Joel Adrian - A Shattered Future

Mona followed, dropping to her knees in the mud. She pushed Catalina’s hair free of her face and propped her neck up. Catalina gasped in pain, one of her hands clutching the bloody spot on her shirt.

Rain spilled heavily from the sky, soaking them all. Mona took one look at the wound and knew the young girl was done for. Tanner raised his eyes, and without saying a word, expressed that he knew the same.

Mona clutched the dying girl’s head in one hand and used the other to clasp into one of Catalina’s hands. “I’m so sorry,” she managed.

“D-don’t be,” Catalina managed, “you’re a g-good soldier.”

Catalina’s eyes eased shut, and her shallow breaths ceased.

Tanner’s gaze fell to the ground. He raised a fist and smashed it down into a puddle next to him, sending water spraying in every direction. “To hell with this! I’m sick of losing people!”

Mona agreed. She couldn’t say anything, though. It would hurt too much. The pain ripped through her every second she had to see him alive.

“We need to go,” she managed.

Tanner clutched Catalina’s shirt. Mona could see he knew they had to go, but he didn’t want to leave her. Just the way he didn’t want to leave Naomi. He never did know how to let someone go. She felt the shot of watching him die rip through her mind, and she pressed a set of fingers to her temples to cease it.

She stood, tired but unwilling to quit. Tanner pulled the cell phone Catalina had recorded the footage on from her pocket, and reluctantly rose next to her. “Ready when you are, ma’am.”

Mona and Tanner started down the long, muddy road. They were two soldiers with their objective growing closer and closer in sight. They wouldn’t stop now. But every step Mona took next to Tanner made her heart ache more. She longed for Tanner. But she had to remind herself he wasn’t hers.

A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning lit up the sky in a brilliant light, just for the moment. They saw the mountain looming in the distance. It felt so far away.

Mona hoped that Emersyn, Joey, and Bravon were having better luck than they were.

Emersyn studied the man at the mouth of the cave.

He was a tall, lanky man with green eyes and a spill of blonde-brown hair flowing down to his shoulders, draped by a long beard that messily fell on his chest. He looked unbathed, but the dirty flannel shirt and bright orange hunting jacket led Emersyn to worry more than she would’ve otherwise.

She explained to Bravon how the hunter had killed Naomi, and how this one was dressed just like him.

Bravon shifted his position, laying down in the grass and pushing his head against Emersyn’s, peering through the small opening in the brush. “We could take him if it came to it.”

Emersyn agreed, but she’d rather it didn’t come to it. They each had a pistol, but he had a rifle, and if he was as friendly as the other hunter, they’d both be blown away if they tried diplomacy first.

“Maybe we should just scare him off,” she said.

Bravon shook his head. “No, if we do that, he’ll remember where he left us. We need to hold that cave for as long as it takes Mona, Tanner, and that Mexican girl to get back.”

“Catalina,” Emersyn said. She turned back to the hunter. “Okay, so do we just knock him out?”

The Sergeant studied the hunter. He had his back planted against the cave wall near the entrance. The rifle was sitting on the ground, his left hand holding it upright and pressed to his leg. He was on his cell phone with his free hand, scrolling through something.

“Surprised he can get a signal up here,” Emersyn noted.

Bravon reached back and pulled his pistol out with a shaking right hand. “He can’t.”

Sergeant Major Bravon Pearson freed himself from the brush and cocked the pistol. He leveled it at the hunter. “Drop the gun!”

The hunter’s phone spilled out of his hand, and he jerked in panic. He let the rifle collapse to the ground and held his hands high. “Whoa, whoa! Holy crap! Easy there, mister! I’m just huntin’!”

Emersyn could see Bravon didn’t buy his story. She kept her spot concealed, though. She didn’t want to give away both of their positions. Not when it might be a much-needed advantage should things go south.

Bravon lowered one hand to clutch at his wound. “Yeah? What are you hunting up here?”

The hunter shook his head. “Anythin’, really. I’ve killed deer, rabbit, squirrel… you name it.” He eased his hands down to the ground. “My family lives 30 miles north of here, I found these lands about a decade ago with my partner Bobby. We comb ‘em over every weekend, it’s like a… bonding, for best friends.”

“Bull.” Bravon held out his hand, bloody from the wound. “Throw me the phone.”

The hunter’s face twisted in confusion. “M-my phone? Why do you—”

Bravon stamped his foot. “Now, damn it!”

“Okay, okay, all right, mister!” The hunter reached behind him and picked the phone up with one hand. He reached it out as if to toss to Bravon.

At the last second, he reared his arm back and threw it at Bravon.

The Sergeant yelped at the phone smacked him in the face. His pistol fired, kicking up dirt to the side. The hunter spun and clutched the rifle.

Emersyn charged out of the brush and charged the hunter, baton drawn, extended and raised.

As soon as the hunter got sight of her, he pulled a chain from his neck and pressed on a pendant he wore. A second later, his body vanished.

Bravon sighed. Emersyn could tell he was just annoyed by the maneuver now.

“I don’t get it,” he said through wheezing breaths. “They can just… disappear. The hell is that?”

Emersyn lowered her baton. “You got me.” She turned, peering into the mouth of the cave. A familiar chill came over her. Déjà vu struck out and hugged her. “This’ll be a lot worse without lights set up everywhere.”

Bravon reached into his hip pack and pulled out a tiny flashlight. He thumbed it on. It cast a dull, bluish glow into the cave, hardly illuminating the walls that were 10 feet away. “This’ll have to do.”

They stepped to the entrance of the cave. The Sergeant cast the light around the innards. It was still damp. Emersyn whiffed a faint burning smell like someone had been cooking and forgotten they left the food in the oven. She covered her nose. “That’s new.”

Bravon turned to her, groaning in pain. “Let’s just hope it’s no more trouble. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

They started to trek through the cave. The opening was wide. Bats scurried out of the entrance as they progressed in further. Emersyn stuck a hand out to train along the cool, wet walls, confirming for herself this was real.

“Feels like a lifetime ago we first entered the cave, doesn’t it?”

Bravon grunted. “Might as well have been, this being another universe and all.”

The two pushed onwards. Just as she’d remembered, the walls of the cave started narrowing about 30 feet in. They looked far more ominous in the dim light. She reminded herself that she’d been here before, and that nothing was new.

She noticed a blood trail behind Bravon, leaking onto the floor. “Hey, Sergeant, are you—”

“I’m fine,” he interrupted. “Let’s just get this damn Requiem found so I can sleep.”

They pushed on. The walls of the cave closed in, and just like before, they were sideways, pushing their way through the crevice towards their destination.

Bravon cried out in pain as he squeezed himself through the final wedge. Emersyn knew the tight confines and jagged edges had to be antagonizing his wound. He pushed free of the tight space, and she followed.