Gray Skies (7 page)

Declan’s father and mother told him the stories were real, though. They had told him and his sister that the Outsiders were real, too. The Outsiders were the darker side of what humanity had become after the accident: a group of men and women who were the worst that the old world had to offer. They didn’t belong to any of the Communes. Instead, they’d chosen to wander in the fog from region to region, and across territories, taking whatever they needed, and whenever they wanted. They were said to be a group made up of molesters, kidnappers, and thieves. There was even a sect of Outsiders known as the Cannibal Gang, preferring human flesh over what the farming floors produced. Declan shuddered at the thought.

On days when the count of hands was less than five, it was their cue to come into the Commune and feed. Smaller children had been known to be snatched right from the school’s entrance. There were stories of hysterical mothers who pulled back frayed tether straps that had been cut by the Outsiders. Their young had been taken, and were never seen again. Some of the older kids said that it was the Cannibal Gang, in need of fresh meat. Others said that the Outsiders needed children, because they could no longer have any of their own. Declan placed his hand over Sammi’s, and held it firmly. Whether they could see five hands, ten hands, or the vastness of twenty hands, there were still things to be afraid of in the fog.

Sammi squeezed his arm, and moved nearer to him. From the heavy mist, she came into his view, with her breath on his neck. Gray mist laced in and out of her red curls before thinning away. He looked into her upturned face as she put a finger to his lips, telling him to keep quiet, but he already knew that. Now was the time for them both to remain quiet. More footsteps could be heard around them. They were hidden in a thick pocket of fog; silence was their greatest tool now. With a shake in his legs, he tried to relax, but couldn’t. He was afraid.

When Sammi motioned down, Declan saw their feet. While the pocket of thick fog remained less than five hands, they could see the crushed stone. Fog hugged the world, but there were some heavier pockets that didn’t reach the ground. Declan couldn’t remember why that was, just that it had something to do with the fog condensing back to water on the ground, or anything it touched, for that matter.

Today, he didn’t care. His expression lightened when he saw what Sammi was motioning to. Declan locked his eyes on hers, and they breathed a quiet sigh. They were standing on a collection of painted white markings, called morse lines. Well-maintained by the workers that wore one or two black bands, the morse lines gave them directions to just about anywhere they wanted to go.

Bread crumbs
, Declan thought. His mother had called them that once, borrowing the name from a fairytale that she’d liked to share with them before bedtime. When he’d grown too old for fairytales, he called them by their proper name.

Every Commune was responsible for establishing and maintaining their own set of morse lines. While their Commune had a dozen or so of the dash and dot-shaped markings, other neighboring Communes had two, and sometimes three, dozen morse lines. Every Commune shared a set of styles in common: there was the solid morse line, which connected the Communes, and then the dash-dot-dot shaped morse line, which lead to different food markets. Right now, he was fixing to find the set that led to their dwellings.

Declan considered the path that they walked from school to home. How many times had they followed the same set of morse lines? How many times had they walked with their heads down, and eyes set on the white markings that kept them from wandering blindly? The path to their dwellings was to follow the base solid line until they reached the second intersection. They then followed a double-dash-dot morse line until they reached the next intersection. Both his and Sammi’s dwelling were in the same building, an ancient concrete box layered with centuries of resin to protect it from the caustic salts.

For a moment, Declan fixed his eyes on the base solid line. Their Commune was closest to the great ocean. They could follow the base solid line away from their Commune, to the beaches and breaking waves. From there, they could turn left, and walk the sands until they reached the VAC-Machine. Or, they could turn around, and follow the base solid line out of their Commune, eventually landing them in the next Commune.

Sammi pulled his arm, drawing his attention back to their situation. His heart quickened and thumped in his chest as the hurried sound of footsteps shuffled around them, and then stopped. His breath stopped. Sammi stopped breathing, too, and he wondered if she might scream.

“They know we’re here,” he whispered. Sammi gripped his hand, and Declan braced himself. Three, maybe four sets of feet were closing in, and, with only a few hands of visibility, they were outnumbered. Declan blinked down at the morse line, and stepped in the direction of their building. Sammi followed, tightening her fingers with his. They pushed further, faster with each step. Beyond the fog, footsteps paced theirs, moving closer to them, and stomping the ground without any care, or furtiveness.

Sammi stopped, and then jerked his arm, pulling him to his knees with her. He wrestled with the injury to his leg, and bit his lip, trying to hold his tongue. She pointed to the space between the ground and the fog, and then leaned forward. His eyes followed Sammi, as long strands of her red hair splashed over the stony road. She moved her ear nearer to the ground, as though secrets were being whispered only to her. But she wasn’t listening to anything. Declan understood what she was doing, and knelt closer to the stony path. He leaned into the ground, feeling the wet gravelly surface on his palms and cheek. He could see a hundred hands in every direction; there was terrific visibility. He wanted to laugh at their luck for having found a pocket of fog that hovered. Sammi pinched him, and pointed to their left. It was there that he found two sets of padded coverall shoes. He turned back in the other direction, and found another set of coverall shoes. He recognized them as being from their Commune; they were not Outsiders. He and Sammi were safe—for now, anyway.

4

Sammi watched as the corners of Declan’s mouth curved up in a smile, hesitant and slow at first, but then broad and relieving. He stabbed the fog with his finger, pointing to the padded coverall shoes a few hands away. She pressed against wet pebbly stones, keeping her eyes beneath the gray canopy, and waited to see if the shoes were going to move. They were just like the ones that she wore; just like the shoes that everyone in their Commune wore. Before she could say anything, Declan was already on his feet. Blood pushed through his coveralls where he’d fallen earlier. Most of the fabric around his knee was stained, and the drying blood was turning brown, while the edges faded to the absent color of his coveralls. Blood caked on the fabric, but she couldn’t tell if he was still bleeding, or not. Concern hung in her next breath. Any blood could be a bad thing.

Standing next to Declan, she suddenly felt tired of hiding, and stepped forward into the fog, where the padded coverall shoes had been standing. Declan followed her, and then took hold of her arm.

“Wish we had some tether straps,” he mumbled jokingly. She nodded in agreement, and then locked her hand in his.

“And miss this?” she answered, lifting their hands between them.

“How convenient, the two of you together like this!” A familiar voice rang out. At once, unease took Sammi’s attention from Declan, and she searched the fog, hoping not to see the face that belonged to the voice.

Do we have time to run?
She wondered. But they were in a light patch of fog now. The heavier patch was behind them, and they were now given twelve, or maybe fifteen, hands of sight. She knew the voice, and the sound of it filled her with dread. If another heavy patch came, she decided they’d run.

From the fog, stepped Harold Belker, and his two sidekicks, Peter and Richie. Sammi’s hands grew clammy, and her heart leaped into her throat. More thoughts of hiding and escape consumed her; they needed to run. She didn’t care about the patchiness of the fog, or that pockets of gray might be hiding Outsiders, waiting patiently to pounce. There was danger
here
, vileness, and they needed to be somewhere else.

She glimpsed Declan’s face: his expression remained the same, unchanged by their new circumstance. He didn’t know of the threats that Harold had made toward her, toward them. He didn’t know that Harold wanted her. Sammi knew the danger, though, and she was afraid for the both of them. Harold curled a nubby finger, and bounced it in a mock wave. She felt a sickness inside her, as if every place that Harold had ever put his hands and fingers became poison, burning her, like the violations they were.

“You missed the last class before the End of Gray Skies,” Declan said, turning an inquiring expression.

“Don’t think we missed much of anything,” Harold began. He moved to within an arm’s length of Sammi, and raised his nose up in the air, smelling her. “Nope, nothing, yet,” he finished, and snorted a piggy laugh. Richie and Peter joined in. Declan’s expression turned to confusion.

“We need to get going,” Sammi interrupted, and grabbed Declan’s hand, stepping to the edge of the pocket of fog. Harold’s sneer and laughter vanished, and he jumped in front of Sammi, blocking their exit. Harold pushed his body closer until his face and piggy nose were within a hand of hers. She could feel the warmth of his foul breath on her face. Certain that her skin would be stained by his breath, she tried to step back, away from him. But fear played a coy joke, leaving her motionless, unable to move.

She felt Declan loosen his grip on her hand, and step in front of Harold. Panic took her breath away. Before she could stop Declan, Harold surprised her by backing away, lifting his hands, and resigning to keep a civil distance.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Declan shouted, irritation edging his words.

Harold lifted his hands, palms up, and smiled, “Just didn’t want you two to leave… not until you saw my catch, is all.”

“Your catch?” Declan asked, his voice calmer. Before Declan continued, Harold motioned with a nubby finger to Richie and Peter.

The boys weren’t alone, and what Sammi saw next made her knees go weak, and her heart feel heavy. She reached for Declan’s hand, clutching at the air before finally closing her fingers on his. As if on cue, Peter and Richie pulled three feral cats from over their shoulders, dropping them on the ground, lifeless. They’d missed Ms. Gilly’s class in favor of trapping wild cats. Declan stepped closer to look at their catch. While his expression remained cautious, Sammi could see that he was impressed by what was laid at their feet. Kneeling, Declan stroked the fur of the cat closest to them. Their coats were the same black color as the writing stones, but they held a luster that gleamed in the gray light around them.

Sammi covered her mouth, and gasped when she saw the milky white fur on the feet of the cat nearest them. While all feral cats shared a similar coat, this one had two white paws. He was different, like she was. A tear stabbed at her eye, and she was quick to swipe it away before Harold noticed. She loved the wild cats, and, against all Commune rules, she’d often carried leftover protein crackers in her pockets, and tried to lure them close enough to touch.

With the fog, nobody knew how close the cats actually were. While hunting without permission was prohibited, there were those in the Commune who’d maintained a hunting tradition, permission, or not. Hunting had been handed down over many generations, as was smoking the catch, and drying the fur, and then sharing, and sometimes trading the meat and pelts with other members in the Commune.

Sammi recalled the day that she had found the feral cat colony. While on the path to school, she’d been lured in by the mews that had come from the fog. For weeks, she’d made a small pile of protein cracker crumbs, and had placed it just a dozen hands from the morse lines. Declan had told her that she was wasting time, and that she was also squandering good food. She’d never thought that the food was good, though, and what she had given the cats didn’t amount to enough to be missed. She hadn’t listened to him. She’d heard the feral cats meow, and she’d told him that she’d also heard the mewling cries of younger cats, too. Weeks would pass without a visual, but the food was gone; it was always gone. By then, Declan had joined in the effort, and would bring with him a few protein crackers to share. Socks was the first feral cat to break from the fog’s cover. He’d appeared to them out of hiding, sidestepping as he approached, and keeping his emerald green eyes locked with hers. A petite cat, Socks had stretched his neck, and, with caution, gently took hold of the food from Sammi’s fingers. Within a few days, Socks had started meeting them near the old theater on their walks to and from school. But what had surprised them was that, even when the fog was crippling, Socks knew when they’d reached the old theater building. As they walked to class, he’d mewed and purred, and would dart figure eights between their legs until they’d knelt to stroke his fur, and offer some food. Socks had been a feral cat, but he hadn’t behaved like one.

Now, here he was, dead. Socks had been caught by the same hands of the boy who’d tortured Sammi. But when the cat began to move, her heart stopped. He was alive! Declan looked back to Sammi, his expression slack, but his lips pressed with anger. Socks moved his leg, reaching to place his forepaw on Declan’s hand. One of Sock’s eyes stayed closed; a large swell pushed from behind his eyelid. His other eye was just a narrow slit, but the familiar green stared back at her, as if asking for help. Blood coated the fur around Sock’s ears and head; some of it was bright and fresh, but most of it brown and scaly. Socks
was
alive, and Sammi felt helpless. She hated that, and it killed her a little inside.