Read Online With the Enemy by Eva Gray - Free Book Online

in stories on the NewsServ, or in blogs.
    At first those stories used words like “reunion,” “families,” and “new start.” That was a few years ago, when the government set up tents and trailers to house thepeople from California and the South who came pouring into the middle of the country after they lost their homes to the rising waters. The tents were considered a temporary stop until the families got resettled. But since the War keeps getting worse, not better, and no new homes can be found for anyone, the temporary resettlement camps have become the permanent Settlement Lands. And now the stories about them involve words like “gangs,” “murder,” and “innocent bystander.”
    “Is there any way to avoid going through them?” Drew asks.
    Rosie squints over the map and shakes her head.
    “Can’t we just go around?” Louisa asks.
    I join Rosie at the map. Even though it’s too old to have the Settlement Lands on it, it shows the developments whose names are most often associated with them, and they stretch in a band around northern Chicago. Trying to go around them will add four, if not more, hours to our trip. Four hours Maddie might not have.
    “Our only option is to go through,” I say.
    “Maybe we should split up, so we don’t draw as much attention to ourselves,” Ryan says.
    “If we do, I’m going with Rosie,” Louisa announces.
    “Me, too,” I agree.
    “Thanks, but we’re not splitting up,” Rosie tells us. “We stay together, keep moving, and don’t bother anyone. Think of it like the first day at a new school — remain alert, but don’t be obvious about it. We’ll be fine.”
    I don’t know if she believes it, but the way she says it makes me believe it. And everyone else, too, I think, since we all seem much less jumpy as we start walking again.
    We pass near one of the groups of breezers. There’s a hand-lettered sign that reads
Hello Daytime! Property KEEP OFF! Guard on duty at all times
, tied on to the fence but no evidence of anyone. The next group of breezers is larger, with a more official-looking sign saying
You Are Now Entering a Desert Fresh Facility
planted in front of a small shack.
    “There’s someone in there,” I whisper to Rosie.
    “Ignore him and keep walking,” she says, and we do, although I notice us all pulling our sleeves down to cover where our missing ID bracelets should be.
    Each of the stands of breezers has wires running from it. Although I doubt either the makers of Hello Daytime! vitamins or Desert Fresh Dry Shower Powder are in the business of generating energy, I’m pretty sure that’s what is going on here. The wires crackle with electricity as we walk under them and into the settlement itself.
    Like flipping a switch, the ground goes from rubble to some kind of street. As we keep walking in the direction my compass says is toward Chicago, the streets become more crowded, but apart from one or two small children, no one seems to be paying any attention to us.
    Most people are going about their business the way they would anywhere, except instead of stores and houses made of bricks and stone, theirs are pieced together out of whatever is available: a car door, a balcony railing, a stop sign. To our left is a substantial structure with a bay window surrounded by bushels of hay. The door was oncea table at a fast food restaurant with a yellow-and-red clown face on it.
    We pass a bootleg software merchant who has decorated his booth with a fringe of finger-drives, a girl selling rice cakes off the back of a bike, a woman offering heavily patched T-shirts, a man with a greasy ponytail hawking Ozone Block SPF 350, which I know doesn’t even exist. Everything is either a fake or secondhand.
    Unlike in downtown Chicago, almost no one here is wearing a uniform of any kind. And unlike in downtown Chicago, every twenty or thirty feet, someone has painted three parallel black lines on the side of a building.
    “What do those mean?” Louisa