Decimation Fields

She cries, a quiet sob as the sun rises above the far off hills and shines its light down into the valley. The night is gone, the day begins. The sunshine burns off her drug induced alter reality, stripping it away like an atmosphere torn from a planet. In 5.5 billion years it will do the same to Earth. All she has left, is the single scar down the inside of her arm where a blade cut her. Blood, dried and hardened, has run down one side of the wound in lines like war paint.

She scrambles to her feet and makes her way towards the forest nearby, over a fence a road and another fence then down through a field. Once there she stumbles in between the trees and falls to the ground. Looking back through the branches of a bush, she sees the round hull of a drone zip over a hill, hovering the usual two meters in the air. It stops near where she had lain, turns a full circle. Next it glides down the rest of the hill to the road. It scans the forest for a moment then turns and zips along the road, disappearing from her view. She cannot help but lie a moment, fearful of that thing, of what they would do to her if they found her out here in the country.

“Alicia!” comes a voice, and she turns back to gaze deep into the woods. “Alicia!” it comes again.

Alicia gets to her feet and heads off, following what she thinks is the direction of the voice. To find it. To silence it. A cry that would bring the drones flying. She stops, gripping a tree for support and tries to catch her breath. Then she hears rustling from behind her and ducks down, clambers over the trunk, then spotting a gap between the thick roots climbs in and drops into a hole. More rustling as another drone drops into the woods.

Suddenly the events of the previous night rocket into her mind, suddenly the singing and dancing become real, the joy, the music, the gathering becomes real again.

* * *

As it all dies down, the embers of the fire burn red, the young man, the idealist turns to his companions.

“Is it not wondrous. The countryside. And to think that none of us have seen it before. But now that we have, how can we relinquish it.” His eyes are wide, his arms spread open.

“We have to, the drones will be repaired tomorrow. Once again, this will be no-man's-land. Once again, a place of death to all but the Lords.”

“No. For I have seen the beauty of these lands, and I will stay in protest.”

“And risk decimation?”

“And risk decimation, indeed.” He says it with a sweep of his arm.

“Here's to the countryside!” Cries another man at the back of the crowd, and they all agree, cheering together.

“Every tenth person a drone encounters it will kill. That is true. But our ancestors walked these lands freely, no one owned them then. It wasn't till the rise of the Lords, that we were enslaved to the cities, while they took back the countryside and rewilded it. And forbid anyone but Lords from setting foot in them. I say hell to them, these are my lands as much as theirs. To hell with it. I protest. I stay this morn. I risk decimation. I risk...”

* * *

The memories fade, and she finds herself back below the trunk of the tree, watching as Danny stands helpless in the face of a dozen drones, not so brave now. She sees him shaking. The drugs have worn off. He is no longer the bold rebel, but a terrified young man.

The drone stops, and unleashes its weapons, as bullets tear through Danny – ratta-tat-tat – battering the earth behind him. He falls.

He was a tenth.

She realizes immediately, she has to get to that exact drone. Her ticket out of here, alive at least. She scrambles up and rushes through bushes, down the hill towards it, then stumbles, turns, and sees that another is already watching her.

She lets out one last scream as the ratta-tat-tat erupts around her, and even that is cut short as the hard dark form of death wipes her from existence.

* * *

Mary sits on the back of the truck, and listens to the distant sounds of thunder. The ratta-tat-tat echoes through the woods. She sheds a single tear for her head strong sister, lost in the woods, with that fool of a boy. She rubs the handcuffs burning at her wrist that held her there as the truck pulled away.

“I'll never forgive you,” she spits at her cousin. He just shakes his head.

“But your parents will be glad I brought back one of their daughters alive.”

Mary breaks down as a second ratta-tat-tat erupts and sobs as her hart breaks, and the old truck shakes the fragments into tiny splinters. The town approaches, barbed wire fences and watchtowers, walls and guns. The sky grows dark with heavy clouds. Dark as her heart. Heavy as her heart. Why me? Why Alicia?

She remembers it had been her who dragged her unwilling sister along.

My fault. I'll die with her, out here.

“Okay you can uncuff me now.”

Her cousin shakes his head, as if he knows her thoughts.

By Gregory Alter