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Survival of the fittest.
“I was eleven when the Kraken attacked. We were on a school trip with my class when he emerged from the waters of Tokyo Bay. The first to sink was a container ship. I remember the size of the Kraken’s arms as he took the ship down. The colorful containers looked like Lego pieces falling in the water from where we were on the docks. We all stood frozen as we watched it sink, taken down by a monster from legend. Panic, it turned out, was not like in the movies. At first, people didn’t scream. They just ran. The screams came later when, in their rush to escape, they collided with others. The teachers ushered us away. In the panic, we lost half our class in the crowds. We never saw those kids again.”
Extract ofWhen They Came, by Arakawa Koichi, published in 2052.
The caravan moves at a slow pace. One wheel is deformed and the entire vehicle goes up and down as if cresting a wave. This is what I imagine it feels like to be on a ship at sea. I’ve only ever taken small boats on rivers, so I wouldn’t know. If I close my eyes and ignore the sounds of the rocky road and the moans of the other prisoners around me, I can almost dream of it.
But then we hit a particularly nasty pothole, and my head hit the wall of our moving prison. I sigh and open my eyes. The heat is stifling under the tarp. But at least we’re protected from sunburn and heat stroke. It took two deaths before the slavers realized we needed protection from the desert’s harsh conditions. I was smart and protected my head with my sweatshirt during the day, but I still got sunburn on my forearms. The skin has started to blister.
“Where do you think we are?” asks the girl by my side.
She doesn’t look older than sixteen. I’m twenty-three myself, but I look younger, so the kids in the caravan tend to gravitate toward me. They look at me for reassurance and comfort. It pisses me off.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Still in Kansas, I think.” I shake my head. My blonde hair is stuck to my forehead with sweat.
The caravans are really slow. We’ve been traveling through the desert for a while now, only stopping near rivers to fill our water tanks. But we never have enough water. My lips are cracked, and they bleed when I smile. Luckily, I don’t smile often. Why would I? I’m getting sold into slavery in the next town or settlement.
The slavers caught me near the ruins of Denver. I had been traveling with a group of nomads I was trading with. I was careless. I know better than to stay with groups. They’re too easy to follow. But I was lonely. If I stay in the wastelands alone for too long, I start to go insane. But crazy sounds better than being sold into slavery right now. Lesson learned.
“Hey, you,” calls one of the adults. A man with a nasty beard.
I refused to give anyone my name, and I didn’t ask for theirs. I don’t need to know them.
“What?” I say grumpily.
“Do you know where they’re taking us?”
Great. Now even the adults look to me for answers. What is it in my aura that gives them the impression that I know better than they do?
Maybe it’s because I’ve almost escaped the slavers twice already. Now my hands and feet are tied together, unlike the other slaves. I wonder why they didn’t beat me senseless like the other rebellious prisoners, though. I heard them talk about keeping meintactfor the sale. Apparently, I’mquality, expensive goods—whatever that means.
“I have no fucking clue,” I say. “South, that’s for sure.”
“Have you been to the south?” he asks me.
I already know that he had lived his entire life in a settlement near Denver when they caught him. A week before that, his settlement got wrecked by a storm that followed Hartross, a god of wind. He talks a lot.
I sigh and nod. I’ve been all over the United States—or, as some like to call them now, theBroken States—during my travels. But it’s a big territory. I need to see famous landmarks to know where I am.
I lower my head and close my eyes again, signaling that this conversation is over. I don’t feel like talking to any of them. They are just more faces that I’ll never see again once we’re all sold.
I pretend that I’m on a ship again and try to sleep.
At nightfall, we stop at the ruins of what used to be a state prison near a town called Colorado Springs. The caravans are solar-powered and can only work during the day. The slavers lock us up in the cells that still stand. Most of the buildings were destroyed a long time ago, either by an old god or by bombing. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, when the destruction happened during the first years after the Rise.
They keep me tied up and the other slaves have to give me a drink of water. Then the five of them sit around me, to keep warm. The nights are cold.
“We should build a fire,” I grumble.
The man with the beard gives me a funny look. “Are you crazy? Who knows what’s out there, looking for prey?”
I chuckle. “Oh, there’s something out there, alright. But he has no eyes to see fires. He can hear and feel the vibrations in the ground. That’s how he hunts.” The slaves surrounding me hang onto every word. They smell like fear. So I add, “But I think we’re okay. We made such a ruckus with the caravans, and yet he hasn’t attacked us. It means we’re lucky, and he’s not on this side of his territory.”
A territory that spans the border of two states, Colorado and New Mexico. And at its center, the Great Sand Dunes.
“Or busy hunting someone else,” says one of the girls.
