Page 45 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

That will be you, the supervisors used to whisper in our ears when they showed us. If you don’t behave like a good little girl, that will be you.

There’s no cure for diseases like that. Things that get in your brain and turn it to soup.

I’ve been fighting all this time to survive, but what if I’m already doomed, no matter what happens?

After a meagre breakfast, I grab my spear and head back down the beach in the opposite direction to the rocks. I found nothing yesterday, but I’ll find something today. I have to. We won’t last much longer if I don’t.

I walk all morning, trudging through the sand. My feet ache, but I welcome it. If all I can think of is my physical pains, then I can’t dwell on the thought that I might be sick. Dying.

I can’t afford to dwell on it. We’re all dying if I don’t find us food. The sickness is irrelevant. I can’t waste my energy on it.

The possible sickness. I don’t know . I need to remember that.

I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the gloriously fresh sea air.

Back home, breaths were snatched and shallow a lot of the time.

Here, I can draw the air right in to the bottom of my chest, fill myself with it.

Hold it inside myself until my lungs burn in a different way.

When I do this, I feel full of potential, of energy.

Like I can take on whatever this world throws at me and win.

When the sun reaches its highest point overhead, I stop to rest beside a large rock that juts out of the sand.

It provides me with some shade and I take full advantage, sitting with my back against the uneven surface, my entire body blanketed by the shadow.

I don’t burn so fast as some of the other girls, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get overheated.

My legs are sweating something awful beneath the boiler suit, and the material chafes my sticky skin.

I consider slicing through the trouser legs, making myself a pair of shorts.

But once they’re cut, I can’t un-cut them, so I decide against it for now.

Who knows what the weather here might throw at us in the longer term.

I might be grateful for the cover if the seasons shift dramatically colder.

I take a moment to be pleased these long-term thoughts keep occurring to me. I guess it means I haven’t given up hope just yet.

I wish there was some means of bringing water with me on these trips.

My mouth is as dry as the hot sand, my lips cracked and peeling.

My tongue feels like it’s got bigger since this morning.

The sky is as clear as I’ve ever seen it, no clouds gathering on the horizon, but I’m starting to recognise the rhythms of this place.

It’s not always true, but generally, the rainfall comes sharp and sudden in the late afternoon.

Another couple of hours, at a guess, and I’ll be able to stand under the downpour, face turned up to the sky.

It’s the only water I’ll get between now and arriving back at our camp.

I did bring a little food with me, though, so I chew on a piece of ration bar as I sit, my thoughts drawn back to the home I left behind all those weeks ago.

My friends at the slaughterhouse. I wonder what they’re doing now?

The same they’ve always done, just as I would have been doing if my name hadn’t been drawn in the lottery.

I wonder if they ever look up at the night sky, glimpse the moon through the haze, and think of me.

Probably not. Probably have too much shit to deal with in their own lives.

I wouldn’t even blame them for forgetting me by the end of the first shift I didn’t attend.

Surviving when you’re at the bottom of the pile is about conserving your energy.

Wasting it on memories of a friend who’s no longer there is just stupid.

And maybe I shouldn’t be wasting my energy thinking about them, either, but I can’t help it. Couldn’t wait to leave the Earth behind, and now I can’t stop remembering the people I left there, wondering if they’re okay.

Of course they’re not okay. None of us ever were.

I brush a hand over my hair. Wonder if they would even recognise me.

“Any luck?” Liv asks when I get back. It’s dark enough that maybe she can’t see straight away that I’m empty handed.

I shake my head. “Nothing. Beach goes for miles in that direction, just sand as far as the eye can see. Not much else.”

Liv nods, her expression grim, eyes flicking over to the tree line.

We’re going to have to breach it sooner or later.

I know it. Liv knows it. We also both know that the creature with the sharp teeth and lashes came from those trees, and amongst the roots and branches, we won’t be able to see something like that coming.

Liv sighs, shaking her head. “Still think we’re going to survive the hell out of this?”

There’s a sort of sad amusement in the way her lips curl up just a little. The words I spoke with such confidence just a few days ago suddenly seem na?ve, ridiculous.

I put my spear down in its place at the side of the escape pod before taking a seat a little back from where most of the others huddle together around the fire.

I know I should join them, but I don’t want to answer their questions about food.

Don’t want to see the light of hope go out in their eyes.

Don’t want to feel any worse about failing them than I already do.

I know it’s not my fault, not really. But I can’t help feeling responsible.

A body dropping in to the seat next to me distracts me from my brooding and I turn to see Grace giving me a sad sort of smile.

“You need to eat,” she says, holding out a pitiful amount of the gross emergency food stocked on the escape pod.

My stomach hurts for want of something to eat, but I shake my head. I didn’t find anything to feed them with today. I should be doing my part to conserve what rations we have left.

Besides, a nasty voice in the back of my mind says, if you’re dying, you’re wasting resources that could go to someone else.

I squash the voice down, try to soothe the edges of my panic.

You don’t know you’re dying. You don’t even know for sure that you’re sick. It could be any number of things causing the dreams.

“You need your strength,” Grace says, pushing the food closer to me.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Ellie, you’ve been staying up later than everyone else, getting up earlier, walking all day.

You can’t keep that up indefinitely, and you won’t keep it up at all if you don’t eat.

Please,” she takes my hand and places the food in it, “I don’t want you collapsing.

It will be me who has to figure out what to do about it, and I… ”

Her eyes cut over to the place where she’s left Lorna. I don’t think she’s succumbed to her injuries just yet, but she’s lying unmoving near the escape pod. She looks more like a corpse than anything else.

I scoop a little of the food into my mouth. The salty, slimy jelly that constitutes Mercenia emergency rations is disgusting, but I’m so hungry, it tastes divine. Even the texture doesn’t bother me.

“She’s going to die,” Grace says, her voice a tremble.

“Lorna. The break in her wrist - I don’t think it’s set properly.

There’s infection in the wound and I don’t have antibiotics and I don’t know what else I can do.

My ‘medical training’ involved memorising diagnostic checklists because they didn’t even teach us to read… Fuck.”

She swipes at the tears beading in her eyes.

“I have never felt more useless in my life,” she says, angry now, but I know it’s not at me. “So I need you to eat. I need you to stop pushing so hard. Because if you get hurt, there’s fuck all I’m going to be able to do about it.”

“More food isn’t going to magically come to us, Grace. I have to push. We run out of rations, we all die.”

“It’s been several days already. We only have to hold on a little longer. When Mercenia come for us, I want you to be alive to get off this planet with us.”

I open my mouth to tell her that Mercenia are never going to come, that we’re never getting off this planet, that finding a way to survive here is the only thing that’s going to keep us alive past another few days.

But I think of my dreams, Anghar’s promises to come and rescue me.

Grace’s hope that Mercenia are coming back for us is just a different version of the same fairytale.

I suppose it’s difficult to hold on when you haven’t got something to hold on for.

It would be an awful thing to take that away from her.

“I’ll be more careful,” I say. “And I’ll make sure I eat.”

I take another mouthful of the food.

“Thank you,” she says.

I expect to fall asleep quickly. I’m exhausted, but I’m also wired, my brain stuffed full of thoughts that whirl around and keep me from drifting off.

Thoughts about the food situation. Thoughts about the dreams. The sickness I may or may not have.

I try to quiet my mind, take stock of my body.

I’m exhausted, yes, but not beyond what I would expect for being hungry and having walked so far in the heat.

My muscles ache. They don’t spasm; they don’t twitch.

I don’t have pins and needles. Everything feels like I would expect it to.

It’s just the dreams. They’re the only thing that’s not right.

My mind wanders back to the thought of Anghar’s hands on my body. The shiver it sends through me, the pulse of need between my thighs. It’s not just an overactive libido. I want to believe it. And that’s not right either.

Tears sting in the corners of my eyes. I don’t want to lose my mind. It’s the only thing I’ve ever had that’s always been a hundred percent mine.

Despite my wildly spinning thoughts, I feel sleep edging ever closer to me, like a heavy blanket closing over me. My eyes flutter shut as I think to myself over and over.

You’re not going to that dream tonight.

You’re not sick.

You’re not.

You’re not.