I’m Tired of Running Away

The streets were barren and cold, and the sky was a dark, troubled grey. All the buildings in the neighborhood were cracked, torn, and worn out. The street was covered with plastic trash and remnants of the surrounding old buildings. It was so silent that you could hear a pin drop in the middle of the street and its echoes as it ricocheted off the ruins. Everything seemed barren and forgotten, except for one girl in the rubble of an old building, hidden in the basement and glowing with a happy aura. This girl was about the age of fifteen, and was named Amy. She bounced around the shelter with glee on her face, and raced up to her younger brother, who was in a wheelchair.

“Judah, stay here. I will collect some food for us,” Amy informed her brother with a innocent bright smile. Her wavy black hair was tied back into a ponytail, and she bore an  aura of youthful ecstasy. Her eyes gleamed at him as she exclaimed, “It’s the perfect day to go outside, don’t you think?”

Judah stared back with an unsure look on his face. “I guess,” he sighed. He rolled his wheelchair towards Amy, worried. “What will happen to you if you get caught? Your eyes don’t exactly make the cut of normal-looking.”

“I’ve never gotten caught before, it’ll be fine. Besides, I have a mask like everyone else,” Amy declared proudly, strapping a gas mask onto her face. “It’s normal to wear these things here, considering the factories are clogging up the air. Now sit tight, and don’t go anywhere, I’ll get food for the two of us.”

“Just be careful out there, okay?”

“I’m telling you, it’s alright out there!” Amy retorted, with a pout on her face.

Before Judah could reply, Amy raced out of the basement, and was greeted by a blast of the cold afternoon air. She boldly strutted out of the basement, and walked down her street without checking for any signs of danger. Amy swayed, humming a little song to herself under her breath, with a face of blissfulness under her mask.

As Amy sang to herself, she met a corner of the street, and she suddenly noticed two figures in the distance. One was guarding a dumpster while the other was scavenging for rations. Her smile turned grim, and her movements became stiff. This was the dumpster that she had wanted to scavenge herself. It was behind the only restaurant in the district. She grabbed a metal pipe laying idly on the street and ran noiselessly behind nearby apartments, edging closer and closer towards the men.

“Don’t you think these are good finds, Paul? I think we can use them for at least a week!” boomed one of the men.

“Yeah, just let me get this last hamburger out,” grumbled the other man. “We don’t have long here. Jack, we need to find these stupid children that the government is talking about.”

“I know, it’s just nice to get food because the government didn’t give us enough rations. Honestly, how stupid. I hate Disableds, they always are so much trouble to get rid of. When we find those two, we’re going to leave immediately.”

The mention of Disabled, implying Amy and her brother, made herself tense up. She checked to see if her gas mask was still hiding her face, before bracing herself as she quickly swung her metal pipe over the strangers’ heads. With two swift blows the two men were sprawled on the ground. They were unconscious and large welts were forming on the sides of their heads. She grabbed the burlap bag next to the men and ran away just as they began to stir.

Amy navigated the streets like the back of her hand while carrying the heavy burlap bag of stolen food. Her adrenaline was pumping over the limit as she ran all the way back home as fast as her legs could carry her. She soon arrived in her familiar neighborhood of cracked buildings and dust-covered roads. When she arrived back home with the burlap bag and her metal pole, Judah greeted her with a bright smile, and his gaze turned towards Amy’s bag. His eyes filled with glee, but it soon changed as he gave her a questioning look as he saw the petrified look on Amy’s face.

“Amy are you alright?” Judah asked. Amy dropped her metal pole on the ground with a loud clatter and curled herself into a tight, clenched ball. “Tell me what happened! Are you okay?!”

Amy looked at Judah with a sweaty, disbelieved face while she stammered, “They found us. I overheard these two men talking with each other. They were working for the government, and they are out to capture us.”

Amy’s hands started to tremble as she started to soak in the amount of peril she and Judah were in, her heart pounding hard against her chest as she fell to the floor. Judah clung to his wheelchair while rocking back and forth. The atmosphere was very tense and silent.

“I didn’t think they would find us,” Judah finally said. “We hid in such a desolate area too. If only they didn’t target people like us. How could they find us now?!” he screamed in a panic. “We need to pack up, we need to move again. As long as they don’t find us again, we’ll be safe. Right Amy?”

“No. We’re perfectly safe here. This area is desolate and forgotten, as you said. Even though those two men know the general area we are in, they don’t know the specific location. Otherwise we would already be in their hands. If we stay here we will be safe. Tell you what, I’ll think about it and I will tell you my decision tomorrow. We either stay or leave, and right now I’m not leaning towards doing the latter,” Amy fretted. “We’re fine. We’re just kids. They wouldn’t want us back unless we were a lot closer. We’re safe here, and outside is more dangerous.”

“No it isn’t!” cried Judah. “I’m the younger one, and even I see that we’re in danger. We need to go somewhere else Amy, I’m sorry!”

“Well maybe it’s because I’m tired of running away!” Amy groaned. “I don’t want to leave here. This is the safest neighborhood that we’ve found so far, and it is the farthest one from the government’s civilization. If we leave now, where else are we going to go?” She wandered off to a pile of filthy blankets on the floor, huddling herself in them. She tried to ignore the nagging guilt and anger in her head.

After Amy got up from her huddle of blankets on the floor, she found Judah eating some of the scraps she found for dinner. She quickly joined in, eating a hamburger that tasted long past its expiration date. It was either this kind of food or nothing else.

“Hey Amy? Please reconsider your decision,” Judah begged. “We really need to leave this area. We should be glad that they haven’t found us already. I know they would gladly kill me, but not you. You’re special Amy. Your genetic dysfunction will be better than whatever I can do,” Judah said while pointing down at his wheelchair. “You have a choice in this. I’m in a wheelchair, while you are a free, able bodied person with heterochromia indium. We really need to leave now. They’ve been chasing for people like us for thirty years. Otherwise when they make it here, I will probably die.”

Amy stayed silent while continuing to eat her hamburger. She kept her eyes on her food, her movements more tense than before. After she was done with her food, she remained silent and retreated from Judah yet again. She headed for a old closet in the basement, and closed the door. She started to think to herself about her situation. We can’t leave now. This is the only place that is safe. We are the only ones here besides those two men. We’ll be fine here.

After a few hours, Amy could hear the drizzles of rain on the rubble of her shelter as a storm started to churn from outside her gloomy neighborhood. She got up once again from her thinking spot, starting to call Judah to warn him of the impending storm. She heard no response, so Amy opened her closet door, and searched around the basement, with no sign of Judah or his wheelchair. She crept out slowly, not used to the silence of the room. She started racing towards the entrance of their basement that exited to the street, and found Judah’s wheelchair knocked over. Immediately, Amy raced outside to finally hear a scream emit from a nearby street, and raced towards the girlish scream. She hid behind one of the nearby buildings, and Amy saw the squirming figure of Judah in the arms of the two men that she had seen earlier by the dumpsters. They were by a black SUV, which appeared to be theirs.

She stood there silent as a statue, when she felt her own hot tears sliding down her cheeks. Why can’t I reach you? I can’t speak out of fear, but what should I do? Amy tensed up as she weakly attempted to call Judah’s name, which came out in a little whisper.

“Where is she?!” roared Jack at Judah. “A girl knocked us out when we were collecting food! Do you know where she is?”

“No I don’t,” Judah replied, with a sheer look of terror frozen onto his face. “I live alone.”

“Then how do you get food?” sternly spoke Paul. “You don’t look quite starving as the other people that we have found around areas like this.”

“I get it myself. My living space used to be a storage area for rations,” Judah responded, calming down a little.

“Get in the truck. He’s useless Paul!” called Jack to Paul. They grabbed Judah by his arms and threw him into the trunk of their SUV.

Both of Amy’s differently colored eyes glistened as she broke down in front of the kidnapper’s truck, as it rode away with Judah still fighting in its trunk. Judah was snatched right under Amy’s nose when he was mugged; they were separated from each other.

She shuffled back to the shelter as she sat down, an empty look in her eyes. Her brother was gone. She already missed his easily worried face, and his rare but reassuring smile. With Judah gone, the shelter felt much more quiet than usual.

She didn’t like the silence. She never liked a house that was too quiet. In spite of the moment, Amy felt her hands clenched into fists, and then she exploded with choking sobs of despair. She screamed at the world for treating her this way. She sobbed that she was the only one left by herself, and that the only family that she had left was gone.She screamed at the world because she couldn’t be accepted because of her “disability”.

Amy clenched her teeth and started to pack up her things, putting them into her knapsack. She got up from her shelter with all of these items, walking far away as she could. Judah, I will make it better for the both of us, without paying the government’s price.