The Sun Dwellers (39 page)

“Joining the WLM,” Maia says, eyeing the stripes of light from the door, once more unbroken.

“Ah, yes. Please continue.”

“Well, like I was saying, I didn’t really even think about joining the WLM until I saw you for the second time. My mother, under the permission of WLM leadership, was able to explain the bare minimum about the WLM. She didn’t need to say it, but she told me I couldn’t join because I was too young. I asked if I could watch the training sometimes, and she and the WLM agreed, although first I had to take a solemn oath of secrecy, which I did.”

“I wrote the oath,” Anna murmurs, staring at the ceiling once more.

“I didn’t know that,” Maia says. “I watched the women train several times, enjoying the way they moved, all graceful and coordinated. It was almost like dancing. Soon they began fighting each other, and I remember having to clean up my mother’s bloodied noses and other nicks and cuts on many occasions. She was getting stronger all the time, more capable, one of the better fighters in the group. I was proud of her.

“I still practiced the movements, but now I didn’t have to hide it from my mother. She didn’t encourage me exactly, but she didn’t try to stop me either. Soon I knew them by heart, and even began joining in at training, although they wouldn’t permit me to stand in line with the other women. But even tucked in the corner I felt like a part of the group.”

“But you weren’t—not really,” Anna says.

“No, I wasn’t. But then my mother told me she had to go away for a few days, and that a neighbor would be looking after me. When I asked her where she was going, she admitted that it was a WLM conference. I begged her to let me come with her, and to my surprise, she agreed. Of course, she cleared it with the WLM first, who had apparently grown quite fond of having me around.

“It was the first time I’d left our subchapter. The train was like a ride, the gray walls whipping by, people hanging onto poles and tucked in rows of small seats. I loved every second of it.

“When we arrived I was shocked at how many women were there. Thousands. The conference was being held under the guise of an annual sewing and homemaking seminar, but it was by invitation only, so only those in the WLM could attend. We sat in a big auditorium with a stage. It was the biggest place I’d ever seen, and I later learned that it was called the Dome.”

Images of the crumbling Dome fill Anna’s head, side by side with her memories from the day of the WLM conference. Oh how things change, and not always for the better. “I have many fond memories of that day,” Anna says wistfully. “Thousands of strong women—fighters—willing to take up a dangerous cause. They did it for their husbands, for their children, for those who had already fought and died. Each and every one of them was a true hero.”

“I felt the same way at the conference that day,” Maia says. “Beautiful speeches by beautiful women. I felt a soaring in my heart like I’d never felt before. But it wasn’t until you spoke that I knew what I wanted.”

“My ‘Now Is the Time’ speech,” Anna says, hearing her own words spoken through her head. “It was definitely one of my best.”

“It was perfect,” Maia says, almost reverently. “You found a way to pour your soul into words and ideas like I’d never heard before. When we returned home, I pleaded with my mom every day to join the WLM, sometimes asking her twenty times a day, until it almost became part of our routine. Wake up. Ask ‘Can I join?’ Mother says ‘No.’ Eat breakfast. ‘Can I join?’ ‘No.’ And so on and so on all day, every day. I learned a lot about my mother’s patience during that time. If I were her, I might have slapped me.”

“She sounds like a special woman.” Anna can’t help but to think of her own mother, Adele’s and Elsey’s grandmother. Another special woman, patient and kind and tougher than anyone ever really knew.

“She was,” Maia says, pursing her lips.

“She passed?” Anna asks.

“Nine years ago. During a special mission for the WLM.”

“She was in the special mission’s corp?”

“Yes. She was recruited six years after I joined the WLM, when I was eighteen. She carried out a number of successful missions, but they were dangerous and it was just a matter of time before bad luck caught up with her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Anna says.

“She died doing what she believed in—for that I’m thankful. We had eight wonderful years together in the WLM. The bond we had during those years was unbreakable.”

“So how did you manage to convince her to let you join when you were only twelve?” Anna asks, still curious as to the beginning of Maia’s evolution from a young, helpless young girl to the strong woman she is today.

“I didn’t,” Maia says, chuckling. “I ambushed her one night at training. There was a break while they set up for hand-to-hand combat. I walked right up to the trainer and asked to join. The look on my mother’s face was priceless, I’ll never forget it, a mixture of wide-eyed shock and unexpected pride. My petition went to WLM leadership and I was allowed in, the only one under sixteen. ‘A special case’ they called it.”

“I’m surprised I don’t remember it,” Anna says, straining to recollect from seventeen years earlier.

“Your name was on the approval form,” Maia says, winking, “although I suspect it was a forgery by one of your assistants.”

Anna laughs, remembering how much she hated paperwork. “You’re probably right. I almost never signed anything, at least not when I could help it.” Her laugh is cut off when the stone at the entrance begins to move.

Chapter Seven

A
beam of light cuts through the darkness and into Anna’s eyes, blinding her.

“Move!” Maia hisses, clambering to her feet, dragging Anna after her. Together they move out of the light, against the side wall, as a giant metal claw rolls the stone away, unblocking the entrance to the cellar.

Only the sun dwellers would have technology like that.

This is it.

The last stand. Take out as many of the sun dwellers as possible to make it easier on the others.

Ever so slowly, Anna slips her gun from its holster. Beside her, hobbling on one leg, Maia does the same. Two women, connected by time and circumstance, brought together with a chance to do this one thing for the cause. Two women, capable and strong and ready.

For what?

To die for what they believe in. To die for those they love. To die for good.

But only if someone kills them.

A shadow cuts into the beam of light; footsteps cut into the night. “Anyone down there?” a voice yells out, gruff and no-nonsense.

Anna takes a silent breath, waits.

“I think it’s empty. Give me a sec to check it out,” the grizzly voice says.

As slow footsteps descend the steps, Anna analyzes the situation. Sun dwellers. Opening bunkers and cellars and hideaways. Looking for survivors to kill or capture. Kill any soldiers or civilians who don’t cooperate. Capture all the others. Anna and Maia: definitely on the kill list.

Only one choice: kill or be killed.

Anna sees him now, illuminated by the light, stopped halfway down the staircase. Tall—at least six foot—built sturdy like a tank, wearing a sharp red uniform, unmarked by the nearly uncontested romp through the subchapter.

He peers through the gloom on the opposite side, slides through the lighted area in the middle, and then scans the other side, his eyes passing directly over where Anna can see him, but he can’t see her. Her heart is in her throat, her finger on the trigger, just a twitch away from ending the man’s life. She hesitates, knowing full well that a gunshot will bring a swarm of sun dwellers into the hole. Their only real hope is if he leaves.

He scans back the other way, and then turns, taking one step up. Anna slowly lets out the breath she’s been holding as he takes another step away, a miracle step. A third step washes all the fear away, until he turns, his eyes locking on something.

Anna follows his gaze to where it rests on the ground in the middle of the lighted area, curious as to what has made him pause. It’s exactly where they were previously sitting against the wall.

That’s when she’s notices how dirty the cellar floor was from the explosions and cave-in, a thin layer of dust covering everything.

Everything except where they were sitting, where the outline of two bodies, four legs, and the scrape of their feet as they made their hasty escape, is stark and visible—unmistakable.

He takes a step back into the cellar.

Chapter Eight

A
nna’s body is way ahead of her brain. While her mind is still trying to wrap itself around the danger that confronts her, her legs are moving and her fingers are tightening on the butt of her gun.

The soldier reaches the bottom step, his footsteps slow and cautious. But not cautious enough.

She strikes from the shadows to the side, using her weapon like a club, slamming it into the back of his head, where she knows it will have the greatest and fastest effect. As planned, he’s unconscious before he even has time to cry out, his body slumping like a sack of potatoes. Although her arms dart out to catch him, she’s not fast enough and he crumples to the stone, his weapons belt rattling off the bare rock, sounding ominously like the bones of a skeleton rattling in its coffin.

From above, she hears, “Quincey! You comin’ back up or what?”

She has no time to lose—a second could mean the difference of life or death, seeing her daughters again or not. Grabbing the red-clad soldier by his boots at the ankles, she starts to drag him from the light, wishing he wasn’t so well fed. Then she feels Maia beside her, pulling at his arms, helping her get the job done twice as fast.

Back in the shadows, she tries to catch her breath as she reassesses the situation. First off, she was lucky that the wound didn’t bleed too much—no trail of blood will lead the other soldiers to where they’re hiding in the dark. The second thing of importance is that she still doesn’t hear voices above them, which might mean there isn’t a full platoon of sun dwellers ready to charge down and overwhelm them. Which might mean they’ve spread themselves so thinly to search the rubble for survivors hiding in cellars and bomb shelters that there are only a few soldiers in each place.

“Quincey?” the voice yells again from above. It’s the same voice. Perhaps they got really lucky. Perhaps the soldiers are working in
pairs
, which, of course, would mean they now had the advantage in numbers.

“He’s probably messing with us,” another voice says, this one deeper. “He’s always been a prankster.”

“If he is, I’ll kill him myself,” a third, much raspier voice says. “This isn’t the time for pranks or messing around.”

Three distinct voices change the odds completely.

“What do we do?” Maia says, her lips practically touching Anna’s ear in the dark.

“Follow my lead,” Anna says, unclasping something black and egg-shaped from the fallen soldier’s belt.

Chapter Nine

B
efore the soldiers are even halfway down the staircase, Anna pulls the pin—one, one thousand, two, one thousand—and throws the grenade, silently praying her aim is true. She doesn’t, however, give herself the advantage of watching its flight; instead, she pushes Maia to the side, throwing her own body over the young girl’s and her arms over her own head.

There’s the distinct clink of metal on stone, but she doesn’t know if she’s hit the far wall, like she intended, or if she inadvertently caught the edge of the stairs, rebounding the handheld explosive device back toward her.

The chatter of automatic gunfire explodes somewhere, bullets zinging and ricocheting off hard rock, distant enough to be safe. And then:

Boom!

The grenade’s explosion is deafening, and although Anna is very much aware that she’s still alive—and therefore, the distance she threw the grenade sufficient—sharp bits of shattered rock sting her as they rain down upon her arms and back, piercing her skin.

Someone cries out in the night—maybe more than one somebody.

Anna waits a moment longer, to be sure she won’t get a jagged splinter of rock in the eye, and then springs to her feet, simultaneously pulling Maia by the crook of her elbow up, too, hoping the young warrior’s ankle will hold up under the frantic pace they’ll have to assume.

Peering through the yellowish haze and dust particles, Anna sees only red. A body to her left, red-suited and limp: the red from his uniform seems to have liquefied, spreading around him on the stone like a dark pool, making it hard to distinguish where he ends and the pool begins. To her right, there’s a nameless soldier, black and red and dead. The third soldier is straight ahead, still alive, clutching the edge of the half-destroyed staircase, as if holding onto it is the only thing he has left—which is probably true. He’s holding on with only one arm, not by choice but out of necessity, as his other arm is lying separately on the ground, between the other two fallen sun dwellers.

Anna knows it was her work that caused this. She’s not proud of this irrefutable fact, but she’s also not ashamed. She did what she had to do. For herself, for Maia, for her family, for the people.
I won’t die here. Not now.
Although she knows her strong and confident promise is not a predictor of the future—nor has she ever felt one speck of clairvoyance inside her—it gives her comfort to know she’s still fighting.