short story

Anu was oblivious. Poor foolish girl. She still thought we were there for party tricks or a romantic rendezvous. It was amazing, amusing and just a tad bit intriguing how people could be so naïve despite all the stuff going down. The world had gone to shit—literally—and yet these peeps could sit around in their little glass houses and throw parties.
     "What… wait, that’s his private… what are you doing?" Anu bleated.
     Now that Emeka was sturdily picking the locks to the master bedroom the true reason behind our trip upstairs had become absolutely glaring. John turned to me with a bossy look that said, ‘keep your girl in check.’ Anu turned to me, eyes with fright that asked ‘what is going on?’
     John wasn’t my boss and Anu wasn’t my girl so I ignored them both. I’m of the opinion that if you want to say something, say it.
     A click sound made us know Emeka had succeeded. We hurried in and I immediately went for the closets. John and Emeka followed suit. Anu stood mid-room, watching with her mouth agape. I’m good at these things, knowing where stuff should be. There, stacked on the top shelf of the closet were face masks. About twenty of them.
     Twenty! That was a cache of gold right there! Air was no longer free—well, the kind of air needed to keep a human alive. The masks filtered the air coming in, making it semi-plausible for one to breathe outside. You’ll still die if you lingered too long, don’t get me wrong, but it gave you much more time and time has always been a rarity. The masks themselves were so expensive that only a select few could boast owning one. Yet, this man comfortably stashed twenty.
     My Uncle, Sam, would have admonished we take only a couple of them. Thought he was smart, Uncle Sam did. In the end, he wasn’t half as smart as he thought he was or he wouldn’t have ended up dead in the fourth region, would he? What’s the point of taking a few when you can take all? A theft is a theft. The owner would notice the missing ones regardless and if you’re caught, fourth region is still your destination.
     While I was brooding, John and Emeka shuffled the lot into my bag. Then we heard footsteps approach. Fortunately, the blessedly foolish owner of this house had a balcony. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what for. We hurried there, opened the balcony door and stepped outside.
     I began the countdown.
     75, 74, 73…
     No matter how many times you experienced it, you could never get used to the feeling. The hot, rancid, dusty air attacking every exposed part of you, the piercing heat tearing at your skin giving you the—quite true—impression that your life was steadily being seeped away.
     "Why are we doing this? Why are we stealing from him?" Anu whispered to me, surprising me and everyone else. These rich kids were truly daft. Why would you want to have a conversation outside?
     She made to move and then John turned to her with an icy glare. "Can you fly?" he asked through gritted teeth.
     "What?"
     "Can.You.Fly?"
     She gulped and stared down the balcony. Somewhere below, a dog barked. Somewhere far below.
     "No," she replied.
     "Then shut up."
     And she did.
     Turned out it was the owner of the bedroom who had walked in and interrupted our heist. Turned out he wasn’t too drunk to notice a hastily closed closet or balcony door. Turned out he had an admirably loud voice. A voice that he raised in alarm. That stupid dog barked again.
     I flung to the other side of the railing before he even finished the first word. Emeka and John followed suit. You didn’t survive in these times as a street kid without being lithe. Without much thoughts, I jumped from the balcony to a nearby window and then another lower balcony. Anu was no street kid. She followed us over the first railing out of sheer terror.
     Not a good thing, terror is, not good at all. She swung aiming for the window and missed completely. With a scream not half as loud as the said bedroom owner, she fell. Turned out she truly couldn’t fly.
     We didn’t look down. We didn’t have the time or luxury for that. Better that she fell and died that way than that she stayed too long outside or got caught.
     53,52,51…
     75 seconds was all we had. It was all anyone had outside—except you had face masks. Heard you could survive three minutes with those. 75 seconds outside would kill a man, but actually if you did spend 60seconds, you were as good as gone with most of your system functions shutting down. The last 15 seconds were for the eulogy. Our parents and their parents failed us. Despite warnings about the ozone depleting, about the atmosphere getting ruined and radical climate changes, they kept on doing what they were doing. The scientists warned, though I often wondered if it weren’t the same scientists who created machines that accelerated the disaster. Slowly and steadily, Carbon dioxide took over the majority vote, air pollution reached an all-time high, and the atmosphere deteriorated. Eventually, the world went to shit. It took a full decade to somehow stabilize the anarchy that followed. Scientists found a way of stabilizing the air in enclosed spaces, hence, safe zones were created for the masses while the rich insulated their area space, their homes and cars etc. Face masks came as an afterthought.
     42, 41, 40…
     It might have been wiser to put on the face masks we just stole, but they were in the bag somewhere with John and time was of the very essence. All I had to do was make it to Bode’s camp.
     A really truly crazy fellow, Bode was. I mean, everyone in the world had gone crazy at that point and the very few that managed to retain their sanity were crazy as well cos if everyone is crazy then crazy is normal and normal is crazy. But Bode was a higher level of crazy. The madman had declared war on all establishments. He would most likely be the death of us all. As fate would have it, he controlled the third region in my city which was the only place street kids like us could safely run into.
     Every surviving city had 4 regions or structures. Region 1 was the haven of the extravagantly wealthy. Covered walkways, connected buildings, house parties… freaking balconies—those were all Region 1 attributes. Usually, access there was highly restricted. It had taken me and the boys five solid months of real Hollywood-type-spywork (which included me seducing Anu) and Bode pulling whatever strings he held to get us the invitation to that Governor’s party.
     The second region was for the average, legal, law abiding folks like Government and company workers and what not. Basically, the everyday regular people. Region 2 comprised of safe haven halls and mass shelter homes.
     Region three was nearly equivalent to region 2. The only difference being that the government stayed clear of them. Third regions were controlled by people like Bode and housed people like me. It wasn’t all that bad there, some people even found legitimate ways of working for survival. The biggest problem with our city’s third region was Bode. A thousand lives depending on the whims of a madman is never good. No, it never is.
     Fourth region was literally everywhere that wasn’t any of the other regions. The in-betweens. That’s where and how the law punished anyone adjudged of a crime. It was really simple, really. Drop them outside the safe havens, strip them of their passes and let them be. Without a pass, no one was letting you in to Region 2 and Region 3 was usually pretty far. If you could successfully make it to a third region and successfully convince whoever was in charge there that you had some value—which without a second region pass, you actually didn’t—than congrats, you survived. Otherwise, being stranded outside a safe haven was as good a death sentence as any.
     37, 36, 35
     The headaches and muscle twitches started.
     Anyone who had lingered outside as regularly as I had was used to those warning symptoms. It was your body basically screaming ‘System Error’. Somewhere behind me I heard Emeka scream. He had either been killed or caught—which was the same thing. I changed direction knowing my chasers would guess my intended destination and lay an ambush, knowing my chasers would have face masks and thus much more time than me.
     Another scream somewhere to my left informed me that John too was gone. Maybe Uncle Sam was right after all. We probably shouldn’t have tried robbing the damn governor’s house at all. We shouldn’t have taken all the face masks either. But what was done was done, worrying about that wasn’t going to change much.
     My change in trajectory, and probably the abduction of John, had helped me successfully lose my pursuers. As a street kid, I knew all the safe havens’ locations. There was one two blocks away. So, with a parched throat, drumming head, weakened legs and screaming lungs, I headed there.
     28, 27, 26…
     It’s the little unseen things that cause the most damage. A little ice sunk titanic, a little stone killed Goliath, a little wine killed Alexander the Great, a little apple betrayed Adam. A little unseen stone tripped me, bending my ankle in a weird direction and slamming me heavily on the floor.
     17, 16, 15…
     I groaned through the pain, tried to stand up and found out I could barely move. I could barely see for that matter. My eyes were clouded and it felt like all the blood in my body had coagulated in my head.
     11, 10, 9…
     I once knew a woman who believed vehemently in prayers. I was neither here nor there about the whole divinity issue. If there was a God, why didn’t he help out? Or maybe he was letting us pay for our own mistakes. I closed my eyes then. Well, if I’m being honest they closed of their own accord, too tired of being stung by the foul air. But since it was closed, I couldn’t think of a better moment to pray.
     "Dear God…"
     5, 4, 3…
     "…see you soon."