Member-only story
The Victorious Few
Dystopian Fiction
The sickness swelled through the Communities like an infection through the bloodstream. Dalia watched her mother and brother suffer from the ailment — the thing dubbed “the stain” from the way dark bruises blossomed on the skin — until their bodies withered away, their bones sticking out through their flesh as if they were starving from the inside-out.
Only when Zeke came to their pod did she know there was no great return. He wore a makeshift mask, a long plastic tube snaking to a tank strapped to his back, and she knew without looking that he had one for her too.
“No,” she said, shaking her head even as someone else — someone unfamiliar, someone whose face was also obscured by the strange face covering — strode forward and pushed her back towards Zeke’s waiting arms. She tried to turn her head back to her family — the only ones left, no, no, no — but Zeke was already pulling her away, his hands like shackles around her wrists. “No, you can’t take me away! I need to stay with them!”
But Zeke turned his head only once to spit back, “If you stay, you’ll die with them.”
A sob slipped from her mouth, right before she took the offered filtration device and strapped it around her face. She felt so sick to her stomach right then that she almost gagged before putting on the mask that…
