Rubicon by B.C. Tweedt

Author:B.C. Tweedt [Tweedt, B.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon.com
Published: 2016-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

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Thump, thump, thump!

Grimes’ shoes pounded the asphalt as he hugged his backpack. He didn’t have much of a running form; it was more of a hopping walk. His legs weren’t nimble like Windsor’s or bouncy like Beep’s. And he certainly couldn’t flex them like Ankeny could when practicing her martial arts. His strength, his flexibility was limited to his brain. And he hated jostling it around like this.

But they didn’t have a choice. The military was chasing them.

“This way to Griffith. The buses will take you to safety!” the soldier had said, swinging his arm in a circle. “All those who take up arms or stay will be considered hostile!”

It had worked for hundreds of frightened protestors, but not for them. They had to get to Thanksgiving Square – in the heart of “hostile” territory. So they had run. Drake took point, then Beep, then Ankeny.

And Grimes just tried not to die.

Thump, thump, thump…thump…thump.

His mind raced faster than his feed did. A map in his head told him they were on route. He calculated the distance to travel, then the number of steps it would take. Distance divided by the average step of a thirteen-year-old boy. Then he saw cracks on the road like tributaries of a running river, meandering this way and that. The rails for the trolley set on a more certain destination. He preferred the rails. He liked certainty.

Then he was afraid. There was no certainty here. It was out of his control now. Like it had been on the evil day. The worst day that had ever happened.

He whimpered and gripped his bag tighter.

Finally they came to their destination. And it was blocked.

“Now what?” Beep asked, surveying the entrance to the Pedestrian Tunnel. It was an archway covering two doorways, where two escalators descended into the dark beneath the streets. Vine plants he knew as Cocculus carolinus filled the archway, spilling over the barbed wire that ran the length of a chain-linked fence blocking the entrance. A sign reading “Escalators Temporarily Closed” stated the obvious.

“Make it temporarily open,” Drake said, nodding at Ankeny.

She pulled out a few metal tools and jammed one into the padlock.

Grimes tapped out his nerves, watching the streets as more and more protestors straggled in. They were well off the beaten path, but others were thinking like them – finding a way around the chaos.

Clonk-clonk-clonk-clonk.

The rhino was distant, but they could still hear its roar. Tinny screams.

Grimes hugged his backpack tighter and stole glances down the roads. He occupied himself with reading the banners that draped between apartment windows.

We LUV ‘Merica. We H8 Tyranny.

Give us Liberty, or give U.S. death.

A bed sheet had been spray-painted with a cartoon. A soldier stepped on a man’s neck, giving him just enough height to reach a button called “Press for Tyranny”. Oddly enough, the man underneath the soldier’s boots held a sign saying “We Support Our Troops.”

Clonk-clonk-clonk-clonk.

“Hurry, Ankeny,” Grimes muttered.

“I am.”

“If we had a propane torch, steel’s melting point is…”

“We don’t have a propane torch.”

His fingers crinkled his bag’s cloth.

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