The Cause

I pull up to the shipping station just as the sun begins to set blood red in the smoggy sky. “Credentials, please,” says the armed guard at the entrance. 

“Lieutenant Lucy Collins,” I say, reaching under my scuffed white body armor and handing him my card. “I don’t usually have to show my ID.”

“I know,” he says. “New security restrictions just came through from Leadership. We’re checking everyone now.” He hands me back my card. “Go on through, Lieutenant.” He presses a button and the gate swings open. 

“Thanks.” I breathe a sigh of relief and pull the truck down the long, potholed road to the loading dock. My palms are sweating, but I feel confident that I’ve shown no outward sign of distress. It’s imperative that I stay calm. Any deviation from the plan could get me killed. 

Scorched palm trees line the road, reminders of a time before the war. Back then, this place was called San Diego. Now, it has no name. It’s simply another numbered military outpost, just one more wing of The Cause. As I turn left, I catch a glimpse of the hazy crimson sky in the rearview mirror. Suddenly, I’m sixteen again, perched on a dock under a cleaner sunset, cuddled up next to Carlos as the ocean waves kiss our toes. We were so naive then, so blissfully unaware of what was to come. It’s remarkable, really, how quickly things escalated. We enlisted as soon as we turned 18. Everyone did. The Cause was new at the time, and we believed in it. World War III had just broken out, and we were all feeling patriotic. Now, we’re 38 years old, Carlos and I. We’ve given 20 years of our lives to this thing. 20 years of having every freedom slowly stripped away. 

I reverse the truck into the cracked parking lot, then climb out, taking my rifle from the passenger seat and strapping it over my shoulder. I open the tailgate for the academy trainees who have just arrived with the forklift. “Go ahead and start unloading,” I tell the pimple-faced cadet who greets me. “I’ll be back to sign for the shipment in a moment. I just have to go check something.”

“Right away, Lieutenant,” says the kid. 

It’s easy to slip away now. I’m the only officer here and the cadets are distracted with the shipment. I look over my shoulder, heading down an alleyway between two piles of rubble that were once warehouses. 

A few blocks away I find Carlos, right where he promised to be, leaning against a waist-high retaining wall pockmarked by bullet holes. He wears the gray uniform of the military police, his hands resting on the M-16 strapped across his chest. I lean next to him, each of us looking in opposite directions, but so close we could touch if we wanted to. 

“If anyone asks,” he says. “I’m briefing you about the recent shipment thefts.”

“Right,” I whisper, a lump rising in my throat. I look at my dusty white boots. “They took Maisy.” 

“I heard,” says Carlos, staring determinedly away from me. “I’m so sorry, Luce.” 

I close my eyes, thinking of my sweet niece. When her parents were killed, I took custody of her, caring for her for three years as though she were my own. But now, with the new decree from Leadership, all children have become wards of The Cause. They shipped her away to be trained as a soldier just like everyone else. Familial relationships have been labelled “frivolous” and are therefore forbidden.

“All the more reason to go ahead with the plan,” hisses Carlos. “There’s no way you’ll get her back if we stay here. They can’t do this, Lucy. They can’t ban love.”

He drops his left hand from his rifle, and very slowly hooks his pinky finger through mine. I melt at his touch, wishing I could hug him, but something stops me- a blinking red light in a palm tree. “Careful,” I whisper. “There’s a camera up there.”

“I know,” he says. “It can only see us from the neck up. And it doesn’t have audio.”

“How can you be sure?” I breathe, my eyes still trained on the blinking light.

“It’s my job now, remember?” he says, tightening his grip on my finger. “I watch this footage all day, every day. Looking for - ” 

“Looking for people like us.” My voice catches as I remember what we are: traitors to The Cause, punishable by death. 

“Stop it,” he says sharply. “Don’t cry. Not here. Keep your face neutral.” He drops my finger. He knows it will be easier for me to keep it together if he’s not touching me. I take slow, smooth breaths, trying to contain myself in an undetectable way. 

“I have the money,” says Carlos. “Don’t turn around now but it’s sitting on the wall behind you. It’s in an official Cause envelope so it shouldn’t look suspicious if anyone sees it, but hide it in your uniform anyway, just in case.” 

“Okay,” I murmur. “Thanks.” 

“We’re gonna make it, Luce,” he says, staring up at the darkening sky. “Just one more day and we’ll be in Mexico.”

“I know.” I swallow hard. “You should go now. There’s no point standing here longer than we have to.”

“You’re right,” he sighs. “See you tomorrow, Luce.” He looks quickly in both directions, then jogs briskly away and disappears behind a rusty shipping container. 

I reach behind my back, my fingers finding the small envelope and shoving it into the waistband of my white fatigue pants. I glance left and right, then hurry back to the shipping lot. By the time I reach the cadets, they are unloading the last pallet of grain. 

My throat lump is gone now, my shoulders squared. “Great work, Cadet,” I say, as the pimple-faced boy hands me a clipboard and I sign my name at the bottom. “I’ll be here first thing in the morning to pick up the Mexico shipment.” 

I arrive at the barracks safely, just as darkness consumes the sky and the white, LED streetlights blink on. Aside from the guard stationed at the entrance, there’s no one around. Even the hallways and bathroom are empty. Curfew has begun. 

I shoulder open the door to my tiny apartment (no locks, of course. The place is not mine. It’s owned by The Cause). “Apartment” is too generous of a word, I think, for my living quarters. It’s more like a cell- a tiny, windowless room with white cinderblock walls, a rickety cot, stainless steel desk, and narrow locker. 

There is also a small white camera installed in the ceiling, its tiny green light blinking twenty-four hours a day. The Cause is always watching us, even when we sleep, change clothes, and bathe. The fact that every home has a camera trained on its beds is our constant reminder that even intimacy is now illegal. 

They can’t ban love. Carlos’ words echo in my mind as I swing my rifle off my shoulder and place it on the desk. I remove my body armor and fatigues, hanging them in the locker and changing into my gray sweatsuit. I carefully hide the money from the camera’s view, keeping my back to the blinking green light and transferring the envelope to the waistband of my sweatpants as I pull them on. Then I cross the room and wedge myself into the corner of the wall next to the locker. 

There is a blind spot to the cameras, I remember. Carlos told me about it. Every dormitory is identical, he said, and each one has a tiny area, about three feet square, that the cameras can’t reach. If I move two inches to the right, sit down or step forward, they’ll see me. But if I stand upright, crammed between the locker and the wall, I am hidden from view.

I reach into my sweatpants and pull out the envelope, thumbing it open and counting the hundreds inside. It’s all there, enough to get us food and lodging for a few days in Tijuana. Or enough to cover a small bribe for a customs officer. If we have to resort to bribery, we’ll be safe temporarily, but we’ll also be destitute. This is why so few people defect- because staying with The Cause guarantees you three meals a day and shelter, such as it is. In Mexico, and many other places in the post-war world, there is more freedom, but also more uncertainty. Food shortages have reached a critical point. Infrastructure has been demolished. Sanitation is nonexistent, disease running rampant. 

This is how desperate we’ve become. When we aren’t even allowed to keep our children, to have romantic relationships, to care for anything except The Cause, things like food shortages don’t seem so bad. I’d rather starve together, I told Carlos recently, than continue living this way alone. 

Once again, I run my fingers over the money in the envelope, but this time something else catches my eye- a flash of purple between the bills. I reach for it and gasp, clasping one hand over my mouth as a flood of memories almost drowns me.

I hold a vertical strip of tiny pictures- the kind people used to take in photo booths. I smile at the three miniature portraits of Carlos and I, each one slightly different from the last. I remember so clearly the night these were taken. It was our senior prom, and we’d worn the most ridiculous outfits. Carlos sported a furry top hat and I wore a slinky, purple-sequined dress. He told me it made me look like a mermaid. We both thought prom was dumb, but we went anyway, dressed in crazy clothes as a symbolic act of rebellion. You could do that back then- rebel against anything you wanted to. We were seventeen, unaware that in a few short months, our lives would be upended by war. 

My eyes scan each photo hungrily. In the first, we’re kissing, in the second, sticking our tongues out, in the third, laughing hysterically. Suddenly, I’m crying so hard I can barely breathe. My whole body aching for Carlos, for my parents, for Maisy. I sob for the beautiful future we’d envisioned for ourselves- a future filled with hope and excitement and love. A future crushed by The Cause. 

I wonder how Carlos has managed to hold onto this strip of paper for so long without it being confiscated. He, of course, knew he’d be killed if anyone discovered it. It was so very reckless for him to keep this, so incredibly stupid, and yet this tiny, fierce act of rebellion makes me love him even more. I flip the strip over, and find that Carlos has scrawled something on the back in his messy handwriting: They can’t crush this. 

I hug the photos to my chest, taking slow breaths as I try to calm my sobs. The camera on the ceiling registers audio, but I know I won’t be punished for crying. People must break down all the time, I guess, given the hopeless, lonely nature of our lives. If they arrested us for weeping, there’d be no one left. 

I slide the strip of photos beneath my sweatshirt and under the elastic strap of my sports bra. There, it rests over my heart, an itchy reminder of everything I’m fighting for. The fluorescent lights overhead blink off automatically, and I know I’ve used up my electricity quota for the day. I crawl into bed, pulling up my tattered, gray fleece blanket. I stare at the ceiling, one hand resting on my chest and tracing the rectangular strip beneath my clothes. I know I will not sleep tonight. Carlos’ scribbled words scroll on a repeated loop across my brain: They can’t crush this. They can’t crush this. They can’t crush this. 

In the morning, I dress quickly, carefully transferring the money envelope to the waistband of my fatigues. The strip of photos gets shoved into my sock, secure against my ankle as I tightly lace up my boots. I check my rifle, then swing it over my shoulder and give the room a glance. There is nothing to pack for my new life in Mexico, nothing, even, to show that I’ve lived here. I own nothing. Or, rather, The Cause owns me. 

I set my jaw and narrow my eyes, determined for our plan to succeed. I am not hungry, but I stop at the mess hall anyway and choke down the same bland toast and black coffee that I am issued every morning. I know it may be the last meal I have for a while. 

I catch the transport bus to the shipping station, oversee the cadets as they load up the latest order of wheat, corn and soybeans onto the three trucks bound for Tijuana. I check in with my commanding officer, just as I do every day, making sure to speak only when necessary. “Keep an eye out for anything suspicious,” says Major Jenkins, scowling out from under his eyebrows. “Lots of armed robberies lately. People are getting hungry. I’m sending a couple extra bodies along for added security.”

Wonderful. More eyes to see me escape. My palms begin to sweat again, but I keep my face neutral, just as Carlos advised, saluting Major Jenkins and swinging myself confidently up into the truck. Nothing to see here, folks. Business as usual. 

I pull out of the warehouse and onto the freeway, watching the two convoy trucks behind me in the rearview mirror. A private named Hanson sits next to me in the passenger seat, her M-16 slung across her chest, her eyes carefully scanning the road for any suspicious vehicles. She is so very young- barely eighteen, I’m sure- not even old enough to remember life before The Cause. I do not speak to her. Instead, I hold my hands steady on the wheel and keep my eyes trained on the road ahead.

The plan is simple, I remind myself. Arrive at customs as usual, hoping against hope that they’re only checking IDs, not doing body searches. I will cross the border into Tijuana, supervising the unloading of the shipment. Right before the cadets finish up, I will slip away, just as I did yesterday. This time, however, I will vanish into the city like a ghost. The tricky part will be finding someplace to buy new clothes and ditch my uniform, but once I’ve done that, I should be safe, at least for a while. I will wait at the rest stop Carlos found on the outskirts of town, laying low until he meets me there tonight. 

The wail of a siren jolts me out of my thoughts, and my heart rate quickens. “Is that the rebels, Lieutenant?” asks Hanson “I heard they’ve been using fake sirens.”

“No, it’s not the rebels, Private.” I pull over to the shoulder, watching the blue and red lights flashing in my side mirror. “That’s a Cause patroller.” I frown. “Military police.”

“Have we done something wrong, Lieutenant?” she asks, her voice quivering. 

"You’ve done nothing wrong, Private,” I say, giving her knee a gentle pat. 

My stomach drops, my hands shaking as I shift the truck into park. The patrol vehicle contains two gray-clad police officers, each wearing matching Cause-issued sunglasses. The one in the driver’s seat gets out, sidling up to my door and tapping on the window with one knuckle. “Lieutenant Collins?” he barks. I nod curtly, too afraid to speak. “Step out of the vehicle, please.”

Before I can unbuckle my seatbelt, the second policeman sticks his head out of the patroller and calls, “Hey! You forgot to put on your new camera!”

“Damn it,” says the first patrolman, jogging back to his vehicle and grabbing a tiny black box from his dashboard. He fiddles with it, trying to clip it onto the chest of his body armor. 

I see my chance- my only chance. As I open the door and climb out, I crouch down, pull the envelope from my waistband and toss it under the truck. Then I wrench Carlos’ photo strip from my sock, dropping it on the asphalt and crushing it under the heel of my boot. 

“Surrender your weapon and raise your hands in the air,” says the patrolman, finally turning toward me. I place my rifle on the ground at his feet, then raise my hands and stare at his sunglasses, wishing I could see his eyes. “Are you familiar, Lieutenant Collins,” he says, “with the security cameras located at the shipping docks of Cause Loading Station Number Four?” 

Of course I am. I saw one just yesterday when I was with Carlos. “Yes, sir,” I respond, trying hard to keep my voice steady. 

“And are you aware, Lieutenant,” he continues, one hand resting on his pistol, “that those cameras were fitted with an audio connection just yesterday morning? Meaning that any conversation held in their vicinity was not only heard, but recorded?”

“I was not aware of that. No, sir,” I gasp, as hot tears prick my eyes and my legs begin to quake. 

As he produces a pair of handcuffs and moves toward me, I close my eyes, thinking of Carlos, laughing absurdly in a furry top hat. 

They can’t crush this. They can’t crush this. They can’t crush this.