Chapter III It was morning. Time to wake up. No time for extra sleep today; it was harvest day, time to get to work picking apples. She hated doing that. Well, maybe there was time for a few more minutes. "Jennifer! It's harvest day!" Damn. All I wanted was another five minutes. She sat up, pulled off her blankets, stepped out of bed into the early morning cold. She grabbed a jacket to keep away some of the shivers... "Jennifer! Wake up!" "I'm up, Mom!" Shut the hell up, Mom... "Get in here! Eat your breakfast!" She decided against answering. Mom had the idea. She'd be at breakfast in a second... -- Ah, the joys of apples for breakfast. She sighed. At least she didn't have to hang around for that long. It was still cold out, though warmer than it had been when she'd gotten up. She was wearing a long dress for warmth, plainer than most she had but good enough for a day of work; it wasn't pretty, no, but who was going to see her? Her family lived in the Wastelands, just miles from the Dark City; it was good land, sure, and it was enough to live off of, but then again they also didn't see anyone more than a couple times a year, when the merchants came to buy these apples, giving them the last supplies they really needed. The only people she knew were her brother and sisters, and of course her parents. Ah, what a nice train of thought; her history. She didn't remember much of Duncan, the city her family had started out in; she knew it was over towards the west, in some mountains, and she didn't know much more than that. She'd been educated by her parents, taught to read, to write; she had, though, never left the farm, not even to see the Dark City. Ah, to see something else in this world besides the neverending apple trees and fields... This was when someone was supposed to show up and carry her away, wasn't it? That's what the stories Mom always told her said. Some random stranger would show up, whisk her away, and they'd go wander around for a while...or, in the books she'd read, they'd go do some more interesting stuff for a while. She'd rather the more interesting stuff. She finally got to the trees that still had apples; you'd think that her brothers could do the ones that were all the way out here, but _no_, this was _her_ job. She sighed. Nothing she could say or do would make her not have to pick some more apples, haul back a couple of loads of them, help preserve them tonight. She was doomed to her fate. Ah, well. It wasn't too bad; at least she had a chance to read later on. Then again, in most of the stories she'd read, this was the time that that random stranger would show up, when she least expected it, when she felt resigned to her fate. He'd sweep her off her feet, take her by horseback off to somewhere exciting, where he'd kiss her and... "Sis! Get back here!" Oh God. Barry's up, and being annoying. "Jen! Get back home, _now_!" That little bastard. She'd just gone off to grab apples, it wasn't time to get back yet. "Go away, Barry! I'm not in the mood for this!" She could be meaner, but, hey, why give him something legitimate to complain about later on? This way, she could tell the truth: she was annoyed, and she yelled at Barry to just go away. She wasn't even very rude. "Jen! Get the _hell_ back here, NOW!" She was about to give some sort of snappy retort -- Barry was really getting on her nerves today, and she had some work to do -- but then she realized something. Barry had cursed. Barry never cursed. 'Hell' was worse than he'd ever gotten in his worse. He was an annoying little shit, sure, but he was consistent. That's it. Something's wrong. Jen dropped her basket, ran in the direction of Barry's voice. "I'm coming, Barry! Give me a sec!" She caught sight of him in seconds. Barry was normally a pretty normal looking fifteen-year old, brown hair, green eyes, a little shorter than herself and a little more heavy...but this time, he looked just plain _bad_. His shirt was torn in three places, one sleeve was entirely missing; his hair was a mess, wet with the sweat from running out to find her and apparently unwashed, too. This from a kid that prided himself on his appearance. Damn, this must be important. "Barry, what's going on? What happened?" "It's Dad. And Tom. My God, Tom..." She finally reached him just as he began sobbing. She'd never seen Barry break before, and he'd gone through a hell of a lot in his short life... "What? What happened?" She ran up, clenched his arms -- she was actually worried. This was no joke. "What happened to Dad and Tom?" Barry just began to cry more; this was not the brother she knew, the brother she'd eaten with just half an hour before. Holy shit, talk Barry! Talk! "I need you to tell me what happened to Tom and Dad. Please, Barry. It's alright." Barry finally choked through the sobs far more than he had before. "He shot him! Dammit, he shot Dad! He killed Tom! He fucking killed Tom! He killed them both! The bastard killed them both!" Jen nearly fainted away herself. Dad? Tom? Dead? "What...hold on a second. Tom and Dad are dead? Where's Mom? Barry, where's Mom?" This can't be happening...this has gotta be a sick joke; my God, what the HELL is going on here? "Mom is still back there; she told me...she told me to run. Dammit, she told me to leave! She made me leave, come tell you what happened..." He collapsed again. It was too much pressure. For the first time, Jen looked on her little brother in fear...and this time, she noticed much more than she had before. His shirt was bloodstained; his left arm was limp on his side. And there was a bulge on the side of his pants. The gun. Jen suddently understood perfectly what had happened. She saw what the stranger had been looking for, she knew that they couldn't get it, and she knew the only way they were going to get out of this alive was to just run like hell. "Barry. Calm down. Calm _down_. Look. Mom's dead by now too. We have to get out of here. We've got to get somewhere safe. We've got to Duncan. And we have to go now. There's nothing more we can do here. We have to GO. Now. Do you understand me, Barry?" "Jen...she's still alive! We've got to save her! We've got to save them all! We have to go back! I have the gun! We can kill him!" He was frantic, incoherent... "NO, Barry. We have to go. We have to take the gun. We have to get away from here. We'll go to the Dark City, _now_." "But Mom..." "_NO_, Barry. She's gone. We've got to go. We can't do anything more here." "But..." "We have to go, Barry. We have to let them go. They're gone, Barry." "But Mom..." "We have to go, Barry." Barry began again to sob uncontrollably. But he stood while he was doing it. They were going to get out of this one together. Jen turned towards the city, away from the house. The dark buildings towered above the trees surrounding them; there was no way they could miss the City, so near yet so mysterious. She began to run.