THE EPOCH CHRONICLES | ✔

thirty-one

Bradley's Marsh
Camp

en route to Refuge
one klick from Camp

━━━━

ZOEY BLINKED herself awake at the sound of shouting.

No; rather screaming. In her dream-like state, she could almost imagine she was back at Deary-Harver Cross Hospital. Just another day of heart attacks, hover-rail accidents, and overdoses piling up her schedule.

She squinted at the ceiling above her. If she was at the hospital, then why was she lying down like a patient? And why was she in a tent?

Shadows flicked across her gaze. Outside of the tent, a large object zipped past, silhouetted by the sunlight. Sunlight? There weren't many windows in Deary-Harver Cross Hospital ... all the patients had to do was step outside to get their daily dose of vitamin D, and some sunburn on the side.

Something wet crept down her cheek. Zoey lifted her hand and dabbed at it, frowning when she realized it was blood. Her nose was bleeding. But that meant ... where was her desmopressin? The spur of panic (why was she panicking? What was so important about desmopressin? She couldn't remember) faded as quickly as her consciousness.

A doctor never sleeps on the job ...

Everything went black.

━━━━

The tent collapsed, knocked over in a blast of air that buffeted Zoey's face.

She rolled over, more annoyed than mystified that her sleep had been interrupted. What was going on? And why were her wrists tied together? Zoey studied the cord in front of her chest, seeing the marks where the plastic had bit into her flesh.

More liquid crept down her cheek. She felt light-headed, but the breeze was nice ... Not the sunlight, which was hot and boiling, but the breeze ...

A high-pitched keen exploded above her, and Zoey was finally snapped out of her woozy state. A huge insect - something with way too many twitching legs and antennae - collapsed next to her on her. Multi-lobed eyeballs focused on her as she spied her reflection more than a dozen times over, and a watery green seemed to spurt from its body.

Zoey screamed.

Twitching legs ... twitching body ... it was a bug it was a bug it was a gigantic bug and Zoey hated bugs in general - and those were the small ones.

Repulsion and more fear than she could ever describe made her roll away, splashing through cold marshy water. She'd been resting on some leaves (How considerate, a sarcastic background thought piped up). Plastic cord cutting into her hands and all, she clambered along her elbows away from that dying creature, feeling her tears fall even though she felt nothing more than terror.

Bugs ... everywhere. Flying over her, whisking her hair all around, and crashing into the earth as the marines fired their volt-guns into the sky, screeches and the flapping of gigantic wings doing little to drown out the roar of blood in her ears.

Where's Amelia?! Zoey looked left and right, cringing away from the sight of a woman being picked up off of the ground by spindly insect legs before being thrown to the marsh below. She racked her boiled brains to remember.