Darkened Stars | Shklance apocalypse AU

Ch 6: Light will fade

Slowly a cup that started off as empty is starting to fill, and we're starting to gain hope again. Granted, we still haven't formulated a complete plan. But I guess at this point we just go with the flow. Too many things that can go wrong and fuck up any plan we make. But right now is a pretty steady idea of what to do. Details spared obviously. We head off west today, and we'll be starting at the north end branch of the Ohio River. We'll follow the river through Indiana and branch off from Illinois onto the Missouri river where we'll follow that through our top four areas where we think the Galra have their base. Because we've heard from other Galra shit heads that a base is in Kansas, there's a base in Nebraska, and then there's supposed to be a base in South Dakota. But they've all mentioned a university. At this point it's kind of the process of elimination. Nebraska was taken over entirely by a hunter group that relies on cannibalism, and we already know the Galra hate them as much as us. So the base the Galra lookouts were talking about was probably one for the cannibals. We'll be trying to avoid Nebraska at all costs until we know the Galra's main base isn't anywhere else. And the University of Nebraska is under the cannibals rule as well. Meaning at that point, if we don't find the real Galra base anywhere else through chatter from Galra hunters, we've got to assume their base is a smaller college in Nebraska. Until then, we'll be going by what Thace said last time we saw him. He said he wouldn't be far from the main Galra base. Just across the border of Nebraska and along the other side of the river in Iowa. The main issue there though is that's way too close to Nebraska for us to be comfortable. The cannibals have been known to jump borders, and there's hundreds of them.

Anyways, despite all of that route planning and confusing deconstructing mumbo jumbo, the gist of it all is we're looking for Thace first in Iowa. It's better to have someone help us than go unguided into the Galra's clutches. Zarkon isn't a huge fan of us if you know what I mean, we have killed a lot of his men. And I really don't know what the others are thinking, why would he let us in because we think I'm a cure? What if there are plenty of others that have survived and banded together already somewhere? I don't know. It's all fucking with my head.

Right now we're all getting ready for The Great Voyage™ by gathering what we can. Allura and I volunteered to groom and feed the horses while the others looked for supplies inside the cabin again, and fill up our gallon milk jugs with water from a nearby pond. Of course the others have to go through the struggle of boiling the water first to get rid of diseases that might come from the water. Granted I would have been able to get in the water, but horse time was always fun.

Allura and I found some crab apples on a tree not too deep in the forest, and decided to take those to the horses instead of just making them eat the grass around the cabin. I stood under the tree, running towards the tree to kick off the trunk and upwards to a thick branch. I pulled myself up onto is and shook the branch by bouncing lightly while I grabbed some of the apples from higher up.

"Lance," Allura called from below me, stuffing some apples into her back pack. "my bag's full, I'm going to count the other supplies and see if we have enough antiseptic. So please no dropping more apples down to me. I'm sure we have enough."

I frowned and sat on the tree branch to get a little closer to the ground before lowering myself slowly, trying to touch the ground with my feet before I let myself fall. When that didn't work, I just let go of the branch and found that the fall wasn't that bad. I shrugged and walked over to Allura, taking my own bag off my shoulders. She was the doctor of the group so it'd make sense she was the one to hold onto more of the antiseptics and such. I've got mask duty so I lug those things around all day. Not fun, but better than having to carry the food.

"Hey, so.. Can I talk to you? Now that we're away from the others this would be a really nice time to go over somethings I don't understand." I dropped my bag to the ground by my feet before flopping ungracefully by Allura, crossing my legs while glancing elsewhere. "I mean I don't get a lot of stuff - granted - nor do I really care about most of it. Well I do, but I've never really been the major problem. Fuck- that's a lie. I mean-"