Migration

A Room

Two Drones stood tall and silent behind her and beckoned her to stand with the twitch of a gun. She stood up slowly, leaving her pack, gun and bottle on the ground, the water spilling in glugs onto the grass. Their utility suits were clean, they couldn't have come from the chaos Zoe had just stepped out from and, through the small gap between them, she spied an open door on an adjacent building.

The Drone nearest to her kept his gun pointed squarely at her head, twitching again to start her walking towards the open door. Their silence was punctuated once or twice by the crackle of gunfire from inside the Farm, the shots accompanied by the low boom of explosions that vibrated into the soles of her feet. As she walked Zoe threw up again. The impulse came from nowhere and caught her and the Drones by surprise. They sprung around her with guns gripped tightly as the warmed water splattered from her mouth onto her clothes and the grass, and she held up her hand to demonstrate her helplessness. They stood coiled and wordless until she was done, marching her forward as soon as she had recovered.

Inside, the white light of the Farm was strong and unaffected. She walked slowly down identical corridors, occasionally glancing back to her captors for instructions each time they reached a junction. After a few turns, they came to a door with two more Drones standing sentry outside. It opened with a faint hum as she approached making her pause her step, before another twitch from her speechless escort instructed her to enter. She glanced at each of the Drones in turn, unsure of what was about to happen, her heart rising again to drum in her ears.

Stepping inside, Zoe saw that the room was half full of Lifers from the raiding party, perhaps thirty of them. A few lay wounded on the floor as others tended to them whilst the rest stood around the walls, staring forlornly at her as she entered. She smiled a weak smile towards them all, relieved that she was no longer alone but lost as to how to greet them in such circumstance. As she scanned each face she heard her name called out from her left side and turned to see Jennifer rushing towards her with her arms open. She grabbed her roughly in a firm embrace, almost knocking her over, and held her there for a second before pushing her back by the shoulders and checking her up and down.

"You OK?" she asked as she scanned her body.

"Yes I'm fine," Zoe replied, a brief feeling of guilt passing through her as she recalled her race from the chaos and her dead friends a few moments before. "Calum, though..."

"It's OK," Jennifer squeezed her shoulders a little. "You're OK. Come and sit down over here."

She led her by the hand to the empty space in the far corner where she had sat moments earlier. They sat down in silence and stared briefly into each other's eyes, a short moment to share their grief, fear and relief at finding each other, before Zoe looked down towards her hands fidgeting in her lap.

"I ran," she said quietly. "I was so afraid and confused, I didn't know what else to do."

Jennifer placed her hand gently on hers to calm them.

"It's OK," she said again softly. "It was chaos. Everybody freaked. You did the right thing, you'd be dead otherwise."

She brushed a tangled lock of hair from her face.

"How'd you think we all ended up here?"

Zoe smiled gratefully back at her.

"Everybody ran. It was a mess. They knew we were coming."

"How?" Zoe looked at her with surprise, a tear forming in the corner of her left eye as her adrenalin began to fade and the trauma slowly crept up on her.

"I don't know, but they did. There's no question. There were too many of them. Too well-prepared. They were on us as soon as we walked in. No alarms. No Migrants. Just Drones everywhere." Jennifer's voice cracked a little as she said this and her eyes glazed in a way that told Zoe she was replaying some terror from before in her mind.