For Eli, who encouraged me to go through the storm when everyone else abandoned me.

My eyes snapped open, and I screamed for my mommy. It was too loud and bright outside. People wouldn’t stop screaming and the lights wouldn’t stop flickering. Didn’t they know it was bedtime? My mother came in, her eyes wide and her hair flying about her. I opened my arms to her and screamed louder. She pushed me to the side with a loud shushing noise. She gathered my blankets and ran back out of my room, leaving the door wide open.

“Holly!” A boy’s voice called to me over the screaming. “Holly!” It called again, more urgent.

“Ivan?” I called my brother. I called a second time and he had run into the open room. His eyes were wide and his mouth set into a tight line. He ran to me and hugged me into his chest. “Ivan, what-?”

“Hush now, Hols. We’re leaving.” He lifted me off the ground and held my head firmly into him.

“Leaving?” I started to cry. “But my books and toys.”

“Not important anymore, Hols. We have to go.” He shushed me and frantically tried to hum a lullaby. The notes were all wrong and pitchy. It sounded more like a dirge.

Ivan ran out the door where the screams got louder and the lights began to burn. I started to squirm to see what was happening, but Ivan’s arms held strong. The screams were scary and scared all at the same time. The lights seemed to try to reach out to you. Through it all, you could hear the storm outside, howling and laughing. It ripped at my clothes and sprayed me with grit. “Ivan, I’m scared!”

“Believe me, Hols,” he whispered back. “I am, too.”

I could hear Mommy and Daddy ahead of us, yelling at each other like they normally did, but I couldn’t quite understand.

“You told them WHAT?!” Mommy screamed.

“That there’s a better place than here, several miles south.” Daddy sounded annoyed.

“Why?!” Mommy sounded angry.

“So they’d let me go!” Daddy sounded annoyed.

“Now where are we supposed to live?!”

“I’ll find somewhere!”

“Your old settlement was all we had as a backup!”

“I. Know. That!”

Ivan missed one of his steps, and I was jostled in his arms. I would’ve fallen if he hadn’t managed to grab me in time. He lifted me up again and held my tiny body against his. My eyes widened as I stared over his shoulder.

The whole city was covered in fire. Men with all sorts of guns and knives were breaking into houses where mommies, children, and their daddies would scream. One man had caught a woman by her hair as she tried to run and spun her around. He kissed her while she struggled against him. He then ripped away her shirt. She was crying when he shot her through the chest. A large sign was burning up with the words, “Welcome to Eden, Refuge from the End of the World”. One man saw me looking and raised his gun to point at me. He was laughing when a man behind him stabbed a long, curved knife through his neck. People lay on the ground laughing, screaming, crying, and begging. My home was in chaos.

Eventually, we stopped running. Ivan threw me into a weird metal cage that purred. I was on a strange seat covered in blankets. Ivan’s face was covered in tears and he looked scared. He also hopped into the purring cage and slammed the door. He turned to me and stroked tears off my cheek.

“It’s okay, Hols. It’s okay.”

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I took a good look at our moving, metal cage. Ivan was next to me on some kind of blanketed bench. I saw Daddy and Mommy in some weird chairs in the front of the cage. A circle was in front of Daddy and he held onto it, spinning it sometimes. Glowing buttons and dials were on the wall between Mommy and Daddy. Large see-through walls surrounded the cage so we could see outside of it. We were in the middle of the storm. I had never seen it so bad before. The buildings of our town used to block out most of it, but out here, it looked as if it were alive. The cage was bumping around, and I began to feel sick.

Ivan was wide awake and smiled down at me. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Where are we?” I whispered.

He laughed and gave a soft sigh. “Lost.”

My eyes grew wide. “That’s not good.” Ivan patted my head.

“It’s just what we wanted in all honesty, Hols.” His look became sad.

“What happened?”

Ivan thought about it for a moment. “Our home went bye-bye.”

I nodded, remembering the fires and gunshots. “Why?”

Ivan thought longer this time. “Bad people said it had to go.” He bit his lip. “And don’t ask me why for that one because I wouldn’t kno-” he cut off as we hit a big bump.

Daddy started swearing and got out to check it out. A weird screaming noise came from outside and I was sure we had hit a person. Daddy’s head poked back in and he looked at Ivan. “Come out here and take a look at this.” He looked shocked but excited. Ivan’s eyebrows drew together in curiosity as he stepped out. I followed and finally got a better look at the cage we were in. It was on wheels. Doors made up most of the side walls. It was high off the ground and the front of it extended out with a hatch on top of it. I stared at it in a stupor. I came to when Daddy called Ivan over to the front.

I peered around the corner and gasped. A pinkish looking creature lay on its side, one of its four legs under one of the wheels. It had a long nose and ears that flopped over. It was incredibly round with big toenails for feet. It screamed louder and sounded more like squealing.

Ivan gasped. “It’s a pig!”

Daddy smiled big. “A pregnant one at that. And to think that I barely nicked her! C’mon, son. Help me get her in the back.” I looked at the back of the cage and noticed that there was a metal bed attached. I smiled thinking about how we got to bring the piggy with us.

Ivan helped Daddy put the pig in the back and then helped me get into the cage again. He told me pig jokes and stories once the cage got moving again. I felt sick once more, but the excitement of the pig and Ivan’s laughter kept me awake. I watched as the storm outside flew by us like flowing fabric.

After a little while, Daddy stopped the cage again. He stared out a big sheet of glass in front of him at a squarish shape in the storm. “Stay here,” he said and got out. He walked away to the dark square in the distance. Mommy, Ivan, and I grew nervous for he was taking a long time. Eventually, Daddy came back and started to hit the cage, laughing and dancing.

“Out, out, out,” he yelled. “We found our new home!”