New America
Emma Synder
University of Mary Washington
Emma Synder
University of Mary Washington
"And the greatest phrase, I think, in the history of politics is on all of those red and white hats that I see out there: 'Make America Great Again.'"
— President Donald Trump
“I’m going to pass out. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!”
I pitch forward on the bed with a choked, shuddering gasp. Lendra pushes me back into the pillows, pinning me there in my own sweat. Nataniel has my naked legs spread wide, elbows propping them apart so he can see better. The whole bedroom reeks of vodka. I don’t remember who was drinking. In the spirit of honesty, it was probably Lendra. Booze is outlawed in the New America, but she’s never given a shit about the rules.
“I can see its head,” Nataniel tells me, curls kinked with sweat. I grasp at air until Lendra’s hand finds mine. Our fingers intertwine, however unwillingly on her end, and I squeeze with all my might as another contraction ripples through my body. I bite my tongue ‘til it bleeds to keep from crying out again. The blood mixes with the mounting pressure in my body, forcing me to gag. I can’t retch anything out besides hot, red spit.
Lendra pulls away from me, lips contorted into a grimace. A swarm of warm, arid air bleeds into the empty space she leaves behind. Nataniel is still between my legs, trying to navigate my ass off the end of mattress as Lendra takes the birthing book off the bedside table. A new contraction rips through my body as she flips through the pages, and I lurch forward with a groan.
“Shut up, goddamnit,” Lendra hisses, glancing up from her book and peering around the curtain that hides the bedroom window from view. The fabric flares in her wake. “We’ll be lucky if the neighbors don’t call the guards. I’m not about to get arrested because of your fucking illegitimate ba—”
“Lendra, enough!” Nataniel snaps. I feel his hands pressing into my thighs, thighs that lost the energy to support themselves hours ago. “I can see the baby’s head and I need you to tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do next.”
Lendra rolls her eyes so far back in her head that her lashes start to flutter. Then she’s back to business, and I know it’s only because Nataniel asked her to. If he weren’t here, she’d have ditched my ass at the first contraction.
“The book says if you can see the baby’s head, that means it’s almost here.” The pain is so fucking intense, I can barely hear her as she says: “Caeda needs to push.”
“I’m going—” I begin, and that’s when Nataniel’s face starts to swim in my line of vision. He pushes against my wavering legs to hold them apart. Any residual strength is draining out of me like I’m a fucking colander. Someone is calling my name, but it’s not Lendra’s high-pitched squeak or Nataniel’s jolly grumble. It’s a voice that I would know anywhere, a voice that grows louder the further that as I slip into darkness.
Asleep, unconscious, or dead; I’m not particularly sure. The only thing I know for certain is that when I open my eyes, I’m standing in an all-too familiar hospital room. My womb is empty and a government-issued dress is pressed flat against my stomach. My hair is cropped short by my ears, a hairstyle I haven’t donned since the Vetting. The only person with me is sitting on the hospital bed, shoulders slumped and breathing labored as the monitor beeps away beside him.
Davrok.
“Caeda?” Davrok asks, tilting his head. His skin is shimmering like how glitter looks in glue once it’s dried, sparkles stuck in all the wrong places. He always looks like this when I’m dreaming, and I’ve dreamed of him every fucking night since he died.
“Caeda, honey. Talk to me.”
I don’t say anything. Agony sears my chest, flaring and hot. I’ve lived through this last moment with him a thousand times, and the ending never changes. It had crept up on us, and we’d been pretending it was fine for so long. The rapid weight loss, the fevers and night chills, the bruises spread up and down his legs from innocent contact with the world around him—all of it was textbook shit for a much bigger problem. We should’ve known better. I should’ve taken him in sooner. Maybe they could’ve done something, back before all this started. Given him cancer treatments. Brought him back to life.
But not here.
Not in New America.
“I don’t blame you for it,” he says. The skin on his arms looks thin as paper. I can see the blue in every one of his veins. “I don’t blame you, baby. I know we had to come here—the cut wouldn’t have stopped bleeding.”
He chuckles now, laughter fading into coughs. Once he recovers, he says: “Should’ve been more careful with the onions.”
When the doctor told us it was the leukemia, they said he needed to be exterminated like they were telling me he had a cold. It wasn’t fucking fair. He had met every single requirement to live in New America. We’d been Vetted at the same time as everybody else, passed every IQ standard, BMI test, genetic evaluation, and standardized exam they threw our way. We were almost perfect enough to live together in a new nation with all the other perfect people.
Except for the fucking cancer.
“Baby, you can talk to me.” Davrok says, kind as ever. “I just need you to promise me that you won’t let them take you, too. That no matter what, you’ll live the way they want you to and stay alive. I need you to do that for me. I need you to be strong. Can you do that for me?”
I can’t hold his gaze. Every time I look at him, I remember how it felt to fall in love with somebody and have it taken away. God, he didn’t even know I was pregnant. I didn’t, either. Not at the time. I took the test a week after the funeral. If he had known, what would he have done?
“Can you, love?” he whispers.
I’m sinking down, back pressed flat against the wall. When the guards come in their storm of gray vests and badges, I’m rocking back and forth on the floor like a schizo. They pin him down, but they wouldn’t have needed to. He reaches out one arm, but I look away like a motherfucking coward. I’m not strong enough to be there for him when he dies. Not when it really happened, and not in this dream.
My ass is flat against the linoleum, and that’s where it stays when they euthanize him. I can’t see what happens, but I hear the monitor start blaring. It cries warning after warning as Davrok’s heart rate goes flat, fluorescent hospital lights flickering like in a horror movie before blinking out all the way.
When they come back on, I’m back in my own bed under a quilt I didn’t know we had. It’s still dark outside, as far as I can tell. The pungent stench of vodka remains, and I’m craving some like never before.
Residual pain throbs through my hips and back with pulsing, inconsistent anger. I feel exhaustion sinking through my body, but the bed doesn’t provide much relief. The pillows are still inconveniently soaked with sweat. Nearby, Nataniel is sitting on the rug with a bundle cradled in his arms.
“You awake?” he whispers. The light from the bedside table is the only thing turned on, and its glow is fleeting. Nataniel’s form is inconsistent, illuminated by the flashes one moment and shadowed the next.
“The guards are at the door,” Nataniel continues, not waiting for my reply. “Lendra’s taking care of it. I told her to tell them the story about you and me, the wedding at the courthouse—in case they get suspicious. She brought the marriage certificate with her.”
“I think Lendra hates the plan,” I say, managing to shift over onto my side. The pillows have been thoroughly flattened by my body, no longer providing any semblance of comfort. “Having the two of you move in here for the pregnancy, finding a house by the border, planning the escape, you marrying me—”
“I wanted to help.” Nat flashes me a smile. “And Lendra knows how I feel about her. She’s fully aware it’s a legal thing, to protect you and the baby. Once we’re in Agua Prieta, I’m going to marry her. You and I have been friends for too fucking long for me to strand you in this situation, no matter what Lendra wants.”
He pauses.
“And besides—Davrok would’ve wanted me to.”
I nod, swallowing the thick, salty lump in my throat.
“And Caeda—the baby is fine. He’s absolutely healthy.”
“He?” I say, almost smiling. I can’t quite shape my face the right way, cheeks straining from the effort. A half-smile is the best I can do.
“Yeah, he. When you fainted, he was almost all the way out. Only took a couple tugs on my part. Have you decided a name?”
Before I have the chance to answer, Lendra bursts through the door. Her face is flushed like she’s been out in the cold—as if Arizona could ever be cold. Hair is fraying from her ponytail, black strings dangling in front of her button eyes.
“The guards are onto us,” she says. “We need to get to the border before it’s too fucking late.”
I would never suggest to anyone to go on any sort of run after shooting a small human out of your vagina. Doubly so if you passed out while doing giving birth. Nataniel does his best to support me, and Lendra takes the baby so I can focus on moving. I haven’t had the luxury to hold my son yet, or to name him. My only sense of relief comes from knowing that once we’re over the border, I’ll never have to let him go again.
Out the back door, through the yard, over the fence, left at the gravel, fork right, head straight. I’ve walked this route a dozen times with Nataniel and Lendra before I was heavily pregnant, to memorize how it felt at different times of the day. Now, the muted darkness of the unholy morning hour covers our tracks. The Arizona grassland switches back to desert every few steps, grass blending into sand and then back again as we run.
It’s not long before the Mexican border is visible in the distance. The fence that separates it from American soil is still virtually untouched from before. It’s pieced together from railroad tracks welded at the seams. Somewhere, huge iron walls are being processed in a factory to replace this barrier. They’re already strung along the whole Canadian border, making passage across impossible. But right now, this fence is all that separates us from sweet freedom. It’ll be easy enough to scale, but there’s nothing to hide behind for miles except squat patches of brush. If the guards catch sight of us before dawn, we’re royally fucked.
“Caeda.” Lendra freezes in her tracks, my baby still clutched to her chest. “Take the kid—hurry.” My son gets passed from her arms to mine like contraband, the baby blanket shielding his face from view. The Arizona sky is growing paler by the minute, pastel colors of dawn staining the horizon line. I start walking forward, but Lendra doesn’t budge.
“We need to keep going,” Nataniel says. His arm has been around me this whole time, supporting a good portion of my weight. He leaves me to balance on my own now, heading to Lendra’s side. “We can talk more once we’re over the border, and we’re almost there.”
“We’re not going to the motherfucking border.” Lendra hisses, face growing red. She grabs Nataniel’s hand, trapping his fingers between her own. “The guards will be here any minute. You won’t make it far.”
I open my mouth to ask her why, to help me to understand what she’s done, but I can’t speak. The words get caught in my throat, jagged and jumbled, coming out in coughs rather than in sentences. I’m holding my son so tightly against my chest, he’s beginning to squirm from the pressure.
“It’s for your own good, Caeda,” she tells me, leeching onto Nataniel’s arm. He tries to shake her off, but she’s having none of it. “They would’ve tracked you into Mexico, killed you and your baby at gunpoint. This way, you die and I get my happy ending. Me and Nat. Just us. That’s how it was supposed to be, before you came into our lives and fucked everything up.”
“It’s not—” I start, but then the guards come. Beefy black vehicles are barreling toward us through the grassland, tires whirring through the brief stretches of sand. Their blue and red sirens pivot from their place on the roof of every car.
My mind flips through options like I’m stuck in a stop-motion movie. I could run. I could get to the barrier, jump over it, duck into the bushes, and wait for this all to be over. But no, I couldn’t. I would end up getting me and my son shot before we touched Mexican soil, at the rate the guards are approaching.
I glance at Nataniel, because he knows all the answers. He’s the one who thought of this plan, the one who suggested I marry him to keep my baby safe. He just stares back at me blankly, dumfounded as the guards grow closer. Lendra is standing with him, the corner of her lips curling into a smile.
Then, I choose to run.
I’ve never found myself so quickly out of breath. By the time I reach the border fence on the last shred of good luck I’ve got, my lungs are burning. My baby is crying, his wails trembling more than my body is, in spite of the wicked adrenaline pulsing through me.
I just need you to promise me that you won’t let them take you, too.
The first gunshots ring out into the Arizona air. I whip around, halfway over the fence as Nataniel falls to his knees. Lendra is screaming, betrayed.
I don’t look back again.
My son’s shrieking as I pull my leg over to the other side of the fence, narrowly managing to keep my jeans from snagging on the rail. More gunshots. Lendra is losing her shit. Nataniel’s yelling, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. The moment my sneakers touch the other side, a shudder runs through my body.
And that’s when the first bullet hits my shoulder.
That no matter what, you’ll live the way they want you to and stay alive.
There’s no pain at first. Not until I’m stumbling through the brush and the blood tracing its way down my arm grounds me in the reality of the situation. I shift my son to the other arm, wincing as the wound begins to burn from the inside out. Bullets pelt the soil like rain. Another one nicks my ear. The pain comes faster than the last time. Blood trickles down my neck, staining my baby’s blanket.
I need you to do that for me.
When the third and fourth bullets hit home, I haven’t made it far enough. Maybe twenty feet past the border line. This might not even count as Mexico. The adrenaline is already fading, euphoria bleeding out of me. My gunshot wounds feel like cigarette burns. They throb and pulse as I fall to my knees.
I need you to be strong.
Once I land, it sounds like someone is talking to me. I think for a moment that maybe it’s Davrok, come to welcome me home. Even worse, the guards catching up to me, commanding my hands into the air. Either way, it’s over. It’s finally fucking over.
But no. Not yet.
The voice is from a young woman buried in the brush, barely visible between the brambles. She has chestnut hair that would be pretty if it weren’t so matted. By her side is a little boy, scarcely seven years old.
“Take him,” I say, spitting out blood as I clamber forward on my knees. “Please.”
She won’t. Why would she? I must look a mess. Blood is everywhere, dripping, oozing, clotting. It’s all over my son—I’m surprised he isn’t crying. But the woman doesn’t hesitate, reaching her arms through the brambles.
“His name is Davrok,” I say, kissing my son’s forehead. I can’t let myself cry now. I’m too close to the goddamn end. I pass Davrok to the woman, holding the brush apart until he’s in her arms.
“I’ll go distract the guards—stay here until it’s over. Keep him safe for me,” I say.
Can you do that?
She nods, holding Davrok against her chest in the right way, supporting the back of his head and letting his little head rest in the crook of her neck. Her own son is staring at me, brown eyes wide as they can go.
Can you, love?
With great effort, I bring myself to my feet. My lungs shudder for every breath. Knowing they’re my last makes them taste sweeter, tickle longer in my throat. The guards are standing on the other side of the border, guns aimed for me through the gaps in the rail.
“Hey, fuckers!” I shout, waving my arms as I stumble away from the brush, away from my son, the woman, and her child. My bruised body lurches toward Nataniel and Lendra, toward my husband, toward all the others who were lost to New America.
“Look over here!” I scream.
They’re looking, alright.
And then, they’re shooting.
— President Donald Trump
“I’m going to pass out. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!”
I pitch forward on the bed with a choked, shuddering gasp. Lendra pushes me back into the pillows, pinning me there in my own sweat. Nataniel has my naked legs spread wide, elbows propping them apart so he can see better. The whole bedroom reeks of vodka. I don’t remember who was drinking. In the spirit of honesty, it was probably Lendra. Booze is outlawed in the New America, but she’s never given a shit about the rules.
“I can see its head,” Nataniel tells me, curls kinked with sweat. I grasp at air until Lendra’s hand finds mine. Our fingers intertwine, however unwillingly on her end, and I squeeze with all my might as another contraction ripples through my body. I bite my tongue ‘til it bleeds to keep from crying out again. The blood mixes with the mounting pressure in my body, forcing me to gag. I can’t retch anything out besides hot, red spit.
Lendra pulls away from me, lips contorted into a grimace. A swarm of warm, arid air bleeds into the empty space she leaves behind. Nataniel is still between my legs, trying to navigate my ass off the end of mattress as Lendra takes the birthing book off the bedside table. A new contraction rips through my body as she flips through the pages, and I lurch forward with a groan.
“Shut up, goddamnit,” Lendra hisses, glancing up from her book and peering around the curtain that hides the bedroom window from view. The fabric flares in her wake. “We’ll be lucky if the neighbors don’t call the guards. I’m not about to get arrested because of your fucking illegitimate ba—”
“Lendra, enough!” Nataniel snaps. I feel his hands pressing into my thighs, thighs that lost the energy to support themselves hours ago. “I can see the baby’s head and I need you to tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do next.”
Lendra rolls her eyes so far back in her head that her lashes start to flutter. Then she’s back to business, and I know it’s only because Nataniel asked her to. If he weren’t here, she’d have ditched my ass at the first contraction.
“The book says if you can see the baby’s head, that means it’s almost here.” The pain is so fucking intense, I can barely hear her as she says: “Caeda needs to push.”
“I’m going—” I begin, and that’s when Nataniel’s face starts to swim in my line of vision. He pushes against my wavering legs to hold them apart. Any residual strength is draining out of me like I’m a fucking colander. Someone is calling my name, but it’s not Lendra’s high-pitched squeak or Nataniel’s jolly grumble. It’s a voice that I would know anywhere, a voice that grows louder the further that as I slip into darkness.
Asleep, unconscious, or dead; I’m not particularly sure. The only thing I know for certain is that when I open my eyes, I’m standing in an all-too familiar hospital room. My womb is empty and a government-issued dress is pressed flat against my stomach. My hair is cropped short by my ears, a hairstyle I haven’t donned since the Vetting. The only person with me is sitting on the hospital bed, shoulders slumped and breathing labored as the monitor beeps away beside him.
Davrok.
“Caeda?” Davrok asks, tilting his head. His skin is shimmering like how glitter looks in glue once it’s dried, sparkles stuck in all the wrong places. He always looks like this when I’m dreaming, and I’ve dreamed of him every fucking night since he died.
“Caeda, honey. Talk to me.”
I don’t say anything. Agony sears my chest, flaring and hot. I’ve lived through this last moment with him a thousand times, and the ending never changes. It had crept up on us, and we’d been pretending it was fine for so long. The rapid weight loss, the fevers and night chills, the bruises spread up and down his legs from innocent contact with the world around him—all of it was textbook shit for a much bigger problem. We should’ve known better. I should’ve taken him in sooner. Maybe they could’ve done something, back before all this started. Given him cancer treatments. Brought him back to life.
But not here.
Not in New America.
“I don’t blame you for it,” he says. The skin on his arms looks thin as paper. I can see the blue in every one of his veins. “I don’t blame you, baby. I know we had to come here—the cut wouldn’t have stopped bleeding.”
He chuckles now, laughter fading into coughs. Once he recovers, he says: “Should’ve been more careful with the onions.”
When the doctor told us it was the leukemia, they said he needed to be exterminated like they were telling me he had a cold. It wasn’t fucking fair. He had met every single requirement to live in New America. We’d been Vetted at the same time as everybody else, passed every IQ standard, BMI test, genetic evaluation, and standardized exam they threw our way. We were almost perfect enough to live together in a new nation with all the other perfect people.
Except for the fucking cancer.
“Baby, you can talk to me.” Davrok says, kind as ever. “I just need you to promise me that you won’t let them take you, too. That no matter what, you’ll live the way they want you to and stay alive. I need you to do that for me. I need you to be strong. Can you do that for me?”
I can’t hold his gaze. Every time I look at him, I remember how it felt to fall in love with somebody and have it taken away. God, he didn’t even know I was pregnant. I didn’t, either. Not at the time. I took the test a week after the funeral. If he had known, what would he have done?
“Can you, love?” he whispers.
I’m sinking down, back pressed flat against the wall. When the guards come in their storm of gray vests and badges, I’m rocking back and forth on the floor like a schizo. They pin him down, but they wouldn’t have needed to. He reaches out one arm, but I look away like a motherfucking coward. I’m not strong enough to be there for him when he dies. Not when it really happened, and not in this dream.
My ass is flat against the linoleum, and that’s where it stays when they euthanize him. I can’t see what happens, but I hear the monitor start blaring. It cries warning after warning as Davrok’s heart rate goes flat, fluorescent hospital lights flickering like in a horror movie before blinking out all the way.
When they come back on, I’m back in my own bed under a quilt I didn’t know we had. It’s still dark outside, as far as I can tell. The pungent stench of vodka remains, and I’m craving some like never before.
Residual pain throbs through my hips and back with pulsing, inconsistent anger. I feel exhaustion sinking through my body, but the bed doesn’t provide much relief. The pillows are still inconveniently soaked with sweat. Nearby, Nataniel is sitting on the rug with a bundle cradled in his arms.
“You awake?” he whispers. The light from the bedside table is the only thing turned on, and its glow is fleeting. Nataniel’s form is inconsistent, illuminated by the flashes one moment and shadowed the next.
“The guards are at the door,” Nataniel continues, not waiting for my reply. “Lendra’s taking care of it. I told her to tell them the story about you and me, the wedding at the courthouse—in case they get suspicious. She brought the marriage certificate with her.”
“I think Lendra hates the plan,” I say, managing to shift over onto my side. The pillows have been thoroughly flattened by my body, no longer providing any semblance of comfort. “Having the two of you move in here for the pregnancy, finding a house by the border, planning the escape, you marrying me—”
“I wanted to help.” Nat flashes me a smile. “And Lendra knows how I feel about her. She’s fully aware it’s a legal thing, to protect you and the baby. Once we’re in Agua Prieta, I’m going to marry her. You and I have been friends for too fucking long for me to strand you in this situation, no matter what Lendra wants.”
He pauses.
“And besides—Davrok would’ve wanted me to.”
I nod, swallowing the thick, salty lump in my throat.
“And Caeda—the baby is fine. He’s absolutely healthy.”
“He?” I say, almost smiling. I can’t quite shape my face the right way, cheeks straining from the effort. A half-smile is the best I can do.
“Yeah, he. When you fainted, he was almost all the way out. Only took a couple tugs on my part. Have you decided a name?”
Before I have the chance to answer, Lendra bursts through the door. Her face is flushed like she’s been out in the cold—as if Arizona could ever be cold. Hair is fraying from her ponytail, black strings dangling in front of her button eyes.
“The guards are onto us,” she says. “We need to get to the border before it’s too fucking late.”
I would never suggest to anyone to go on any sort of run after shooting a small human out of your vagina. Doubly so if you passed out while doing giving birth. Nataniel does his best to support me, and Lendra takes the baby so I can focus on moving. I haven’t had the luxury to hold my son yet, or to name him. My only sense of relief comes from knowing that once we’re over the border, I’ll never have to let him go again.
Out the back door, through the yard, over the fence, left at the gravel, fork right, head straight. I’ve walked this route a dozen times with Nataniel and Lendra before I was heavily pregnant, to memorize how it felt at different times of the day. Now, the muted darkness of the unholy morning hour covers our tracks. The Arizona grassland switches back to desert every few steps, grass blending into sand and then back again as we run.
It’s not long before the Mexican border is visible in the distance. The fence that separates it from American soil is still virtually untouched from before. It’s pieced together from railroad tracks welded at the seams. Somewhere, huge iron walls are being processed in a factory to replace this barrier. They’re already strung along the whole Canadian border, making passage across impossible. But right now, this fence is all that separates us from sweet freedom. It’ll be easy enough to scale, but there’s nothing to hide behind for miles except squat patches of brush. If the guards catch sight of us before dawn, we’re royally fucked.
“Caeda.” Lendra freezes in her tracks, my baby still clutched to her chest. “Take the kid—hurry.” My son gets passed from her arms to mine like contraband, the baby blanket shielding his face from view. The Arizona sky is growing paler by the minute, pastel colors of dawn staining the horizon line. I start walking forward, but Lendra doesn’t budge.
“We need to keep going,” Nataniel says. His arm has been around me this whole time, supporting a good portion of my weight. He leaves me to balance on my own now, heading to Lendra’s side. “We can talk more once we’re over the border, and we’re almost there.”
“We’re not going to the motherfucking border.” Lendra hisses, face growing red. She grabs Nataniel’s hand, trapping his fingers between her own. “The guards will be here any minute. You won’t make it far.”
I open my mouth to ask her why, to help me to understand what she’s done, but I can’t speak. The words get caught in my throat, jagged and jumbled, coming out in coughs rather than in sentences. I’m holding my son so tightly against my chest, he’s beginning to squirm from the pressure.
“It’s for your own good, Caeda,” she tells me, leeching onto Nataniel’s arm. He tries to shake her off, but she’s having none of it. “They would’ve tracked you into Mexico, killed you and your baby at gunpoint. This way, you die and I get my happy ending. Me and Nat. Just us. That’s how it was supposed to be, before you came into our lives and fucked everything up.”
“It’s not—” I start, but then the guards come. Beefy black vehicles are barreling toward us through the grassland, tires whirring through the brief stretches of sand. Their blue and red sirens pivot from their place on the roof of every car.
My mind flips through options like I’m stuck in a stop-motion movie. I could run. I could get to the barrier, jump over it, duck into the bushes, and wait for this all to be over. But no, I couldn’t. I would end up getting me and my son shot before we touched Mexican soil, at the rate the guards are approaching.
I glance at Nataniel, because he knows all the answers. He’s the one who thought of this plan, the one who suggested I marry him to keep my baby safe. He just stares back at me blankly, dumfounded as the guards grow closer. Lendra is standing with him, the corner of her lips curling into a smile.
Then, I choose to run.
I’ve never found myself so quickly out of breath. By the time I reach the border fence on the last shred of good luck I’ve got, my lungs are burning. My baby is crying, his wails trembling more than my body is, in spite of the wicked adrenaline pulsing through me.
I just need you to promise me that you won’t let them take you, too.
The first gunshots ring out into the Arizona air. I whip around, halfway over the fence as Nataniel falls to his knees. Lendra is screaming, betrayed.
I don’t look back again.
My son’s shrieking as I pull my leg over to the other side of the fence, narrowly managing to keep my jeans from snagging on the rail. More gunshots. Lendra is losing her shit. Nataniel’s yelling, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. The moment my sneakers touch the other side, a shudder runs through my body.
And that’s when the first bullet hits my shoulder.
That no matter what, you’ll live the way they want you to and stay alive.
There’s no pain at first. Not until I’m stumbling through the brush and the blood tracing its way down my arm grounds me in the reality of the situation. I shift my son to the other arm, wincing as the wound begins to burn from the inside out. Bullets pelt the soil like rain. Another one nicks my ear. The pain comes faster than the last time. Blood trickles down my neck, staining my baby’s blanket.
I need you to do that for me.
When the third and fourth bullets hit home, I haven’t made it far enough. Maybe twenty feet past the border line. This might not even count as Mexico. The adrenaline is already fading, euphoria bleeding out of me. My gunshot wounds feel like cigarette burns. They throb and pulse as I fall to my knees.
I need you to be strong.
Once I land, it sounds like someone is talking to me. I think for a moment that maybe it’s Davrok, come to welcome me home. Even worse, the guards catching up to me, commanding my hands into the air. Either way, it’s over. It’s finally fucking over.
But no. Not yet.
The voice is from a young woman buried in the brush, barely visible between the brambles. She has chestnut hair that would be pretty if it weren’t so matted. By her side is a little boy, scarcely seven years old.
“Take him,” I say, spitting out blood as I clamber forward on my knees. “Please.”
She won’t. Why would she? I must look a mess. Blood is everywhere, dripping, oozing, clotting. It’s all over my son—I’m surprised he isn’t crying. But the woman doesn’t hesitate, reaching her arms through the brambles.
“His name is Davrok,” I say, kissing my son’s forehead. I can’t let myself cry now. I’m too close to the goddamn end. I pass Davrok to the woman, holding the brush apart until he’s in her arms.
“I’ll go distract the guards—stay here until it’s over. Keep him safe for me,” I say.
Can you do that?
She nods, holding Davrok against her chest in the right way, supporting the back of his head and letting his little head rest in the crook of her neck. Her own son is staring at me, brown eyes wide as they can go.
Can you, love?
With great effort, I bring myself to my feet. My lungs shudder for every breath. Knowing they’re my last makes them taste sweeter, tickle longer in my throat. The guards are standing on the other side of the border, guns aimed for me through the gaps in the rail.
“Hey, fuckers!” I shout, waving my arms as I stumble away from the brush, away from my son, the woman, and her child. My bruised body lurches toward Nataniel and Lendra, toward my husband, toward all the others who were lost to New America.
“Look over here!” I scream.
They’re looking, alright.
And then, they’re shooting.
Emma Snyder is a senior at the University of Mary Washington, majoring in both Psychology and Creative Writing with a minor in Digital Studies. Her writing focuses on mental illness, educating the public about the stigma and other difficulties those with these disorders face. Her work can be found in the Spring 2020 issue of Furrow Magazine, and she has an upcoming publication with The Abstract Elephant Magazine in Spring 2021.