“I don’t want to go with him,” Elle said. Tears were streaming down her face as she pleaded with her mother. She was standing in the kitchen. It was dark. The lights had been out for two days. Riots had begun in the city. Buildings were on fire. Women and children were begging for food in the gutters.
“You have to, Elle.” Mother was a tall, willowy woman with black hair. “We don’t have a choice. You don’t, either. This is the only way to keep our family alive.”
The kitchen was empty. The house was, too. It had been for a while.
When Dad and Johnny never came home…well, Elle’s mother had gone off the deep end. Panic controlled her every move. And now she was sending Elle away, out of the city. To a place that was supposed to be safe.
Supposed to be.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Elle begged.
“Because I have to wait for Daddy and Johnny.”
“But they’re not coming back, Mom. They’re dead.”
Mother slapped Elle across the face. Elle’s cheek stung with pain, but she didn’t cry out. She was too stubborn.
“Your uncle will take good care of you,” Mother said, but her voice was venomous. She was angry. Mad that Elle had pointed out the obvious: Dad and Johnny were dead, and Mother was staying in the city because she wanted to die, too.
She was giving in.
“You’re just going to give up,” Elle whispered.
“I’m accepting the truth, Elle. Someday you’ll understand.”
“I’m going to come back for you,” Elle promised.
“Don’t. Don’t you ever come back to this city. This city is death.”
Elle shook her head.
“I will come back,” she said. “I’ll find you.”
She meant every word.
Elle woke with a start. She was sitting upright in the corner of the bakery. Georgia and Jay were in the opposite corner, talking in low voices. Pix and Flash were asleep. She watched them. They were all thin, underfed. Elle wondered why they — out of all the kids at the juvenile correctional facility — had been the ones to survive.
They looked normal enough. They didn’t appear to be hardened criminals. Pix and Flash couldn’t be older than thirteen. Georgia looked to be around sixteen, and Jay was probably around seventeen or eighteen. They looked… tired. Like Elle.
She knew what it was like to be tired.
She toyed with the idea of bringing them home to her apartment, but decided against it. They could easily turn on her. So far, she had survived because she’d been smart. One stupid decision could end her life.
She wasn’t about to start a bad habit now.
She got to her feet and walked toward Georgia and Jay. They immediately stopped talking, piquing Elle’s curiosity.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Georgia hesitated.
“Well. We were thinking,” she whispered. “Maybe since you know so much about the city, you could give us some tips. Like where to find food. We’re starving, Elle. We need help.”
Elle looked at Jay. He seemed frustrated to be asking for help. “We just want to know what you know,” he said, tense. “Where to look for food. What areas to avoid. That kind of thing. It might keep us alive longer.”
Elle raised an eyebrow.
“You want a tip?” she remarked. “Here’s one: get out of the city. There’s nothing here for you. If starvation or sickness doesn’t get you, the Klan will. And if for some reason you avoid all three of those things, you’ve got to deal with Omega. You’re already dead, you just don’t know it yet.”
“But you survived here, shortstack,” Georgia countered. “So can we.”
“I’m lucky.”
“You know what you’re doing.”
“And my life could end in a second! All I have to do is make one mistake and I’m dead.” Elle felt the color rush to her cheeks. “You need to understand that everything in this city is death. Almost every building is full of rotting bodies and most of the food was poisoned when the chemical weapon hit the city. The Klan executes foragers like me on the streets and hangs their dead bodies from lampposts to mark their territory. This isn’t a city anymore, this is a battlefield. And sooner or later, all the good guys are going to be dead.”
Jay and Georgia stared at her, their jaws slack.
Elle swallowed, uncomfortable. She hadn’t meant to go on a rant, but they needed to grasp the danger that the city held.
“If it’s so dangerous, why haven’t you left?” Jay asked, his dark gaze searing into hers.
Elle didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have an answer.
“It’s morning,” she said instead. “I need to go.”
“Elle, please help us,” Georgia pleaded, standing from the table.
“You don’t need my help. You need to get out.”
“But we have nowhere to go!”
Elle lifted her shoulder in a halfhearted shrug, throwing her hood over her head. “Join the club,” she commented.
“Please, Elle. Jay won’t say it, but I wilclass="underline" we need your help, and we’re begging you.” Georgia touched Elle’s arm. Elle flinched. “We haven’t eaten in three days.”
Elle closed her eyes.
She knew what it was like to be hungry. To be starving.
“If I help you,” she said, “then you have to promise to let me leave when I’m done. You can’t follow me.”
Georgia nodded.
“We can do that.” She looked at Jay. “Right?”
Jay stood up and offered his hand. Elle just stared at it.
“You can trust us, Elle,” he said. “We’re not bad people. We’re not here to hurt you.”
Elle dropped her gaze to the floor.
She’d heard people say that before…
She said, “I can show you where to find a little food and water.”
“That’s all we need,” Georgia answered.
Elle wanted to shake her, to tell her NO. They needed to leave the city. That’s what they really needed.
But she didn’t.
Jay stood in the shadows, a muscle ticking in his strong jaw. He looked like he could be twenty years old, but if he had been in a juvenile correctional facility only last year, he couldn’t be older than eighteen.
Flash and Pix groggily awoke.
They’ll have to wake up faster than that if they want to stay alive here, Elle thought. The Klan doesn’t give you time to be lazy.
“First lesson,” Elle said, tightening the straps on her backpack. “Sleep wide awake. The Klan is everywhere, and there’s more of them than us. So. Don’t be lazy.”
“Sleep awake?” Pix echoed. “That makes no sense.”
Elle shook her head.
This was going to be more effort than it was worth.
Nadia’s Market was an organic grocery store before Day Zero. Movie stars and wealthy socialites would shop there, buying bags of lentils and quinoa, and other staples of an elite’s diet. Unfortunately, the organic food didn’t last as long as the processed foods, and that was Elle’s first lesson to the kids.
“The only thing you’ll find in there are jars of almond butter,” she said. “And that’s not a bad thing; I mean, food is food. But you’re better off spending your time searching somewhere else.”
They were standing catty corner to the market. The parking lot was full of rusty, broken shopping carts. A colony of once-elegant penthouse apartments comprised the neighborhood around them.