Atlas

I would do what I have to, to survive. Whatever it took, I would make it happen.

I remember thinking that on an ordinary day as I drove to work. I don’t know why I thought about it while I was stuck in traffic on the I-15. Perhaps it was triggered by a recent tv show I watched, or else by the rapidly corrosive politics consuming our world at the time. Greed and depravity had been cleverly disguised as fair and equitable policies to the public back then. It provided the necessary foothold for evil to take control globally, and soon after our world had split into “The Marked” and the “Skuless”. You were either with the elite or against them. But before it got that bad, doing whatever I could to survive was an idea I never thought I’d actually have to consider. It was like contemplating how you might spend a billion-dollar jackpot, intriguing but unrealistic. What I didn’t realize then was how hard it would be to survive. Now I know each day is a battle to keep my identity.

Today, I may have lost that battle.

I look at my hands, caked in blood and dirt. I can feel my knees digging into the dry rocks beneath my cargo pants and I'm keenly aware of a dry metallic taste in my mouth. Is this what life looks like now? Is this what it means to be alive? I clasp the flask from my hip, and with shaking hands I take an overly disciplined sip of water, all the while maintaining eye contact with the crumpled body a few feet away.

How much longer until we find freshwater? I think to myself. It’s nearly impossible these days. Water is either hoarded by corrupt, elite officials, bubbling brooks of blood, or submerged below the Earth’s surface. We had been lucky. We stumbled, literally stumbled upon a leafless forest and into life-giving water. We decided to cut through the bark bones instead of crawling over the mountainous terrain when Dominic’s foot hit the lid of a long-forgotten well. As he fell over, his combat boot pulled up the tangled roots that had clawed themselves around the well's lid. It had been several days since that incident, several days of peace and hydration. Today, that peace was broken, and now…now the consequences lie a few feet away.

I look back down at my unrecognizable hands. The tremors won’t stop due to the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Instinctively, I thrust them into the dry dirt as if willing my hands to push through the crust and into the depths of cool water. Why? Why are we still here? What are we living for? It’s a thought that plagues my mind at the worst moments, a thought that doesn’t disappear, but I always push it away. I don’t have a good answer. I just know that we keep on pushing. We go because that’s what you do. You live, you survive, you push on. You just…go.

“Clár? Clár?” I feel his hand on my shoulder, a tight concerned squeeze instead of a shake. He’s worried. Suddenly I see moisture dripping into the dirt. I realize tears are escaping my traitorous eyes as I’m bent over double on all hands and knees. I look up at Dom and release my hands from their Atlas-like hold.

“You can’t cry. Remember? It will only dehydrate you more.” Dom’s eyes are pleading.

“I know,” I say, looking intently into his brown eyes. “I know,” I say once more for myself as I grip my heart-shaped locket from around my neck. It is my tether to humanity and it helps ground me in this moment. I feel myself choke off the tears in my throat. They still threaten to pool over, so I visually imagine myself siphoning the liquid towards the back of my eyes.

Dom lends me his warm, supportive hand to ensure I rise steadily from my knees. His hands are caked in dirt, but there's no blood on his hands. Not yet at least. The dirt is a light russet brown, almost identical to the color of Dominic’s skin when we lived safely inside our apartment. That was back when we had clean, running water at our disposal, and cushy, work-from-home jobs. Now the sun and elements have darkened his Filipino skin to deep mahogany. In the summer months, people used to mistake him for Hawaiian or Mexican when his skin darkened like this. I wonder how Hawaii or the Philippines look now? I longingly imagine a tropical paradise, pretending to feel the cool ocean spray upon my face. It is a welcome distraction from a particularly horrendous day.

Dom’s skin is made for the sun while mine is made for overcast, rainy weather, a scarce phenomenon these days. My once fair, Irish complexion is now caked in layers of clay to cover the red, raw skin beneath it. In this world, my skin is an inconvenience and one of the reasons we flipped our sleep schedule. The other is safety. Dom and I sleep during the day, crammed into our one-person tent, and travel by night to avoid The Marked. However, day travel can’t always be avoided, not when survival is a top priority.

A few weeks ago, we heard something while day sleeping in our tent. Perhaps it was a rare wild animal or another Skuless, but we couldn’t take a chance, not when it might be one of The Marked. When we found the well it was one of those cloudless, sun-scorching days. I covered up as much as I could, but some skin remained exposed. It was such a relief when Dom helped me sparingly mix the water and dirt over my burnt skin in a cooling clay-like bath. Now, unfortunately, there would be no more clay to cake on. Not until we found our next uninhabited, life water spot.

“We can’t stay here anymore,” I say to Dom. “Her hand was marked”.

“I know.” He says concisely.

“Her hand was marked, Dom,” I say anxiously.

“I know.” He says again more forcefully. “Are you okay?” It’s then that I begin to process everything. He knows the drill – if one of The Marked shows up, we have to hide, run, or fight. The first two are priority options, they help you remain untraced longer. The third option is a last resort. If you fight, you fight to the death, and there are no exceptions. Losing means you become a resource to be used by The Marked. You might be forced to take the mark, you may be used as they please, or you may be killed. Either way, it's better to die fighting. The Marked cannot be trusted. If you win, you have to evade in order to keep going. Right now, we are in evade mode but I am freezing up.

I begin to nod my head, trying to physically show him that I am processing the plan and I am okay. We can talk or not talk about the fight as we evade. “We have to pack up now. We have to go because going is what we do to survive. I’ll be okay.” It’s a phrase we have rehearsed time and time again for this very moment. The minute I affirm the plan, Dom switches into action.

Dominic quickly heads over to the well to fill up our camelbacks and flasks before we take off once more. He splashes some water over his hands and face before moving to the body. He lifts her up under her arms and drags her over to the well. Her head is still bleeding as Dom lowers her into the depths of the well, but it is the bar protruding under the skin on her wrist that I can't take my eyes off of. She will be discovered regardless and we cannot allow the elites to have another source of living water. I’m sickened, but I’m surviving. This is one of those moments when my words reverberate in my head. I would do what I have to, to survive. Whatever it took, I would make it happen.

I can see the sherbert orange glow of the sky begin to glow along the horizon. I rub my neck feeling the bruised muscles where she began to choke me. Dom had gone off to scout for food just before sunlight. I was pulling water up from the well with my back stupidly facing the steep hill when she jumped me from behind. She must have been a Water Scout. The minute she saw me drawing water she knew she had found two resources, the water and me. Luckily the hill worked to my advantage, and I was able to flip her over my body. The moment she landed on the ground her head collided with a small rock. It wasn’t enough though and she began to reach for her gun. I flinch internally at the next part and I attempt to block it from my memory, but the evidence lay in front of me in the form of a bloodied rock. When the fight was over, I looked up to see Dom walking toward me from afar. I made my way toward him, looked back at her, and collapsed into a dusty and bloodied heap.

I realize I’ve been operating on autopilot when I look down at our partially folded tent in my hands. A few feet away Dom is collecting the food we left out to dry, it lasts us longer that way. Everything is dry now, the land, our skin, most of the freshwater, and even the food. Eating jerky fish, jerky fruit, jerky lizard, nuts, and bugs can feel tiresome but that’s what we have these days. I tie the tent to the bottom of Dom’s backpack and begin to fill mine with other supplies lying around. I pull a hat out and wrap my dirty body in a button-up even though it is the last thing I want to wear. The days have been growing hotter and the sun won’t be any friendlier today.

“We’ve gotta go now.” Dominic slings his heavy backpack over his shoulders, takes a swig of water, and clips his flask back into place. “We already spent too much time here.”

We start walking toward the mountain range. The dry and treacherous terrain is not welcoming, but there are more places to hide. It’s our only means for a successful evasion. They will know where to look, but if we can get ahead of them, we might be able to stay alive and safe for a few more days. Hopefully, by then they will give up searching for us in favor of new water sources. If we are lucky, and most people are not, we may even run into other Skuless and survive this world together.