The Outer

ONE

I can’t sleep. It’s cold. The fire has already gone out.

The wind is strong, almost trying to whip the tent away. I don’t know how many hours had gone away but I know a lot has happened from the place I ran from. I can’t get myself from saying the name of the city anymore, because there I am nothing. I was nothing. Now I am something else, someone else with a purpose. Probably someone with a high hunt price in my forehead.

Where should I go then? I don’t know any place I can go refuge by, or a place I can be safe for a week. Or even just three days. Because people like me aren’t safe from the eyes claiming the sky.

I’ve seen so much in the city that molded my mind in such a young age. They were the rules I couldn’t take to live with. Neighbors said I act like my father, but father was long gone. I couldn’t even remember his face. The only color there had been was red, the color of my father, and the color of insurgence.

Insurgence causes a city with limitless complications, and we suffered from the most of them. That’s why I ran. Thinking about it for over two days is making my head ache. Since I slipped away from the twenty feet tall wall in the eastern gate, I wasn’t been haunted. Normally, when someone tried to get out or even a person climbing out for just a mere curiosity the news spread in just half an hour, but now I am here in the middle of nowhere. And my half an hour has long expired. Had even made my fire, and slept inside my makeshift tent in a bare desert place. There was a big aluminum board standing from way back then, with bullet holes. It was read ZONA. I’m pretty sure it was a name of a city I’m sleeping in now before the outbreak happened twenty years ago.

I don’t want to think about what I did, but my eyes are alive than my body. It’s like they’re standing on guard. Yes, probably that’s it. The city guards are most likely scouting places for me. The question is: why would they do that? Dying here in the outside is an ease for them anyway. But as I’ve noticed, the guards are spending most of their troops locating that single person.

I check my watch. Deep inside me, no matter how much I tried to hide it, fear creeps like waves in an early morning seashore. The time tells me it’s just forty minutes since I settled. It felt longer than I thought.

Tomorrow, I have to be up before the sun races through my back. I don’t want to be preyed upon by the eyes of the heaven. I have to find a place, if not a refuge or a village – places I do hope still exist, where I can hide from both sides. In this place, though already dangerous beyond man’s sanity, sky and land aren’t safe anymore. I need to sharpen my blades too before tracing routes tomorrow. I felt for my crossbow, and it’s securely protected in my side. I felt, just a little bit, safe.

The only question that strikes me more than just wondering about it is, why is the city’s chief so anxious about getting the Outers back inside. Now, it’s more than just my question. I have to find out why. More than I quit my life in there, I need to find that color. Red.

TWO

There’s a long narrow road in front of me, but it winded to the right where I can’t see it anymore. I start walking, feeling a heavy weight in my back. I follow the road, but every step I’m taking feels lumpy. I look down. The road has grills on them and long metal on both sides. I remember this, from the books; it is a trail for big metal snakes. Then from somewhere I hear it. A far away roar of the monster I see in the books, where its hatred is noticeable by the smoke coming from its snout. The ground begins to shake. I take a chance to look behind me, but it’s not yet here. So far I’m safe, or I’m hoping that I am. Above the crown of green tall trees a moving smoke is visible. It is near. I want to run, but as much as I want to I want to see the monster. The ground shakes. And I see it. It’s metal body grinding on the metal grills. It’s fast. Strong. Unstoppable. Then I feel something. Is it fear? Or panic? The thing is big, and it’s not slowing down to look at me. To study its prey. But it’s moving fast. I can’t move.

I jump away. But the only thing that I did is to wake up with panic in my eyes. The train. Of course, I just realize it. Train. Train tracks. Maybe I can follow the tracks somewhere, if there are still any.

I squint my eyes but it’s not yet sunrise. And I feel weird, though the dream is too helpful to be forgotten, the panic is still in my heart and my body seems to shiver at the thought. Monsters. Are there still out here? For years that I was protected inside the walled city, the topics about the Breakers are nothing but dying memory. An acceptance to the majority of the newer generation. I am part of the new generation, but few years from now the new ones will be obtuse enough to realize why they are born and still protected. History helps, but history becomes a shadow of the unwanted past. A myth. But now that I’m outside. An Outer. I know not to make myth a joke. I haven’t encountered one yet, but one of this time of the day I might.

And I’m not wrong, because farther away I can hear a thin wail of an Eagle-eye. They probably commenced on finding me out here in Zona. The place is deserted, there are houses, but all of them are burnt to the ground, almost certainly after the Outbreak. I do hope that my calculation is right, based on the way it wails, it should be behind the mountains across where I’m staying. I need to leave my makeshift. I don’t need to put so much weight in my back if I need to get away. I remember the dream again, where I had a full pack in my back.

I shake the thought off and pick my crossbow and some needful stashes and left the things that I don’t need that will surely make my escape slower. I don’t want to risk trails so I kick the makeshift with my foot until the shades cover the place where I slept. The wail in the sky is thin, if I’m a person staying in this place, I won’t be able to recognize the sound. It sounds like a bird, but the rhythm is mechanical. I don’t wait anymore; I sling my stash and run through the brown bushes in front of me. My aim is to find a safer haven for the night. If I can find one early today, I will take it as my place and won’t go out until I’m sure the sky is safe.

My stomach rumbles while running. There’s no time to eat anyway, and I’m relieved that my dream was able to wake me up. Yet it troubled me, it was as if I was there before. It’s like I was killed by a train before. I have to wander my thoughts off, I need to find a safer place until the Eagle-eye spots me and links me straight to the city’s base. I’m sure I can hide, but the eye will only follow me and won’t leave me. It knows how to follow than wine about its presence.

I feel the tightness in my wrist, where the electric bracers had once held me a prison in the city. Working at the car shop is supposed to be an amazing job, because job reservations is quite hard in the city and small numbers of proficient workers like me can fix and recreate destroyed cars. I hated it, because I can’t get anything from it except a ration of a day’s meal. I could still feel the electric current passing through the small needles when my requirement should be done in time. I wonder why some of my workmates preferred to stay working at the shop, probably because if they’ll leave reservations would keep in and they couldn’t go back. But when I quit, I didn’t hesitate. I was free, until I found the crossbow under the floor of my bed.

Well, because I got no rations left to eat. I decided to do some jobs like stealing food and other people’s rations. For over a week it all had been successful but someone told the authorities about what I did. I didn’t want to be put in shackles anymore, same shackles my father wore before. They kept on telling me I was the same with my father. I couldn’t see why.

I’m suddenly disturbed by a sudden burst of acrid smell. Like a rotten flesh cooked under the heat of the sun. My heart leaps in my throat. If it’s possible, this will be my first encounter of the Biters. The Eagle-eye, on the other hand, is close by now as it scans the crevices for my image. The scent becomes stronger, and I can’t hold my empty stomach anymore. But I need to find a shade, that way it will be easy for me to run away from the eyes looking for me in a limited time.

Last night, I tried to make the slice of mountain my goal, a place where there could be a sanctuary enough to be made a hideout for a night. I run for it, a hundred meters to go. I notice a slight movement somewhere in the brown bushes and tall desert grasses on my side, but I ignore it. I know I heard it, but I’m trying to think it’s just the early dusk’s cold wind. The slice of the mountain looks like a wood sliced with a big axe. Then I see it, a big slab of stone just under the mountain’s V. I need to get there before they eye sees me.

The movements on my right side become more numbered, and even though I tried to think it’s nothing but a wind’s whisper I know that they are Biters. How come they’d know I’m somewhere here? If it wasn’t about the train and the unmistakable wail of the Eagle-eye I’m surely be a meal to their feast by now. In front of me, tall dead plants are straddling against me and I have no other choice but to crouch just not to be but by their sharp feeble branches. Blood will surely make them frantic, I know that.

But before I can manage to successfully crawl through, my feet caught up to an empty space and the next thing I realize is that the world is spinning. I can feel the ground all over my body, and when I breathe I inhale sand. But it’s just quick before I realized I fell down a steep barren ground. I feel warmth all over my temple, and my left arm and right foot feels like lead. I’m bleeding. Above me a shadow is falling. A Biter. With a painful heave of a hand to the left away from the direction of the falling Biter, I painfully place the arrow on my crossbow. Thanks, I still got the strength to pull the trigger. Then there it was, broken, yet desperately trying to reach its mouth to my feet. My bow is shivering; my heart beat seems to leap away from my chest. I slide away, kicking the biter away. I’m sure that above me other biters are following. I’m seventeen, I know how to kill a dead the second time. I was raced without a parent, so I know how to survive. I know I can survive with this. Trembling, I pull the trigger. The arrow leaves a sharp sting on my cheek and in front of me the Biter falls silent.

I try to stand; I know that the Eagle-eye is getting closer. My foot is limping. I don’t know what to do, I can’t run faster anymore. The slab of stone is probably fifty meters away. The Eagle-eye will find me. Then above me, three other Biters sickly rolled down, body limply falling along the dry dunes. I limp backwards while putting another arrow. The Biters crawl in front of me. Even it’s too early not notice their faces; I know they decomposed months ago… Months.

A knife slides in the air through my left, and it hit the Biter straight in the head. Surprised, I look back. A woman and a man are standing side by side. They look familiar. They don’t smile at me, but the woman walks by and I cringe away. But she doesn’t touch me, as I expect her to be. The man is still looking at me. His built is so familiar, his hair and there are three scratch marks on his right temple. I know him. I know I suppose to recognize them.

Then the woman stops beside me, I didn’t realize she killed the other two Biters. She then wipes the black blood on my shirt and smiles. Her face. I know both of them. It has been a year since.

“Don’t be shocked, boy. Welcome to the outside. You’re an Outer now.” The woman taps me on my shoulder.

The man moves closer to me and studies my face, and he nods. The woman put the knife in her hip leash, and wipes the man on the arm. She is reassuring him not to punch me, maybe.

“Outer means danger, but we are free here. So know how to survive well. We have a sanctuary behind those mountains. The Eagle-eye? Oscar did his job to silent it. Welcome, rebel.” He says, looking at the sky.

I notice that the sky becomes silent. Rebel. I don’t know why, but deep inside I know this is the reason why Eagle-eye keeps on tracking the empty hollows of the dead world. I am a rebel. Yes. And I smile at the man, and he nods again.

“Welcome to Arizona.”