Empty Streets (2 page)

A thin sound outside the front door jolted her. She pushed her sweaty brown hair away from her face, looking harder at the front door and taking two steps towards it. At the base of the great heavy door was a thick piece of rubbery material, which allowed in little noise and no light. She crept towards the door and knelt down, touching the rubber seal with her finger. She pulled the seal back, pressing her cheek against the floor and looking intently at the space it vacated.

A gasp of sunlight abruptly pushed through the tiniest opening. Eri's heart beat hard against her rib cage. She sat up and leaned back against the door. She took a deep breath, feeling silly. Why couldn't she just leave this alone? Why did this feel so important? What am I doing?

She knelt again, peeling back the seal. She could see a sliver of the front porch, a sliver of the outside world, and then, barely, a grey corner. She recognized the material, feeling relief and excitement. Her family received a weekly food shipment, based on requests and income, and it was delivered on Tuesdays. She wondered if retrieving the package might be a legitimate enough reason to open the door. She decided it was.

Eri reached up to touch the keypad with tingling hands. She had watched her parents' key in the code this morning, hiding in the dimness of the stairway. She paused, looking down at herself before entering the numbers. She didn't have on shoes. Would she need shoes? Would the sun burn her skin? Would its light blind her instantly? It hadn't yesterday, but the window had shaded her.

She concentrated on the firm keys under her index finger. Pushing the numbered buttons was odd; she felt an unusual sense of authority and reality. She couldn't place it, the power of keying in the numbers, the strange exhilaration and nervousness she felt when the key pad lit up a faint green color, the fear she felt in her stomach as she unlocked and turned the knob of the door. She was certain it wouldn't open, that it would stick or an alarm would sound, then steel bars would descend from the door frame, completing her vision of the jail in which she lived.

But the door opened easily. Light and heat screamed at her as she took a tentative step onto the front porch. Terror rippled through her veins as the sun sunk into her skin. She waited for her eyes to burn and her skin to melt. She held her breath and clenched her hands and squeezed her eyes shut.

Nothing happened.

She opened her eyes, blinking slowly as she exhaled and looked around. She stood on a small, crumbling concrete stoop. Five stairs led to a cracked concrete sidewalk.

Eri looked up at her housing unit and two black windows above her head looked back at her. A hot breeze rustled her tangled hair, cooling the sweat on her forehead. In confusion, Eri breathed deeply. The air felt…okay. It was hot, but not deathly so. She looked at the ground next to the porch. Gravel and pieces of ancient asphalt littered its surface, interrupted by clumps of grass. A hue of color called to her from north of the porch. She walked down the stairs, her eyes on the speck of magenta, uncertain if it would disappear when she blinked.

The feeling of the sun-soaked dirt and rock against her bare feet startled her. She jumped towards the last foot of shade the building had to offer, a spot that hugged the base of the building. She stood in a patch of weeds as tall as her waist. They were green and spindly, poking her legs and scratching the tops of her arms. She bent down, facing the dark stone of the building, and touched the small, pink wild-flower that grew impossibly out of the side of the building's foundation. Its petals were so soft she wasn't sure she was touching them; the fragrance of the grass she had crushed under her feet was intoxicating.

A loud crack shook the air. She whipped her head up. She thought about racing up the stairs, but her feet remained firmly planted.

"Sit down," a voice whispered urgently.

"Who's there?" Eri asked. Her hands and face were sweating from heat and adrenaline. She pursed her lips, trying to stay calm.

"Sit, so they don't see you!" The voice was more pressing this time, and closer.

Eri turned, uncertain if she should follow its directions. The cracking sound was getting closer. She felt dizzy.

A boy leaped up onto the porch next to hers before jumping onto the ground beside her. She studied him. He looked her age, with tousled black hair, a creamy complexion, and the most intense hazel eyes she had ever seen, simulated or not. He locked eyes with her, scrutinizing her with both interest and confusion.

He shook his head once and said, "You can hit me later."

He put an arm around her waist, pulled her close to his side and dragged her to the ground with him. Her shirt snagged on the concrete face of the building, scratching her back against the wall. He pushed his side against hers, slouching as low as he could against the building while keeping his legs hidden in the grass. She could hear a growling sound, almost directly in front of them.

As she watched through stray pieces of tall grass, an old, beat-up truck idled by. Its engine gurgled unnaturally. She held her breath, leaning as far back towards the building and porch as she could. Faint silhouettes were visible through the deeply tinted windows. A block down, the truck pulled over.

"Shit," the boy whispered.

"Who are they?" she asked, curiosity trumping her fear.

"Street cleaners." His body tensed next to hers as several men got out of the truck. Looming figures stood in the near distance, their voices catching on the wind.

"Someone saw him, they called it in," a bald, tall man said. His words were stunted, slurred and clipped. He walked along the periphery of the porch nearest to him, poking at the weeds. His tight white t-shirt muted the dark tattoos that covered his torso. A tattoo escaped the back of his shirt and ran its way up his neck to the back of his head.

"Shit, they probably saw another truck. Ain't no one out here," a younger man answered. He crossed the street, examining collapsing entryways. The spikes of his black hair were exclamation points against his expressionless face.

"We will look around." A third man emerged in a cloud of smoke from the car. He leaned causally against the truck, reading messages on his wireless device. The wrinkles in his grey suit fell away in the heat as the other two men spread out silently.

Eri glanced at the boy. The tension in his face fascinated her, his intense eyes hyper-focused on the distance, his chin tilted up slightly as he looked over the low-lying grass. He watched the men as they moved away from Eri's town-house. Eri watched him.

"C'mon," she whispered, grabbing his arm and rolling onto her porch without climbing the stairs. She pulled him into her house and shut the door.

"Don't release the doorknob," he hissed.

Eri squatted, with the boy next to her, on the inside of the door. She held the doorknob, preventing it from clicking back into place. He squatted next to her, leaning against the door, his knees lightly touching hers. They breathed heavily and stared at each other.

"Did you go through this door when you went out?" he asked.

She nodded. He studied her with the same intensity he had studied the street cleaners. The tilt of his chin and the probe of his eyes made her uncomfortable, but she couldn't pull her eyes from his. His eyes were a sea of colors, brown and green, with flecks of gold light radiating from the iris. Eyes like the sun, colors indistinguishable and loud.

"I need to go so you can release that latch," he said softly.

"Why?" Her terror blurred with the constant gnaw of curiosity.

"There are timers. They know when a door opens and closes. They will call. You have to latch that door soon enough that you can say you were just getting the food crate. Make sure your parents know they are calling. Have your parents say they told you to get it. It is very, very important that you do not say you were curious. Got it?"

She'd been staring at his mouth as he talked, intrigued by the movement of his lips and the shape of his teeth. They were even and neat, but shaped slightly different from one another. She wanted to look closer, to touch his nose and ears and hands, these things she had never really seen outside of her family. She nodded instead.

"Why would I have hit you?" she whispered.

He smiled. "I don't know, for throwing you to the ground?"

She did not return his smile. "Did you just save my life?"

"I don't know. But I think you saved mine." A muffled bang rang outside, signaling the departure of the street cleaners. Eri cracked open the door to make sure, opening it wider when she saw the truck fading into the distance.

He exited behind her like wind against her back. She grabbed the crate of food, hauling it inside while pinning the door open with her leg.

"Hey!" he whispered loudly.

She poked her head around the doorframe, looking in his direction.

"Find another way next time. And welcome to the outside." He held his arms out to the world around him and smiled before he turned and jumped onto another porch, disappearing on the other side.

She shut the door and set the crate of food down, knowing with certainty that everything was different. She closed her eyes and saw nothing but his face.

School

Eri walked into the bathroom and touched the lamp to illuminate the mirror. She expected to see red, burned flesh from the exposure she'd experienced this morning. She looked closely. Her skin was unchanged.

She rushed through the thirty seconds she had of water to brush her teeth and wash her face. She leaned toward the hazy mirror. Her dark eyebrows came too close together, her eyes were too big for her face, and her skin always looked washed out in this grey world. In her mind, girls her age looked beautiful, with firm, curved bodies and smooth, glossy hair. They wore lip-gloss and plucked their eyebrows. They wore bright clothes and had perfect, straight teeth. She imagined this to be true.

Eri walked straight to the basement door. Her parents would be home at five-thirty. She wanted to be done with school when they got home so she could beg them to cover for her. She had already thought about her reasoning: she had been uncertain what there would be for dinner and wanted to get the food in the house. Perhaps she could explain she had heard at school that people's food rations had been stolen around town, even with the harsh consequences. She was pretty sure her parents would stand by her fallacy, so long as it was easier when The People called to ask about it.

She went downstairs to the Sims machine and climbed in, already feeling her energy wane. Something about going to school through a machine wore on her.

Once she had all the gear on, she reached forward to power on the machine. The electric hum of the building lulled slightly as her machine accessed the energy and information grid. The Sims used a lot of power. No one in her building could use much other electricity as long as their children were attending school. No air conditioning. Little electricity. Minimal hot water.

Most of the people who lived in this complex worked at the factory. Their children were lucky to have Sims machines. Eri shuddered to think about the few children who were shuttled to public schools every day, met with unsavory conditions and dangerous external elements.

Eri took a deep breath and stood outside of her first class, waiting for the usual wave of nausea. She was certain it was the Sims environment that made her feel both physically and emotionally unwell. When only a slight discomfort settled over her, she watched her hand reach out and pull the door handle open, vaguely aware that in "real life" she was pulling at nothing in her simulator. She walked into a sunny, well-lit room where she saw the twenty-five other people enrolled in the same class. They were all fabulously good looking. It was only when someone would participate in a class discussion that she got a sense of who they really were.

"Hey…Eri?" A small, thin girl with bright pink hair and a pert nose smiled at her. "Is that you? Every time I see you, I think you look different."

"Hi, Sal." Eri sat at a small desk and a laptop appeared in front of her. "It's weird isn't it, since in reality we all look the same every day?"

Sal giggled. "Totally. I'm secretly really a six-foot-tall man!"

Eri stared at Sal, waiting for Sal to say she was joking. Sal opened her laptop and made no move to take back the statement.

Eri hated that she didn't really know what anyone looked like. All she knew for sure were people's voices, although you could buy software to alter that, too. Was Sal really a boy? "You can't trust anything," she murmured.

"Hmmm?" Sal asked, eyes on her computer.

"Nothing."

Eri typed notes as her history teacher talked, one simulated person staring at another. Boredom crept into her mind.

She raised her hand, forcing a pause in the lecture. "Will our tests all be multiple choice?"

Ms. Fritz paused, not used to being interrupted. "No."

The lecture continued.

Eri raised her hand again. "Is this material going to be on the Achievement Exam?"

"Yes, Eri. Is there anything else?"

Eri's faced burned with the use of her name. She shook her head, looking down to hide her embarrassment. The Achievement Exam was seven months away and would decide everyone's future career. Even though she had always done well in school, she knew her future at the factory or outside of town at the loading stations was pretty much guaranteed. Kids like her didn't end up in any other jobs.

Ms. Fritz continued, uninterrupted this time.

"Since the People's Constitution was written, replacing the original U.S. Constitution decades ago, the number of shooting deaths, acts of terrorism, kidnappings and rapes has dropped dramatically. People are safer than they have ever been. You students will be required to know the basic tenets and beliefs of the People's Constitution, as well as the basic political philosophies that existed prior to the rewriting of the Constitution and the structures put in place since. This includes a well-rounded understanding of the Patriot's War, out of which our constitution was written. Um, yes, Eri?" A small breath of irritation escaped Ms. Fritz's mouth.