by Alex Bratton
“A man on the radio,” Alvarez continued, “and he heard it from a National Guard officer who’d been driven out.”
“That’s it?” Lincoln’s voice rose. The piercing pain in his side tormented him. “Don’t ever bring me news like that again, Alvarez, unless you can provide better evidence than that!”
“Lincoln, why would someone lie about—”
Carter intervened, touching Alvarez on the shoulder. “Now’s not the time.” He turned to Lincoln. “We’ll come back in the morning. Get some sleep.”
Nelson opened his mouth as if to say something, but he closed it again and followed Carter and Alvarez out of the tent.
Angry that they would give him this news and then abandon him, Lincoln yelled after them, “How am I supposed to rest after that?”
He knocked over a stand next to his cot, sending a metal cup and tray clanging down onto the dirt floor. The medic, who must have heard the racket, came back in and gave Lincoln some more morphine. He finally slept.
They kept Lincoln sedated for several days, as much to help him rest as to keep him from ripping open his stitches. When he finally woke, the same anger welled inside of him, but he refrained from upsetting any more trays or shouting at anyone. He didn’t actually have anyone to yell at except the medic, who helped him sit up and eat. Everyone else was at the mine, although his team wasn’t allowed inside until every tunnel was declared safe. After Lincoln’s head cleared a bit, he realized he hadn’t asked Carter, Nelson, or Alvarez about their families. Ashamed of himself, Lincoln was glad they had left him alone.
Already he was stir crazy. Lying in bed only gave him time to brood and mourn for Mina. Hating that he had survived and she hadn’t, Lincoln’s thoughts turned dark. He had put her on that plane. He had agreed that she come home. He should have been the one to die, not her.
When he couldn’t stand his own grief anymore, Lincoln sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He hobbled out into the sunlight. Despite the clear sky, the day was cold. The medic anxiously followed him, admonishing him not to tear his stitches.
Lincoln shrugged him off. “I’m not staying in there anymore.”
But after a few more seconds of squinting in the daylight, he began to feel dizzy. The medic helped him back inside, and he was left to his misery. Lincoln’s one consolation was they had a lot of work to do in the mine, and he wasn’t going to rest until every last alien was eradicated from the planet.
Chapter Four
For the first few days, Mina had avoided houses, but as she grew hungrier and rainwater no longer assuaged her thirst, she began watching them. Knowing she couldn’t live on her own forever, she resolved to approach the first house that looked safe and ask for help.
The next day, she found her opportunity. The two-story farmhouse looked quiet with a woman and teenage girl tiptoeing around the yard, watching the sky every time they set foot out of the house. Mina watched them for an hour and then left to look at another house on the next property. Although the previous house looked safe enough, Mina was too nervous to commit to any place despite her promise to herself. After seeing the gang at the station, she was terrified. She wanted safety but wanted to escape attention, too. However, the second house was burned out, and nothing of value lay outside.
Returning to the farmhouse seemed like a solid plan, and Mina approached it warily but with a buoyancy in her steps. Hopefully, this woman was friendly. Mina planned to offer to help, to do anything so that she could stay.
But when she arrived at the farmhouse, a gruesome sight met her. The woman and teenager lay sprawled out on the front yard with their throats slit. Blood soaked the ground beneath them. Horrified, Mina recoiled from the scene, backtracking into a stand of trees and trying not to throw up.
She lost her battle, heaving the bile in her stomach onto the roots of a tree. It didn’t make her feel better, and the image of their bodies followed her as she ran from the scene.
Who did that? Mina shook her head. What did that?
Her new path took her to a small highway, which she followed for a while, afraid of moving back into the trees but knowing they provided more cover. After a few hours of this fearful trek, though, Mina began to hear buzzing. It grew louder as she passed a line of abandoned vehicles.
Then, the stench hit her, a smell on the wind unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Putrid, strong, and almost sweet.
When she came to the end of the line of vehicles, she saw the source.
Bloated bodies covered the road and shoulder. Some were in Army fatigues, others in civilian clothes. Blood stained the concrete, congealed over hundreds of spent bullet casings. Flies buzzed everywhere in dark, mobile clouds.
Mina heaved again, but nothing came up. With her heart pounding, she stumbled away from the scene, desperate to get away from the carnage.
Had the aliens done that? Mina wouldn’t have even questioned it except for the bullet casings. They must have been from the Army trying to defend themselves and the civilians. She passed two automatic rifles on the ground, but she didn’t even consider picking one up. That wasn’t for her.
More bodies lay within the trees and surrounding field. Mina cried when she saw a young woman with a bullet through her head. From the little she had seen, the aliens didn’t use bullets.
Clearly, more lawless were already organized, attacking people for supplies or out of some misplaced need for power.
Don’t be stupid, Mina. You don’t know what happened here. It could have been friendly fire.
Mina sank down against a tree, trying not to sob, to catch her breath, to make sense of everything, but there wasn’t any sense to be made. Everything was pointless. The attacks, the road, the trees. Resisting the urge to hide in a hole, Mina forced herself to stand, took off across the farmlands, and headed west.
Three days later, Mina fought her way through a creek bed. Trees loomed over the creek, their branches a lattice against the pale sky above. At the bank, the snarl of roots and budding vines snaked all the way to the water, and Mina treaded carefully to avoid slipping into the bitter current. She leaned against the muddy embankment, breathing heavily and listening. Male voices drifted over from the woodland trail above the creek. She had to be moving in the same direction they were. They could move to the creek for water at any moment. Staying here was dangerous.
Weak and a little disoriented, Mina hadn’t made it far that day, preferring to scout the surrounding land for food. She hadn’t found any, and when the men had arrived, she had sought the creek for cover.
Mina gazed back at the path she had slogged through, at its slippery stones and moss and tree roots. She dreaded the thought of fighting her way back along the creek bed, but she dared not leave its cover. On one side of the water, to the west, the thicket thinned quickly until nothing but small trees dotted the land all the way up to the road.
Thinking of the massive black ship over the station and the slain bodies in the fields, Mina shuddered and contemplated her other option. A narrow nature trail lay on the east side of the creek. The large trees along the trail provided perfect cover for the people fleeing the open farmlands. Or they would have if bands of armed men weren’t tramping up and down the trail. Alone, weak, and helpless, Mina couldn’t use it. She envied the people who had a friend or loved one with them. Before the invasion, Mina had never been afraid of being alone. Now, she could think of nothing but finding safety in human company.
Beyond the path, a few more thickets of trees opened up to rolling farmland broken only by windbreaks. Why she thought she would be safe here, Mina could not remember. Now that she was here, though, she didn’t know if she would be safer anywhere else.
She stood and headed back the way she had come, hunched over as if walking that way would make her harder to see. The nagging hunger that had awakened her at dawn intensified as the afternoon wore on. By the time Mina had fought her way back to her starting position, her body rebelled, refusing to cooperate as
she stumbled along the creek bed.
Finally, deep shades of dusk made further progress along the water impossible, but the men’s voices had faded. Mina washed mud from her hands and face and drank deeply. The water tasted of earth, sand, and trees. If only she knew how to filter it. But she didn’t, and thirst drove her to drink her fill.
The wind blew cold night air through the trees, rattling the branches. A full moon shone down on dead brown shoots. Since fleeing to the farmland, Mina had noticed all the early crops were dying. She suspected the aliens had done something to them.
Pain rippled down Mina’s spine as she straightened. At the edge of the trees, the quiet field looked safe.
Mina paused to find her bearings and looked for the tree she had camped by the previous night. Spotting the large, gnarled oak in the moonlight, she crept out of her hiding place and across the corner of the field. As she approached the tree, something moved at the corner of her vision across the barren rows near a stand of trees. Startled, Mina dropped to the ground. The sharp smell of dirt and decay stung her nostrils, making her eyes water.
Mina's chest constricted in fear and then humiliation. What was she doing? She couldn’t hide in the dirt. Keep it together, Mina.
Rather than overthink her options, she screwed up her courage, pushed off the ground, and darted behind the oak, listening. Another breeze rustled the newly budded branches above.
After several minutes, Mina risked a look. Nothing. Relieved, she slumped to a sitting position while her heart rate and breathing slowed. Must have been her imagination. The sweat on her body cooled in the night air, and she shuddered.
Nights Mina had once deemed “crisp” now felt bitterly cold since she had begun sleeping outside. She had finally started a few campfires using the lighters. Puny and smoky, the fires threatened to die every five minutes if she didn’t heap more small twigs and dry leaves on them, but the feeble warmth had made her more comfortable on colder nights. Tonight, though, after multiple sightings of gunmen and the scare in the field, lighting a fire seemed too risky.
She pushed thoughts of the day aside and burrowed into the bed of last year’s leaves and pine needles covering the ground. Every twig beneath her tried to jab her in the ribs, and large tree roots dug into her shoulder. She twisted around to find the most comfortable spot. Her only advantage was her exhaustion. Eventually, she would sleep despite her discomfort. Mina pulled her thin hood over her head, tucked her hands into her jacket sleeves, and waited for the cold to settle.
The sky darkened as winds blew clouds across the moon. A light flickered along the horizon. A whiff of smoke drifted through the night, but the field remained quiet. Even though the smell sent her heart racing again, Mina was too weary to consider leaving her hiding place.
When Mina woke, intense cramps knotted her stomach. From the creek water or hunger? She stood and brushed off her clothes. Every part of her body ached, and she twisted and stretched to relieve the knots in her back. Then, she went in search of food. What I wouldn’t do for a steak right now. She could have eaten a whole cow before being satisfied.
The sun filtered through smoky clouds and warmed the earth. The day would be warm, a welcome change from the last week. Mina spent the rest of the morning examining bushes and vines for possible food. The trees and plants were mostly green, so she could study the foliage, but she really didn’t know what to look for. Hadn’t she read somewhere that dandelions were edible?
Mina didn’t find any dandelions. Instead, a berry dangled near the ground beneath three jagged leaves. Several more of the plants were scattered around. The fruit resembled a small strawberry. Mina picked one and sniffed it. It smelled sweet, but it could still be poisonous. She touched her tongue to it. Yes, it was sweet.
Mina’s stomach cramped again, and she doubled over. She’d eaten her last snack cake four days ago. She’d eaten her last meal nine days ago, before the flight. Casting aside her doubt, Mina stuck the berry in her mouth. Wonderful, tart juice shocked her taste buds, and it tasted like a strawberry from the grocery store. She scrambled to gather more, eating the tiny berries directly off the plants. The more she looked, the more she found, and she followed the line of plants along the edge of a small, secluded pasture.
When she’d eaten all of them, Mina sank down in the grass. Wind rustled the trees, and birds flew into the air to chase one another. With her hunger abated, warmer than she had been in days, Mina allowed herself the luxury of closing her eyes for a few moments.
“Six days,” she said aloud, her voice cracking from disuse.
Six days since the truck stop.
The weather was definitely warmer, but the nights were still cool. A cold snap could still freeze her before warm weather set in. She needed to make a shelter, but without moving from place to place, how could she eat? Mina didn’t know how to trap animals, couldn’t catch them by chasing them, and didn’t have a fire hot enough to cook them if she could.
And I’ll never reach Atlanta if I stay put.
Her thoughts turned to her plan. Each day she had walked west through the fields, the idea of finding Lincoln spurring her on. She thought about it when she lay down at night, devising a plan for when she arrived in Atlanta. She would find the airport first.
Of course, getting there would be easier if she used the roads. She could stop at farmhouses along the way. Some structures had people milling about. Others sat as if empty, their windows broken and doors bashed in. After seeing the men on the trail and the gang at the station, the empty houses made her nervous. If she saw the opportunity for shelter, others would, too, and Mina had no way of defending herself if she crossed paths with the wrong sort of people. The only way to avoid them was to stay away altogether.
She kept coming back to the same conclusion. Solitude meant she was safe from malicious people, but it also meant that if she got into trouble, she was alone.
Mina hadn’t spoken to anyone since the station. She wondered what that soldier’s name was. There may not have been anyone alive to mourn him. She also wondered why the aliens had allowed one survivor to pass through and killed the other. Tears fell down her cheeks at the hopelessness of it all. Confusion, frustration, fear—all emotions that followed Mina wherever she went.
Inevitably, anger replaced all of them, spurring her forward. She didn’t want to accept what had happened. Most of all, she didn’t want to believe that there was nothing to be done about it. But the more days that stretched out since the invasion, Mina suspected that acknowledgement of the present situation might be the only key to her survival.
She just wasn’t ready.
Mina sniffed and wiped her face. Crying about her situation wouldn’t do any good. Plans would. At least she had a goal.
Without the road to gauge her distance, she didn’t know how far she had walked. Yesterday at the top of a tree-covered hill, she’d glimpsed mountains to the west. Without food, though, how would she reach them?
She resented her marathon training now, her desire to stay fit. Would she starve more slowly if she were fatter?
The sun disappeared for good as a chilly breeze blew in, bringing with it more clouds and another whiff of smoke. Mina shivered again and rose to her feet. A deer started at her sudden appearance and bounded across the field, disappearing into the trees.
She shuffled across the hard ground toward another creek, her feet creating miniature dust clouds. At the bank, Mina slid down to the earth next to the water. The soft mud caused her to sink down all the way to her ankles, and she almost fell over as it sucked at her feet.
She managed to extract herself without losing her boots and then spent considerable time cleaning them. When she finished, she sat at the bottom of the embankment. The water churned with debris and brown sediment. Maybe there were fish in the water? If she tied her shirt to a couple of branches, she could scoop them out.
Right now, though, she wanted to rest. Mina freed her wild hair from its ponytail and sat back. Feeling safer, she
slept.
A blurry face swam through her dreams. White ash drifted around her. Smoke. Too much smoke. Panic. Terror. Mina coughed and raised her hand to the gash on her forehead. Warm blood oozed through her fingers. Someone ran past her in the haze, the shadow blocking her light. Blood dripped onto her arm, and Mina looked up.
A drop of water splashed her face, and she started awake, heart racing as thunder rolled across the fields like a great booming drum. Wind swirled debris across the embankment. Dark green clouds moved ahead of the storm. Mina massaged a knot in her neck leftover from her awkward sleeping position and then climbed to her feet.
The heavens opened in earnest. She spread her arms wide, allowing the rain to soak her dirty clothes and wash away the dream. The smell of smoke disappeared. She opened her mouth, tasting the water, fresher than any she’d found in days.
Cold water tickled her ankles, and Mina looked down at the creek. The runoff from the fields was rushing over the sides of the embankment, the water level rising faster than she would have imagined. Mina turned and tried to lift her feet. The water flowed, swirling and sucking around her legs, filling her boots. She fought to keep them on as she made her way through the churning water to the embankment. The slippery mud gave way beneath her, and she slid back into the water beating at her knees, threatening to pull her under. She grabbed ahold of tree roots to pull herself from the creek, but her cold, muddy hands refused to grip anything for long. The water rose in a torrent, buffeting her body in a swift, unrelenting current. Mina couldn’t rise out of it.
She was going to drown.
“Help! Somebody! Anybody! Help me! Oh God, help me! Down here! Help!” She hugged the tree root as best she could, fighting against the water threatening to sweep her away. Rain pelted harder and harder, drowning out her shouting.
No one will hear me, she thought.
When a face appeared at the top of the embankment a moment later, Mina almost let go of the tree in surprise.
