Jacob and Amelia
Reading Credits to Gonzalo Galdames
Fiction
By Luisana Ortiz
Panting in unison, the boy-dog duo dared not look back.
Nothing was left for them there. None of Mother’s food to calm their constant stomach aches, no matter how hard their tummies pleaded; not a drop of rain to offset the ever-inc-reasing planet’s heat; no roof to keep them shaded and cool in the hours the rays felt especially scorching.
In any case, the climate could not be any more stifling than his exasperation this past day. He anxiously witnessed his mother’s arrest, knowing it was the last glimpse he would have of her. The image seared into his brain for as long as he lived.
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If anything, he initially lied to himself. He had Amelia to com-fort him; the old cocker spaniel’s presence turned out to be the only “comforting” thing, as the dog didn’t suddenly transform into the loving companion he hoped for. Father gift-ed Amelia to Mother before he left the Community, and she lived with them before the boy could imitate her four-legged strut.
Though she was officially considered a member of the family, she never seemed to take much liking to him, saving a soft spot only for Mother and Father, or, rather, simply leaving him out of the picture. More than once, Amelia’s snobby attitude almost made him lose his fascination with animals; he often chided himself for wondering just how it was possible they lost elephants and polar bears but were left with that indifferent creature.
Despite their strained relation-ship, he felt compelled to take the dog with him. To his own surprise, she cooperated in following him in his sudden escape. Mother would have wanted him to, he thought. She taught him to take care of others, and now Amelia was all he had of Mother and Father (although she still managed to keep her distance). Just having her nearby helped move his fatigued feet farther and farther.
As the sun reached its peak standstill for the day, the boy began to find it more difficult to swallow. Luckily, he came prepared: a knapsack with enough food and water that, if he rationed just right, would last him just over a week. He squeezed a few drops into his mouth, then offered some to Amelia. Mother prepared it weeks in advance for this exact occasion.
He just never thought he would use it.
The two trudged on, kicking up dust with every step they took in their path. The boy looked up, hoping to distract himself. Unfortunately, the uniform landscape before him didn’t leave much to the imagination. Its uninventive features created an illusion of endlessness, one that would have most definitely left anyone from only a couple hundred years prior thoroughly perplexed. For many miles, his view merely consisted of parched and barren soil, the cracked, black-and-yellow pathway he and Amelia had been following for hours. Roads — he remembered their names from the old history books he effortlessly devoured back at home and at school before they shut it down. Roads were useless now, as Earth’s oil ran dry and the automobile became obsolete.
Suddenly in the distance, he was able to spot a dead forest, and he decided it would be the much-deserved rest stop for the two.
Soon enough, in the desert, an internal commotion was back to haunt his memory for perhaps the hundredth time. Once again he could feel his heavy eyelids snap into their wide, alert positions from one second to the next as Mot-her shook him awake. He could still hear her hurried whispers.
“The Head will be here any minute now; they discovered my alliance. I am now a traitor to them. I love you. Please don’t forget the knapsack.” Through the pitch-black environment he carried Amelia to the hidden escape hatch they dug out months earlier. At its end, he wriggled under an unguarded area of the Community’s border chain fence. Then, with the dog at his side, ran for his life.
Having reached the rest stop, he set down the knapsack and sat at a stump under a shady clump of what one might have once called trees. He glanced at Amelia, lying and panting at his side, and meekly lifted his hand to her head, lightly stroking her. At first she let out her usual snarl, but to his surprise she let him continue.
Her gentleness finally broke him. The realization of the day’s events came crashing down: He left his lifelong home in what would probably be a futile search for Father and the home he’d promised to build for his family when he was forced to escape three years ago.
The Head discovered his family’s involvement in the illegal distribution of survival resources to the Rebels.
The Head had probably killed Mother by now.
He had no one left.
He felt the need to spill this rush of emotions, yet he only allowed a small whimper out; he couldn’t afford to lose any more fluids than he already had. His thoughts and the heat stuck him to the stump for hours before he drifted off.
He awoke with a start. Amelia’s perked up ears heard it, too: voices in the far distance, but voices nonetheless. As carefully as he could, he scrambled to his feet, yanked the knapsack, and tiptoed deeper into the barren forest. It was so cleared out he could’ve been easily spotted, and anxiety took over again. How could they venture this far in so little time?
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Just when he had begun to lose hope his thoughts were interrupted by an opening in the ground he hadn’t noticed. Fortunately, the small trip did not hurt him, but he found himself in a cave. I can camp out here until the officers disappear. Tucking himself into a darker corner, he shivered, remaining alert into the night until his eyelids could no longer hold their own weight.
The following morning, sunlight peeked through the opening, and with it, the realization that the deafening silence had returned. He awoke with a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived when he discovered Amelia was missing.
His last piece of Mother and Father was gone.
No longer caring, he climbed out and spent his morning living a nightmare: Amelia was nowhere in sight. He dared not call her name out of fear, remaining grief-stricken for the rest of the day.
As nighttime fell, he once again drifted off with three words trailing around in his otherwise barren head:
I failed Mother.
Soon enough, it was morning again. Grabbing the knapsack and struggling to keep his mind clear, he set out into the forest and began his trek again, trying his best to ignore the absence of responding paws to his left.
It was evening before he let himself remember Mother and Father’s incessant generosity to the war-torn Community’s Rebels. They provided food, clean water, and electricity, risking their own Head-partnered lives in the process. He remembered school and his inability to make friends with any of the Head’s children, but it didn’t matter; even Amelia was a better friend. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he missed her.
Stuck in a reminiscing-and-advancing loop for various hours, he had also failed to notice a faint buzz of noise ahead, followed by beams of light. Once the news caught up to him, he was sure he was hallucinating. Or dreaming. He had to be. In the glaring distance, he noticed a blue ... automobile, lurching its way towards him.
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Dumbstruck, his knees buckled in place, staring ahead as he waited for what he was sure would be his demise. Soon the vehicle was … parked, right in front of him. This had all been for nothing.
“Jacob?”
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An unfamiliar towering figure stepped out of the automobile, carrying in his arms a mass of caramel fur he recognized.
“Amelia!” Jacob screamed out, and the dog jumped out from the stranger’s arms into his. Whatever grudge she held against him had been forgotten in the moment, and Jacob laughed and hugged her as she frantically licked the entirety of his face.
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“You’re Jacob, aren’t you?” the man spoke again crouching in front of Jacob, who nodded without looking up. The man smiled.
“Thought it was. Your father’s been waiting for you.”
The three of them piled into the vehicle. An overwhelmed Jacob hadn’t said a word; he couldn’t. Fortunately, the man was doing all the talking for him.
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“... solar-powered engine during the day, stores some energy for the night too. Designed it myself,” he boasted. “Course, I had some help from the others. There’s not a lot of us, so we’re all family in a green pasture; you don’t see those everyday. And there’s a lake, too.”
His dog on his lap, the soft murmur of the man’s stories and the engine felt like a warm blanket that covered Jacob and tucked him to sleep as the car drove off into the countryside.
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