The sun was hot and the trees were behind them. Quill had gone back to carrying Aurelien, and Terrence was leading the way. Ahead the plain stretched on, seemingly endless because of the incline. There was neither cover nor shade as far as the eye could see.
Aure took her thumb out of her mouth. “We’re walking ‘round the whole world,” she declared.
Terrence, whose spirits were soaring, turned to face them and walked backwards. “We’re skipping ‘cross the globe,” he agreed.
“I’d rather take an airplane,” Quill chuckled.
“I wish we had an airplane,” Aure piped in. “I could fly everywhere.”
“Me too,” Terrence smiled wryly. “Heck, if I had an airplane, I’d take it straight to the moon.”
Quill grinned. “I wish airplanes could’ve flown to the moon. I would’ve gone there all the time.”
Terrence started to laugh, but he paused, unsure if his mother was being serious. “You can’t take an airplane to the moon?” he asked, incredulous.
Quill’s smile faded. “No, they couldn’t go that far.”
“But they fly.” He still looked skeptical, as though he was trying to argue why a plane should be able to fly one distance if it could easily cross another. In his lifetime, there’d been no news of travel to other countries, let alone space, and both fell into the realm of places that could no longer be reached. Eventually, he shrugged. "Weird.”
Aurelien, who had gone back to sucking her thumb, suddenly pointed to the side. “Look how shiny!”
Quill stopped abruptly. Not so far in the distance, a cluster of metallic structures stood out against the barren plain. The settlement was large and appeared to be permanent, unlike a bandit’s quick camp. Small patches of farmland stood in orderly rows and far past them, just at the edge of the horizon, she could make out the walls of a city. “New Jericho,” Terrence breathed.
There was one hushed moment of awe, and then they were running. Terrence was faster, but even as she sprinted to catch up, she could see that the settlement was encircled by a chainlink fence. There were no breaks as far as she could see, but as she drew closer, a person stepped out of one of the buildings and noticed them. With close-cropped hair and practical clothing, she appeared to be some sort of lookout on patrol. She ran up to the fence and waved her arms. “Hey! Stop! What the hell are you thinking?” the woman shouted.
Terrence, who was preparing to climb the fence, halted. Quill stopped as well. She was breathing so hard, it took a moment to catch her breath enough for an answer. “Please, we’re just trying to reach New Jericho. We were robbed on the road and need provisions, especially water. I can work.”
“No, not that,” the lookout shook her head. “It’s the fence. Can’t you read the sign?”
Quill’s gaze followed the woman’s finger, to the sign she had noticed but quickly dismissed. No doubt Terrence had done the same. Danger—High Voltage. “But…nobody has that much electricity,” she reasoned, faltering. “Not for the past fifteen years.”
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The woman’s expression softened. She fished a metal button out of her pocket and tossed it at the fence. It made contact, and there was an electric flash of white. The three newcomers stared on, shocked beyond words. After a moment, the woman gave a wry smile. “Welcome to New Jericho,” she greeted them. “Or the suburbs of it, anyway.”
----------------------------------------
Just like that, the adventure was over. The rest of it—the bus ride, filling out papers to be considered once New Jericho fell below capacity—was hardly worth remembering. The only thing that stayed with her, when it was all finished and she was back at the suburb town getting situated to her new life, were the city walls. Even in their shadow, it was impossible to not feel protected. No normal monster, she was certain, could get through them.
She found herself telling as much to Pasha, the lookout, the next time she found herself watching the city through the electric fence. Terrence was at school and Aurelien was playing with another young girl, and Quill found herself done with work. Pasha said she didn’t mind the company, so they found themselves talking.
“Well, it’s pretty safe here too, so far as I’ve seen,” Pasha was saying. “The fence is mostly here to keep the crops from getting taken, and anyone with at least one eye can do my job. So far, I haven’t even had to shoot anything.” She reached the corner of the fence and turned. “So, did you see what supplies came in from the city? You helped unload the truck, right?”
“Yes. We now have a few logs of synthetic wood, and an emergency box of medicine. Oh, and they gave me a CommPad communicator device. I guess every household gets one?”
“Yeah. It’s handy to have in an emergency, not that there have been many emergencies. As I said, it’s pretty quiet around here.” Her gaze swept the horizon. “How’re the kids doing?”
Quill smiled, although Pasha wasn’t looking. “Aure is fine. She’s getting along well with the other children, and I’m glad she can finally be with kids closer to her age. She’ll ask me sometimes when we’re going to have to leave, but I think she’s getting used to the permanency. I just want her to have a normal childhood.”
“We all do,” sighed Pasha. Looking at her, Quill judged her companion to be in her late twenties. Fifteen years ago, she would have been young. “And what about the boy? He’s fine too?”
“Mostly. Terrence, well, he’s made some friends too, but he can be difficult. Especially with school. It’s not that he has trouble understanding, it’s just that he doesn’t want to be there. He’d rather be out helping to guard the fence than sit and do math.”
“In all fairness, we could use another set of eyes.” The younger woman put her hands up defensively when she saw Quill’s face. “Look, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but he has a point. The world’s changing. Maybe we need to change too.”
Quill didn’t immediately answer. She might have brought up the old adage about the future lying with their children, but it suddenly sounded quaint, idyllic, like some trivial echo of a rose-colored memory. The past was fading, already finished with Renn and her parents and so many others, and it hit her more strongly than ever that she was a member of a dying breed. She, too, would be gone soon, and within a generation, not even the memories of the world as she knew it would persist. She’d done her best to get the kids to New Jericho, but she could never bring them the past.
At last, she looked back at Pasha. “You’re right,” she said. “I just hope that, along the way, we don’t forget too much.”
“Yeah.” Pasha’s face was grim. She was no longer looking at Quill, but at the sunset. It fell perpendicular to the city, with one side of the sky still bright and the other having slipped into darkness. An unseen creature howled and was joined, belatedly, by its pack mates. They chorused in the darkness.
“Yeah,” Quill agreed, watching Pasha take in her world. And she realized it really was her world—Pasha’s, Terrence’s, Aure’s, the monsters’, and however reluctantly, Quill’s. The horizon lit up with fiery colors as the sun dipped out of sight, changing from orange and red to blue and finally navy. “It really is beautiful, out there.”