Eko knew the moment she opened her eyes her comrades had been slaughtered. Her vision doubled the sight of charred trees surrounding her. The hit she'd taken to her temple beat like pain had its own heart inside her skull, and it cried blood down her ear and her stiff neck.
Before she knew she was doing it, she leaned off of the tree she was up against with the help of her hand. Above her was the pink and blue sky, the hot and rising sun on its way. Below her, the scattered ash blanketed the dry ground, filling each crack and groove with soot. There were patches here and there, darker than the rest because of blood. She followed one trail to a tree ten feet away from her, where the body of Ken lay in torn, gray camouflage stained in red, his entrails resting outside of him.
Eko had gotten to her feet at some point, finding herself stumbling,
and using her tree to stay upright. Shrill ringing sung in her ears as
pressure relented from her head; she staggered to the side, and as the
circulation began in her body it woke up every other pain. The claw
marks in her shoulder and her upper-arm, barely missing her artery; the
gashes in her back, exposing her to cold air; and the dozens of
punctures in her leg, running over her calve and her knee. She felt her
cracked bones. That wasn't her imagination, and it burned with the bite
of a thousand knives.
With an unsteady step, she moved one foot
near Ken, knowing long before she ever did that she needed to survey the
area. Her body wasn't on the same page until she was halfway to the
corpse and the wind picked up. It stung her wounds, but carried with it
thick smoke and its failure to mask the scent of various decaying
bodies-Rue, Lan, Kay, Orn, and Dre.
Pieces of them laid several yards away, some behind thin or wide trees. Or up in the weak branches, which impaled Kay through her stomach and chest. Her leg was below her, beside the upper-half of Rue. There were snapped rifles around them, and handguns bent out of shape by powerful jaws.
Eko ambled over to Rue and checked his breast pocket. There was a bullet in there, the one he'd call his 'lucky bullet'. She took it, along with his jacket she tied around her waist. It was then she found Lan's body, missing part of her neck, her shoulder, and her ribs. Eko grabbed her rifle off of her, and dropped to her knee, verifying its health: barrel, check. Trigger, check. Ammo, none, except the one she'd loaded it with.
A twig snapped-and despite the tiredness, in .75 seconds she whipped around and aimed the gun at the noise source. Her body moved faster than her mind, a millisecond away from shooting the creature down, but she recognized them in time. The silhouettes of two men, injured, the taller one supporting the other.
"Dre...? Jin?"
A slight smile bent Dre's lips as he wavered. His exhaustion distorted his words: "Thing that's th' firs' time ya'v said my name, Eko."
He tipped; Jin couldn't support him, and she rushed over, closing the ten-foot distance between them to save Dre. She didn't lay him down, but he gave most of his weight-a little over three-hundred pounds-to her. It'd have been more trouble to get him back up.
"Shh," Eko told him. It was then she realized his arm had not been hiding behind Jin. It wasn't there at all. "Stay with me. We have to finish the mission."
"The mi- mission?" He made something like a scoff, speaking in to her shoulder, which was easy to do at five-foot-ten, barely shorter than her.
She checked his bloody elbow. Jin must have cauterized it at some point. She moved to his side with his good arm, which she placed around her wounded neck. "The Phoenix isn't much farther. Let's head out."
"We'r not gon' make it," he breathed. "Y' can' be ser'ous..."
"I don't kid, soldier. We're walking on three. One, two-" She took
him with her on the first step, and egged him on for the next. He could
rest, however much he managed to while absent-mindedly walking, as Jin
kept an eye on things. He was almost injured to the point of Dre, and
the only difference was that he had all limbs and a heavy limp for his
awkwardly twisted leg.
On they went, through one of the many
burned forests that all looked the same, devoid of life save for the
gang of soldiers who'd been foolish enough to waltz into it. Luck shone
down on the survivors for every moment they did not hear, nor see
anything, for if anything did make a sound or show itself it would only
be the monster that annihilated their squad.
Dre fumbled, stumbled, and every now and then almost tumbled. The sun had finished its rise and was already shifting shadows by moving toward the west, and the survivors only just reached the treeline of the forest. Ahead was more than fifty miles of the rest of the desert, with nothing more than a mirage, titillating them with the image of a lake no one had seen the reality of for decades.
The sun remained hot on their skin; it would have blistered their organs and dried off layers long ago if they were normal humans. She covered five, ten, twenty miles, and her legs only just started to ache and feel worn.
Dre missed a step, and she almost fell over with him as he groaned and
hit the ground. "I jus' need a moment," he breathed, and when she tried
to urge him to get up he repeated himself. She let out a long sigh into
the air, wiping her forehead of the little sweat there.
"Thirty-five more miles," she said. "We will reach the mountains. We'll find Phoenix."
"Feel like that ain' true... Been out here so long. It even 2059 an'more?"
"We left on the cusp of spring. Winter will begin soon, but not yet."
"That all it took to talk, Eko?" he murmured. "Losin' ev'one?"
"I didn't need to talk. Even now it's debatable, but it helps, doesn't it?"
He parted his bloody lips to speak, but decided against it, his brows making this quirk like he wasn't sure what he thought of the statement. He started to prop himself up, and she and Jin hovered just in case, but he got to his own feet-shaky, breathing hard-and started walking.
"Thirty-five miles?"
"Thirty-five miles," she said. "We've done worse."
"Yeah..."
"We've never been worse," Jin just had to say, but it was with a laugh.
"Is that coming from the man who has two bionic arms?" said Eko. "You almost died then, too. And we lost everyone that time, too. We get to the mountain, and then we go home. That's all we need to know."
"Who'da thought you had optimism in you."
She snorted. "Don't take it that far."
Without Dre's arm weighing on her back, she stretched her neck and rubbed her fingers hard in to the notches of her spine and the tendons holding it together. He'd stagger every few moments, managing like a drunkard whose innate sense of balance was the only thing keeping him upright.
As the sun lowered into the west, it abducted more and more of the heat, reaching that point where they no longer despised the temperature for being hot, but for being the opposite. The winds carried with them an icy chill, bringing up dust. Distant howls rang in the faraway, setting all of their hairs on ends. As though none of them heard it, Jin said to Eko,
"I don't know how you're doing this... Jumping right into action."
She didn't say. They trudged on through the nothingness, and Eko found herself watching Dre's feet. They dragged across most steps, but would always lift just in time to go over each crack in the ground, without fail. He didn't know what he was doing, but she knew there'd been a time when children played that game.
***
"Nooo, no, you stepping on the lines, you gonna die!" the little girl said. She ran over to her sister, older by one year with light-brown hair and lighter skin. "You stepping on all the cracks, you died like, five times o'ready!"
"I got a thousand lives, I'm fine," Shastri said. She hopped over the next line, made by the square, concrete slabs of the sidewalk wrapped around the playground, then she stepped right on the thin crack in the middle of the next square.
"You're playing it all wroooong!" whined Eviliah. She ran in front of Shastri and held out her arms. "Hold! You don't getta pass 'less you play it right!"
"It's no fun to play it right," said Shastri. She grabbed Eviliah and forced her to step on a crack, causing the girl to shriek and cry:
"I'm d-dead noooow, I'm gonna start dying! You killed me!"
"Are you dead, or dying? Pick already," laughed Shastri. "Oh, lookie! The ants are back!" She left Eviliah, who might have cried more if not for the mention of some bugs to pique her interest. While children played around on the obstacles, Eviliah crawled over near the tree with her sister. There there was a stream of ants walking across today's newspaper. Many of them seemed to disappear against the large black headline: Will 2040 be the New End of Days?
"What'a they doin'?" Eviliah asked.
"They're eating the crumbs, you don't see them? Right there." Shastri pointed at some of them on the paper.
"They look like they fightin' over all the food."
"I think they're part of the same ant group, I think they're just trying to bring it all back home."
Eviliah got up and ran over to her father, who sat on the bench
beside her mother. The latter was leaned in to listen to her husband's
phone conversation, both not hearing Eviliah when she asked for her
snack, so she grabbed it herself and ran over to the ants again.
"Here you go, antsies, you get my gold fishies. I like them lots." She set it down, and the ants only split their paths around it until Shastri grabbed it up and crumbled the cracker into smaller bits.
"Evie!" Her father called. "Shastri, come here!"
Eviliah ignored it at first until her sister urged her along, and she bunny-hopped over to her parents. "Yeah?"
"We have some good news," Mom said. "It's perfect timing." "Are we gonna go to Wooonderland!?" Eviliah jumped up and down, and Mom laughed.
"No, honey. Here, look." She took Eviliah's hand, along with Shastri's, and placed them on her swollen stomach.
"Oh, momma, you got fat," Eviliah said, causing Dad to burst out laughing. Shastri gasped, and before she said anything, Eviliah felt it a moment later-the skin moving, kicking back at Eviliah's hand. She screamed and pulled away. "Momma, something IN THERE! GET IT OUT!"
They all started to cackle, and Shastri said, "Mom's pregnant, silly! She's having a baby." "A baby?" Eviliah blinked. "But the baby gonna be so tiny." "She still needs some time to grow," Mom chuckled.
"She? Another sister?" said Shastri.
Mom nodded. "We've known for some time now, but I wanted to make sure I was well into the second trimester before we told anyone, just to be safe. Both of you will have a new baby sister in about five months." It was Eviliah's turn to gasp. She moved her mother's arms and pressed her hear back to her belly. "She so quiet."
"She won't be talking until later, honey."
"Do I getta pick out her clothes?" Eviliah asked. "Can I put her in dresses? And share my dolls with her?"
"You'll be able to do all of that and more," Mom said. "Are you excited?"
"Yes! YesyesyesYES!" Eviliah jumped and spun around. "Can I name her? I wanna name her! Let's call herrrr...Thumper! 'Cause she went thump-thump!"
***
"What?" Jin asked. Eko furrowed her brows at him; both of her comrades were behind her, as she'd walked faster without knowing it. The mountains still looked too far away. "You said something. Thump-thump?"
"Oh... Yes," she said, with no explanation. He didn't ask for it. She must have been talking to herself again. What a bizarre scene to think of, she thought. It was as crystal clear as looking through her own eyes.
At some point they had passed by a dirty watering hole, which they had to give a wide stretch of space to. Animals congregated there, both predator and prey in an uneasy truce that broke the moment something incited something with sharp teeth and claws to act.
"I swear," Dre said, "if Phoenix ain'-ain' there I'm gon' kill it."
"That doesn't make sense," Eko told him.
"Language is hard...an' 'm five, six, blood-pints short? A'ight?"
Eko shook her head. She stopped with Jin when they heard a high-pitched cry sounded out, starting out high and then hitting a plateau before its sudden end. It was followed by more-whooping from the only creatures who could make such vocalizations. They were there, at the horizon behind them, more than ten hyenas.
She went to Dre and wrapped his arm around her again. "We have to pick it up."
"Huh?" He watched Jin walk ahead of them, his limp heavier. He
couldn't look behind, and Eko told him what was after them, but even
that didn't speed him up. They'd already walked more than ten miles
since leaving the woods, and adrenaline was no friend of his. Not until
the hyenas got closer. Their figures grew bigger-every time Eko glanced
over her shoulder, she could make out more details, from their spots, to
their bearish snout. There'd been thirteen, now twenty.
When
they were close enough, Eko wouldn't let Dre walk away, much as he
tried. She'd turned around to face the hyenas with Jin, neither of them
daring to keep their backs to the creatures. Their prominent bones
showed most of their skeleton underneath their thin furs, their
waistlines small as their spines.
"How min' bullets you got?" Dre asked Eko.
"One."
"Fuck," he laughed, but with several cracks in his voice. "Was kin'a h-hopin' there'd be three."
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