The first fire storm on the East coast landed at 5:55 pm. Sia and her younger sister Paulie sat cross-legged on the cold concrete floor of their makeshift living room, huddled around the glow of the glitching television screen. The youngest sister, Gigi, adjusted the machine’s antenna.
“Hold still, Gigi!” Paulie leaned closer to the television and squinted her eyes. “They just say 5:55? That’s an angel number.”
Sia sighed and passed Paulie a hand-rolled cigarette. “That’s what I was about to say.”
“They said the storm’s coming this way,” the youngest whispered from behind the television set. Flashes of orange sputtered across the screen’s usual black and white disposition.
“Yeah, we heard. We all watching the same program.” Paulie took a drag on the cigarette and broke out into a coughing fit. There was no covering her mouth in Paulie’s world, and she let spittle fly through the stale air as she struggled to hold the cigarette to her lips. Wincing, Gigi turned to her older sister expecting her to reprimand Paulie’s behavior, but she found Sia staring at the floor unmoved.
“We need to go. Now. Right, Sia?” Gigi pressed her lips together as soon as the words exited her mouth, the preteen’s go to strategy to hold back her crying.
Sia rubbed her eyes as Gigi and Paulie waited for her directions. The hum of the television barely covered the distant screams emanating from outside of the apartment walls. None of the sisters flinched, though Sia briefly looked towards the boarded window at the west side of the formerly abandoned apartment and wondered how she could handle yet another move without her parents by her side. Without her father encouraging her to be brave. Without her mother holding her, her fingers gently combing through the coiled hairs at the nape of Sia’s neck while her voice assured her that everything would be okay.
“Can I be honest?” Paulie said after a moment, still catching her breath. She stared at the spliff between her index finger and thumb, her own go to strategy to hold back tears before any hint of moisture reached her eyes. Her cuticles were red and swollen—Paulie found that picking at her fingers helped ease her anxiety, too, regardless of how temporary the relief was. “I’m so tired of running.”
Sia hung her head in her hands.
“Well, if no one else is gonna do anything, I’ll go get our bags together. Okay?” Abandoning her duties at the antenna, Gigi started to pace around the room and counted her tasks on her fingers. “I’ma get the tool bag, our food and water packs. And I’ma get Marcus’ carrier, his food—”
“You not seriously gonna try to bring that dog, are you?” Paulie said before approaching the youngest and grabbing her by the shoulders more aggressively than she should have. Tough love came more quickly to Paulie than tenderness—in a world with so much danger, she wanted Gigi to be afraid. Fear was life saving.
“Gi, we talked about this,” Paulie took another deep breath and loosened her grip. “It’s too dangerous.”
“But I know what went wrong last time! I didn’t teach the other one when to stop barking. But Marcus knows how to be quiet, I can show you!” Gigi snatched her body out of Paulie’s grasp before searching her eyes for understanding.
Before Marcus, the last dog Gigi found was a sweet mutt with short tan fur that looked like a mix between a Labrador and a terrier. Gigi found the canine whimpering and covered in fleas in a rundown country gas station in Alabama as the girls traveled North. Sia and Paulie called the dog disgusting when the youngest sister brought the scared thing back to their low-grade encampment—Gigi told them the dog wasn’t anymore disgusting than they were, their clothes tattered and covered in mud and ticks they had to pick away each night.
The dog followed them during their journey for weeks, dutifully lapping at Gigi’s heels whenever the girl was too tired to walk further. Over time, the dog learned to jog ahead of the girls, mapping out safe pathways for them to traverse lush but dangerous woods, bringing back rabbits and squirrels for them to make meals out of.
But the dog’s barking—with Gigi the dog grew to be happy and loud, for better or for worse. One dark night in what used to be Georgia, the girls ran and hid in the hollowed trunk of a dying red oak after hearing the footsteps and low grumbles of a group of men they knew intended to do them harm. The dog wouldn’t stop barking, exposing their hiding spot to these strangers. Paulie took care of the men with the five bullets remaining in their father’s old revolver. Shaking, the girls and the dog huddled within the trunk for the remainder of the night, and in the morning, Paulie tied the sweet thing to the tree so the dog couldn’t follow them any further. Teary eyed, Gigi knelt in the mud and buried her face into the dog’s shoulders, her short tan fur scratching Gigi’s cheek for the last time.
Now, facing Paulie and the idea of leaving Marcus behind, the child briefly wondered why Paulie couldn’t understand the importance of watching over this dog. She quickly resolved that Paulie simply must not know what love is. How else could someone not want to take care of a dog who’s all alone with no one beside him? The girl regularly had nightmares about being abandoned in this tremor-filled, fiery terrain without her sisters to guide her. She couldn’t bear seeing any creature encounter that fate if there was anything she could do about it. How could Paulie? How could anyone?
“Please, Paulie. Sia!” Gigi turned again to her oldest sister. But the young woman remained in the same position, her legs crossed under her on the floor, her head in her hands, her small body swallowed by the oversized knit sweater she wore. A relic of their father.
Gigi knelt beside her sister and rested a hand on her back. Through the wool, she felt the familiar vibrations of a silent, withheld cry.
“Oh, Sia,” Gigi wrapped her arms around Sia’s shoulders, awkwardly at first. For so long it had been the reverse—Sia wrapping her arms around Paulie and Gigi, carrying them, watching them grow. Shuttling the trio north through wiry, expanding forests and the sarcophaguses of formerly bustling cities. Through rain sharp and thick as wild briar and hail as cold and unrelenting as the deadly regime they fled six years ago. The regime that was as responsible for the planet’s sickness as anyone was.
When we get sick, our bodies try to fight against the bad things—bacteria, viruses, toxins—but sometimes our bodies get confused and fight the good things too, Sia told her sisters years ago as they weathered a bad hail storm in rural Virginia. It was a few months into their journey North toward what they were told would be safer places. This memory was so vivid for Gigi—it was Gigi’s first time successfully starting a fire with flint. The sisters sat around the crackling flame in a dank, old cabin as they listened to Sia’s stories, her words punctuated by the hail battering the roof. Earth is sick. We have to let her know we’re a good thing, but that’s not enough, Sia said around the fire, making sure to look her sisters in the eyes. You got to be brave ‘cause you need luck to survive.
Back in the apartment, Gigi wondered for the first time how scared Sia might have been all the times she encouraged her younger sisters to be brave. “It’s okay, Sia. It’ll be okay.”
The soft pitter patter of paws broke through the background noise of television static, and a small black and gray dog with fluffy hair curled up on the floor next to the eldest sister. Sia placed her hand near the little dog’s wet, black nose. Marcus looked up at her with big, brown eyes and licked her knuckles softly.
Across the room, Paulie struggled to relight her cigarette and muttered curses under her breath. She walked to the cardboard-covered window and lifted a corner of the improvised curtain to peek outside. A subtle, orange glow illuminated her face—was it the setting sun or approaching flames? The light bounced off of the sea shells in Paulie’s locs and cast a halo around her head.
“Okay. It’ll be okay,” Paulie said, wiping away the couple of tears that escaped her eyes and streamed down her gaunt, brown face. “I’ll take care of Marcus and get the car ready. Okay? Don’t worry.”
Gigi dabbed Sia’s tears with her palms before rubbing her hands on her threadbare dungarees. “We’ll take care of you.”