The City Of Death

Chapter Thirteen- Macy

For the third time in a week, I wake to my tent falling down on me. 

With a curse loud enough to wake the dead, I fight my way out of the heavy fabric of the tent and the tarp that covered it. It's suffocating, really, and I take a deep breath of cool morning air when I finally get out from under it. On my second day in the camp, another large storm came through, the second since I've been in the Outside. The North Camp, as the Renegades here call it, had warned me of how bad storms could get out here. In the north, they were situated at the bottom of a natural bowl, which usually broke the storm before it could hit them too hard. 

Here, though, there was no such protection. The storm had kept me awake all night, scared that my tent would come crashing down. And it did, but not until hours after the storm had passed. I set the tent back up the way Gemma had shown me, but clearly, I wasn't doing something right if it kept falling back down. With another curse, I start setting the tent back up with only the moon to light my way. 

"Having a little trouble there?" I yelp, accidentally pulling the stake I'd just set out of the ground as I turn to face whoever interrupted me. Without thinking, I hold the stake out in front of me as a makeshift weapon, and the Renegade laughs softly. Once my heart calms down, I realize that I vaguely recognize the Renegade. Gemma and Savannah were sitting with him by the firepits that first night. One black stripe wraps around his chest, a red stripe on each bicep. I noticed before that his hair was dark, but it wasn't until now that I saw that his narrow, deep-set eyes were also dark, just a few shades lighter than Gemma's, the moonlight almost making his warm skin glow. 

"It keeps falling down," I tell him, and he crouches a few paces from me, inspecting one of the stakes. 

"How long has it been doing that?" 

"Since the storm," I respond, and he hums in thought. He goes around, inspecting each stake, including the one I was holding. Occasionally, he would pull one out of the ground, completely obliterating all of my progress. I protested when he pulled the first stake, but he waved the comment away, continuing with his task. Once he was completely around the tent, he walked back over to me, holding three stakes in his hands.

"Here's your problem," he says, pointing to one of the stakes. Immediately, I see what he's talking about. The stake in my hand has a pointed end, but these don't, the bottoms of the stakes rough and splintered. Along all three of them were hairline cracks, compromising the integrity of the wood. "Bad stakes. Even if she held them right up to her face, Gemma probably wouldn't have seen the cracks, and she wouldn't have felt them. When the storm hit, it cracked them the rest of the way, and now they're not sturdy enough to stay in the ground." 

"So what do I do?" I ask, and he smiles softly. 

"I have a few spare stakes in my tent. I'll be right back," he says, taking off for the opposite end of the rows of tents. With nothing better to do, I put the stake in my hand back on the ground, checking to make sure the rest of them were properly secured. In my head, I scolded myself for not noticing the cracks in the stakes. As a Doctor, I had to pay great attention to detail, or my patients would suffer. If I can't extend that attentiveness out here, what chance do I stand of completing my mission? Before I can work myself into a frenzy, the Renegade comes back with three new stakes in his hands. No words were exchanged until we had the tent back up and we were admiring our handy work. 

"Hey, so, I never got your name," I mention, and he rubs the back of his neck. 

"It's Matt. And from what I understand, you're Macy," he responds, and I nod, looking beyond the horizon where the first pinks and oranges of sunrise light up the sky. While living in the City, my memories of the sunrise always stayed with me. Faded a little from time, yes, but never disappeared completely. Now that I'm back in the Outside, the sunrises are just as glorious as I remember. The sunsets were something to behold, that much was true, but they didn't pierce my heart as much as the sunrises. Beauty surrounded them both, but I preferred the morning, knowing that the sun was about to rise on a brand new day. The sunrise held the feeling that anything was possible.