lot of people out there are not.”
“Did everyone else make it?” Anna asked.
“Char and Ashton were on the ship the entire time,” Michael said. “I saw Makara outside still, giving orders, trying to organize all the gang lords. I imagine they’ll be taking stock of who is hurt and who isn’t, trying to find time to help everyone they can.”
With so many wounded, so many to bury, finding shelter would become all the harder. We were not far out of reach of the
“We have to find a Bunker,” I said. “We can’t stay out here in the open any longer.”
The blast door opened, letting in both Makara and Julian. It was a relief to see them both standing when so many had died.
“Good, everyone’s here,” Makara said. “Bring both Char and Ashton here. I need to lay out the plan.”
Before anyone could move to get the doctor and the Alpha, both appeared in the hallway from the direction of the clinic.
“Is it bad?” Char asked.
Makara nodded. “It’s horrible. At least two hundred dead, and more dying. I’ve ordered that the wounded be divided between the two ships. The rest are to strike immediately west, and on the double. We’re not stopping until we reach Pyrite, where at least we’ll have the safety of the walls. From there, we can hunker down until Ashton can find out which Bunker will be our best bet.”
“The wounded…” Ashton began. “I assume you want me and Char to take care of that. How am I supposed to find time to research?”
Makara sighed. “You will somehow have to find time for both, Ashton. We all have too much to do, and not enough time to do it in. I want you to first get the wounded in the galleys of both ships. Should be several dozen; treat them in order of severity. The worst cases we can shuttle to Skyhome. As long as they don’t stay there too long, they shouldn’t be such a drain on its resources.” Ashton was about to counter that, but Makara continued on. “We don’t have time to argue. We only have time for action. Train anyone who is able, or try to find anyone with any experience with working with the wounded. Work in shifts. Whatever the case, let’s get this done.”
“What about Samuel?” I asked.
Char looked at me. “Samuel is still out, but stable, hopefully. We have more people to take care of than him, now.”
“He’s right,” Makara said. “For now, let’s do what I’ve already said. Move the wounded on board the ships. Once that’s done, Rey and the rest will lead what’s left of the Exodus to Pyrite. Char, you can take
He nodded. “It can be accessed from either, but yes, I can man
“Good. Get to work. Find anyone who can help out. I want to clear this hill within the hour. Pyrite is still twenty miles out. If we push ourselves, we can make it by evening tomorrow.”
I doubted that. With the wounded and the weak, we’d be lucky to make the town in double that time. I kept my mouth shut, however.
“I can help with nursing,” Lauren said. “I have some experience, though I was never registered with the Bunker.”
“Anything we can get helps,” Makara said. “You can help Char here.”
With that, we broke up. Anna and I headed outside, leaving the bodies of the dead but moving the wounded on board the ships. With everyone in the Exodus working with a single purpose, it was all done in thirty minutes. From there, anyone with any sort of medical experience was assigned to either Ashton’s or Char’s team. Admittedly, that wasn’t much. With Lauren, we had about a dozen people spread across both ships tending the wounded. There was not much we could do for any of them — not with the ships’ limited resources. Painkillers ran out very quickly, along with bandages. It was an impossible ordeal, but it was the best we could do. It was decided that the priority was getting to Pyrite before the swarm closed in on us again.
It was a long, hard journey. The first of that tempest Askal had warned us of closed in just as dawn broke. Of crawlers, there was no sign, but the bleak, cold wind from the north did a sort of work that crawlers could never do. Dozens died from exposure, and where they did, they were left behind, stripped of anything useful. We had become like the monsters we were supposed to be fighting. It took monstrosity to survive in these circumstances. The only thing that kept people going was the promise of warmth, the promise of safety.
In the end, it might have turned out to be an empty promise.
All the same, Makara ordered that fighting men be loaded into both ships along with the wounded, and landed in the city. If there was resistance, then we had orders to take it out. It was desperate, it was amoral, but we didn’t have time for morality. Not with so much on the line. Thankfully, it turned out the leaders of Pyrite had been bluffing. They begrudgingly accepted our takeover, and tents and a large fire were allowed to be set up in the town’s center. The town, at least, was surrounded by a tall wooden fence. Not great, but better than nothing.
While the Raiders, Exiles, and gang members stood guard in the town center, Anna and Makara ferried the ships back and forth, picking up the weakest members of the Exodus before the cold could get to them. Anna had to learn a great deal in order to pilot the ship on her own. However, necessity had been her teacher, and she was able to get the job done. More and more of the Exodus was unloaded in the town until finally, after two days and several ferrying trips, the last of the Exodus was inside the walls of Pyrite.
With everyone inside, we had escaped the xenoswarm, but at great cost. A few days later, a head count revealed that we were now down four hundred and twelve people — about half from the battle, half from the extreme cold. This left us with about sixteen hundred souls. In a single night, we had lost twenty percent of our total force. And if hadn’t been for the
An inventory of Pyrite’s granaries revealed that, for everyone, there was probably enough food for two weeks. Though angered, the leaders of the small settlement could do nothing about it. In the end, they were forced to join us on our mad journey to escape the growing power of the Great Blight and reach Los Angeles, before it was too late. They soon saw, once they heard our stories, that they would not escape the coming storm. Our numbers had taken a huge hit, but recovered somewhat with the addition of the town.
It was small condolence when so much had happened, and so many additional threats faced us. And with Samuel still out and apparently in a coma, it was only going to get worse. We had to find a shelter large enough for two thousand people, and we had very little time to find it in.
And it was this desperation that led to us to commit our gravest error.
Ashton did his research, and found that Bunker 84 was probably our likeliest bet. Even if it was our closest option for shelter, the Bunker seemed so far away. Bunker 84 was in Northern California, buried in the mountains near the border of what used to be Oregon. It would be far colder there than here, especially given the season — however, as long as we could find a way to get everyone underground, I supposed that wouldn’t matter.
According to Ashton, Bunker 84 had been designed to house one thousand people, making it twice as big as Bunker 108. It had fallen in 2045, three years before even Bunker One had. It had been one link in a chain of consecutive Bunker falls, barely a blip on the radar. Most Bunkers began going offline in the early 2040s, and the huge string of falls hadn’t ceased until the mid-2050s.
The last transmission received from Bunker 84 had come on May 6, 2045, though the Bunker Manifest’s information didn’t give specifics. The Bunker had been offline for more than fifteen years, so it was anyone’s guess as to what happened.
It was eerie, but the fact that Bunker 84 had gone offline so long ago, even before Bunker One, showed that it was highly unlikely to have been caused by the xenovirus. It could have just been abandoned because a critical
