Read Viral Nation (Short Story): Broken Nation for Free Online

into some kind of military service no more than half an hour ago. Are we doing the right thing?
    Alex starts the car, then finally stops for a second and looks at me. “Are you ready?”
    “So ready.”
     
    • • •
     
    I’ve been so wrapped up in school and learning how to live without my leg that until I find myself in the center of the city, I don’t realize how tense things have become. There are no other cars on the road. People move in and out of the downtown buildings with purpose, no loitering.
    We pull into the parking lot of a building that used to be a casino but now holds the giant farmer’s market where Alex picks up our weekly food rations. He calls it the Bazaar. As Alex cuts the engine, I’m struck by how easy it is to accept change when there is no choice.
    Alex takes my chair from the trunk of the car and puts me in it, then puts my backpack and his bag in my lap and moves at such a fast pace away from the car that Maggie has to jog to keep up. I take her bag from her.
    We go through the main doors into the Bazaar. The slot machines are still there, lined up in neat rows, but no one is playing them. A few people are working on them, though, and it seems ridiculous to me that of all the things to get working again, slot machines would be anywhere near the top of the list.
    We have to move slower now, so that Alex can find the ramps that let him push me up and around the casino floor toward a back exit. People are staring. I hate that I can’t walk far enough yet with my fake leg. It makes me feel weak and useless, and there is no room right now for weak and useless.
    Frank is behind the casino, at a loading dock, with his massive eighteen-wheeler truck. Alex told me that’s he’s been driving it his entire adult life—he inherited it from his father. The two of them speak to each other, low and far enough away that I can’t hear what they say.
    “It’s time,” Alex finally says. He has to lift Maggie up into the truck, she’s too small to manage it on her own. She scrambles back to the part of the cab that’s hidden by a curtain. I imagine that’s where Frank lives when he’s on the road.
    “You’re going to be okay,” Frank says to me. I look at him for the first time. He’s my mom’s age, somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, with brown hair that’s just starting to go gray above his ears. He looks like a nice man, and as hard as I try to keep my guard up, I feel comfortable with him. “I’ll get you where you need to go.”
    “Why are you doing this?”
    “I guess subversion is in my blood. My parents fought the system back in the sixties.” He looks over to the casino. “Walled cities. They wouldn’t have bought it. I guess I don’t either. Not completely, anyway.”
    “Your turn,” Alex says after he’s put our bags into the truck with Maggie. He puts an arm around me, to lift me, and I push him away.
    “I can do it.” I can walk to the truck anyway, and I stand up on my own and do that. My progress is slow and both men stand watching me. I can feel them wanting to help.
    It takes ten seconds of standing at the open door to the truck cab to realize that there is not a chance I can climb in on my own. Not on the first try anyway, and not without embarrassing myself even more than being lifted in like Maggie was.
    Alex lifts me into the truck without a problem. I’ve lost weight and he’s gotten stronger. He wrangles my folded chair into the back with Maggie, then sits next to me as Frank climbs behind the wheel.
     
    • • •
     
    Even jumping off a bridge can seem like a good idea before you hit the ground.
    I have a strong memory of my mother’s favorite bit of advice as Frank slows the truck to a brake-screeching stop. We’ve made it to the interstate on-ramp.
    “Get in the back,” Frank hisses without turning his eyes from the two men who stopped him. They’re standing in the road, waving both arms above their heads.
    “Why do we have