The Resistance, Jenna Marie [books to read to get smarter TXT] 📗

you get here?” asked the other twin.

Jen shrugged. “A few minutes ago.”

The twin that had spoken earlier introduced her to them. “I’m Mackenzie,” she said and then gestured to her twin, “this is Kiara, and that’s Mesha.”

“Hi,” Jen smiled. “I’m Jen, this is Brian. It’s nice to meet you guys,”

“You too!” Mackenzie said. “Did Jayden find you?”

“Ash did,” Jen corrected. She laughed, “We were asleep under a tree and when I woke up, he was standing there with an arrow, ready to shoot me.”

Daniela gasped. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“Must have slipped my mind,”

“How do you forget someone threatened to kill you?” Mesha laughed.

“I don’t know.”

“Alright, Jen, your tent is set,” Jayden said from behind them. He dusted his hands off. “Why don’t you grab your stuff and get yourself set up??”

“Sure,” Jen said, looking back at him over her shoulder. “Thank you.” He returned to his tent without another word.

“I swear, that boy doesn’t say more than five words before he disappears again,” Mackenzie joked.

Mesha’s eyes had settled on the closed flap of Jayden’s tent. “He’s always sitting alone in there, I wish he’d come out once and a while.”

“Well, you know him,” Ash said, making his way over to them with a stack of folded blankets and two pillows. “There are for you and Brian,” he told Jen, dropping them into her arms.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. You might want to get them set up now because we’re going to start cooking dinner.”

Brian asked, “Can I help you start the fire?”

“Sure,” Ash said. “Let’s go grab some wood from the pile over there.”

While the boys headed off to get firewood, Jen walked over to her new tent. It was small but she figured it would be roomy enough to fit her and Brian, who was a little more than half her height. Ash had given her two blankets, but she didn’t think they’d need the second one. It was too warm, even for mid-September, for them to use it. So instead of returning the spare to the supply pile, she folded it in half and laid it across the bottom to make the ground a bit softer to lie on.

Outside her tent, Brian and Ash were getting themselves situated by the campfire. They placed the logs in a pyramid formation and dropped twigs around it to help the fire catch.

While trying to start the fire by grinding a stick into a flat board, Ash asked, “So how did you and your sister wind up out here? She didn’t really say.”

“Oh.” Brian watched white smoke trail up from the wood. “We ran out of supplies at home so we left to find more.”

Ash blew on the small flame that had appeared on the plank. “What happened to everyone in your town? Couldn’t you have shared with them?”

“Jen said they were all gone. That they either died or left.”

“Show how’d you guys end up here, then? Were you with anyone else?” he watched the boy closely. Everything else up to this point was matching up to Jen’s story. If the kid said one thing off the mark, he’d have a problem on his hands.

“No, we were alone. We followed the highways toward New York City and used the bridges to get to New Jersey.”

Ash took a deep breath. The newcomers were telling the truth. But just to be safe, Ash continued his questioning. “You guys came all the way from Long Island and didn’t see anyone at all?”

“Well, we saw people, but we didn’t speak to them.”

Good. “And why’d you guys come out this far, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Jen just wanted to keep going.”

“Oh, okay.” Ash stood up. The fire had grown considerably and gray smoke blew into their faces in the breeze. “I’m going to get dinner started. You should go grab your sister.”

“Okay,” Brian said, climbing back onto his feet and heading off to find Jen.

Jayden’s tent conveniently neighbored the pile of supplies, so when Ash walked over and knelt down between them to rifle through a bag of canned goods he could speak to Jayden in private.

“Their stories match up, Jayden,” he muttered. “They never spoke to anyone or received help.”

“That’s great. Still keep an eye on them, though.”

Ash returned to his feet and carried a few cans of baked beans and creamed corn back to the campfire. He cut the tops open and set them on a metal try over the fire. Slowly the group convened around him. Mackenzie and Kiara threw down a blanket on the dirt and settled themselves there while Mesha and Daniela sat down on one of the logs. Jen eventually sat with them, and Brian lowered himself to the grass and leaned against the wood. Meanwhile, Ash passed around the cans and utensils. After a few minutes Jayden emerged from his tent, grabbed some corn, and sat alone on the other log.

Darkness settled over the land quickly and engulfed everything in blackness. Millions of tiny stars flecked the sky and melted away into the horizon, which could only be discerned because of the lack of light emanating from it. The golden light of the campfire illuminated their faces and cast long shadows on the ground around them. Sitting around the campfire eating and joking around reminded Jen of the times she would visit her friends during the summer and sit by their fire pits, roasting marshmallows. They were all dead, of course. They had either died or left the country.

Jen placed her empty can of mixed vegetables on the ground and looked up at the sky, mesmerized by the brilliance of the stars and the immensity of the purple and blue stretch of the galaxy visible above them. A meteorite streamed across the sky and the bright white trail left in its wake faded just as instantly as it had appeared.

Finally she and Brian had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs and the protection of six other individuals. She was glad they were safe.

Two.

 

Jen awoke the next morning with a bony knee jabbing her in the back. Ugh, Brian, she thought, shoving his outstretched leg away. She climbed to her feet and pushed through the tent door.

Clouds had descended upon the area overnight and blanketed the sky in a tired, cold gray. The early morning breeze was icy and it chipped away at Jen’s bare arms. Rubbing away the goosebumps, she sat down on a log and stared longingly at the blackened campfire. She considered setting a fire, but she wasn’t sure if Jayden wanted one so early in the day. The smoke could be visible for miles around and she surely did not want to bring any visitors this way.

The camp itself was quiet, save for the muted snores of Jayden and/or Ash—the sound was coming from somewhere on their side of the camp. It seemed she was the only one awake and she had no idea how early it was. She couldn’t estimate the time by looking at the position of the sun because of the rainclouds that loomed above, and she didn’t know if Jayden and Ash had a clock around here anywhere. Not that it really mattered, they didn’t have a schedule to meet. This was a different world now: no bustling cities and overcrowded railroad stations, no traffic on the roads at rush hour, and no casual window shopping in town squares as she and her friends had done so often at home.

She stretched out her legs into the grass. A single rat was to blame for this – or, at least, that’s what the public had been told. The story was that a rat somewhere in South America had become infected with the virus and then came in contact with other rats. Eventually, those that made it onto trading vessels and overseas carried it with them, infecting the larger rodent population. In poorer areas of cities the rats came in close contact with dogs or cats, who then passed the virus onto humans. The illness spread like the Black Plague and decimated the population, confounding scientists and doctors who could not develop a cure.

The symptoms were widely known because warnings had been plastered all over television, the radio, and billboards. The virus started with flu-like symptoms: chills, fatigue, and a sore throat, and rapidly developed into something much worse. Persistent dizziness and weight loss came next, majorly because of the inability to eat anything without heaving it back up again. A horrible dry cough would descend afterwards, becoming so acute that many people cracked ribs. A few days of pain and suffering would be topped off with the deterioration of muscle and organ tissue, causing internal bleeding. And if it wasn’t the bleeding that got you, it was the abnormally high fever.

People blamed the researchers that decoded the Mayan calendar. Some said that the world ending in 2012 was a lie manufactured by governments meant to brainwash the public into working toward a common end. Others agreed with this statement, but furthered the argument to say that the unknown common goal was to be prepared for the real end of days in 2014, which the government had been aware of but kept a secret. Not that any of that could be proven, of course. No one could possibly have known that a rat would develop a mutated disease in the midsummer of 2014 and spread it so widely that it would bring the world to a stand-still by August. At least there weren’t any zombies roaming around like the media proposed.

Daniela emerged from her tent, tired circles under her eyes and her hair a mess. “Good morning,” she whispered, sitting down on the log across from Jen.

“Morning,” Jen breathed.

“Gosh it’s cold!” she gasped. “When did you get up?”

“Little while ago, no one else is up.”

Jen figured that after a while it would get warmer, but it hadn’t. Daniela yawned. “I wonder what Jayden will make us do today?”

“What, he puts you guys to work?”

“More often than not,” she said. “I’ve been here for four days and I’ve already chopped firewood, set up tents, carried the wood back here, and hunted squirrels. The other three helped hunting and stuff, but still. He always finds something for us to do.” She undid her knotted hair and brushed her fingers through it. Her fingers moved quickly when retying the braid; halfway completed, her fingers froze. “Jen . . .” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

Her eyes were locked on something over Jen’s shoulder. “Don’t turn around, but there’s a man in the woods.”

“What?!” Jen instinctively jerked around.

“I said don’t turn around!” Daniela’s voice strained. The man stood just within the shade of the forest, his lower body and any possible weapons he carried hidden behind a tall plant. He stood close enough that they could see his dark eyes scan the campground, jumping from the girls to the tents to the supplies and then back to the girls. Something was tied around his waist and pulled down on his sleeveless, yellow T-shirt. Slowly he reached for it, and Jen rose to her feet to get a better look. Daniela jumped up behind her, her unfinished braid abandoned down her back.

The man pressed a filthy finger to his lips, a smile creeping up around his eyes.

“Morning,” Jayden’s