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「 JACKSON, WYOMING 」 December, 2036
❝ Please God, don't let me die. ❞ Maia pleaded. Her makeshift blade cut into the palm of her hand, leaving it slick with blood as she tirelessly cut at the rope that wound itself around her ankle.
"I'll be better," She thought," I'll be devout, I'll help anyone who needs it."
Like she didn't do that already. Helping anyone who needed it is what got her into the situation she was in. It was the reason she was using a broken piece of glass as a blade. She just wanted to help people, and now she didn't have any water, very little food, no weapons. The only thing she did have were the clothes on her back, which were doing very little to fight the cold of Wyoming in the winter.
She was becoming light headed the longer she worked the rope, the blood rushing to her head was sending an excruciating pulsing sensation through her brain. And the sight of blood running down her arm, dripping off her shoulder and onto the clean white snow made her more nauseous.
Her eyes fluttered, the pine trees around her seemed to be spinning and black dots began clouding her vision. And then came the sounds, Maia couldn't tell if it were hooves hitting the ground or dozens of runners. The distant vocalizations of clicks and screeches confirmed her worst fears and she pushed through her mental fog.
Maia crunched her body towards her ankle, as far as she could, and began slicing at the rope, hissing as the glass dug further into her skin. The rope frayed little by little and the sound grew closer.
"I can't die like this." She spoke through gritted teeth. With one last slice, the rope gave away, sending her hurling towards the snow.
Maia landed on the ground with a thud, her head bouncing off the compacted snow sent a shockwave of pain through her body.
"Get up." She thought.
She groaned as she tried to sit up, her hand stinging as she pushed herself into a sitting position. As she rolled over onto her knees and attempted to stand a cry slipped through her lips and her knees buckled.
"Walk, Maia, just fucking walk." She whispered to herself.
Maia took a few steps down the snowy embankment, each as excruciating as the last, and it became clear to her that the ankle she had cut free was likely broken, or at least severely sprained.
She just needed to make it back to her camp. Ride out the storm until the next morning and then she could finally find out if the city she was looking for was real or just another apocalypse myth.
"You can make it, Maia," her hands dragged along the trees, " Halfway across the country, what's another half mile?"
Maia blinked rapidly, hoping the black dots would go away and the world would stop spinning. She couldn't hear them anymore, any noise had been replaced with a low pitched ringing.
