Symbiosis: At World's End

Worlds Collide

Brianna was unbelievably hungry. She had been searching all day for food but had come up empty handed. She wandered down a street, resisting the urge to kick at the shards of concrete that littered the street in frustration since she was still in her night clothes. That meant no shoes or socks. It was getting dark. She needed shelter.

She ducked into a nearby building and found a mess of vines. She crawled inside and huddled into a ball before falling into a fitful sleep.

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Merrick knew that getting these kids ready to survive was going to be difficult, but all things considered, it was going pretty well. In the morning, he had them run laps around the inside of the building for an hour and thirty minutes before he showed them how to identify places to look for caches of supplies. From there, he had them do pushups, pull ups and sit-ups. They complained of course, but he would then remind them that they needed to do this to survive. Then he gave them examples of when all of this would be needed. Some of these examples included outrunning the Rippers, hanging off buildings and instances where they would need to fight. All things considered, it was going well. As luck would have it, they also ended up getting a rainstorm, allowing them to completely refill their water bottles. Once they were able to repeat back to him exactly how best to navigate an unfamiliar area as well as find supply caches while also knowing what to put back into a supply cache without pause, he then began to give them physical training for navigation.

Nevertheless, he had one recurring question. This time, it was while he was preparing their dinner.

"When can we leave the shelter?"

He groaned inwardly and recited in monotone:

"When I know you can handle yourselves. You'll be staying up here for at least two more weeks. Any time after that depends on you."

"How does it depend on us?"

"It depends on how hard you work to be ready."

He hadn't told them that last part. In truth, he wanted them to get the basics down so he could leave them in the hands of another Runner to teach them the finer points. He intended to spend some time shadowing them after that just to ensure everything was fine. He had actually grown quite fond of the two kids. Plus, they had really come a long way in the short time he had been looking after them. He had started having them do some manual labor around the shelter such as collecting wood for their day fire and other tasks as a way to gauge their strength and endurance.

He had gone back to check on the crowd he had discovered the other day and thus far, things seemed to be pretty normal. He could see that the group was becoming more spread out and that it was also thinning out. Either that meant that people were leaving or dying. He felt kinda bad that he wasn't doing anything to help them, but the fact of the matter was that if he left a can of beans down there, they would fight over it like animals. There simply wasn't enough to go around and his priority was himself and the siblings first.

He snapped back to reality when he saw today's special: canned beans, mixed roots and three-day old coyote, a newer catch of his, was ready. He divided out everyone's portions and dug in. The kids still weren't used to the food yet, but they had accepted that this was about as good as they were going to get out here. He looked out at the sun. It was dipping low. He doused the fire with a sack of dirt and made sure that the kids were safely tucked away and warm before climbing onto a web overhang he had constructed to sleep in while allowing the symbiote to take watch.

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Meanwhile, far away and deep underground, a council of men and women met once again. They all seemed very apprehensive, and it showed. The first person spoke.