The Survivalists

"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴

𝘐𝘵𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴

𝘓𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘺,

𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦, 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴.

𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘥.

𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘥.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦,

𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰."

- 𝘾𝙤𝙝𝙚𝙣

YEAR 010, AGD.

The world hung in a tense silence.

In the moment, everything was still, and calm, and breathless. As if everything alive had grown cold with abandonment; undead, unresponsive. Not dead, though, not completely gone, still a part of it awake somewhere, lingering beneath the rubble and drifting smoke, masked by the thick, humid fog that rolled and swept across the grounds sleepily.

All the energy had been spent again and again, and now the planet tensed into a pause, taking in the quietness and brief calm of the storm before it blew it all out again in a defiant rage of destruction and disaster.

Ash-soaked leaves blew heavily and limply from broken branches and snapped twigs. The grass was stripped of its healthy greens, heat-stained and crunchy with pale brown hues, dust and decay wandering with the soft winds that tangled itself between the flattened blades carpeting the grounds.

“What are we waiting for?”

Elianor Bridges’ gaze tore away from the view to the young girl sitting beside her. Small hands pressed up against the smooth, glossy panels that made up the window encircling the building’s balcony, her breath hitting the clear surface. She was so curious, her round, dark hazel eyes wandering over the damp stone path leading away from their sanctuary to the Outside. That’s what the younger ones had started calling it. A place beyond the gates, where the stone paving stopped and a ruined world started, a place they used to call home, that was the essence of natural beauty. Now, it was ‘the Outside,’ a scary place home to the unknown and unsafe, somewhere that was destroyed over and over, and the only hope left to save it had been stretched thin into almost nothing through the passing years.

She glanced at the girl’s questioning expression pointed up at her expectantly, and gave her a tired half-smile, shaking her head in a weak response. The child frowned softly at the lack of answer, turning her attention back to the bland grounds drawing out into the distance, dipping down the gradual hill and out of sight. Sometimes, she had to remind herself of what it was they were waiting for, why they were still here, training and scavenging and fighting, surviving. The little girl was eight years old now. That meant ten years of waiting. Nine years since the disappearance of the bravest of the brave. Eight years that this child had started getting used to the way things were. How long would this countdown go on for?

A light sigh left the girl’s lips, and her body rested against the window’s strong surface, turning to face Elianor properly as she repeated her question.

“But why do we wait?”

Elianor let out a long breath, searching her mind for an answer that was as close to the truth as she could bear. There was no explanation enough to give, not to someone so young, so deserving of a better place.

“Because we’re us, Anni,” Elianor decided on after a beat of silence, brushing a stray strand of dark hair out of the girl’s face. “We’re survivors. We’ve got to keep going, because we always have. That’s what makes us, us. It’s our first instinct.”

“What’s an instinct?”

“Something rooted deep in how we behave,” Elianor responded thoughtfully. “We survive, we love, we learn-”

“We do?”

Elianor blinked, fixing her attention on the child’s curious, innocent gaze. And for a moment, Elianor was just as unsure as she was. She paused, shaking her head helplessly yet again as the girl looked back outside, trying to think of something else to say, something brighter. Anything to make her believe enough to keep going. She had to.

“There are people.”

Elianor’s brows twitched in confusion, her eyes shifting to look over.

“People?”

“People,” the child insisted, her finger prodding the windowpane and pointing at a spot beyond the gates. “Look, there’s a boy.”

Elianor’s eyes searched the grounds to follow the girl’s finger, and her breath caught in her throat, her body tensing. She quickly got up to her feet, hurrying over to unlock the balcony doors to go down to the base.

“Stay here, Anni,” Elianor called over her shoulder, working the lock, as the girl frowned and pouted behind her.

“But-”

“Stay here,” Elianor said a touch sharper, not looking back, and closed the doors behind her as she went down the stairs two at a time, her breath coming out shakily as she stepped.

From the balcony, the young girl watched after her with a huff of indignance, sitting up straight by the window to watch Elianor’s figure appear a minute later. She stepped into the Outside boldly, her jacket zipped up tight over her frame, mask shielding the bottom half of her face, lenses protecting her eyes. Her hair swung in its low ponytail as she strolled briskly to the gateway of Aridwatch Sanctuary.

The thick, firm walls circling the building and its grounds were tall enough to block anyone from seeing in, too smooth and sleek to be climbed. The defences weren’t on, but Bridges didn’t bother to shout out for assistance. This wasn’t a threat.

Muffled thuds drummed an uneasy beat on the walls, carrying on even while she opened the gates that parted like the red sea on her command, disappearing into each other to make a gap big enough for her to slide out of.

“Director Bridges!”

Arimir’s voice echoed as he jogged out of the Sanctuary and towards her, wide eyes dulled by his lenses. “Don’t go alone, Director, we need to-”

“Tell Tuluin to get the cleansing stations going,” Elianor cut him off with a firm-set gaze, and Arimir nodded quickly. “I’ll handle this, sir. If I need backup, I’ll call for it.”

“Director,” Arimir nodded again in acknowledgement, before backing up and rushing back indoors.

She turned away from him, her attention moving to the small boy who stumbled back unsteadily at her appearance, his murky green eyes wide and desperate as he cowered away from her, back towards the paving and dead greenery beyond the walls. He shivered at the unforgiving cool air, tainted with toxins, his scarf hiding small, pale lips and spotted fair skin. Her heart skipped and ached for a painful moment at the stab to his innocence, another child ruined by the ruins of their world, full of fear and confusion and despair.

And then Elianor saw the woman.

She trembled harder than the child, her skin bleached by ruthless infection, and her lips trembled weakly. Beyond weak. She looked dead already, sickly and pale, her eyes glazed over and reddened.

“Miss,” Bridges spoke as softly as she could while still being heard, taking a steady step closer to her sprawled-out figure, “Miss, can you hear me?”

The boy ran back to his mother with wobbly legs, crouching down beside her and laying his small, frail hands over her shoulder, shaking her gently.

“My mummy,” he mumbled brokenly, his voice catching and cracking.

Elianor closed her eyes for a long moment, forcing herself to take in a deep breath of the clean, purified air inside her mask, her gloves already streaked with dust and dirt and small traces of ash. She forced herself to open them again, taking another step towards the mother and son, lowering two fingers to press lightly but firmly against her neck. The woman’s pulse skipped and drummed in quick and slow lapses, her breathing laboured and restricted to harmonise. Another Outsider, who’d been dragged through the depths of hell before sinking into it through a slow and unfeeling death.

Bridges glanced back to the gates of the Sanctuary, dithering in thought for a moment as she lifted her hand. The boy glanced up at her too, peering over to gaze warily at the intimidating sight of safety. He didn’t know what it meant. Safety to this child was his mother, but just by looking at an all-too-familiar sight, Elianor knew that no matter how many antibiotics they gave her, she was already beyond hope. She’d been left exposed and untreated to the bacteria for too long, and Aridwatch Sanctuary had nothing close to the amount of care she’d need. Constant care, constant medication, not to mention the risk of it spreading. Twenty years had thinned out their medical supplies to almost nothing, the last few preserved for absolute emergencies, to catch early cases, nip them in the bud before the inevitable struck.

Bridges looked back down to the young woman, forcing herself to give her a small smile, one of as much understanding and empathy as she could give before she broke too. She shook her head.

The woman seemed to read her expression through weary ocean eyes, letting out a long, thick breath in one stilted stream, resting her cheek back down against the ground in exhaustion, the path and its dried muddy chunks leaving indentations over her milky skin.

She tilted her head slightly to blink up at her boy, the only part of her still living, wide-eyed and terrified, and her hand lifted weakly to give him the smallest push in Elianor’s direction. She looked so tired, a thousand emotions wanting to pour out at her at once to comfort her baby, but all she could do was watch him between slow blinks that threatened to blacken her vision forever.

The woman’s lips parted, her voice strained and toneless, as the boy eyed her in forlorn apprehension.

“Go,” his mother mumbled, her hand dropping back to the ground as the boy reached for it, “with… the lady.”

The little boy whimpered timidly, fresh, hot tears trickling down his cheeks, and Elianor swallowed hard, holding herself upright determinedly, and offering her hand to him, who stared up at her in shock.

“Come on, poppet,” Elianor coaxed him encouragingly, “let’s get you inside, okay?”

Somehow, she always found a way to care in knowing ways, just a little more than she needed to, but holding herself back before it became too much. Catching onto others’ routines and ways, so that she wasn’t just their director and mentor, but someone to truly trust. And that was what mattered. Trust. Faith. Hope.

But the youngster didn’t seem trusting of a single thing but the sight of his mother lying weakly on the ground. Bridges’ attention shifted to look her over, this woman who was maybe ten years younger than her, far too young, and barely alive. She shivered convulsively, much more than her son’s tired, cold quivers. Elianor dithered, her usually calm, collected eyes torn with hesitance and raw, bitter pity. The mother’s paling eyes met hers, empty and hopeless, before they dropped to the ground, her head shaking slowly.

“Listen to your mummy,” Bridges pressed gently, holding her hand closer to him, refusing to pull him away by force. “Let’s go somewhere safe and warm.”

“But… but my…” His words started and ended together hopelessly, and he blinked up at Bridges despairingly, as if trying to make her understand wordlessly. She nodded slowly, biting the inside of her lip hard to keep her composure, offering her hand once more as he glanced at it doubtfully.

His small, calloused hand eventually slipped into her smooth, slender one, letting her lead him gently in the direction of the gates, where Arimir and Tuluin waited for them nearby, Arimir glancing over at his unresponsive mother and sighing, his eyes darting away as if in pain.

“Come on, pal,” Elianor tried again softly, moving a hand to his back to guide the child towards the sanctuary’s entrance carved into the thick, high walls.

He dithered every few seconds, taking small shuffles along with her, unable to tear his gaze away from the young woman who shivered weakly a few feet away, a lock of her hair fluttering upwards briefly in the air before fanning over her pale face. Her eyes blinked slowly, the light of the afternoon dimming into a murky blackness that fogged her mind and numbed her senses in heavy pulses.

From the Sanctuary’s balcony, high above the small group advancing into the building entrance, the little girl’s stare didn’t shift from them, her attention tracing the boy who held onto Director Bridges’ hand and kept looking back at the gates sliding shut with a firm sweep and lock in place, just as the boy’s mother closed her eyes and gave into the blackness.

“Mummy!”