Page 2 of Genesis (Alter Arlo #2)

INNOCENCE GONE

ZADE

My sister was alive, but this bunker was no longer safe. There was no time to grieve my brother when the war was on our doorstep and the others in this bunker were turning hostile.

We’d been staying here for three weeks. When our hometown got overtaken by the rebel forces, we tried to flee, but my fucking dad forced us to come here.

The only reason we came was to stay with Amelia, my sister.

These were his doomsday prepper friends, and now they were asking questions about where he was.

“We have to get her out of here,” Cadoc said, strapping a multitude of guns to his body and glancing around.

Thinking on the fly, I announced, “We need supplies if we’re going to defend this area. We’re going on a supply run and taking Amelia, just in case. What do you need?” I asked the group, knowing full well we wouldn’t be coming back.

Cadoc caught onto my plan and started rambling off shit we’d need, which made the others chime in. His voice shook, but only I noticed. While he did that, I packed a single backpack full of Amelia’s shit. She was thirteen and pretty independent, but she was scared and she knew something was up.

“Where’s Zan?” she asked me, stuffing feminine products into the front pocket of her bag. “Where’s Zan? Don’t lie to me, Zade.”

I couldn’t lie to her, but I wasn’t ready to verbally admit the truth. I fucking choked on it.

This wasn’t a good place. It’d kept us safe for a while, but when the men grew hostile and wanted to stand their ground against other rebel groups, it became a war zone of its own.

While the governments fought each other, we fought ourselves in the only area we knew of that wasn’t under total control.

And it all started with a human rights debate that spanned the globe.

Like wildfire, debate spread across the world, and when those fires got too hot, chaos broke out.

To be honest, I barely knew what was going on in other parts of the world because there was no way to find out anymore.

No signals. No cell service. No internet.

I wasn’t school smart, and that made me too stupid to understand all this.

All I knew was that I needed to keep my sister alive and find somewhere safe.

Cadoc was discreet about it, but he shoved a first aid kit and some dried food into a pack, strapping it over his shoulder with all his guns within easy reach. He grew up with gangsters, so guns weren’t new to him.

“Okay, if we aren’t back by sunrise tomorrow morning…” I started and let that trail off, hoping they’d think it meant we were dead or captured. “We’ll do whatever we can to find this shit.” I took the list from one of my dad’s buds.

“Where’s your dad?” he asked again.

“Went scouting with Zan. I’m hoping they just got held up on their way back. We’ll look for them.” The lie choked me even more.

Cadoc trembled at my brother’s name, but he buried it and grabbed Amelia’s arm. “Come on, kiddo.” He lit a cigarette and took Amelia outside.

“Zade.” My dad’s friend stopped me. “You know something I don’t?” He gave me a look that warned me against lying.

“Yeah, I know we need supplies. The war is being pushed back by the rebel groups, but if we don’t defend ourselves, we’re fucked. That’s all I know.” I held eye contact the whole time. “And I’m freaking out about where Zan is. I just want to look for him.”

He hesitated, but he bought it. “Signal on your way back.” He handed me a radio. “We’ll make sure our area is clear.” The radios barely worked and were put together with shady tech equipment and old satellite receivers, but I took it with a nod.

This area wasn’t clear. The bombs were less than a mile away, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was losing another sibling to this fucked up world we now lived in.

I left the bunker, which was in someone’s backyard, and found Cadoc protecting Amelia around the side of the house. He was still smoking, and I had a feeling that would be his life now. His fingers, tipped with chipped black nails, would never be without a cigarette again.

“Let’s go.” I walked past them, my eyes open and my ears alert.

“Where?” Amelia asked.

“We can’t go south.” Cadoc nodded in that direction, planes visible in the air. “Our best bet would be to go further into the grey area and hope for the best.”

Ever since the war started in this area, a section of what used to be the border between Canada and America had been blocked off and defended by rebel groups and private sectors.

We called it the grey area. Thank fuck we weren’t anywhere near a coastline because those areas were what governments went after.

“We go west and try to find my crew.”

“I thought we were scouting,” Amelia said. “Where’s Zan?”

Cadoc’s eyes watered, so he lit another smoke and walked ahead of us. Stealing a vehicle would be faster, but that wasn’t smart until nightfall. Plus, a lot of the roads were blocked with abandoned cars or they had craters in them from smaller bombs.

“Who is it?” I asked Cadoc as another plane was shot from the sky. “It’s no government.”

Cadoc shook his head. “Just rebel groups. Let them fight and kill each other.”

“Dad said there are no more governments,” Amelia said.

She didn’t have the same hatred for our father as we did, but I still noticed she hadn’t asked about him yet.

“He said the militaries fought each other until their numbers dwindled, and then the stragglers joined up with rebel groups and gangs.”

Maybe. There were probably still some organized armies left. But mostly, the entirety of North America had turned totalitarian—all except this part. One government now ruled every part of North America but here.

“I don’t know, Ames. I just know we have to get deeper into the grey area or we’re gonna get bombed.”

“What even happened to make the world like this?” she asked, stuck in the middle between Cadoc and me. “Dad said a billionaire did it.”

“A megalomaniac wanted a totalitarian world and had the technology to do it. A pissed-off billionaire megalomaniac wiped out all technology to prevent it. Chaos ensued.” Cadoc looked through the scope of his rifle to scout the way ahead.

“Outside of here, there is totalitarian control, Ames. We’re just stuck in the grey area by chance.”

“You want that kind of government?” she asked. “You want out of the grey area?”

Never. I’d put a bullet through my head before someone forced me to leave. I hadn’t sought out the grey area, we just happened to already be in it by the time the rest of the continent was under that kind of control. “No.”

“Then who is fighting?” she asked, motioning all around us.

“We’re in the only free area left on this continent, Amelia.

People are going to fight over it.” Cadoc looked at her.

“The only reason we haven’t been taken over is because there’s no technology anymore, and whoever is in control needs time to regroup.

They’ll come for this area, just like they overtook the rest of the country, and by that time, hopefully we’ll have stopped fighting each other so we can fight for it. ”

“Why here? Why didn’t this place get taken over?”

“Because we have nothing of value here. Shitty farmland. No coastlines. No refineries or anything they need right now.” There were oil refineries all along the border, and they'd come for them eventually, but for now, we were left to war with one another. “Someone got told they couldn’t make a choice regarding their own body, and it sparked an online debate that reached critical levels. Governments stepped in to control their countries, but by that time, some tyrant motherfucker had hacked them all and taken power from the governments. Another tyrant motherfucker wiped him out, and now we’re just living in a world that's fighting itself. Outside of the grey area, they’re fighting for individuality.

In here, we’re fighting for safety and territory. ”

“Mass manipulation. Mass control. Mass hysteria. That’s what’s out there,” Cadoc added.

“How is that any different than here?” Amelia huffed, not understanding the depth of the new world we lived in. I barely understood it. I barely knew what we were fighting for.

“Because in here, we still have a shot at freedom. Dangerous and criminal freedom, but it’s still freedom.”

Until they come for us.

Because I was looking, I saw Cadoc’s heartbreak on his sleeve, but he was doing a decent job of hiding it from Amelia.

I’d keep my promise to my brother and protect him from dying, but I never promised to make his life something nice.

I wanted him to suffer, and I’d stop at nothing to make sure he did.

A week later, Amelia was as hardened to death and destruction as we were.

Just like that, her childlike innocence washed out, and in its place came dire acceptance.

She’d seen a lot over the course of a week, including point-blank murder.

Cadoc killed freely whenever someone tried to kill us, and Amelia became numb to it.

I killed when necessary, and she’d stopped crying over it when I killed a scumbag who’d tried to rape her.

Ironic that this all started with ‘my body, my choice’ activists, and now we were reduced to barbarians who raped and pillaged with no remorse. The human race was hypocritical.

Cadoc stopped walking. He shook his head and his panicked eyes met mine. With unclear eye contact, but a message I could read within them, he begged me not to make him walk over there. We’d been on the road in all directions for a week, and somehow, we’d ended up back at Synner’s Lake.

I left him where he was and brought Amelia to the edge of the cliff. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“Look! It’s still there!” Amelia pointed to the cottage we used to stay in on the edge of the lake. We were up on the cliffs, but we knew every area of this lake well enough to recognize it. “Zan and Cadoc met there.”

Cadoc choked behind me, and then his lighter sparked.

“Yeah, they did.” I stepped up beside her. “Look, Amelia, there’s something you need to know.”

She looked up at me, her dark eyes knowing. “Something happened to Zan,” she said. “Cadoc would never leave him for this long.”

Cadoc coughed on another choked sob behind us.

My chest cracked wide open. “Zan—”

“Zade!” Cadoc screamed, his gun firing at rapid intervals.

Before I could even turn around to see what happened, Amelia’s head exploded to bits, coating me in bone and brain matter.

My ears muffled and my eyes blinked. Stunned.

The shocked expression on Amelia’s face was still staring at me, and her upright body barely even moved.

A moment suspended in time. A window into Hell.

I looked into her eyes, refusing to believe another death had happened on this fucking cliff. No.

No. No. No. No.

“Zade!” Cadoc screamed again, running towards us. “Fuck. Fuck, Amelia!” He caught her as she fell, holding her tight and tackling me with him. Bullets zipped over our heads, but I was still staring into my sister’s dead eyes.

My sister, who I barely got the chance to know. My sister, who had a different mother from me and Zan. My sister, who spent so much of her life happy while I was being tortured in the dark. My sister…

“She’s gone, Zade,” Cadoc said.

No. She couldn’t be. Life was not this fucking cruel! How? I was the angry, vengeful asshole, and yet, I was the only one left breathing. Me. It should be me bleeding into the cliffs.

Cadoc shifted Amelia into my arms, and then he put his back to us. His gun fired and reloaded. Fired and reloaded. I just stared at Amelia. He shouted something about being under attack, but I didn’t care anymore. Let me die here with my brother and sister.

“Cadoc, throw me in the lake. Throw us in the lake.” At least our graves would be together.

“No, you dumb fuck.” He stood me up and put Amelia’s small body into my arms. “I promised him.” He glared at me, blue eyes on fire. “I fucking promised him I’d protect you.”

“Don’t,” I whispered. Begged. “Don’t.”

And he didn’t. A bullet struck me in the shoulder, and another hit him in the side. Before the world tipped sideways, we were falling down the cliffs with Amelia locked between our bloody and dying bodies.

Hello again, Zan.