Chapter Text
The girl thundered down the stairs, backpack in hand, chasing after her brother and her parents. “Don’t leave me!” she called, sock-covered feet skidding on the carpet.
Her mother turned around, frowning as she looked at her daughter. “They won’t wait,” she said in her Spanish purr, “We have to go now, Cassidy. Get your shoes on,”
Cassidy nodded, skipping over to her sneakers and pulling them on, dashing out of the door and out to the car, where she promptly leapt in and buckled her seatbelt. Her mother took one more mournful look at their home, flames silhouetting the houses behind it, then followed Cassidy, sitting in the passenger seat.
“Where are we going, mom?” Cassidy squeaked, kicking her feet against the car seat, much to her brother’s dismay.
Brown eyes of her mother’s bore into Cassidy as the woman turned around, a frown on her face. “Far,” she replied, monotone. “Far away from here. We can go to America. They’ll have breached the border by now,” America sounds good, Cassidy thought, I can be a character from that show that Mom likes to watch. Be a cop. I bet this is just gang uprisings – has the price of wheat gone up, or something?
She opened the window, poking her head out as she let her brown hair fly about, watching the amber that seemed to fill the sky, smoke obscuring the dusky clouds. She would miss her home, but America would be better. Maybe she’d make a friend there.
When the tiny car got past the border and into America, the family in it noticed something: everything was the same. The same flames burning bright around wheat fields. The same screams, the same traffic jams. They had not escaped it.
Years later, Cassidy slung her rifle lazily over her shoulder, padding down the stairs. She wore her converse and a loose hoodie. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, however, she felt a gentle draft weaving its way through the house, which was horrifying, especially in a QZ. She sped up, finding the door, and seeing a familiar silhouette sitting out on the porch: their only piece of peace in the Zone.
She sighed, fidgeting with the strap of her rifle, before she decided to walk forward. Her mother sat on one of the deck chairs, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the barbed-wire fences that bordered their backyard. She had a heavy-looking backpack on the floor next to her, and that only signified one thing to Cassidy.
The woman gestured to the chair next to her. “Sit,” she said, offering only a glance. Cassidy quickly nodded, pulling the rifle from her shoulder and sitting down, tapping her fingers against her knees. She watched as her mother inhaled sharply, then she averted her eyes to the sunset, which she had always loved.
“I’m leaving, Cassie,” her mother whispered, half-blowing out smoke. Cassidy had long since predicted this, sure, but seeing her tired eyes and the backpack made it all too real, all too horrible.
Cassidy sighed, frowning. “How are you going to get out? There’s guards at every exit. They don’t just let people come and go, and you hate those smugglers,” she reasoned. Please stay.
“That’s why I need your help, Cass,” the woman rasped. “I need you to use your switchblade, okay? I need you to cut apart those barbed wire pieces so I can get out. I can’t do this anymore. I’m so, so sorry, my dove,”
Tears began to blossom in the corner of Cassidy’s eyes, but she held out, nodding. “I- I- okay,”
Her mother stubbed out her cigarette and stood up, heaving the backpack onto her shoulders. Cassidy felt for the switchblade in the pocket of her jeans and latched her hand around the smooth wood, getting to her feet and walking through the backyard, through the twisting vines and reeds and nettles, before she finally got to the fence.
Barbed wire ran across the top of its entire length, prickly metal sticking out at all angles. Cassidy knew what to do, but the implications of it hurt, tore at her heart until it was only lumps of muscle swimming around in her veins.
She cut the wire, the barbs springing apart just enough for her mother to fit through, but, as she turned around, she was enveloped into a hug, one that she wanted to stay in forever. She wished she could freeze time, surrounded by her mother’s love – probably the last of it she’d ever receive – and just be.
But her mother released her, clambering over the fence, and dropping at the other side. She grinned at her daughter before dashing off, into the wilderness.
After that, Cassidy never saw her again. It hurt to lie to her family, sure, but she just said her mother had been attacked by an infected person while she had been out hunting, and she’d had to shoot her. Her father stayed in mourning for a good year, leaving Cassidy and her brother, Javier, to collect ration cards and hunt and hold up the fort.
That had all changed when Cassidy joined up with the Fireflies, leaving her brother and her father alone.
Then she had met Emilia, as beautiful as she was, and something had shifted, leaving her world changed forever.