Divided

Marcos stumbled over the piles of concrete and steel. If his friends could see this right here, they’d believe him. But no one in their right mind would venture outside the walls. Marcos was the only one brave — or stupid — enough to try.

Their Historia textbooks had shown pictures of the Great Civil War battles set in an urban landscape, smoke hiding the carnage of lives, roads, and buildings. Cities divided street by street with territories marked. The ruins around him added texture to those dry, sanitized images.

Marcos stepped inside a half-standing building, the ceiling open to the sky. His shoes crunched broken glass. What had this building been? Desks peeked out from beneath fallen walls and sections of roof. A mound of jumbled metal beams and bricks stopped his progress into the building. A lone shoe in the mound sent him spiraling backward.

He retched into a scraggly bare bush, its limbs tangling in his hair.

This was the epitome of death and destruction.

And Marcos finally understood what Abuela had said.

They might be safe as a nation, but they were no longer free. People had died fighting Martin. Fighting his iron-fisted control.

All the broadcasts giving them a few extra rations here or a new item in market that no one could afford there. And for what? So Martin could keep his power. And now the draft.

Marcos sank onto the broken street and held his head in his hands.

He felt stuck, powerless.