Like a Cat on Earth

For a place famous for being inhospitable to life, the wasteland sure had a lot of strange plants. Sure, it was mostly rolling hills of dirt and gravel, but there were stretches of hard, thorny underbrush among short trees with what looked like bulbous purple tumors. Perhaps they had evolved naturally—life was amazingly adaptive, after all—but I suspected that they were remnants of early genetic engineering attempts.

Not that I spent much time thinking about it. As we marched through the night and into the morning, my mind was preoccupied with other thoughts.

The village. Thought I couldn’t wait to be rid of it, but now that it had gone up in flames, I realized it meant more to me than I ever imagined. No matter where I went in the world, I would have felt at peace knowing its lush fields, gentle slopes, and humming machinery still existed back there. Instead, it felt like a small part of me had burned away in those flames.

The villagers. Most of them were unpleasant to me, and because of that, I didn’t have much fondness for them, but I never wished them any harm. Even so, I felt guilty for caring more about the village than about them.

Myself. I was completely useless when the fighting broke out. Oliver had found the transport, and both Lea and Apollo had kept me safe. All I had done was carry the suitcase. Anyone could’ve done that, but because I was chosen, I was helped to escape in a transport while the other villagers were forced to flee on foot.

The gynoid was wrong to choose me.

Oliver’s voice pulled me out of my ruminations. “Sprout, slow down. You’re too far ahead.” As the world came back into focus, I was reminded of the weight I bore on my back. We had loaded our backpacks with as many supplies as we felt we could carry. Somehow, despite being the smallest member of the group, I wound up carrying the most. In comparison, the warhead’s twenty kilograms were insignificant, but they felt much, much heavier. Even in the deepest depths of my self loathing, I hadn’t been able to forget a single ounce.

The backpacks were at least small, due to a recent Federation invention that allowed items to be shrunk. Maybe someday they’d figure out how to make ‘em lighter too. The discoveries making this possible came from a program aiming to develop a cartoon-like hammerspace. Shame it wasn’t safe to use on enriched uranium.

I stopped and turned around to wait for the others to catch up. As they hobbled up the hill in their protective suits, I couldn’t help but bounce up and down on the balls of my feet, anxious to get moving again. When they reached me, however, Oliver plopped down on the ground and rested his back against a boulder.

“Let’s rest here for a while.”

That was the last thing I wanted to hear, so I grabbed him by the arm with my free hand and tried to pull him up. “We have to keep going.”

“Sprout, I’m exhausted, and so are you. If you keep pushing ahead like that, you’re going to collapse.”

“I’m fine. Besides, you were the one who said we can’t let them catch up.”

Honestly, they were the ones who looked like they were about to collapse, hunched over and breathing heavily. Even in that state, though, Apollo did something I never would have expected had I lived nine lifetimes: he agreed with me.

“She has a point, Oliver. If those humans catch us, we’re done for.”

Oliver shook his head, a gesture that was difficult to notice underneath his protective suit. “Transport took us most of the way, but we’re still days away from the closest dome. Can’t walk that far without rest, and neither can they.”

He was right. Soon as I realized that, I stopped bouncing up and down and took a seat next to him. “Gonna be hot soon. We can rest until it starts cooling off.”

“You changed your mind just like that?” Apollo asked. “Ain’t you worried about the humans catching up?”

“I am, but our fear was causing us to act on pure instinct.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Persistence hunting.”

“Huh?” all three of them blurted out at once.

“It’s something humans do. Cats are ambush predators, so as prey, our instincts tell us to stay as far away from the humans as possible, yeah? We run as fast as we can and tire ourselves out. Meanwhile, the humans follow behind at a steady pace. When they eventually catch up to us, we’re too tired to fight.”

“Pretty sure that’s just a myth,” Oliver said. “At least, I’ve never seen humans do that.”

I tried to shrug, but my shoulders ached against the weight of the backpack.“Maybe, but it applies to our situation. They’ve got more stamina, so they’ll eventually catch up. It’s just a matter of whether they reach us before we reach our destination. We need to focus on how to cover the most ground each day, not on getting the biggest head start.”

Apollo plopped down next to me. “You’re thinkin’ too much like one of them, but I won’t say no to a little nap.”

Neither would I. To my surprise, I was falling into a deep slumber. Maybe Oliver was right—I would’ve collapsed if I kept going like that.

But even in my dreams, I found no rest. Something was chasing me, something I couldn’t see. I ran, carrying the suitcase through the village, through the wastelands, and through deserts and cities, landscapes I had only seen in photos. No matter how far I ran, I never reached safety. I was alone and I needed help, but there was no one left to help me. There was nothing I could do but run, forever.

When I awoke, the sun was halfway to the horizon. It guessed from its position that I had slept about six hours. Oliver and Apollo were breathing heavily on either side of me, but Lea was sitting a few meters away, keeping watch in the direction of the village.

Still burdened by the weight of the supplies I carried, it took me a few minutes to stand. I walked over and patted Lea on the shoulder. “Did you get any rest?”

She nodded. “We took turns.” First time she had spoken to me since I insisted that I was human, and it was to inform me that I had once again been useless.

“Lea, about what happened at the village, I’m sorry—”

“No, Sprout, I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have tried to talk you out of it. The gynoid was right: you really are the best person for the mission. Rest of us are just slowin’ ya down. You’re even carryin’ some of our share, and we couldn’t keep up with ya. Talked it over with the others while you were sleepin’. Go on ahead. We’ll stay here and set up an ambush, try to save you some time.”

Even through her suit, I could see her shivering as she spoke. It wasn’t cold; she knew she was volunteering to go to her death, and she was scared.

“No.” I squeezed her shoulder, not so much to reassure her, but to comfort myself. “Wouldn’t make it without you. When the village was attacked, the three of you protected me. I was useless. I don’t even know how to fire a gun. All I can do is run.”

“I didn’t do much. Federation guns practically fire themselves. Here.” She picked up the rifle lying next to her, pressed a button on top of the scope, and handed it to me. “Just look through here and move the gun where it tells you, then pull the trigger.”

It took me a minute to see what she was talking about. The gun had picked a tree about a hundred meters away as its target, and it placed arrows at the edges of the screen to tell me which direction to move the gun. When I had everything lined up with a dot on the screen, I pulled the trigger, and a big red X flashed on the screen.

“Says I missed.”

“You pulled your whole arm back. Just squeeze with your finger, like this.”

As she leaned forward to put her hand over mine, I felt her chest push against my back and was distracted by thoughts of how Oliver would react if he was in my place. He’d probably blush and mumble and try to run away, but Lea would…

Then I realized, while I had been wallowing in self-pity, Lea had been suffering more than any of us. She was still in heat, which must have made marching all that way extremely uncomfortable.

“This is pointless,” I said. “Lea, if there’s anyone who should survive this, it’s you. Let me stay behind and buy you time. You’ve got a family that needs you.”

“If they’re still alive.” Lea pulled back from me and I heard her sniffle. “No, my kittens are resourceful. I’m sure they’ll be OK. You, on the—Hold on, what’s that? Over there. I thought I saw some movement.”

I panned the gun toward where she was pointing and caught a glimpse of miasma-stained tan stumbling through a patch of mostly dead underbrush.

“It’s a person.”