“And we’re crashed on an alien planet who knows how far from home. I think we have time.”
“Point taken.”
“So?”
“So, let’s just say I haven’t always had the best luck dating men.”
“Preaching to the choir. But that still doesn’t explain this.”
“I was getting to that. There was this guy, Billy. Well, Billy was a bad boy, which I used to have something of a weakness for.” She gestured to an ornate design on her left shoulder.“That’s a coverup from matching tattoos we got on our one-year anniversary.”
“Pretty.”
“Yeah,nowit is. But let’s just say the original wasn’t the greatest of looks. Anyway, this was before the crazy really started to show through. Back then, he was just a prepper. You know the kind, the guys who stockpile canned food and water filters, ‘just in case.’ Turns out the guy was a certifiable nut job, once he let his true self show through. But I have to admit, he did teach me some useful skills when he wasn’t going on about conspiracy theories, and chemtrails, and chips in people’s heads.”
“What about alien abduction? Was that on his survivalist Bingo card?”
“Surprisingly, that wasn’t one of them.”
Harper chuckled. “And yet here we are.”
Olivia laughed, but it was a somewhat pained sound, her gallows humor deployed as she continued her efforts to keep herself from slipping into panic, shock, or worse. “Yep. If only I’d been so lucky.”
“If only.” Harper looked around at the ruins of their former cell. “This place is a wreck. We must’ve really taken a beating when we—” She fell silent, eyes quickly scanning the compartment before resting on a few lingering bloodstains on the walls and floor. “Where are the others?”
There was no gentle way to ease her into this. Ripping off the Band-Aid was the only option.
“They’re dead, Harper. All three of them died in the crash.”
“But, where?—”
“I buried them while you were sleeping. It was the least I could do for them.”
The injured woman moved as if to say something, her mouth moving like a fish struggling to breathe a moment before it shut as the reality sank in.
“Look, I don’t know what we’re dealing with out there, but we can breathe this atmosphere, and the weather isn’t too hot or cold.”
“The Goldilocks Zone.”
“What?”
“Not too hot, not too cold,” Harper replied, slowly coming out of her silence.
“Right. We got lucky with that, but one thing is for sure: we need water if we’re going to survive. I put aside some pieces I can use to hold water if I find some, but I’m gonna have to leave you alone for a while to search.”
“What about the built-in water supply?”
“It didn’t seem to be working earlier, but if you can figure out how to get it functional, that’s one more resource we’ll have on our side. But for now, we need to assume we have very limited supplies, and getting more water is priority one.”
Olivia moved for the opening in the hull, carefully stepping out into the fresh air.
“Don’t be too long,” Harper called after her.
“I won’t.”
The items gathered to hold water were rather varied in size and shape, and none of them had a proper sealing top. But even so, with a little ingenuity and hard work, Olivia had managed to scrounge together a respectable assortment of makeshift vessels to fill if she did, in fact, find a fresh water source. First and foremost, however, she set to work while the air was still warming from the overnight lows.
The foliage around their crash site was deep burgundy and a stunning shade of dark green. Trees with winding branches towered above, and waxy-leaved bushes spread as far as the eye could see, dotting the area but still spaced out enough to allow relative freedom of movement.
