Chapter 3

Bam! The sound of the creaky shutter banging against the side of the building is driving me insane. I try to sleep, but the sound keeps on waking me up in a panic whenever I come close to drifting off. I have given up trying now. I sit on my bed, back to the headboard, staring with eyes that feel sunken at the opaque window of my room. This is not the first night I have given up on trying to sleep.

I count the long crack in the ceiling for comfort. There are many of them, so it will keep me occupied. There's a long jagged one that runs from my corner of the room all the way to the opposite corner. About a quarter of the way across, another one meets it and widens the crack, coming from the edge of the room the window is on. Cracks run down the walls. Cracks run across the floor. The only thing that really isn't cracked is the wall to my right where my heavy oak set door is placed...and the wall around the window.

My comrades know better than to let cracks form there.

I am tired of counting cracks. Bam! Once again the shutter bangs against the wall, flooding my arms and throat with the pain of surprise. I rise from my bed, and I am ashamed to say that an almost feral growl of frustration escaped my lips. That damn shutter! I charge.

Clink. Clang. The chain attached to the back of my homespun straight jack goes taut as I near the opposite wall. I can almost see the shutter. The wind blows it back and Bam!

The sound sends a flood of pain through my head. My legs buckle as tears form in my eyes. My lack of sleep is now turning into a headache.

Please. Please, please, please. Just stop it.

I lay on the ground, my face and arms pressed into the cold floor. The cold is too much for me. I start to shiver.

As my dignity and resolve dissolve I open my mouth. "Help! Please help me! Help!"
My cries don't even echo. Well. That would be cliche anyways.

She is the one who answers. "What is it?"

Her face hovers near the open square in the oak door. She looks bored. My cheeks go red, and I scramble back onto the bed.

Bam! Both she and I jump as the shutter slams against the side of the building again. She presses her hand against her chest, and I lower my head as the headache intensifies. "The window. Please..."

She looks at me with small creases above and below her eyes. "I see."

We are four stories above the floor. The only way she'll be able to get to the shutter is by opening my window.

She disappears briefly, but when she finally reappears and opens the door she is trailed by a goliath of a man with a large feral beard and a thin bony man with brown eyes so pale that they look yellow.

Yellow-eyes points his gun at me.

She stands behind him. She is the only one who will speak to me. "Al, I know that with so many people in your room." Her eyes glance back at the window as Goliath starts to work. "You'll be tempted to try and escape. I just want to remind you have been doing well the past few days. If you can last another week without an event, we can be sure that you're safe to release."

I decide not to reply, though if I thought I could get her to talk longer, I would. I know by now that talking to my comrades, and especially her, is useless.

The cracks behind my comrades have started to move. They coalesce behind her to form a grim smile. It is skeletal and angry, and as soon as I see it, my eyes close. I don't want to see what will happen. If I close my eyes, it won't happen. But it's like I've been shot up with a drug. I can't control myself. As the pain in my head clears, I open my eyes again, and the grim face has formed itself into a dark, three-dimensional drawing that stands behind the woman.

Goliath is pulling his body back in from the open window, the lone shutter that had been tormenting me in his hand. He does not see my phantom to the left. As I stare at Goliath, the phantom raises it's hand, like a spear. The woman continues to speak, taking up some small piece of my attention as I watch with horror. "I heard that you used to be in the army. Is that true, Al?" The broken shadow lifts its sharpened nails to Goliath's neck as he looks at the woman.

I close my eyes again.

I hear her scream, and I can't help but open my eyes again. I am no longer in my straight jacket; instead I am on the other side of the room, a jagged piece of the shutter in my hand. Goliath clutches at the base of his neck as it bleeds. I have five seconds to jump through the window before the floorboards I was standing on explode as yellow-eyes' gun goes off.

I hit several tree branches as I fall down the four-story building. Thank God I planned an emergency exit. Then I hit the snow, and I scramble down the hill, ignoring the blood coming off my leg from the landing. A patch of snow explodes as I reach the tree line, but by that time I am already gone.

As the noon sun rose, the girl unwrapped the moss binding on her arm and piled it together with the other waste-bandages to her right. The wound on her arm had taken surprisingly well to the moss binding. It had now been two weeks since she woken up. Now she could stand up and walk without trouble, and by some strange twist of fate, she had found a half empty, scavenged backpack a few feet from the pit. There were holes in it, but the sewing kit she found inside of it made the backpack usable. The best guess she could make was that it belonged to one of the people from her team, maybe even her. She was the only one who hadn't been crushed after all. Animals must have found it in the pit and dragged it outside to take whatever food was inside.

However it had happened, the pack had ended up in the forest, and no food had remained inside it. In addition to the thread, she had found half a torn blanket, and a shirt and a pair of pants that fit her fairly well. That made her stop and wonder if the backpack was really hers, but with the black shirt and pants feeling so much like a uniform, she couldn't be sure. She had hoped to find some rope or a knife, but she'd had no such luck.

As she sewed the holes in the pack shut she'd realized how heavy the pack was still, and to her surprise she found a zipper at the bottom of the bag. Opening it up, she found a compass and a paracord bracelet. That made her stop. She stared at the compass. It was covered in grit and the glass was slightly broken. Slowly the girl turned, watching the needle. It kept pointing firmly back into the jungle.

She sighed. Well, at least she was sure of where she was now. If she wanted to go South she had to head into the sand dune wasteland.

By evening she was mostly ready. She'd spent the day collecting moss and hunting fish in the river, building up the supply she'd already created. With the warmth of the day and a bit more food in her stomach, her energy had spiked. She'd used the paracord to make a fishing line and had searched her considerable pile of moss for bugs. After that, all she'd needed was time to catch the fish.

As the world cooled for the night, she still faced one issue. What about water? She had plenty of water here, where there was a river, but the moment she headed out into the desert she was on the clock. Her life lasted just as long as she had water, but she had no way to carry it.

The girl sat at the edge of her fire, staring at the river. She just wouldn't be able to last out there without water. Heck, she could die even if she were able to carry water. Who knew how big that wasteland was?

Out of frustration, she leaned over and pulled the worn black and green pack to her knees. She zipped open the metal zipper again and felt along the sides for about the fiftieth time that day, hoping for another secret compartment.

Nothing.

The shadows created by the fire seemed to stretch longer before her as the girl placed her head in her hands. The best she could think to do was to make one out of wood, but she had no knife, which meant she couldn't even carve anything.

The girl looked at her hands, unsure. An image flashes before her eyes. Her hand was flat on the ground, and another, masculine, hand held a sharpie above it.

"I'll write my name on your hand, and you write yours on mine," the man said. "That way, the next time we meet we'll know each other's names. No more awkward introductions."

The girl breathed in quickly, blinking. The memory made her head fuzzy. Her name. Melancholy starts to fill her. What is her name? Her head started to hurt as she searched her mind for something, any detail, any clue. And who was the man? Why did she want to remember his name? Did it even matter?

Why was it so easy to remember what her mission was when she couldn't even remember her own name?

Lifting her eyes away from her hands, the girl stared out into the darkness beyond her fire. As she dug within her brain it started to pound, and the black, dancing shadows in front of her seemed to grow larger and more malicious.

Nothing was going to change. She was going to remain stuck, here forever, because there was nothing else she could do. The pounding in her head increased and the girl stood, her body shaking with a sudden, hot anger she couldn't shake.

"Damn!" The girl took in a shredded sob. She was going to die here, alone.

She was going to go mad.

The shadows thickened, reaching towards her until she screamed out in pain. Just stay here. They seemed to say. It's safe here.

The girl's eyes widened as the shadows reached for her. Stumbling backwards, she tripped over the log she was sitting on and landed on her bottom, hard.

Tears rimmed the edges of her eyes and the shadows continued to reach for her, their motions like caresses. All you need to do is live.

The girl curled inward, wrapping her arms around her knees and burying her face into her knees.

No.

For as long as she dared the girl remained curled there, her body shaking. When, finally, her beating heart slowed, she raised her head. The campfire crackled cheerfully as usual, and the shadows were back to where they were supposed to be.

The girl felt her heart tighten. There was something wrong about this place. All she needed to do was live? The girl sat up and put her head and arms on the log she had tripped on. If she didn't find other people, there was point to her surviving the asteroid in the first place. There was no point in her life if she didn't find other people.

As these thoughts flowed through her head, something hardened in her mind. She would leave tomorrow evening, when the desert was cool, water bottle or not, damn knife or not.

She couldn't stay here. There was no point. She hadn't sacrificed her entire world to live out her life alone.

Rising to her feet shakily, the girl reached for her backpack.

The next morning the girl found a canteen hanging from a swiss knife stabbed into the tree next to where she had been sleeping.

A frantic and rather nervous search of the area had revealed no signs of human life other than her own. The girl returned to her campground and sat once more on the log seat she had been using the two weeks she had been awake. She ran her dirt-covered fingers through her hair and stared at her backpack, wondering if it too had been disturbed. She hadn't touched the knife, nor the canteen. Once again, a wave of uneasiness ran through her and she shivered. Throughout the day yesterday and during the night she had set some fish she'd caught by the fire to dry and smoke. Feeling the beginnings of pain from her stomach, she turned to the fish. She glanced at it. What if it had been disturbed by her nighttime visitor too? Breaking off a piece with her fingers, the girl put it under her nose and smelled it. Then she put it into her mouth and tasted it. It tasted like nothing, but then again it wasn't salted. Bland. If someone had poisoned it, she would taste it in the blandness. Hungry, the girl finished the fish.

This last day was a moot point in her preparation so she spent the day relaxing, sleeping as much as she could, and building up her energy. Mostly, she spent it staring at the canteen and knife. Right before the sun set she finally took the canteen and knife out of the tree and filled the bottle. She'd almost expected to have someone jump out of the bushes when she'd done it, but nothing had happened.

Then, as the last rays of light abandoned the edge of the horizon, the girl set out onto the sand.