Autumn's Dawn
an excerpt

“We didn’t plan this well,” Ana said.

“What could we have done? Driven the SUV? We know it had a tracking device, and if we disabled that, it was a dead giveaway that we were running,” Emily said. “We didn’t have any place to store supplies. We didn’t have the money to buy the right ones. We still really don’t. We have less than eight thousand dollars, people. And until we can find a way to make some more, we’re going to keep losing it when we buy stuff.”

“And we can’t rely on the charity of strangers forever. That man-”

“Was slightly empathetic,” Emily interrupted. “If it wasn’t for that sense, he would never have picked us up.”

“How do you know?” Steven asked skeptically.

“I’m a telepath. I can tell.”

“So the government knows where we are,” Ana said.

“No,” I slowly replied back. “There’s over fifty thousand of the lesser ones. The government can’t keep track of everyone. If it’s only empathy, and weak at that, how is it useful? It isn’t specific, and can mislead. Think, guys. If he really was part of the government, do you think he would have let us go?”

Ana shook her head, but Steven still looked worried. “You told him that we were-”

“He believed it. It’s true- from a certain point of view. And if you believe something sincerely enough, it can overwhelm the falseness. Telepathy is a lot harder to fool. Trust me- I was trained in this kind of stuff,” Emily said.

“Fine, fine,” Steven said. “Let’s get a move on before it gets too much later. Ana, could you find us a place to sleep for the night?”

She shot him a look, but focused.

“A couple miles further up, down a private dirt road, is an empty vacation home. There’s food there, and hopefully some camping equipment.”

“Are you sure it’s empty?”

“Yeah. The furniture’s covered in dust clothes. Hasn’t been touched in months.”

Steven nodded, satisfied. I sighed, though. It was late May. Now was the time when people started coming on vacations, especially if they didn’t have children to worry about school. But it was only for one night, and preserved food goods. Most people weren’t going to begrudge those, especially if they never found out someone had entered the house. And that was easy enough with my lock picking skills and Steven’s ability to teleport. We may not even have to enter the house at all.

An hour and a half later, now dark enough that we could barely see feet ahead of ourselves, we came to the end of the long driveway and looked at the house we could dimly see. There was a porch with a small overhang above the door. It was three storied, though the top one seemed oddly small compared to the rest of the house. And Ana and Emily confirmed it was still empty and hadn’t been touched. Now all we had to do was enter it.

It was easy enough- I just had to lift pins. There was no security system, as far as Ana and I could tell. Simple. We quickly shut and locked the door behind us, just in case. To my surprise, there wasn’t a lot of dust, less than there should have been if the place had been empty for months. Still, the kitchen was fairly clean and right next to the door we had entered. Ana quickly turned on the light above the sink so we would have some light to read the goods in the pantry by. Emily opened the pantry door and then froze in horror. The rest of us stopped moving and we all heard the car stopping near the front of the house. There was nothing we could do. The door was just behind a little wall, no more than a foot long. The light could be- and had been from the raised voices in the yard- seen from the driveway. There was no place for us to go. We were caught.