It's Harder This Way

by Travis Hill

  The chatter of Bull plasma repeaters broke my daydreaming. I began to wonder if I had a concussion since sounds were becoming distorted along with my sense of time and reality. A slap on my shoulder brought me fully back to attention. I held up three fingers without looking back, then changed it to two and pointed to the opposite side of our shack. I counted to ten then leaned around the corner and fired at the Bulls. Three other soldiers opened up on them as well, dropping the aliens quickly.

  I pointed to another small building fifty meters to our north then headed toward the wooden hut we’d just shot at. Two assault rifles and a shotgun greeted me before I got within ten meters. Tony grunted displeasure at me then turned and ordered two of his squad to keep an eye out, especially for the shuttles which had moved toward the canyon.

  “We need to get gone,” I said, sliding to a stop and kneeling down beside him. “Now. There’s two more ships up there.”

  He nodded his head. “Where’s Dru?” I shrugged. “Let’s move,” he said, pivoting and running toward the trail that led out of the campground.

  I stood and took a single step before the familiar popping noise met my ears at the same moment the world tilted and whirled. The wooden shed exploded, launching me through the air until I slammed into the dirt. A hot, sharp metal shard tore open my neck a fraction of a second before the bolt of my AR-17 ripped the skin on my back. I screamed in pain, immediately clamping a hand to the right side of my throat. It took me almost thirty seconds before I could rise to my feet and force my legs to begin moving.

  The sounds of heavy weapons from the airships and the smaller staccato of their foot soldiers’ personal arms became a wall of angry buzzing as the aliens laid waste to the campground and anyone foolish enough to still be in it. I ran to the northwest, not even bothering to look down into the canyon to see how bad it was. I heard whooshing noises and looked to my right to see three white smoke trails rise from the canyon followed by heavy explosions above and to my rear. I blocked out the fear of plummeting shards of hot metal landing on me by focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.

  My shoulder was already on fire from the earlier wound, made worse by the way it rubbed and chafed against my shirt. My cheek was on fire and bleeding from the puncture wound I’d taken on the ridge. Hot, sticky blood seeped from under my palm as I tried to keep the wound in my neck from bleeding me out. I stumbled twice but kept going. The third time I fell face-first into the hard dirt.

  I remained there, eyes closed, fighting to swallow without saliva, nearly choking myself to keep the gash in my neck closed. I knew I wasn’t going to get up again. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to get up.

  I panicked when I felt myself being jerked to my feet. The instant my hand came away from my neck I swooned and my legs gave out. Druscilla caught me in her arms and yelled at me, immediately grabbing my right hand and placing it against my neck. She screamed in my face but I couldn’t understand her words.

  When she put her shoulder into my left armpit and began to jog, I had no choice but to move my feet or force her to drag me along with her. I knew Dru wouldn’t let me go. A small, lucid section of my mind begged me not to kill us both by giving up.

  We ran as fast as my legs would allow over the next thirty minutes. I finally had to shove her away and keep going on my own so we could pick up our pace. She steered me around obstacles on the road while I tuned out reality. My legs never stopped moving no matter how rubbery and dead they felt. The dry, burning pain in my lungs from running for an eternity eventually merged with the piercing agony in my sides.

  It didn’t matter. We kept running until the road began to rise near an old tourist lodge. She slowed down when we came to a hiking trail that would take us to the top of the volcanic ridge surrounding Crater Lake. Dru waited for a full minute before slipping under my left arm to force me to keep going. It took almost ten minutes but when we reached the top, I looked back toward Base Charlie and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  Even from six klicks out we could watch the ongoing destruction of the base. Only two airships remained, but they never stopped firing. When the smoke and haze finally blotted out the scene, Dru helped me back down the trail to the road.

  I was delirious. I wanted to lie down and sleep forever even while I felt the cold fear seeping into me from blood loss. I didn’t want to die. After another step I wanted to lie down again. Then another step and I realized I wanted to live.

  I don’t know how long it went on. At some point we came across others making their way to Point Alpha. I wasn’t coherent enough to worry the Bulls might move north after finishing off Base Charlie and continue to pick us off. I hoped for it, to die quickly when it happened. I prayed I was spared again should it happen.

  Someone handed me a canteen after we stopped. The initial sip went into my lungs instead of my stomach and I spent a few minutes hacking and coughing while trying to swallow another mouthful. I took too big of a drink and threw it up, but held down the next few. Dru never left my side, always keeping a hand on or arm around me. She was a bit player in my mind, my thoughts desperately trying to focus on Tony and Rebecca. Mostly Rebecca.

  “Stop crying, goddammit,” Dru said, giving me a shake that brought me back to reality.

  Instead of making out with Rebecca in a storage closet, I was suddenly trudging along a path with the sun falling below the western horizon. I jerked away from her and felt my face with my left hand. It came away wet, slimy, and red. I wasn’t sure if I actually had been crying.

  “Fuck you,” I croaked, my throat burning for water once again.

  “If you were going to bleed to death, you’d have done it long ago,” she said angrily. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on in your head but you aren’t dying.”

  “Tony?” I asked, licking my dry lips with a dry tongue.

  “He’s a couple miles ahead of us,” she said.

  “Rebecca?”

  She shook her head. I tried to turn around but she forced me to keep marching.

  “Bullshit,” she said and poked me in the back hard enough to make me stumble. “You’re going this way. If she’s alive, she’ll eventually find us.”

  “Fuck you,” I said again and tried to break away from her grip.

  Dru was silent but determined to keep me from running back to the base. I argued with her, cursed at her, even threatened her. She never said a word, nor did she let go of me.

  “How many?” I finally asked after using too much energy fighting against her grip.

  “I don’t know, Evan,” she said softly. “There might be a hundred of us left. It’s not good. Just keep walking. We’re almost there.”

  *****

  We regrouped near Diamond Lake at the base of Mt. Thielsen. I slept for a while after Dru let me drop onto a blanket under a lean-to. I woke up to darkness, my right arm aching, my right hand on fire from a paralyzing cramp. I almost screamed when I tried to pull my hand away from my neck and it wouldn’t budge. All my mind saw was the scab breaking and blood gushing out.

  I looked up when Jackie Nunez kneeled next to me. Her expression was worried but relieved, which told me she’d seen far worse injuries among the survivors. She turned her head and called out for Len Carter, one of the few skilled beyond basic first aid. Len jogged over, took one look at me, then ran off again. I giggled and closed my eyes, opening them when I felt the cold metal of a canteen on my lips.

  Len returned with a bucket of water and a white rag. Jackie moved away and let Len get to work washing the blood from my face so he could see how bad the damage was. I imagined myself as a frightening burn victim who had also lost half his face from chunks of shrapnel impacting it. After a couple of minutes, Len clucked at me and frowned.

  “Christ, Greggs, you act like they got your jugular or something,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Is it bad?” I asked. I couldn’t feel my right hand.

  “Sure it’s bad,” he said with a chuckle. “You got a nasty cut
on your neck, a hole in your cheek just below the eye, you’re missing a small chunk of your left ear at the top, and I bet when I check that burn on your shoulder it’s going to be ugly.”

  “But I’ll live?”

  “Don’t be a drama queen,” he said and squeezed out the rag before wiping more of the blood from my face. “Sit up so I can look at your shoulder.”

  I clenched my jaw tightly, holding in a scream of pain as I straightened my back and shoulders. My entire body felt poisoned and my joints were stiff. I begged for a drink. Len handed me a plastic bottle then used a pair of scissors to cut open my shirt.

  “Ow,” he said softly after staring at my shoulder for a while.

  “I’m sure it hurts me more than you,” I said through a hiccup.

  “You’ve already got your sense of humor back,” he said with a grin. “You’re gonna need it.”

  I screamed when he inserted the tip of the surgical tweezers into the hole in my shoulder. It felt like he jammed a blowtorch into it and rotated it around a thousand times. When I started to tremble violently, he clamped a hand on the back of my neck to hold me steady while he continued to excavate my shoulder.

  “Sorry, Evan,” he said after I stopped growling to keep the pain from reaching blackout stage. “Whatever hit you left a piece of itself in there.”

  The pain finally became a dull throb when he finished. He held the tweezers in front of my face. Besides the blood and glint of stainless steel, I saw a tiny ball caught between the two ends.

  “Is it a splinter?” I asked, remembering the moment when a dozen trees exploded behind me from the Bull airship’s attack.

  “I’d say carbonized resin, but I’m not a real doctor and I damn sure ain’t a scientist,” he said then removed the tweezers from view. “But it sounds scientific enough and you’re not the first one I’ve had to extract it from. The others say their injuries happened when a plasma round hit a tree near them.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I took another drink. “Where’s Tony?”

  “I’ll get him for you after I’ve sewn up that wound on your neck,” Len said. He glared at me. “Now, be a big boy, Lieutenant.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said then fell over onto my side.

  I was asleep within seconds. When I woke again, it was dark and Dru was curled up next to me, a blanket covering us both. My neck was on fire. The hole in my shoulder and the scrape from my AR-17 competed to see which would could produce the most pain. My cheek throbbed and demanded I do something to resolve the hole in it. On top of that, I had to pee but I was too tired. I fell asleep again and dreamed of another battle with the Bulls—but this time we fought with glowing swords and shields in the shadow of a towering steel castle.

  Excited whispering woke me up. The night was fading but the sun hadn’t risen above the eastern horizon. I shivered, cold now that Dru was no longer next to me. When I tried to sit up, everything became fuzzy and I clutched my head. The noise from a dozen voices hurt my ears until I realized the sound wasn’t voices but a steady ringing noise. It passed after a few minutes and I finally stood up, wobbling for a dozen steps until I could see straight.

  I waved Dru off when she saw me leave the lean-to. I decided if I couldn’t piss on my own, I’d just lay down and die on the spot. I made it a hundred feet before my bladder warned me one last time it was now or never. I tilted my head back and relieved myself. My thoughts turned to Rebecca. I didn’t know why I couldn’t get her out of my head. The memory loop of our last few minutes in a storage closet was almost powerful enough to convince me to run back to the base and search for her.

  Thoughts of Rebecca disappeared the moment I made it back to the encampment. Out of the one hundred humans I could see, more than half of them looked to be injured. Far too many seemed to be in shock. I sat down on a dead stump and watched them move about, hugging, talking, helping each other. Tony, Dru, Larry, and Jackie spotted me and headed my way.

  “How bad is it?” I asked before they came to a stop.

  “It’s bad, Evan,” Tony said. He looked to be the only one other than Dru who wasn’t visibly injured. “Only one hundred and twenty-four of us have made it this far.”

  “Rorque?” I asked. “Kristin? What about Hines and Sidler?”

  Larry and Jackie shook their heads. Dru sat down next to me and put her arm around my waist.

  “They haven’t shown up yet,” Jackie said softly. “We sent out two squads to scout back into the area but told them not to get too close if it looked hot. The rest will have to make it out on their own.”

  I remained silent at her unspoken assumption that the rest were dead. Going by what I’d seen with my own eyes, it was a miracle anyone survived. We talked for a while, Tony and Dru giving me updates on the injuries our people had suffered. Jackie and Larry told me they had come within five klicks of the campground when the Bull ships began firing on us ten klicks to the south. They immediately pulled all the way back to Mt. Thielsen after Jackie spotted four airships in her binoculars. I couldn’t blame them for retreating. We should have retreated days, even weeks earlier.

  We waited twenty-four hours but only a few trickled in during the first eight hours, and by morning, less than thirty had come in during the night. Tony put out the order for everyone to pack up and get ready to move north. It would take us two days to reach The Farm, three if our injured slowed us down enough. Larry sent word out to the two scouting squads to stick around the area for a few days just to make sure the Bulls hadn’t holed up at the base and were waiting for reinforcements before coming after us.

  Dru stuck by my side as we walked. We didn’t talk much. I kept worrying about Rebecca, but new worries were forcing their way into my thoughts. I didn’t know what I was going to tell Jenna and the council. Worse, I didn’t know if the Bulls would show up one day and wipe us out. No doubt if they did, they would come with nothing less than double or triple the force size they’d brought to Base Charlie. If they knew just how many humans lived at The Farm, they might decide to simply wipe us out from orbit instead of risking troops and vehicles.

  Out of the seven hundred of us who had volunteered to travel south to wipe out a human threat, less than three hundred fifty would return home. I didn’t want to face anyone at The Farm, especially the family members of dead soldiers. I didn’t want to face anyone at all. I wanted to head off into the woods and just keep walking.

  I turned and looked back one last time before the Willamette Highway dipped down into a valley. The smoke was thinner than the day before. Instead of brown smoke and a half dozen columns of black, it was a uniform grey. I shook my head and forced myself to only look forward.

  9. Home Again

  We met the first scouts almost thirty miles out. They quickly headed back to The Farm to let everyone know we were coming in after I promised to leave two of our people as lookouts until they were relieved. The scouts said very little to us, but they looked worried.

  I was in a lot of pain physically. I was maybe worse off emotionally. Some of it was Rebecca, though it wasn’t like I had never lost a lover before. After too many heartbreaks that ended with “her” dying over the years since the invasion, I’d learned to keep my relationships to a few nights at most before I moved on. I had stuck to that routine for the majority of my time at The Farm, and while I didn’t have a steady stream of females to keep me company, I always felt I had just the right amount to keep me from thinking about it too much.

  Then there was Branda… but I didn’t love her. Maybe I did on some other level, but there wasn’t any passion in it for me beyond the physical. The reason I loved her even when I didn’t was because of her daughter, Ellie. Ellie would be nine years old soon, and I’d been a father figure to her for at least three years even though her mother and I had only been together for two. I was already torn up inside over the fact I’d pretend to love a woman just to give her child an extra boost in life.

  Which made me question my ego a bit. The Farm wasn’t really a
hippie commune, though it certainly had begun life as that long before the Bulls showed up. We were a commune in the sense that children rarely had to look further than the nearest man or woman if they needed a parental figure in their lives. A few children were orphans, but by far most were born to loving parents. Even if those parents didn’t always love each other. Because of the importance of working as a team to survive in a sometimes harsh world, there were very few adults who wouldn’t step in as a role model or lend an ear to listen to what anyone’s kid wanted to discuss.

  And Mom… Jenna. The way “Mom” rolled off my mental tongue felt too awkward now that I’d become one of her lovers. Or was she just another one of mine? Jenna had been alone by choice for most of the years after Tremaine was killed. I was already with Branda. I shook my head as we passed by another marker that let us know we were less than ten miles from home. I wondered if I kept walking, would I eventually turn into the pile of shit I felt like?

  What about Dru? my lizard brain asked without being invited into the conversation. I glanced to my right. If I felt like a solid piece of shit before, I now felt like something both liquid and vaporous at the same time. She was barely twenty-five, definitely an adult. But I was pushing thirty-nine. Too adult.

  Druscilla might have had a last name at some point, but left it behind before I met her. She was a product of The Farm, but not a natural born citizen. Jenna told me the girl’s father made it to Ivan Jeffreys’ ranch twenty miles to the north, barely alive, carrying Dru and her baby brother in both arms that were badly burned and covered in blood. Misha Jeffreys said the man only asked that someone watch over his children then died on the spot.

  She’d just turned two and her baby brother not even a year old. Dru’s mother had been pregnant with him when civilization died. Her brother lived another twenty-four hours before passing on. Ivan and Misha repeatedly asked Dru the boy’s name since her father had perished before revealing that information. Dru was either too traumatized, or more likely, was too young to understand (or remember) that information.