Year Twenty-One

Chapter One

The fire Mya had built at dusk had long since faded into glowing embers, but still she was awake, watching the last few sparks dance lazily against the now ash gray sky. The sun would be rising soon, yet she still could not bring herself to break the quiet peacefulness of the night before.

The night had been perfectly clear so that each star sparkled proudly around the full, iridescent moon. It had lit up the woods around her, sparking off the creek beside her. The gentle water whispered to her, playful and teasing. A pack of wolves in the distance sang a haunting, yet beautiful song to the bright sky.

The sky had become more blue than grey as the first rays of light stretched over the mountains. The trees rustled as birds woke up and called to each other, flitting from branch to branch. My closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the cool morning air. As she exhaled slowly, almost drifting into sleep finally, a sudden rustling of the bushes just a couple yards from her feet made her eyes snap back open. There were very few animals that could make such little noise before getting so close. There was something there, patiently waiting for its opportunity to pounce. Her hand was already on the knife next to her, suddenly very aware that her bow was leaning against a tree on the other side of the fire.

Without sitting up, Mya listened hard and, without moving her head too much, tried to hear how close the cougar was. The woods around her were suddenly much too quiet for comfort, but she still was not able to see anything nearby. As slowly as she could, Mya rolled over her stomach, knuckles white around the handle of her knife. The creek gave some visibility, but that was in front of her and she knew that if she turned around, she would be met with bright eyes surrounded by shadows within the bushes.

In one quick motion, Mya leapt to her feet and spun over the fading coals of her fire. She still wasn't close enough to grab her bow, but at least she was facing the now charging feline. Digging her feet into the soft dirt, Mya brought the knife up as her only defense against razor sharp claws and canines long enough to bite through the throat or back of the neck. The next thing she knew, Mya was flat on her back with the wind knocked out of her and she saw stars for half a second, but it was long enough for the cougar to put a deep gash in her forearm.

White hot pain shot up and down her arm and she yelled loudly before finally getting a decent grip on the handle of her knife. The cougar started to lunge forward again, this time going for the kill, teeth fully bared and growling wildly. Mya swung her injured arm up and with a swift movement, plunged the knife into the throat of the animal. It went limp as it knocked Mya to the ground again. She struggled for a moment to free herself from underneath the surprisingly heavy animal. Still breathing heavily, she knelt next to the creek and let the cool, clean water wash the blood off of her hands and knife. Her arm stung where the cougar had cut her pretty deep, but there wasn't much she could do about it for now.

When she finally caught her breath, she began to skin and gut the animal. It wasn't very often breakfast tried attacking her first and she hadn't caught anything fishing all night anyway. After building up her fire again she cooked a piece of the meat and then packed up the rest to start hauling back to her cabin downstream. She didn't want to stay there for much longer in case the cat's screams attracted other animals.

When she finally made it back home, the sun was high in the sky already and Mya was exhausted and drenched in sweat from carrying her weapons and a large, cut up animal. After storing the meat, she rinsed off in the tiny stream by the front porch. She noticed that the scratch on her arm had not started healing yet, which was strange since she always healed quickly ever since the outbreak of the Virus; a science experiment gone wrong. It had wiped out well over half the population, killing off any sick person from cancer patients and car accident victims to people with a simple cold. Any person that wasn't completely physically healthy died suddenly, within days. It had been nearly 50 years since it happened and as far as Mya has found since that the remaining population had been left essentially frozen. She no longer aged or got sick and any physical injury healed almost immediately and every other person she had encountered had the same experience, though it had been quite some time since Mya had crossed paths with any people.