Pull (originally published as Deep Darkness v1)

Seraphim - Part 2

The morning light began to shine in. There was nothing but silence. Most mornings on Errikus you could hear the birds singing. They weren't exactly birds more like bats. Each had two sets of wings. A longer set was used for flapping and gliding and a shorter set they used to steer through the sky. They had long tails and could grow anywhere from a foot to three feet high. They were scavengers though. It was rare if ever that they would attack anyone on the street. If anything they weren't singing now because they were having a feast on the corpses of all the fallen. I hadn't eaten anything but a ration snack the day before. Thinking about the birds made me hungry and then more disgusted as I began to think about my mother. Aira woke up a few minutes after me

    "Where are    the birds?"    she asked .

    I didn't answer. I thought it was better to let her think they were all dead, or let her imagine where they might be. I wouldn't let my opinion bring her discomfort.

    "We need to head out. Hayden is probably waiting for us." I said.

    "The last place the monitor said he was near the drop ship repair factory. We're not too far from there, plus if there are any drop ships around I've had practice in the simulation... Maybe I could drive one." I was beginning to feel slightly optimistic as I spoke. For years I played games in one of the simulators we brought down from the Erebus. They were meant to train soldiers, train pilots, even train workers but some of the simulations were fun. It was like living inside another reality, some even called it a 'meta-verse'. The things you saw, heard, and touched all felt real. The only thing it couldn't reproduce was smell (and that was how you knew it wasn't real).

    "So that's the plan?" Aira asked... "Find Hayden and ride into the sunset inside a drop ship." "Find Hayden and run. Just like we're supposed to. Whether the Aelita and Erebus come we have to survive." Those words were enough to get Aira up and ready to move on. I knew I wasn't great at making speeches but I'm glad I could motivate her.

    We grabbed our gear the Eek had given us. After ten minutes I was finally hungry enough to pull off a ration snack from a pack we found. It was pure protein. It had no real taste but it wasn't disgusting. It had the texture of a hard piece of bread. It would have been nice to have something to wash it down but I was grateful we even had food. At that moment I realized there were probably a hundred maybe even a thousand other survivors all starving. All those who locked themselves inside underground bunkers and basements had locked themselves inside a prison that could only be opened from the outside. The only food source they had would come from anything anyone brought with them... or the vermin that had taken up living in the empty holes. On the outside at least if you had to you could loot a store.What was worst is that unless someone came for them they would all suffocate. The shelters weren't built to supply air to the hundreds they now contained.

    I began to wonder why they had even built the underground shelters. It had been nearly a hundred years since any of the hell beast had broken their way inside the city. It was hard to believe an adult hell beast the size of a three story building was seen as much of a threat. They were slow and could easily have been gunned down before getting past the gates.

    "I don't hear the leviathan screaming anymore, do you?" Aira asked. "No." "Maybe that means it's gone!" "I wouldn't count on it...it might just be so far away now that we can't hear it." "If it is, I'm glad. I hope the hell beasts tear it to shreds." I should have agreed. I would have been happier thinking it was gone. We could have found Hayden without feeling rushed and scared but we were scared. We were looking over our shoulders ever other minute now. We climbed through what remained of the buildings that had been torn apart. Pieces of the Tritan had landed all across Errikus. For all we knew, pieces of the Tritan could have been scattered all over the land and oceans. Errikus was an old planet but it had mostly been unexplored. There were only two large landmasses and chains of smaller islands in between. North of the colony was a jungle full of ancient ruin and even farther north of that was tundra. Our colony made up most of the bottom half of the landmass. The area right outside the wall was nothing but fauna and forest.