Ander's Point of View
“Dammit,” I frowned at the bottom of a can of beans. Or what used to be a can of beans.
“Damn what?”
A girl stumbled through the doorway with her arms burdened by sticks. Her hair was braided to the side, but little copper strands escaped and clung to her face with sweat. Worried blue eyes looked from me to the can that I held out towards her. One look inside the can was all it took to trigger a sigh of exhaustion.
“What are we going to do? We can’t eat rotten food.”
“I don’t know, Ari,” I chucked the can out a window. Rubbing my grimy face, I leaned back in my chair. “We have enough food to last us three days.”
“God,” Ari sat down on a wooden crate, which to my surprise, didn’t cave in. “There’s got to be some way to ration it to make it last longer. There has to be some way.”
“I know,” I got up to look out the window at the desert’s emptiness. My eyes lingered on the distant sight of what seemed to be plateaus or mountains. “I rationed it as much as I possibly could and it came out to three days worth.”
“Are you sure?” the desperation in her voice frustrated me. “Ander, are you sure you checked underneath and in all the cabinets and in -”
“I checked everywhere,” I turned around to face her. “What do you think I was doing while you were out looking for wood?”
“This can’t just be it,” she ducked her head.
Nothing was said for a few minutes while we thought about our impending end.
“We need to move,” I shifted and grabbed my backpack.
“What?” Ari looked up as if I had suggested we light ourselves on fire.
“We have to leave here if we want to survive,” I didn’t bother pausing my hasty packing.
“And where are we going to go? Just go visit the neighbors and ask if we can borrow a cup of sugar?” she asked in disbelief. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ander, but we’re in the middle of nowhere living in the carcass of a boat.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re going to be dead if we don’t do anything,” I stopped shoving things into my bag to look at her. “There is a reason we are the only ones out here. There is a reason we are in the middle of fucking nowhere with nothing but the clothes on our backs. I don’t know what it is, but I sure as hell intend to find out. Who knows, there could be more people out there.”
“And what if there’s not,” Ari stood up to point out the window. “What if we get out there and we don’t find anything? We’ll be too far from here to make it back alive.”
“What if’s don’t exist anymore, Ari,” I finished packing my backpack and moved on to gathering what remaining food we had. “We don’t have the luxury of thinking about what if’s. We can only do what we have to do and accept the inevitable.”
“Who said you could make all the decisions?” she mumbled.
“I’m sorry,” I put a hand on her shoulder. “I just… I want to do what’s best for us. We need to survive.”
“But do we really need to?” her brows furrowed. “What even is the point? Who said we need to survive? We’re just going to live long enough to watch each other die.”
I noticed her glance at the gun tucked into my belt.
“We are not going to die,” I placed my hand over my gun, “Not if we move now. We’re going to find out why we’re here, what happened to everyone, and where we are. Even if it means we die trying.”
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Those Who Remain
FanfictionAnder and Aries thought they were alone. Just a week before, the two girls had woken up on the desert floor knowing nothing about themselves or their past lives. They banded together, surviving in an overturned boat for as long as they could, until...
