Author bio: I live in Waterbury with my parents, three siblings, a cat, a dog and lots of chickens. I love reading dystopian novels and I tried to make my story fit along those lines. I play soccer and basketball and I like to bike and run in warmer weather. My favorite Netflix show is Friends and I got 100% on The Ultimate Friends Quiz on Sporcle.
Blurb: A huge storm recently hit this small Kentucky town and caused Thea and her little sister Willow to go into hiding. When they finally re-enter the world everything is quiet and they must go on a hunt to find anyone or anything.
A shiver wakes me from my sleep even though I am covered in 3 warm blankets. I roll over and see my little sister laying pushed up against the wall. She must have climbed into my bed late last night but I can’t remember. What I can remember is the blaring alarm on our TV screen.
“Storm warning! Retreat to the Nearest shelter and get as far underground as you can,” that robotic voice and the excruciating noise.
I remember Willow running to me, scared, although we’ve heard it before. A variety of storm warnings are common in Kentucky. As far as I know, they are common pretty much everywhere on earth right now. Global Warming really did ruin the environment, although the government doesn’t like to admit that they were wrong about the whole thing.
Willow stirs next to me and brings me back to reality. The bed creaks as I move my feet so that they hang off the edge and onto the floor. A Monopoly horse stabs into the bottom of my foot and I curse under my breath. My back cracks as I stretch before finally getting out of bed, and I find more board games scattered across the basement floor. I reach over to flick on the television but all that shows up is a bunch of static. The heat finally kicks in and begins warming the room.
When Willow wakes up we grab a bite to eat and head out the door. Not being able to get the television to work, we have no idea what the damage is outside. We breathe our first fresh breath of air in the past two days. Willow runs in circles on the muddy grass, her cute little pigtails bobbing up and down. She rushes over to me and grabs onto my hand pulling me along with her. We have to leap over fallen trees on our way to the barn.
When Willow is tired of running we slow to a walk. The bottom half of our boots are coated in mud and every few steps one of us gets sucked into the small muddy holes that are spread across the ground. I don’t know what to expect once we get to the barn. I haven’t talked to Willow about it yet but the storm must have been bad since Mom, Dad, and our brothers aren't back yet. All the animals could be dead but I tend to overthink things.
Once we arrive at the barn I can’t hear any sort of sound inside and it frightens me.
“Willow,” I mutter, “you stay out here.”
I am surprised when she doesn’t complain.
A small creek slips from the barn door when I pull it open. The pungent smell of cow manure and wet moldy hay fills my nostrils as I begin my search for living animals. A muddy flood line shows me that the barn was filled with about 2 feet of water. I walk warily towards the pig pen only to find a pig-sized hole in the side of the barn. They must have broken their way out in an attempt to get away from the rising waters.
Only after swinging open the chicken's door I realize that they were roaming free outside, and there is no way that they stayed in a big open field during a storm.
Suddenly a big bang erupts from the back of the barn like a firework going off. My instinct tells me to run but I can’t get my legs to move back. Instead, they pull me forward and toward the sound even though all that's going through my head is that I need to move. Some random person could have been seeking shelter last night and decided that this barn looked abandoned.
I am about a foot away from the origin of the bang when I notice a small tail sticking out from behind a fallen board. A noise materializes and finally, I realize that underneath all of this broken down wood a small cow lays there. A sliver of wood the length of my thumb sticks out of Daisy’s leg but other than that she seems perfectly healthy. The anxiety floods out of me and I can finally breathe again.
Willow jumps with joy when I walk out of the barn followed by a limping one-year-old cow.
***
After who knows how long we are still here searching for any member of our family. We’ve already checked the place we always said we’d meet in case of emergency. We’ve also searched in the hospital, the school, the library, and all over the streets. As far as I am concerned we will keep searching until we find someone living or the night sky is so dark that we can’t see a foot in front of our faces.
Now that we’ve searched pretty much everywhere in town I am getting kind of desperate. There is no way that my family is just gone. That's what I keep telling myself. I wouldn’t know what to do with life anymore.
Okay, I may be a bit overreacting because I do still have Willow but that's it. I mean, besides a cow with a limp. But now I am not reacting enough! My family could all be dead!
After I finish my panic attack I realize that Willow is tugging on my sleeve. Somehow we’ve ended up in a very dark alleyway and all I can see is some woods a few hundred feet away. All beside a dull light shining out from behind a dumpster.
Just as I begin to back away a hand touches my shoulder and I scream. At least I try to, but before I can do that a greasy glove covers my face. I can’t figure out why though because I haven’t seen a soul around here but now that is on the bottom of my list of worries.
***
A frog in the distance croaks as Willow and I sit on an upside down bin around a small campfire. It took them a while to let go of me due to them thinking I might run away. Don’t get me wrong, I would have. “Them” are a group of people who look to be 17 or 18 at the oldest, the youngest looking around 12. That would sum up what I think that I know about them.
“So,” a girl that I can only assume is the ‘leader’ of the group mutters while spitting something gross looking out of her mouth, “what’s your name?”
“Umm,” I mumble shyly, “my name is Thea.”
“Do you have a last name, Thea?” some kid from the back says quite quietly.
Before I can answer him the first girl chimes in “Nobody cares about what her last name is!” the people laugh. I don’t know why. It wasn’t funny. “Are you going to introduce us to your little sister?” she says whilst pinching Willow’s cheek. I pull willow away from them and ignore their questions.
“All right, let me give you the scoop.” another boy who looks a lot like the first girl says, “We’re all orphans now. The government doesn’t accept that and they think that we need to be adopted by some stupid adult people who follow all the rules. We don’t want that. Obviously, we are “smart” enough to survive on our own. We would all still have houses if they hadn’t taken them away from us.” he continues, “So, are you?”
“Am I what?”
“An orphan obviously.” He says.
“No” I quickly reply but then I begin to doubt myself. What if we are now? Would they take away the farm? Would they take Willow, the only person I have left? Of course they would, because what do they care about people's feelings?
They must sense the doubt in my voice and they ask me where my parents are. I tell them the truth for some reason. I don’t know where my parents are.
“So, do you want to join us?” they ask me
I can’t think of what to say. I want to stay on the farm with Willow but if they take that away from me then would I regret not joining this gang of orphans?
Before I have to make a life-changing decision they make it for me.
“We were just kidding, there is no way we would let you join us. We can barely feed ourselves.” I find myself wondering why I am here but they answer that as well. “We’ll probably just take your money. There is really no point in beating you up.”
***
Two days later I find myself sitting on the porch. I am down 24 dollars and I’ve got a bit of a sore arm from those kids grabbing me. I am so glad that we live in the middle of the woods otherwise the government would have taken us away by now.
I know that some government people know we are here but they don’t know if we are alive. We received a letter from them saying that if anyone is alive we are required to report to the police station within 3 days. If we don’t they are going to come and do a search of the house to make sure there were no survivors and if there isn’t they will take over the farm. It will officially be their property. At least that's what the letter said.
Suddenly Willow runs past me and breaks me from a deep train of thoughts.
“You're it!” she screams. I don’t think she really understands the whole our-parents-could-be-dead thing yet.
I chase after her at a slowish pace because I don’t want to catch up to her right away. Once we reach the barn I tag her and she falls over in exhaustion from running.
Something brushes up against my leg and I let out a small screech. I start to back away but I trip over this thing and go tumbling towards the ground. I look around for anything that could have tripped me and I see nothing. Willow giggles and I look over to her laying on the ground with a little kitten. At least I think its a kitten but it’s hard to tell. The poor thing is matted in dried mud and leaves.
Muddy (as Willow has now named her) weighs only a couple pounds and as I carry her inside it is like carrying an empty cardboard box. I struggle to open the front door while trying not to drop the kitten.
Something is wrong, I think before doing a double take of the driveway. To my surprise, a big black van sits there watching me. I tell Willow to run inside and the door clicks in an attempt to lock the government out, but I know that in the end there is no way to really succeed.
We run down the basement stairs leaping over all the board games left out from days ago. I hope I am making the right decision on where to hide. The closet door opens with a screech and I somewhat carefully shove all of the clothes and bins away from a secret-ish trap door. All it really is is a small storage compartment, but I didn’t discover it until a couple of months ago so I doubt they will find it while searching for us.
I jump when I hear a steady pounding on the front door. A rodent of some sort scurries away into a small hole in the wall which I can only see through the dull beam of my flashlight. Willow strokes Muddy next to me as I arrange the few storage bins in front of us so that from the outside we may not be visible.
I hear them knocking stuff over upstairs before finally stomping down into the basement. One of them shrieks and curses. They probably stepped on a piece of a board game. My breathing slows and I can hear Willow following my lead, trying to listen in on them. The same creak as before bursts into my eardrums although it wasn’t too loud. I shiver with fear when I realize how close they are to finding us.
They shuffle around through the clothes and bins in the closet. As soon as they are there they are gone like they must have some other place they have to be. I wait till I hear the final click of the front door closing before knocking open the storage space door. After sitting so cramped up in there for that long my legs crack when I stand.
***
With Muddy, the cat all cleaned up and well, non-muddy, Willow and I are enjoying the last times on this farm. While Willow and Muddy play together I can’t help but think about how lucky we were to come out of the house and still not be split up. If they had caught us who knows what they would have done, or what the consequences would have been for hiding away.
My thought process breaks and I look up from the ants climbing across the wooden beams of the porch. Nothing changes and Willow is still there playing in a patch of broken down willow trees - which she was named after - with what seems to be our new pet.
I gage something out of the corner of my eye but as soon as I turn it disappears. I look back to the ants and the figure in a distant patch of willows appears again.
“Willow, stay here,” I remember saying something like that before but that doesn’t matter now. I walk towards the trees and Willow doesn’t seem to see me leave.
About ten feet away from me stands who I think is my brother. Why would he come through the woods? Who cares? That's what I think as I run up to him and we join in an embrace. A tear slips from my eye as I back away. I wipe the tear away with a muddy sleeve but when I look back to where I thought my brother Michael was standing all I see is a dirty seventeen-year-old boy. I guess that matches the description but its not him.
“Well this is awkward.” he says, “I didn’t think you’d even remember me.”
Then it hits me. I have seen this boy before.
“Yeah… Um, who are you?” I respond, quickly becoming very uncomfortable.
“I was in that group of orphans,” he tries to answer but his face doesn’t click. “I asked you what your last name was,” he attempts to clarify.
I can’t come up with anything to say.
“Anyhow,” he breaks the silence. “I saw those government police officer people walking into your house. They left and then you came out, and I didn’t want to walk over there and seem like I was watching the whole thing. Which I was doing.”
“So why the hell were you at my house in the first place?” I throw the ‘hell’ word out there to try to sound tough, but it just sounds like I am trying to hard.
“I came here because didn’t want to stay with those other orphans. They were mean. I saw which direction you walked, and once I got to the dirt roads I could just follow the footprints.”
I think he regrets throwing that part in.
I don’t talk for a good minute so he continues, “They- the official government police officer-looking people- will come back here in a few days to search your house again and then probably tear it down- it’s kinda old-looking- and build some new modern-looking places. I would suggest getting out of here.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because,” he replies, “I know you love your sister and you would do anything to protect her. Sorry, that was really cheesy. Also, they did the same thing to my house, and that is proof.”
A million things go racing through my mind. Do I trust him? Maybe he’s still with those orphans and they just want more of my money. He really does remind me of my brother. He’s kinda cute. That's really weird...
“Ummm… show me your house.” I decide this is probably the best idea for both Willow and me.
***
“Willow, don’t just pack toys. You need clothes too,” I say as I throw a pair of jeans into my backpack. So far Willow’s bag contains three stuffed animals, two dolls, a set of blocks, and a few books. I might have to take over her packing soon.
“So what did you manage to pack?” I ask the boy who I now know is named Liam.
“I had no idea they were going to come back, so I just threw in a flashlight, some batteries, and a few cans of food. Plus the little bit of money I had in my pocket,” Liam replied. “You're lucky I came to save you.”
I laugh, “We would have been fine without you.”
“Oh, one small thing I left out, I do have a car so pack as much as you want.”
“Well, that would have been nice to know!” I exclaim. “And by the way, I do have a last name. It’s Clark.”
We shove all of the bins of food from the basement into the trunk of his car. Willow makes the back seats her new home by layering pillows and blankets out and making thrones for her dolls. Willow leaves one seat for Muddy where she makes him a bed out of an extra blanket. All I bring is some clothes, books, and a random assortment of survival things.
We are so lucky we still have a somewhat intact trailer Liam’s car can attach to so we don’t have to leave Daisy behind. Who knows if that old thing will hold up during the drive.
It will be hard leaving the farm behind. It was my first and only home. I grew up there. We marked my heights on the wall. We played hide and seek and pretended to be monsters in the dark. That’s what I think of as we pull away for the last time. No more farm.
We don’t know where we are going. Probably somewhere farther up North. Vermont or New Hampshire if we can make it that far. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if my family is even dead. Maybe they are still alive but I can’t risk the thought of that holding my back. I need to protect Willow.
Dust blows up onto the windshield and I know that our next adventure has just begun.