Welcome back to my post-post-apocalyptic novel, Ada’s Children, and thanks for reading! If you’re new to the story, please don’t be surprised that it’s paywalled. The Prologue and first three chapters are free, and you can start reading them here. The previous chapter, “The Rendezvous,” here.
The last time we were with Carol, she and Michael were fighting a losing battle against the creation of racial homelands in the southern U.S. Now she makes one last attempt to keep her only friends in the world from joining the mass exodus southwards.
MAY 2041
Michael opened the apartment door. He looked haggard, his arm in an inflatable cast. Carol looked past him to the packed suitcases in the hall. “This is it, then?”
“Get inside before someone sees you.” He checked up and down the street as she stepped through the doorway.
Shondra was in the living room. The place looked empty without their pictures and keepsakes on the shelves, their framed certificates and awards on the walls. Shondra looked empty somehow, too; thinner, but also hollowed out, a vacant look in her eyes. She’d looked that way even before the events in the Zone. The university had finally let her go the month before, unwilling to lose its federal funding.
Carol went to her and hugged her for far longer than was comfortable. “I’m not letting you go.”
“What do you want us to do?” Michael demanded.
“I’ve got my car packed.”
“And where would we go?”
“They’re still resisting in Chicago.”
“Girl, do you want to die? You know what happened in the Zone after we left. And how would we get there? It’s four hundred miles. What are you going to do, put us in the trunk?”
“If I have to.”
“And then you’re going to just drive on down to the South Side? ‘Excuse me, officer, I have to get around your barricade to join the revolution. Please don’t search my car.’ That’s assuming the bot will take you that close.”
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