The Last One Standing

Chapter 3

I jerk awake with gasp from my nightmare. The clock on the wall indicates it's 20:00. I remain sited up on the couch and look around me. I just dreamed myself being in Austin, watching my own best friend get crushed by a boulder on fire, almost got choked to death by a Dark one and watched my mother get shot by it. But one thing is stuck in my mind, what the Dark ones said while it was strangling me: " We've found you last one standing, we will exterminate you just like the other humans, just like your crybaby friend!"

What did it mean by that? Was this nightmare supposed to be some kind of warning foreshadowing that the Dark ones will find me? I let go of the thought because it was just a stupid nightmare I had.

I get up and walk around the living room. Mitchell isn't here and there is a lot of mud from coming from the door. I follow the mud tracks all the way through the entire spaceship I think until they reach an end at the metal sliding doors that are the exit from the spaceship. To my horror, the doors are wide open. Mitchell definitely left in a hurry. And I'm going to go get him. I go back to my bedroom to grab my laser gun, climbing axe, grapple, invisible spray and backpack. When I make my way back to the metal sliding doors, I take a deep breath and step outside into the Nevada desert.

                                                                                               ****

After I few hours of searching for Mitchell through the desert, with no luck of finding any footprints or anything that might lead me to Mitchell, I start to get really worried. Why would Mitchell suddenly take off like that and leave me? It think about it for a little longer and realize that something forced Mitchell to leave. Part of me believes my theory but the other part of me doesn't. Ever since I've been living in that abandoned spaceship, no Dark ones have ever walked around there. They don't know I'm still alive. The Dark ones don't travel in deserts, otherwise if they would, I wouldn't wander out here by myself searching for Mitchell.  As I think more of the possibilities where Mitchell could've gone, a raindrop drops on my cheek, then another one and another one. Great. Just Great.

While I try go find a nearby boulder to cover myself from the rain, it gets heavier and heavier until I have to change my speed and run towards shelter. While I run, I slip in the muddy sand and collapse. When I get up, my feet don't move, they seem to be stuck in the sand. I struggle against the hold but my feet won't budge. While I struggle more to free myself, suddenly a lighting bolt emerges in the sky, making me shriek. As I shriek, the sand starts to move, pulling me down with it.

Think Myra, think! I think to myself desperately about how I am going to get out of this quick sand before I suffocate inside it. Before I try another method to free myself, I freeze as in the distance I see something big rushing with light speed towards me. Oh crap, I think.

As the thing comes closer to me, it is a big black furry beast with a long spiky tail at its back. The sand is now up to my waist and if I don't get out soon, I will die. Then I have an idea. As this thing that rushes at light speed towards me, I can grab its tail and pull myself free out of the quicksand. And that's what I do. The beast rushes past me, missing its target as I grab its spiky tail and pull myself free. At some point the beast feels me hanging on its tail as it starts to shake it uncontrollably to get me off and it does, it throws me into the sand. The sand beneath is colored in blood as I realize I have a big cut across my palm from those spikes I grabbed trying to free myself from the sand. I quickly get up and I sprint to my laser gun but the the beast tackles me with its tail, injuring me badly in the shoulder. I am now literary a few centimeters away from my laser gun as I desperately try to reach it while the beast now prepares to run into me at full speed. I crawl those few centimeters, I finally reach my laser gun and shoot the beast in the head in the last second. Blood explodes from its head and the beast collapses to the ground,dead.

I get up and look at my wound on my shoulder. My arm is covered in blood all the way to my hand and my face is filthy with mud and dust.  I slide down my backpack from my back and get out my first aid, I clean my wound, I bandage it and move on.

As time passes, the wound in my shoulder feels better and it gets my hopes up. Plus I killed the beast but now I walk more cautiously through the desert, one hand holding my laser gun and the other one is over the bandage in my right shoulder. Looking at my bandage, it reminds me of one thing: My mother. When she was alive, she worked as a professional surgeon in a hospital in Austin. She would always tell me stories that she saved lives every day by performing those surgeries and she told me that I would save the world one day too. I snort at that thought. Its already too late for me to save the world, and even if I could, it would be impossible to kill thousands and thousands of Dark ones all by myself.

I walk a little while longer until I stop and see in front of me, are city lights. Those city lights come from the Dark City, one of the cities the Dark ones built to live in, over what it once used to be Las Vegas. I've sneaked inside the Dark City before, to scavenge food, water and anything useful to help me survive. I look down and see a long thick line in the sand leading all the way to the outside sewers of the Dark City. I realize that those tracks must me Mitchell's. I have no other hope of finding him except going into the Dark City. I jog to the outside sewers and throw myself into the filthy water and swim underground into the city.