. I pushed myself up on my elbows to see who had spoken. She stood a few yards above where we had shed our clothing. From where I was, she looked younger than we were, tall and bony with a mop of wild brown hair frizzled by the sea and the sun. The wind blew the hair up from behind, creating a nimbus around her head. I glanced at Kyer, who shrugged in response. Suddenly the girl grimaced. “Ew, are you guys doing it?” she asked. Kyer called out, “Doing what?” She took a few steps closer and kicked my tunic where it rested in the sand. “If you have to ask, then the answer is no. Why’d you sleep on the beach? The sand fleas will bite you alive.” “Now she tells us,” I muttered to Kyer.