Young Writers Society

The city of Chicago was in chaos, but not the kind of chaos normal people would expect. No, it was environmental chaos.

Black smoke filled the air where the sky should be, blocking out all sunlight and forcing the flickering and dying lampposts to be the only light outside. Walls ringed around Chicago like the Berlin wall, reminding citizens that they can never go outside of them. Dirty windows, dead trees, and dirty cars lined the roads and buildings with a menacing appearance. To Allison, the dead trees rather looked like monsters coming to kidnap her and use them for their monster purposes. She shivered it off and began to run, trampling over some of the few straggling plants left.

She was out of oxygen quick. Because most of the plants were dead, Chicago didn’t have much oxygen-filled air left. Unfortunately, that proved to be a problem to Allison, for she knew that if she didn’t complete this mission, she would die.

Allison snuck her way into the dark alley, in which shadows hid the dirt and mold that all of Chicago had seemed to accumulate ever since World War III. She stumbled over something on the ground. She looked back and the dim light revealed that she had tripped over a dead squirrel. Allison wrinkled her nose and moved along.

She jumped into the nearly-hidden dumpster and rummaged around the bags. She knew that it was in here somewhere—she wasn’t going to return to her makeshift home without-

Aha!

She took out the Burger King meal, which the person had thrown away half of the burger so haphazardly. Allison knew that she could always find food here; the person who lived here was rich (A Burger King meal! That’s expensive!) but also anorexic. This allowed her to dig around the dumpster and pick out easy meals.

Allison was just starting to dig in when she heard a thump. She turned around but saw no-one. She sighed in relief when it was just a trashcan on the road bumping on the nooks, crannies, and pebbles. She was glad that no one had seen her; last time she was caught, she was put in prison for three months eating mush that shouldn’t—couldn’t—be counted as food. She wasn’t about to go through that again.

She heard something again, but this time it was a male cough. Allison froze and swore in her head. She wanted to do anything but get caught, and a male voice around here usually meant a soldier. Everyone knows how that works. Men are officers, soldiers, and laborers; women cook, clean, and do womanly stuff.

If she stayed in one place, she would get caught for sure, she knew. Allison jumped onto the dumpster--food still in hand--and onto the windowsill right above it. It was a thin place to put her footing, but it worked. She shuffled around, using her free hand to pull herself up onto the top of the window.

This left Allison in a very uncomfortable position with her nose pressed against the wall and her toes barely on the thin ledge. She mumbled a swear and put the food in her mouth like a dog and used both of her hands to pull herself up to the next window. She repeated this process again and again until she reached the roof.

Allison nursed her bruised nose from bumping against the brick wall and looked down at the ground, many stories below. There, she saw a man. However, she didn't recognize him, though she thought she knew everyone in the city, between getting arrested, stealing food with accomplices, and the old war vets that liked to tell stories about WWIII, Allison swore that she, at least by name, could identify everyone in her city (it did help that people tended to die a lot from pollution there; less people to memorize).

The man was African-Americanㅡa rare sight in the new Chicago, for most of them lived in Atlantaㅡdressed in black with a cloth in front of his mouth. However, he had the strangest hair that Allison had ever seen. I can see it from here. In the front of the head, there was a lot of curly black hair with the occasional bright green highlight. However, in the back, it was completely shaved and was pink transitioning gradually to red.

The man turned around and coughed into his arm. His other arm fumbled for something inside of his shirt. Allison gasped. The small amount of skin that showed under the shirt for the short amount of time that it happened distracted her from noticing that he had reached for something shaped like a walkie talkie.

She paused. She hadn't seen one of those things since she was three and was going through her great great grandparents' old stuff. According to her great grandparents, they were used to communicate, like ultra-ancient versions of Communicators.

Allison squinted. After cell phones were banned in United Americas, people used Communicators to talk to each other. Even she had one, even though she knew the government tracked you through everything you do through them. The only reason for someone to have something other than a Communicator would be if-

They were an outlaw.

Allison needed to get out of thereㅡfast. If there was an outlaw that was making sure not to be tracked and wasn’t captured already, that meant that they were serious trouble. If Allison would be caught, she knew that she was screwed.

She blinked.

The man was gone.

Allison began to panic. Where was he? Had he seen her? Was he going to report her to his gang, if he had one? Oh God, what if he is one of the leaders of a gang? I’m so screwed! And, even though she knew that she had to stay calm in this situation, Allison began to have a major anxiety attack.

A gloved hand went around her mouth. Allison’s eyes widened. It was him. How did he get up here so fast? A man’s voice whispered in her ear, “Be quiet. She’s around here and I don’t want you to die.”

A gang member, not wanting her to die. Typical and hypocritical. He was probably trying to trick her into-

“Actually, no, I’m not going to trick you. I seriously, definitely, don’t want you to die, Allison.”

How does he know my name? How does he know what I was thinking? Did I say that out loud?

“Um, actually, no, you didn’t, and I’ll explain later—when you’re safe.”

Allison nodded, not wanting to go against this strange, and surprisingly strong, black man. If he did turn out to be a gang member with weird mind-reading technology, she needed to just go with him and find stuff out before he-

“Next time, Allison, please make plans where I can’t hear them. It’s really anticlimactic. Now, come with me if you want to live.”

Allison nodded, trying to clear out her thoughts. He gestured to her and jumped off of the building, a bit like Spider-man did in the illegal movies that Allison watched. Allison didn’t want to go after him, but she decided to jump anyways. That dude got up onto a roof in ten seconds flat. I’m not running. He caught her in his arms and she blushed, scrambling to get off of him.

Wait. This would be the perfect time to get answers. Whoever he’s running away from is probably the authorities. I can get help from there, if we get caught.

“Alright,” she said, stomping her foot on the ground. The man was already turning a corner to the next ally when he turned around. “I’m not going anywhere else until you explain to me what the hell is going on! First you’re standing there, then you’re behind me in ten seconds, next you’re covering my mouth like some creepy pervert, and you expect me to follow you, especially since you look like a person from a gang? Start explaining, or,” she said, pulling out a switchblade. “We’re both staying here.”

He didn’t even look intimidated. He stared at her blankly and then sighed. “We kind of need to get out of here because there’s a certain person who’s super dangerous and from the government that is a blood-thirsty witch that wants to kill me. If she saw you up on that roof, watching me, you would have died as well. However, because I was stupid and touched you, now she’ll kill you anyway because she can sense that I had touched you. Let’s get to somewhere safe.” Now that he was talking for real, Allison noticed that he had a bit of a Texan twang.

“That doesn’t explain how you got behind me in ten seconds. Did you fly or something?”

“First of all, I didn’t fly, I jumped,” he started.

A man could jump onto a building like that? Doubt it.

“Second of all, you will die if you stay here, and third, I am not intimidated by that tiny knife you have there. I doubt it would do any actual damage to me, even if it was thrown. Now, we’ll escape now, talk later.”

Allison paused to think for a moment, and then grudgingly said, "Okay, you're right. But once we're out of danger from this person that is somehow more powerful than somebody who can jump onto a 20-story building, you will explain everything, starting from the beginning."

She didn't believe this boy for one bit. There was something fishy about his story, and she was determined to find out what it was.

He sighed. “There is nothing fishy about this story, and, for the record, I am twenty-two years old. I’m no boy.” The man sighed and turned back around again.

“And, for the record, I know your name, but you don’t know mine. The name’s Joash Kowalski. Nice to meet you, Allison.”

He turned back around and started to run, Allison not that far behind.