I would probably never be able to stop running. Four day’s worth of hunger gnawed at my stomach, but I couldn’t stop running. I couldn’t hang my salvation on something that wasn’t actually there. The maze was supposed to be nothing more than a myth. I had known of people who went to check them out and never come back. People had used them to escape the bombs that fell in an attempt to quell the uprising at the change of the government, but I’d lived here in Curr most of my life and I’d never seen the maze. It was said that there was a maze of sewage tunnels under the decimated city.

Get her to the maze, a deep, gravely voice shouted. I heard them laugh, heard them say something that chilled me to the bone and pushed my exhausted legs faster. It hit the ground with a loud clang, too late to stop it from giving away my location. Without thinking I grabbed it and threw it behind me out of my way. My fingers touched something cool and metal. I had a job to finish and I wouldn’t sully the memory of my parents by failing this soon. My day would eventually come, but it could not be this day. Not after everything I’d done to survive this long. My feet pounded packed dirt and my heart pounded in my chest. Something pierced the sole of my foot and I cried out, but I kept going. I landed and my thin soles skidded and burst on the loose gravel. My arms flailed to keep me from tipping and my feet kept running despite the lack of traction. I picked up my pace, ran up the side of the slab, and vaulted into the air. Tonight, it just might kill me.Ī large slab of concrete loomed in my path, outlined momentarily by a flare of flame.

I knew what was left of this city well in the daytime. The moon was in its recycle stage, and the farther I ran from Curr’s city center the heavier the dark pressed in. Visibility was nothing more than dancing shadows cast by the flames still flickering where I’d left them behind me. I had been running my entire life from responsibility, from assassins, from nightmares. Rocks and debris dug at my feet as if I was barefoot, but I couldn’t stop, despite the pain. Gravel scattered in every direction as I scrambled in fear for my life. My dilapidated boots pounded the rubble-strewn ground. Other Books from SideStreet Cookie Publishing Chapter One I write for you as much as I write for myself. For my readers everyone still with me and everyone to come.

Rat City by Tyffani Clark Kemp