Safe

Safe
Rushed heavy breaths escape me as I search my room. I’m looking for something, anything that will protect me if the need arises. Dad said anything, pencils, scissors, pillow cases and broken mirrors, all of these things will benefit and help in time –even when I don’t need to worry about my safety. I have tried to stay minimal, packing the essentials, but I can’t help myself from trying to tuck away the little pieces of my room which I find unbearable to leave. I know I am taking too long, reminiscing over my teddy bears and paperback books, and when mum comes in I know that we only have minutes before they lock off our area.
“No honey,” she says peering into my backpack. I watch in panic as she reaches in her round arm and removes certain items: my favourite clothes, my treasured books, my little teddy bear friend. “You won’t need these. There will be more once this is all over. But for now you need to pack light – extremely light. Nothing should hold you back or weigh you down,” she advises dropping my books onto the edge of my bed. The stack begins to slide off the fabric and I can almost imagine them falling to the floor, their pristine pages crinkling and spines bending under the unexpected treatment. But her fingers reach for them before they do. Her long, full fingers press into the covers to hold them. She knows how much they mean to me. How hard it will be to let them go. She pushes the books back onto the bed, a little further from the edge, then turns.
Her eyes bloodshot, fear, a glassy blanket covering the once vibrant blue irises, taking in my small room – the colourful walls which seem to only remind us of incredible memories before we must abandon them. She looks at me with a shaky smile. Her desire to stay is obvious. She, like us all, wants to stay, to live normally, to hold onto the things we love without the worry. But we can’t. She wants to stay, to try to protect it – but she knows, we both know, that we can’t – that in order to save our home, our family, we must first save ourselves.
“Alli!” My name is called from downstairs. The voice is urgent and almost unafraid. Dad gives us some hope – that there is a chance for all of us – but deep down we know he is just as scared as the rest of us. We both jump, but are suddenly brought back to the reality that is this new hardship. She reminds me to hurry as she exits my room, and I listen to her heavy footsteps fall rhythmically on the staircase. I do a 360, taking in my room for the last time. Dad calls again, and within seconds I have slung my bag over my shoulder and snatched up the little bear and a book that Mum had claimed to have no benefit towards our survival.
I crash down the stairs. Bags are lined beside the front door. The house is a wreck, drawers opened, papers and books a new kind of debris, chairs turned as we have all searched for items that will protect us in time. The only room, somewhat clean, is the kitchen, the cupboards emptied of non-perishable food, which are now stacked in boxes that Dad carries out to the car. I watch him for a few moments from the kitchen window, running back and forth between the car and the house, grabbing suitcases and putting them into the boot. I see Mum run out to help him only to be yelled at for dropping several items under their weight.
We are going somewhere safe. Or so I’ve been told. I don’t know where “safe” is anymore – no one really does. The disease, once a promising scientific discovery, has spread uncontrollably. And for a while we were in the safe zone. But with more and more people becoming infected, the zone has become smaller and smaller – along with our safety, and population of our race. In some ways, “safe” is a map of all the places you have wanted to travel in life being burnt from all four corners, so that there is only that section in the middle that is left untouched – but you are trapped in the middle waiting for the flames to finally swallow you whole. The second you touch the flames…well, you’re gone. Infected. You have become one of them.
A loud, pealing siren breaks through the silence, like an ambulance with a lower pitch that everyone in the city can hear. They’re going to cut us off soon. That’s why we’re going. Soon, our home will be labelled unsafe – another burnt area on the map. I can hear the muffled voices outside: Mum calling out for me and Dad telling her to get into the car, his voice agitated. There are more bags at the door, I take what my arms will allow, leaving behind one with a floral pattern – Mum’s.
My parents help me load the car, the siren loud enough now to interrupt our thoughts. Ear splitting shrieks of tyres streets away echo down the deserted road. A new level of panic entered my body – were we the last ones here? Looking back towards the house, Mum noticed the door hanging lifelessly on its hinges, the rose-print of the bag in plain sight. She began to run.
“No, Marie! You can’t be serious!” Dad called, his tone angry and charged with paranoia, as he watched my mother stumble back towards the house. Spinning me around, he pushed me towards the car. “Get in, Alli.”
Nearly sitting in the car, I didn’t see the last few seconds unfold. My own father, ripping a revolver out from thin air, his fingers poised on the trigger. A new noise broke the rhythmical beat that the siren screamed. Those seconds became a slow motion. My head turns to see my mother cradling her hands over her heart, a mien of shock on her face, the suitcase crashing into the pavement, its contents exploding from within as she falls to her knees, then topple over.
Seeing her lying on the pavement I scream and begin to sprint to her side, only to be held back by the monster I call my father. Struggling in his arms, tears erupting from my eyes, I kick and fight to be released, but his grip is too strong. Picking me up, he thrusts me into the car and closes the door. He ran to the other side, climbing behind the wheel and started the engine. I watched with blurred vision as her round figure lying in our driveway receding out of view.
“She was too slow, Alli. She would hold us back. We have a better chance of survival than she ever would.” My whole body shook violently. Too slow. Too slow. Too slow. Now she’s dead. Now she has no chance. My brain just can’t seem to comprehend what had just happened within a few short seconds. It was only a bag, just a bag – not worth being dead for! How could he! How did he?
~*~
In the Safe Zone we quickly learnt that it was every man for himself. Some, like Dad and me, joined an alliance, taking turns to watch for danger, search for food or anything to keep us alive. For a long time, I couldn’t look at Dad without deeming him a despicable creature for murdering his own wife – my mother. The words “too slow” a giant neon sign flashing in my head relentlessly.
However, in time I came to understand what he meant. Mum wasn’t as fit as the rest – she wasn’t going to be able to keep up every time we had to run. As a child I had never seen her disability as a hindrance, but now I understand that it was. She was always going to be too slow. I hated Dad for what he did, but for a while, and with everything going on, I just really needed someone there for me that knew me. There were others in the alliance, teenagers like me who had lost members of their family or were fighting on their own. After a while, I realised that I didn’t really need Dad there either. Soon enough, he too became “too slow”.

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