GREEN [complete]

CHAPTER 11: Sekam

Bek's truck hummed up the mountainous road, flowers bobbing with each bump and dip. She swerved around a wayward bush sprouting up through the cracks in the pavement. Ahl trotted behind her, Sekam settled comfortably on his back.

On one side, a rockslide rose up, up, up and on the other side, a sheer cliff face that plummeted a hundred feet down. Brush perked up through the crumbling rocks—most of it dead, neon green tainting their leaves and trickling down their their frayed bark. The cold intensified as they pushed on, and soon, snow was clinging to the rocks around them.

It had been four days since they left the blue house, and they'd only stopped for Bek to refill her insulin and fuel up her truck. Sekam overheard Bek's constant chatter and Dylan's heavy silence. Every now and then, they would offer a grumble that was lost under the noise of the the truck's engine. Sekam and Ahl were silent, focused only on the task in front of them.

A froth of snowflakes blew across the road, carried by the bitter winds that twisted around the mountain. Sekam hunkered down, twisting her fingers in Ahl's hair and hiding her cold-reddened face in the warmth of his shoulder hump. His breath came out in warm puffs and his fur bristled against the chill. She missed her fur more than ever.

They rounded another corner, and she saw it. The wall.

It rose so high it disappeared in blotted out the sky. The dark grey concrete was painted with neon graffiti; yellow and orange and blue and red. No green. Never green. It warped the landscape and encompassed what was surely the shining city in the mountains. Sekam couldn't see beyond it, but she was sure that the city was just as insidiously toxic as the rest of the world.

Bek pulled to a stop, urging her truck onto the shoulder of the road. She cracked open her door and hot air blasted out, along with an assortment of cans, wrappers, and empty water bottles. She slid out behind them with a plastic bag and closed the door, trapping Dylan in the inferno. Sekam was almost jealous.

As Bek collected the garbage that had fallen from her truck, Sekam hopped off Ahl. Her boots crunched through the snow. Veins of green were already growing through the fresh snow, and it oozed in the prints she left behind. The disease was spreading and she needed to stop it. As soon as possible.

Bek stood up and circled around her truck, unsnapping a tarp that was rolled up against the cab. She pulled it over her flowers, tenting it over a stake that jut up from the bed and fixing it on the tailgate. With her flowers safe, Bek turned back to them. "Are you ready for a hike?" She popped a cracker in her mouth and leaned back against her truck, crossing her arms under her chest. "Because"—cracker dust spewed from her lips and her cheeks flushed a deep burgundy—"Oops! I'm sorry!" She swallowed down the rest of her cracker with a bottle of water that she pulled from her jacket. "We have quite a hike ahead of us." She glanced over her shoulder at the snow-covered mountainside.

They were so close. Sekam's pulse leapt. Her ears flicked off some of the snow that tried to accumulate in her fur. "I'm ready," she said. "How is Dylan?"

Bek looked back at the lump huddled in the passenger's side of her truck. "They're doing good. Good but ... not good enough. Ahl, dear, you're okay carrying them, aren't you?" She looked up at Ahl, who'd wandered to stand over Sekam's shoulder.

"I can do that," Ahl told her.

"Wonderful news." Bek lingered long enough to make sure Ahl saw her grin before she circled around the truck and knocked on Dylan's window.

Dylan opened the door and slid out, shrinking into their hoodie. They closed the door behind them and looked up at the wall that surrounded the city in the mountains. "Containment," they breathed. "I didn't miss this."