A "Glide"

 

She didn't have time to think. When she had heard that her little brother, who was autistic, was going to be taken away the next day for disposal, she had to make up her mind.

It had been days since she and her little brother had been separated from their parents and big brother. The people taking care of her and her brother were pretty good people. It was a staging area for kids. It was where decisions were made about who was kept and who was to be disposed of.

She was in the bathroom when she heard two women, two guards, talking in low voices, "Tomorrow, I tell you, tomorrow, she told me."

- But, what do you mean, they weren't supposed to wait until next week?

- No, they want to move things forward. There's a leader who phoned. They're going to take the weakest, the ugly, the disabled.

-You mean the little one, the autistic one, they don't want to keep him? He's so cute!

The women walked away.

She had been listening. "The autistic one" was her brother. She left the bathroom without a sound, went to the dormitory where her brother was sleeping.

She woke him up, dressed him in the silence of a sleeping dormitory. When they were dressed, she went to the exit, opened the door. She heard the muffled voice of a kid calling her. She didn't answer and closed the door.

In the hallway, the lights were on. A camera was watching the alley. She moved forward without hesitation. It was three or four o'clock in the morning, the time when a guard could be less attentive.

The door to the barracks was closed, as she had expected. She opened the door to the broom closet next door. Once inside, she opened the skylight she had already spotted. It was the advantage of having had chores cleaning the premises, she had already entered this closet and had seen this window without bars.

So she opened the casement and stuck her head out. She and her little brother could pass the body and slide out. Fortunately, her little brother was completely asleep at this time. He let himself be led without reluctance, his eyes half closed.

They found themselves outside and walked silently through the park. This part of the camp was the least guarded. The fence was not electrified. They stood there not knowing what to do when the lights of a vehicle lit up the road in the distance. A vehicle was approaching. She forced her little brother to get down. They waited. The car was Mrs. Berten's, the camp director. The car approached and the gate opened. When the car passed, she took her little brother with her and got out.

They walked for hours until the first light of dawn. All around was the countryside. There was no light at all, just a few satellites streaking across the stars.

They cut through the fields, contrary to all logic, and reached the center of a remote village. The sign indicated the name "Manéglise". They quickly passed the town hall square. The houses were gutted. Only an elegant lamp post remained, miraculously in this Dantesque scene. It seemed to the older sister that she could hear voices further away. She was frightened.

It was improbable, there was nothing left. The last humans who had resisted the bacteriological attacks had died in the fighting or had been taken away by the globalist armies that were sweeping through the countryside.

Meeting someone under these circumstances could be frightening. She was even more stressed because her brother was exhausted. He was talking loudly, crying, asking for his Mom, calling her. He was in full crisis.

She managed to drag him away from the hamlet for several kilometers.

Finally, she decided to enter a blue and white house, on the right side of the road to Epouville. She dragged her little brother into the house. The doors were open. There were signs of a struggle, overturned furniture, a broken window.

After going around the house, they saw that there was no life. They collapsed on a bed, in an upstairs room that had not suffered any visible damage. 

They woke up a few hours later. They were hungry. They found cans of food and were able to satisfy their hunger. They quickly went around the house. They found a variety of objects that showed the many trips they had made. She thought about her father, who had been a traveler long before she was born. What was to become of a young girl and her autistic brother in this unknown countryside?

They continued their exploration, going into the garage. There was the body of a man, driving a big American SUV. The door was open, there were traces of blood on the seat. There had been a confrontation, the individual had died while trying to flee, at the wheel of his car. She noticed a pair of eyeglasses that had fallen to the ground. A broken lens suggested a last stand. The corpse had been a guy with glasses. She turned away from the scene.

Next to it was a long white motorcycle, a Harley-Davidson, weighing 375 kilos that was slumped to the ground. "A 2020 Glide Special!" She exclaimed.

Her older brother was a mechanical nut. He had told her passionately about this model. She remembered the numbers: "375 kilos, 1,800 cc, 2.42 meters long, a 19-inch front wheel..."

She looked at the huge V-Twin where the mysterious numbers were engraved: 114. A "Milwaukee-Eight," she recalled. Her older brother would have loved to be there. He would have straightened it out, fixed it, taken her and her autistic little brother to escape from there, to take the big sunny road she could see below.

But she was just an inexperienced young girl. She didn't have the strength to straighten the machine. She didn't know where she was, where her parents were, where that big brother she admired so much was. She cried. Her brother looked at her, indifferent.

What she didn't know yet was that she was only a few kilometers from the English Channel, a few kilometers from the Seine; that there was food to be had in deserted houses for miles around, that she could survive for years, in peace, in this beautiful forgotten countryside.

Little did she know that she and her brother were the first generation of a humanity that would survive a stillborn monstrous plan. A few years later, she and her brother would join other wonderful humans, who would live in peace in a world freed, temporarily, from its nightmares.