The Run

The ash from the most recent attack was slowly drifting down from the sky. It was an hour before dawn and the overcast sky seemed to smother the earth, dampening all of the noises around me.

I hurried through the side streets, the “package” firmly in tow. If it wasn’t so eerily quiet out, it would have almost been beautiful. Right out of one of those pictures from the previous century, you know the ones that I’m talking about, right? Who was that guy? Oh, yea, Norman Rockwell. Right out of a friggin Norman Rockwell Christmas painting. If only it was snow and not radioactive ash drifting down from a dead sky. If only the dead and lightless houses I passed by actually held some sort of life. If only things had been different.

I stopped at a corner, on the balls of my feet, listening to the stillness around me. I heard it and felt it long before I saw it, one of the Hunter-Killers that prowled our empty street. Then I could see the flashing lights, the probing beams, the stark contrasts thrown off by its’ blazing head lamps. If you were caught by one of the lumbering beasts it was sure death, ground to bits beneath its’ clanking wheels, or worse yet, sliced in two and left to bleed to death.

If you were caught.

I took off the other way, dragging the package after me. I knew the HK’s were not intelligent enough to pick up my tracks in the powder on the ground, so I had no worries there. But with several of them around, it was easy to lose track of them and get caught. It was easy to focus on what was behind you and run straight into the gaping maw of another.

I raced down one street and skidded around the corner, turning North. I kept up a steady pace, not panicking or wasting any effort. I wasn’t as young as I used to be, and I needed to make up for speed and endurance with cunning and patience. It sucks getting old, and it really sucks when your life now depends on your physical conditioning, when it never did before. Now I wish I had listened to my physical trainer and taken her program more seriously. If only I had spent as much time working out as trying to get in her pants…

The flashing lights and dull rumble me snapped me out of my reverie, a scant 50 yards in front of me and closing. I darted to my left, crashed through a hedgerow and crawled under a pine tree, dragging the package after me. Just as I gathered the package to my chest, getting ready to flee once again, the HK rumbled past, oblivious to my presence. Climbing out from underneath the tree and the prickly bed of needles, I said a brief prayer to my maker, thanking him for keeping smart technology out of the HK’s. Like he had anything to do with it.

A mile later, after several twist and turns, I saw the safe house. I approached from the North and paused at the edge of the road before the house. Crouching down in a drainage ditch, I looked both ways (just like momma always said!) to make sure there wasn’t anything out there. I could see the entryway to the safe house, less than 100 feet in front of me. Beckoning me, calling me with its’ sweet embrace of warmth and safety.

But I was tired, tired of dragging the package, tired of running, tired and weary of the constant struggle that our lives had become. I didn’t want to make a mistake here, give ourselves away and end everything that we had built with a careless mistake. So, listening to my mother once again, (oh how I miss her these days), I look both ways, see and hear nothing, and sprint across to the doorway and into the house.

I put the package down and begin to shed my clothes, thinking of my decontamination shower. I put my clothes in the containment structure and enter into the main room when a light snaps on……

“Hi Honey.”

“Oh, hey, what are you doing up so early?”

“I thought I would start a load of laundry before getting on the tread mill.” She bends down to rub the dog and says “How was your run?”

“Um, it was good. Nothing really to speak of…”

“I saw it was snowing out. Are the town plows out? I hate it when they don’t plow before we go to work. Like what else are they so busy with during the winter?”

As I head up the stairs she begins talking with the dog “and so how was your run with daddy today, pookie poo? You know, daddy really needs to put on your vest if you’re going to go out in this weather….”

…..I stand near the decon shower, waiting for it to spin up, when I feel the house rumble and know that an HK is grinding past, completely oblivious to our presence. But tomorrow will bring another run with the “package”, and I’ll have to stay sharp if I want to make it home again…