Light, Glorious Light

Run, Akiva, Run

Akiva slammed the door and jammed the bolt lock home. Heart racing, her brow glistened with sweat. Chest heaving, her body shuddered with every breath. The Mothers had sent her to find supplies, instead she found the infected. On her Armpad she'd marked the coordinates of a half dozen possible locations to scavenge. Most were on the coastline, miles away and devoid of infestation. If she had known the abandoned facility was connected to the underground caves, she would have chosen a different site. It would have been the logical choice to pick one of the other locations clean, and bring back all of the electrical supplies she could find.

Unfortunately, Akiva rarely made the logical decision. The Mothers had never chosen her by name and she'd thought this was her opportunity to make an impression. Seemed more like an opportunity to get herself killed.

A thunderous bang shook the walls, decades of sand and dust cascaded down upon the young woman. A second louder bang hit the door, warping the metal frame. Akiva backed away. The bolt held, barely, but it wouldn't for much longer. Another impact against the metal wall of the ancient depot and Akiva could make out the imprint of a face. Shoving a pair of file cabinets against the door, for what little help they would do, she sprinted from the room. The sounds of the infected battering their way through the barrier followed her down a series of passages and up a metal ladder. The door finally failed as she neared the top. The hoots and snarls of the infected filled the long forgotten halls of a long forgotten stronghold.

Akiva Raheem was a scout by trade. Small and quick of wit, she'd spent her entire life scrounging The Waste for anything she could use as barter. She fed, and clothed herself off the land's bounty. Ultimately making a decent living picking over the carcass of the old world. Akiva survived by a simple code. At the first sign of trouble, whether in the form of bandits or the infected, Run. It was better to return to Phalanx empty handed than not to return at all. Akemi Raheem, Akiva's mother, had gone beyond the borders of Phalanx one morning and never returned, leaving her adolescent daughter to fend for herself. It taught the girl a lesson she could never forget. Survival was the scout's overriding directive.

Akiva reached the top of the ladder and grabbed the rusted shaft cover. It resisted her efforts at first, but loudly and grudgingly began to close. At the bottom of the ladder shouted a thin man. His hair was long and matted, his skinny arms bulging with fist sized pustules. Their eyes met across the forty foot distance, and he licked his lips. More infected came into view, all snarls and reaching hands. Like spiders they climbed up both the ladder and the rust covered walls of the shaft with equal ease. Akiva pulled with everything she had until her arms ached and the cover slammed shut.

She breathed a momentary sigh of relief then the door at the end of the chamber fell off its hinges. Her heart skipped a beat. A dozen infected charged out of the adjoining tunnel and straight toward her. Akiva screamed and, as one collective entity, every infected within earshot cried out in mad hunger. She ran for the opposite door. Akiva had spray painted her mark on the inside of the metal, beside it were two tick marks. She was close to the entrance and the open waste beyond. As far as she was concerned that desolate landscape meant salvation.

The scout reached the door with a slavering infected on her heels. Akiva tugged on a pile of metal junk as she ran through the adjacent corridor, toppling rusted piping and sand. The creature behind her shouted as he was buried. The gap between her pursuers widened, but she could already hear them tearing through the temporary barricade. She met another symbol at an intersection of passages. This one was beside one tick and an arrow pointing towards the way out.

Thighs burning with exertion, Akiva laughed. She couldn't stop, not until she was in the safety of direct sunlight. Even then she'd keep running until she was safely behind Phalanx's walls. Phalanx sat two days' journey by foot, through the most dangerous parts of The Waste. All she'd had to do was head towards the coast, explore the region marked cleared of infected.