The Gap - Chapter 1

​Back cover description:
Zora lives her life in tenuous routine, using her unique gifts to guide refugees through the treacherous Gap in search of safety within the walled-off empire to the north. But her journey takes a turn, one day, as she uncovers dark secrets among the jungle's predators and bandits. Soon, survival becomes more than just reaching the other side, and it may come at the cost of everything she once held to be true.

Chapter 1

The green leaves on the crown of the continent provide living sustenance to the hearty roots at her foundation.

The stem doesn’t question why it lacks the color of the petals; it is simply grateful of its role as part of the flower.

These are the adages spoken by my people, recited as scripture and passed down from generation to generation.

I remember the first time I saw the Freesians. I was four years old. All the kids in my village gathered at the edge of the dirt airfield to watch the three Freesian aircraft. Their dual-rotor downwash sent dust flying into our faces, but we didn’t care. It was the first time any of us had seen anything like it.

Around forty Freesian soldiers disembarked carrying crates of medical supplies, food, materials for our school, all stamped with the Freesian flag—a white flower with spiraling contoured petals set on a blue backdrop.

They treated our wounded and sick, trained our local healers, conducted counter-insurgency exercises with the nearby garrison to help them fight the cartels.

We celebrated that night by inflating the community projector screen. We had popcorn, a treat that the Freesians brought with them; I had never had any in my life.

I was in love.

And then, just like that, they were gone. Leaving pink candies in the hands of our youth and legends of the grand Freesian Empire in the minds of our elders. No one questioned the might and nobility of our northern neighbors, no one had any reason to doubt their omnipotent goodness. Not outside our village, at least.

Not until the Burn.

Four hundred thousand dead in two weeks across the continent. A mighty upwelling of our planet’s interior brought to the surface, reducing thousands of cities to ash and flame, shrouding entire countries in thick black smoke.

The survivors fled northward, only to be greeted by a great wall on the edge of the mighty Empire, called Jericho. Those who we had always known to be our saviors and friends now turned their backs on us, ignoring the human waves of huddled masses yearning for just a single breath of clean air.

The Burn didn’t affect the Empire, with their sophisticated technology and their army of engineers and scientists. But it affected the rest of us, trapped us in a hell that only the devil could conjure up in his dreams.

I was ten when the Burn happened. I was out in the mountains with my friends when an eruption took place. It was far to the east, but a valley at the base of the mountain channeled a thick pyroclastic flow directly into our village.

Everyone died instantly.

I ran away after that, moved from town to town, begging for food that they themselves didn’t have. I was chased out of homes that would later be nothing more than rubble.

Nearly two decades later and nothing much has changed. Most of us have consigned ourselves to live in poverty among the ruins. There's still the occasional eruption, though they occur far less frequently now.

The Empire holds a lottery every year, accepting a thousand southerners into their lands. It’s nothing, compared to the millions that still wander these lands, surviving off the meager crops that they grow themselves in whatever patch of fertile land they can find—most of the continent is tarnished by noxious compounds leftover from the eruptions.

But it’s still enough to convince hundreds of thousands of people to make the dangerous journey northward in search of asylum among the Freesians, whom they still consider to be gods in their own right, living in lavish homes with bounties beyond imagination. It’s enough to convince them to turn a blind eye to the diseases and bandits and pirates that plague the road north.

It’s even enough for them to overlook the Gap.

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Title image courtesy of David Riano - Pexels