Chapter 20

While Solomon hadn’t fallen over again yet, he felt dizzy as he ran. His ears were still ringing. He wasn’t keeping very good track of where he was going. He had some vague idea of trying to get to an urban area before the drones found him. After all, he was wearing civilian clothes. He could blend into a crowd, right? But he thought he was on a walking trail. Cars were flying past him while he ran. He wasn’t even really running anymore, though, he was limping, had he gotten hurt?

Next to him on the side away from the cars was a metal guardrail barrier. How had he gotten here? There was grass on the other side of the barrier, a low upsloping hill. At the top of the hill were a series of houses. Maybe that was where he should go. Houses meant people, more people, a crowd, a crowd to blend into. Or maybe he could hide in one of the houses. Maybe some of them were empty. Had to be. Who wanted to live this close to the border?

He climbed over the highway barrier. He started going up the hill but it was too open. Everyone could see him. The sun was bright and the sky was blue. He dropped to the ground and started army crawling which made him feel safer. He thought the ringing in his ears was fading. Or was that siren he was hearing an effect of the sound grenade? Wait, were those dogs barking in the distance? The hoarse staccato of the barks barely cut through the high-pitched tone in his ears. He should move faster. Why was he crawling? He must look so suspicious. He had to get to his feet.

There was a row of half-grown evergreen trees in front of him, and a house several feet past them, a house with dark windows and nobody in the yard. Solomon crept up to one of the trees. It had some sort of knitted cloth wrapped around its trunk, which was really weird, but the pattern’s colors were green and dark blue like his clothes so he tucked himself in next to it, so that he looked as if he were part of the tree too. Now he could look at the house. Now he could see –

“Don’t move.”

Solomon froze. It wasn’t because of the voice. It was because he could see out of the corner of his eye a pistol pointed in his direction. Hidden on the other side of the tree, apparently waiting for him, the owner of the pistol stepped out. She looked African to him, not Black American, but actually African. All the Africans he knew back in the red zone were Christians, but this woman was wearing a hijab. She looked him over. Her hands were steady, she’d positioned herself far enough from him that he couldn’t close the gap between them without risking getting shot, and she clearly knew how to handle her weapon, a weapon that was pointed at his head.

A weapon that she suddenly lowered.

“Come this way,” she told him. “Quickly. Through the basement door. I’ll hide you.”

At least Solomon thought that was what she was saying. His hearing was still off, and her accent made it harder for him to be sure. Was she really offering to help? How did she even know he was hiding from someone? Maybe it was a trap. But she had already turned away, heading toward the back of her house. She lifted one of the bulkhead doors from the ground. Her pistol was still in her hand. She hadn’t put it down. But she hadn’t shot him, either.

If she were a man, Solomon probably would not get into that basement, but as it was, he was going to bet that he could take that pistol from her later if he needed to. She was smart, though. She aimed it at him and stepped back as he approached the basement. She let him pull the bulkhead door shut over his own head. The steel edges clanged slightly as he did, and he was left standing on the bottom step of a cement stairway inside a lightless room, while overhead he heard the woman turn a key, locking him in.

He put his hands out and started feeling around for a light switch. The ringing in his ears was mostly gone; he felt more alert now, and intensely on edge. When a bulb flashed brightly overhead his adrenaline soared. But nobody came swinging at him. Instead, he saw another woman’s face peering out over the railing of a stairway rising up out of the other side of what he saw now was a small, unfinished basement with a cement floor. She wasn’t the African woman who’d led him to safety, though, she was a White woman with short blonde hair.

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She stared at him. He stared back at her. Then he heard a door opening up behind her and a second later the African woman he’d first met was standing next to the White woman, both of them halfway down the stairs.

“Are you running from the police or the border guard?” the African woman asked him.

“The… the border guard,” he answered. His voice was hoarse.

“Were you trying to escape into the red zone?”

This was Solomon’s first time interacting on his own with blue zone civilians, and he found himself feeling disoriented, as if he hadn’t completely shaken off the effects of the sound grenade. Her questions were not what he’d expected. It almost felt as if she wasn’t a fan of either the blue zone police or the blue zone border guard, but why would that be the case? From the hijab, she was Muslim, and precious few of them had chosen a red zone to live in.

Suddenly, the White woman grabbed the African woman’s arm. “I don’t think… I…” She peered over the stairway railing to look at him more closely. “Are you… are you from the red zone?”

Solomon didn’t think he ought to answer that question, so he stayed quiet. In the silence, the siren he’d thought he’d heard earlier went off again. The African woman put her hand on the White woman, where she was grabbing her arm. “Go to the radio scanner. Listen for any reports about where they think he is.”

So that was how she’d known about him, how she’d known when she saw him that he was looking for a place to hide. He wondered what description they’d given. He’d have to get new clothes. He didn’t know how he was going to, though. He wanted to go listen to the radio scanner too, but it seemed that these women for whatever reason were willing to help him, so he didn’t want to do something that would scare them into shooting him. The African woman still had her pistol in her hand. Which was actually pretty strange, now that he thought about it. He could’ve sworn that a class they’d taken during boot camp had taught them that blue zone citizens weren’t allowed to own guns.

They waited in silence until the White woman came back. “They’re down south. They think he stuck to the river.”

The news that nobody was about to bang down the door and take him was such a relief that all the tension in his body melted away. With that release came a keen awareness of all the discomfort he’d been ignoring since he’d tackled the guard. His neck muscles were throbbing from the chokehold. Every turn of his head was accompanied by pain. He didn’t know how he’d hurt his ankle but he thought it was swelling. He was terribly thirsty.

“Could I… could I have some water?” Solomon asked, his voice still raspy.

The women exchanged a glance. Then the African woman went up the stairs, coming back down a few minutes later with not just reusable water bottles but pre-packaged snacks, granola bars and dried fruit, all of it piled on top of a blanket folded on top of a pillow. She placed her load at the bottom step then retreated back up to join the White woman, whose hand she took.

“Stay here,” the African woman told him. “Eat, drink, rest. You can go in a few days when they stop looking for you.”

He nodded. He wanted to ask her why they were helping him, but they were both heading back up the stairs now, and the White woman seemed extremely nervous so maybe it was better if he didn’t press the issue. Waiting until he heard the door close before he started limping toward the bottom step, he then did as the African woman had told him to: he ate, drank, then propped the pillow up so that he could lean against the wall while sitting on the blanket.

He also thought about Manal. It didn’t make sense that he missed her as much as he did right now. He didn’t even know her real name. He’d met her for the first time a literal week ago. And yet it’d probably been the best week of his life since he’d been drafted.

She made it back across, he told himself. She’s safe now. And I, too, will find my way back, find my way back home, and maybe I will get to see her again…