To Beginning (Part 1) — We made it. Mara felt warm tears of relief trickle down her cheeks. There sat the safehouse, barely more than a wood shack under the crown of an enormous oak. But fear scorched away Mara’s tears of relief. Voices were coming from the dimly-lit shack. The past two safehouses had…

The chimney [sic] by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash Why? What earned us this much violence? A plume of fire burst through the black smoke at Mara’s left elbow. Close. Too close. Keep running, Mara. She and Ian had made it to two safehouses so far. But each time they’d arrived at one, flames had…

Mara’s feet pounded the ground in an uneven drum beat. Ba-thump. Ba-thud-thum-thump. Thud-thud. She staggered downhill, over the pock-marked earth that had once been covered in grass. The first of the fires had killed anything green days ago. Another hacking cough rattled her body. The collar of her shirt did nothing to block out the…