The Will To Live✔️

Chapter 05: Signs of Life

Well, it looked about as good as it was going to, he supposed.

Greg carefully looked out of each window around him, doing a complete three sixty scope of his surrounding environment, and decided that he'd waited long enough. It had been close to an hour in the car, and although he appreciated the chance to get his breath back and rest his aching body, his arm was already starting to hurt again. He had to keep resisting the urge to pry off the armor, roll up the sleeve, and take another look. Normally he was good at stuff like willpower, or at least decent at it, he felt, but this was his body he was talking about.

He could be dying.

There were no more of the alien wolf things around in any direction. Although it was more than possible that they had simply gone into hiding among the trees to either side of the road he now found himself on, Greg knew that his time was up regardless. He needed to get to that building. He needed to keep moving forward. With this in mind, he got out the knife and opened up the door. Nothing happened.

Cold air seeped into the car.

Greg got up, groaned softly as he felt his joints pop, his lower back ache. Still nothing happened. He closed the door and started walking. Still, he was alone. He let out a slow sigh of relief and replaced the knife after about a dozen paces. They were gone, or far enough away to count, but that might not keep. He needed to take advantage of this situation while he could. Hoping for the best, he set a brisk pace, walking down the road through the morning sun. His breath foamed on the air as he walked. All in all, this was a lot easier than marching through the woods, kicking his way through the snow and having to go around trees.

His arm pulsed painfully in time with his heartbeat.

He put that out of his head, instead focusing on studying his surroundings and letting his mind wander just a bit. He was thinking of his time aboard the Icarus. Although three months might not seem like that long of a time to people who lived more stationary, less action-prone lives, it could feel like three years when you were flitting about the galaxy, fighting firefights on a dozen different planets. He'd gotten tossed onboard one day after becoming the sole survivor of a squad that he'd gotten thrown into only a few weeks previous to replace one of their Corporals. The fight had been on a world he didn't remember the name of, a place of grasslands, mountains, and oceans. It had ended up a place of glass after the Covenant had had their way with it.

It had honestly been a miracle that he had made it to the extraction point, let alone that he'd made it there carrying the only other survivor of his Fireteam. But although he'd gotten his fellow Marine to the Pelican, and they'd managed to make it up into the belly of a UNSC warship right before it had dropped into slipspace and disappeared into a blazing trail across the cosmos, that poor son of a bitch had died on the table while they'd been trying to save him, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

That ship had been the Icarus, and after he'd given his after action report and gotten shuffled through the system again, he discovered that he didn't have to go anywhere for his transfer: Sergeant Brink had been onboard that Pelican he'd dragged the dying man aboard, and had been following his status updates over the radio while he'd been trying to flee the dying world. Evidently, Greg's struggle for survival had impressed the Sergeant, and since they had also lost a few members of their own squad in that battle, he'd gotten slotted in.

And now Brink was dead, along with half the squad.

Greg had settled into the routine of life aboard the Icarus pretty easily after that, but not because he considered himself any more adaptable than the average warrior, nor because he made friends easily. He didn't, actually. But because that was how life in the Marines was. Didn't matter if you were in outer space, on Earth, or any one of a hundred different unique environments spread out across the galaxy: you still had the same schedule and made your bed the same way. It was easy to fall back into routine in a brand new environment.