by M. R. Holman
stairs to find the frail girl standing across the bank and staring confusedly at him. Maybe it was the sunlight reflecting off her light brown hair or the emerald gleam of her green eyes, or maybe it was the fact that she was naked from the waist up, but Traveler had completely forgotten any past injustices she had visited upon him and was sure that she could have anything that she asked of him. However, she remained silent.
He took a painful gulp and approached the door by which the girl was standing. He was very aware of the way he walked and that he had not bathed in recent memory. They were within an arm’s reach of each other before Traveler stopped. He had trouble meeting her eyes so he just pushed the bulletproof vest into her arms, muttered, “Stay above ground,” and turned away.
What a fool.
He pushed the bolt into place on the rifle and worked the action, placing a bullet into the chamber before turning the safety on and opening the door. He stuck his head out and looked each way down the street but saw nothing. Reaching back, he turned the lock on the bank’s door and pulled it shut, causing the bell above it to ring. Traveler stepped out into the world.
He looked back through the glass. If she had been confused before he gave her the vest back, she was utterly bewildered now. He didn’t know what to say or if he should say anything at all so he didn’t. He was bad at goodbyes, and realizing how much of a sucker he was for a pretty face, he decided to get out of there immediately.
There was still about an hour of sunlight remaining and he needed to find somewhere safe to spend the night. Eyes and ears strained for the slightest sound or movement, Traveler began to make his way down the street toward where he had parked his dirtbike. Exciting thoughts of speeding out of this town were racing through his mind.
The hair on the back of his neck was prickling as he reached his dirt bike. He wasn’t sure if it was lion or human, but he felt like he was being watched. He turned around and surveyed the street but saw nothing. This did little to assuage his fears. As he was turning back to the bike he saw movement in the upper peripherals of his vision and looked to the rooftops.
There they were. The two other women had escaped completely unharmed, it seemed, to a rooftop. They were staring down at him.
Traveler didn’t draw his rifle, but rested his hand against the strap holding it to his shoulder. They looked at each other for a few tense seconds before he turned to the bike. He mounted it and pulled the kick-starter lever out.
“You’re no better than us, you know,” a deep, but feminine voice called down to Traveler.
He brought down all his weight on the bike’s kick-starter over and over, trying to ignore her.
KUH-THUMP
“You may not be a cold blooded killer but your actions still cost lives today.”
KUH-THUMP
“Now I suppose you can go on to kill again, now that you have a taste for it.”
KUH-THUMP THUMP
“In the end,”
KUH-THUMP THUMP THUMP
“You’re just one of us.”
KUH-THUMP THUMP
“You’re just another criminal.”
KUH-THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
The engine sputtered to life and then began rumbling like the lions he was so desperate to leave behind. He turned the throttle with difficulty due to his sweaty hands. He wanted to yell back at them, to tell them that he’d never be like them, but in taking a deep breath to do so he felt his lungs burning and decided not to. He dropped the shifter into first gear and took off heading east.
A bubbling sound roused Traveler from his troubled revelry. His stolen, expired, baked beans were ready. He slid the blade of his knife under the can and slowly eased it away from the fire to cool for a moment. He added several slits around the top of the can with his knife and pried it open, stirring the contents with a piece of beef jerky he had pulled from his backpack.
He didn’t really have what one may call “good days” anymore. Today, however…
‘Today sucked.’
He scribbled down the two words onto the tablet he had taken from the bank before downing the rest of the can of beans in a few gulps. He took a sip of water and then popped a peppermint into his mouth and leaned back against the bike again. Above the two words he wrote: Vacation - Day 2. He threw the pad back into the backpack.
He was exhausted but didn’t know if he would ever be able to drift off to sleep after everything he had seen that day. The gruesome images cropped to the forefront of his consciousness every time he closed his eyes. The haunting words of the gang and the rumbling and roaring of the lions reverberated off the inner walls of his skull. He thought of his trip and how in the morning he would be back on the bike heading for the coast. This helped a bit.
A coyote’s howl sounded somewhere in the distance but was ended prematurely by the sound of a hoof against bone. Maybe having the giraffes around wasn’t so bad after all, he thought. Traveler turned on his side and fell asleep.
The LHP (Last Habitable Planet)
The hair on the back of a young man's neck stood on end as a distant war-cry of a thousand or more voices pierced the air. His rapid breaths fogged his glasses, but he could not see that through the tears in his eyes.
The tears were not from the pain of the tooth that had just cracked when he clenched his jaw shut involuntarily, but from the mix of a hundred different emotions that could only be summoned by the sound he had just heard. It was the same sound that had accompanied the demise of every other member of his battalion.
The planet he was on was small and rather plain. There were mountain ranges and oceans and deserts and so on, but in the grand scheme of things in the universe, it was a boring planet worthy of little note.
The one facet of the small little planet that set it apart from all of the rest was that it was the last one left that could sustain life.
The universe was well within its dotage. Most of the stars had burned out and their accompanying planets were either destroyed or turned to cold, dark masses floating through space.
The planet that the young man now found himself on was known by all that remained in the universe as the LHP (Last Habitable Planet). He had spent his entire life traveling there, along with a great number of others on an enormous starship. In fact, several generations had passed aboard that same starship, but his was the one that had to take up the fight when they finally reached the LHP.
His civilization was among the first to reach the LHP, though they were quite certain that others would shortly follow. There was, of course, the race of beings that were now attacking the young man as well. They had arrived shortly after he landed.
The starship that had brought the young man to the LHP was docked more than a lightyear away and was cloaked to the best of its abilities. It hid all that remained of his species' population, along with more than one hundred years of drinking water.
A small jump-ship had brought himself and the recently living members of his battalion to the planet. Their mission was supposed to be a quick one, but that had not been the case.
Despite all of the technology aboard their jump-ship, there was one particular portion of the mission that could be trusted to none but a human - they were to poison every drop of water on the LHP.
Inside of the backpack of the cowering and shaking young man was a small plastic bag - no bigger than a football. Inside of the bag was a series of powders, gases, and liquids that when mixed together would form a poisoning agent that would render the water on the LHP unsustainable for life for ninety-nine years.
The packet of poison, ironically named LifeBlood, had passed from hand to hand as each carrier was killed in action while making their way to the sea on the LHP. Its purpose was to wipe out any civilization that tried to settle the LHP. While other beings had prepared their ships solely for war, the humans were trying to play the long game. They wanted to wait out the fighting over the planet, make it inhospitable for anyone anything else, and then come in and settle when the heat was
finally off.
The young man was sitting with his back to a boulder that jutted from a sloping sand dune. He could see a vast expanse of blue in the distance through his watery eyes. He was only a few hundred yards away from the ocean - his mission's goal.
He tossed the pulse-rifle that he had been clutching in his hands with a death grip unceremoniously into the sand. It had done him no good thus far anyways and there were far too many enemies to fight off by himself. Besides, he owed his survival to the fact that he did not use the rifle. He was a runner, not a fighter.
The sound of the advancing army was growing louder. He slung his backpack off of his shoulders and retrieved the LifeBlood. Even all of its separate components looked sinister as they glistened in their little pods within the bag.
The full weight of what he held in his hands hit him for the first time. Every single member of the army that was searching for him would die if he made it to the ocean with the LifeBlood. Every single member of that army's family would die. Every being in the universe aside from those that waited anxiously on his water-laden starship would perish if he made it to the shore, squeezed the bag, and released its contents into the foaming surf.
He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes on his tattered, tan sleeve. The pitch of the army's war-cry had changed. It sounded as though they had reached the dunes. He did not have much time left.
Could he really do this? Could he destroy
