One Thousand Leagues Under The Trees

Chapter 1

I crouched under the vehicle, clutching my pack to my chest and willing my breath to soften. Watching silently, I saw the officer looking around, his shiny black boots crunching gravel as he made his way back to the guard station.

I waited until he was out of sight before I rolled out from the vehicle and popped up, an ache in my chest. As I drew nearer to the gate, I took a deep breath, zipped my black windbreaker up and tightened my backpack straps. I focused on putting one foot silently in front of the other, careful to make no noise.

"Dec!" I stopped, fear turning to ice in my veins. "Declan, what in God's name are you doing?"

Turning around, I let out a sigh of relief and chortled. "Clara go on, let me be."

Her eyes widened as she realized what I was intending to do. "No. Absolutely not. You know as well as I do that this wasn't something our parents could do, what makes you think a scrawny 20 year old can? Not to mention with nothing but one of Dads old knapsacks."

Clara crossed her arms and stared me down, a look I was told she got from our mother. This was something we'd been fighting over since the day Josie turned 8.

From what we were told and taught in school, beyond the 11 foot concrete wall was a forest. A forest 27,493 feet deep was said to stretch from one end of the world to the other. They say it was like that everywhere, the only source of water came from large bodies of water throughout the states.

You could walk it, I remember my father telling me from a young age. He'd been out there once before we were born with my mother. They found out that the further out you go, the darker it gets. They dedicated their entire life to walking all the way across.

It's been 10 years since they went missing, and now that I was old enough and trained, I was going to walk to France. Uncover all that my parents died trying to find.

"Declan, I want to figure this forest out just as much as you-"

"No you don't," I said sharply, looking her in the eyes. "You wouldn't fight me if you did."

"Mom and Dad died in there, and you want to go risk you life trying to prove a point?" Her voice was rising and I could see the tears starting to form.

"Keep it down, you're going to get us caught," I muttered harshly, shifting my weight.

"Jesus Christ, Dec. I love you, but you can't do this. Not when things are hard here."

I snorted and shook my head bitterly. "This is a stupid fight," I muttered, pulling my jacket around me and storming past Josie.

The walk back to the bunker was tense, the only sound was gravel crunching ominously under our feet and Clara's occasional cough.

I slammed the door open and threw my bag on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aden sitting on the edge of my bed, running his hands over a book I had given him on his birthday last year.

When he saw me, he jumped up and bounced over to me.

"What were you doing?" Aden asked, his 15 year old face scrunched up in obvious confusion. I didn't have the heart to tell him where, or what I was doing.

"I was uh, doing research with Eric," I lied, pushing his blond hair back from his eyes. They were a spitting image of our fathers. Aden shoved me away and turned on the radio. The sound of old rock echoed off the walls and filled the air with a certain warmth.

I leaned against the counter, closed my eyes and remembered a time when mom used to turn on the radio and dance around in the morning. Dressed in dads sweatshirt and ratty pajama pants, she'd hum along to Aerosmith and make breakfast.

When dad would come in, she'd kiss his cheek and dish up pancakes and bacon. When I opened my eyes, Josie was staring at me, a sad look in her eyes. As if she was remembering the same things.