And I survived, and even if nobody else did, there has to be some useful stuff in the wreckage. Food supplies, maybe. Shelter, for sure.
CHAPTER 7
Ido not know how many days I spend in the wreckage—or even if it is more than a day at all. It gets light and dark and light again, but my mind is not working the way it should and I am not counting the way I should, and after a while I can’t deal with the growing scent of death. I’m afraid of seeing someone I recognize. I’m afraid of seeing, well, him…
Functioning more on some theoretical sense of what should be done more than actual real human thought, I carry what I can in a pack, and I dress myself in discarded uniform pants. I have boots, leggings that fit me well, a pair of over-pants that don’t, a sweater, a thick jacket that is also too big, and a bag full of items I’ve somehow managed to forage from the wreckage.
I start to walk toward a forested area. I want to be away, but not too far away, in case rescue comes. I know that I will stick out. I took a radio device, and some other wired things that I think might register if someone was looking for a survivor.
Just as I leave the wreckage site and slide into the trees, I hear voices.
What a beautiful thing.
The sound of humans has never struck me so profoundly before. I open my mouth, prepared to cry out for help and recognition, but something stops me before I do.
I peer through the leaves of the bush I happen to be in and I see people moving through the wreckage. They’re not survivors though. They’re not wearing our uniform.
They’re big men wearing dark clothing, with red insignia.
They are Vikar.
I know it instantly.
I crouch down in the undergrowth and watch them as they move through the wreckage. They’re looking for something. I wonder what. Not any tech or supplies, because they walk past all sorts of interesting things that I’d take if there weren’t a limit to what I can carry.
“A lot of bodies.”
“We’ll give them a funeral,” one laughs. His words are kind of nice, but his tone isn’t.
“There’s someone alive,” a deeper voice insists. “Keep looking.”
My blood runs cold. They’re looking for me. They must have some kind of scanning device that detects alive people, so they know I am here. However it works, it apparently doesn’t give them an exact location. Or maybe it does, and I just moved in time.
“Fan out. He’s here.”
They think I am a man. That’s useful. Maybe I can just sneak around being all feminine and not getting on their radar.
Then one of them swings around to look directly at me. I stand there like a stunned fish. I am not at my best right now. Being full body slammed from a great height into a planet and left in the smashed-up remains of everyone and everything you’d come to know is not good for the mind, the body, or the soul.
“There’s a woman there!”
“Argh!” I say.
The little part of my brain that is still working in a reasonable way tells me that was not the thing to do. That part starts forcing its way through my frozen mind, kicking shit over and telling the rest of my brain that the time for being stupid and shocked is done because we have some surviving to do.
I feel myself come online sort of all at once, in the weirdest way. It’s like I was just reset.
I drop the bag, because it’s heavy, and I run.
“Get her!”
The Vikar give chase, and I suppose some part of me knows they’re going to catch me, but no part of me has any intention of making it easy for them.
I sprint for open ground, quitting the forest proper and running along its edge instead.
There has to be a dozen of them, and they are now all chasing me, joining in the hunt like wolves tag-teaming their prey. I’m not going to get away, but I’m going to try…
We already know what happens before it even happens.
