previous study of the maps of this island. It should help you know where to turn.”
Myrha is impressed with Lynne’s thoroughness, she really is, but that map…Lynne is not a cartographer by any stretch of the imagination.
“Is that supposed to be…?”
“A large rock.”
“Right.”
“Myrha,” Lynne’s voice is unexpectedly quiet, drawing Myrha’s full attention.
“Yeah?”
“You have to continue on,” Lynne pushes the utiphone into her hands, “alone.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t understand,” Lynne’s voice is sharp, “these infected beings will stop at nothing until you are dead. You cannot carry me or take me with you. You cannot afford to slow down.”
But Myrha can’t imagine Lynne not at her side, can’t imagine leaving her behind because Lynne is not Bartin or Spinner or even Zel or her mother. Lynne is something else entirely.
“I’ll drag you if I have to,” Myrha says.
“You will not.”
“Yeah, like you could stop me.”
Lynne’s gaze is dark and just a bit deadly.
“I’m not going to leave you behind, I’m just not,” Myrha says.
“You will find means of survival or escape, and if it is practical, later on you may return to retrieve me.”
“Oh I may?” Myrha says, clenching the utiphone tightly.
And she can’t believe that Lynne would just…lie here. Just sacrifice herself and let Myrha go on alone. And Myrha knows, she just knows, that she can’t leave a person like that behind. Android, human, alien…a person like that, a person who – who cares – like that, can’t be left behind.
“Myrha,” Lynne says.
She doesn’t continue.
Her whirring noises desist, her eyes fall shut, and everything about her just…stops. Myrha trembles and shakes her shoulder, but she knows what’s happened, though her mind skitters away from the truth. But she knows.
She’s alone.
Her skin prickles with cold fear and it’s too quiet in the night, too quiet without Lynne there to talk to her. Shakily, she clasps the utiphone to her wrist, and she studies the projection of the map. Then she hauls Lynne’s prone form into her arms and her legs buckle. Ugh she’s heavy.
She tries to throw her over her shoulder, but the weight almost crushes her back; she tries bridal-style, but her arms collapse under the strain. Myrha contemplates the problem for a moment, and then grabs Lynne by the ankles. She’ll get her to the homing signal, even if she has to drag her the entire way.
It’s probably the slowest chase to have ever occurred in the history of the Universe. Myrha can hear the shuffle of their footsteps behind her, muffled by the thickness of the trees and leaves. The moons are setting and she thinks she can see the zombies’ shadows stretch out alongside her, or maybe those are just the shadows of trees, shaking in the wind.
She leaves a clear trail behind her, Lynne’s form crushing the undergrowth and upturning dirt; the sound of her body dragging across the ground is a steady sccchick that Myrha finds comforting. She doesn’t look back to see the android’s closed eyes, closed like a human in sleep. She just follows the doodled map on her utiphone and hopes she’s keeping to it as much as possible.
Blisters coat her bare arms; it’s hard to distinguish between the human-burning-skin-plants and the safe-plants in the dim light, so she marches through all of them, earning her long strips of blisters and a fiery feeling that spreads over her skin. She drags Lynne through all of them, and is thankful that androids are built to be robust. Far different from the fragility of humanity.
Her throat is parched, reminding her of yet another fragility: the need for hydration. Her travel kit’s food stocks have been depleted but she wouldn’t want to stop long enough to get anything out of it anyway. She’s slowing down.
Her muscles burn from more than just the plants; they cringe with exhaustion and sweats coats her body. It drips into her eyes. She still has the energy to find that annoying.
A tricky root makes her footing falter and she slips to the side, falling hard onto the ground, tangled up with Lynne’s unresponsive limbs. She can do little more than sit and pant, trying to catch her breath, and without the sound of her footsteps and Lynne’s body being pulled through dirt, it’s too quiet.
She doesn’t try to listen too hard, she doesn’t, but the clacking of teeth is hard to ignore. The sound comes from the darkness of the trees, ominous and rather ubiquitous and she can’t see them, not yet, but that doesn’t really mean anything.
It’s really hard to stand back up again.
She sits back on her haunches, looks up at the quiet night sky, and it feels like she is last person alive in the entire Universe.
But there is more out there, she knows it. She just has to get to it. I must go to the stars again, to the willful explorer’s life.
“Get the fuck up, Myrha,” she tells herself.
Her legs cramp and sort of wobble and won’t let her stand. The sweat seems to suffocate her. Her arms shake and she doesn’t know if she has the strength to pull Lynne anymore. She spares a glance for Lynne, mostly just to check that she’s still there and still extremely heavy, but she can’t look away. Lynne’s face and hair are streaked with dirt and leaves, her outfit is ripped and stained, and she looks like everything Myrha has ever been afraid of wanting. She reaches out and pats her cheek, feels the hair-less and soft nature of her skin.
“The things I do for you,” Myrha sighs.
The situation speaks of the L-O-V-E word and it’s sort of impossible to deny it any longer. In the end it doesn’t matter that they’re made out of different materials. Materials are just atoms in the Universe. They’re the same in the ways that matter. In the ways that make Myrha want to lug Lynne through a jungle on a deserted planet to escape from infected zombie-like creatures.
“I am so fucked,” Myrha says.
A sharp click draws her attention from her comatose friend (lover, whichever). She stares hard into the dark forest, and she thinks she can see the white of eyes. She takes a fortifying breath and with a mighty push, gets to her feet. To the asteroid’s way and the nebula’s way, where creation is born from strife. If this isn’t strife, she doesn’t know what is. She stares down at Lynne’s lovely face and thinks of that four-lettered word and what will happen if they survive this, if they get the fuck off of this planet, and she grabs Lynne’s ankles and decides that she really, really wants to find out.
With a reservoir of strength, something secret and hidden in the depth of her humanity that can only be called upon at such times of strife, she heaves Lynne’s ankles up and takes another step, stance sure and true. Mindless eyes follow her movement and she can feel their gazes on her back as they stumble through the trees. She trudges on at a pace she had previously thought impossible.
She wonders if this is what being under the hallucination is like: she can no longer feel the burning in her skin, the pain in her limbs is inconsequential, and she can ignore the sweat running down her neck. She has one goal: get to whatever homing signal they have found and hope that it somehow helps them. She has to do this. For herself, for Lynne. She needs to see Lynne’s eyes open, needs to hear her voice and see her smile. And all I ask is a simple smile from a passing fellow-rover, and we’re just two specks in the endless night when everything is over.
“Fucking Turobeck,” she whispers hoarsely, “what a fucking genius.”
And this is why she loves poetry, why she ever started reading it: just a few words, just a single line, and she can feel like she is understood…can feel like she can endure hardship. Her father didn’t want her, her mother was too poor to sometimes feed her and the kids at school would prey upon her unless she became exactly like them. But nothing stopped her from reading in private, beautiful words calling to her, giving her strength, giving her knowledge that there was more than this.
I must go to
the stars again, for the call of a twinkling sun is a wild call and a clear call that cannot be outrun.
And she fucking loves Turobeck, but she no longer likes reciting poetry by herself.
“We’re going to survive, and you’re going to wake up and quote poetry back at me, hear that, you bitch?” she says, a little breathless.
Of course Lynne doesn’t respond, but Myrha hopes she can hear that somewhere in the clogs of her mechanical brain.
And so continues the slowest chase; Myrha limps onward with Lynne in tow, and the infected beings shuffle towards her, trying to catch up as Myrha slows down. She can’t slow down. She’s not going too. But she can hear them, even over the sccchick of Lynne’s body. They must be getting closer. The map on the utiphone blurs before her eyes, and the supposed landmarks she should be looking for melt into the shadows, indiscernible. Still, she doesn’t stop, though she might have to and eventually fight until she or every single infected guest dies. The odds aren’t really in her favor. Sort of like that time with the punch and the authorities.
She chances a look behind her and nearly jumps out her skin. But she doesn’t make a sound. Doesn’t really have enough energy to. Bartin, mangled face clear in the moonlight, stares at her. He staggers towards her down the path created by the drag of Lynne’s body. He’s utterly silent except for his clacking teeth and rasping breath.
His flower shirt is stained with blood.
And she’s not sorry. She’s not. She’s too