Dreams and Swords by Katherine V. Forrest

Author:Katherine V. Forrest
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781612940489
Publisher: Bywater Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SURVIVOR

She awakened to silence and peace, and whiteness. Blissfully, she floated off again into unconsciousness.

When she awakened once more, the whiteness drifted into focus. The walls were an uneven whitewashed brick. Odd, she thought: no windows. The nightstand was a simple metallic cube, barren of all but an empty glass. The gown and sheet covering her were muslin, wrinkled and musty. The room smelled of cold and dampness and disinfectant.

She lifted her hands from her sides and turned them front and back, examining them with curiosity. They seemed a stranger’s hands, dark, puffed up, dry and numb, the fingers hard to bend.

She lay quietly, in profound contemplation of her body. She was very warm—perhaps feverish. But unhurt, she judged.

She struggled to sit up, grimacing at the lassitude of her limbs. Unfamiliar feet dangled beneath her gown, the same dark red color as her hands, possessed of the same puffiness.

Very slowly, she eased herself off the bed. Rocking back and forth, she analyzed the sensations in her feet. They felt, she decided, as if hot water bottles were strapped to them.

Gliding over the floor on her liquid feet, she peered out into a long corridor made of the same coarse brick as her room, a white tunnel extending in both directions into infinity. There was a low murmuring to her left, and she stepped out of her room toward the sound.

Intersecting invisibly only a few feet away was another corridor; and around its corner, seated at a small metal desk, a woman clad in a zippered white jumpsuit and close-fitting white cap spoke into a headset, her head bent over a clipboard she held in gloved hands. Her nose and mouth were covered by a tight mesh mask.

“Six thousand, sir.” Her voice was slightly muffled by the mask. “Estimation thirteen hundred viable. Our last test readings at nine hundred hours, safety range down to oh point one three—Sir?” The woman had looked up. “Excuse me, sir. One of the casualties is here with me. Over and Out.”

The woman flipped two switches, removed the headset, strode out from behind the desk. She was tall and burly; a few dark hairs straggled from beneath her tight white cap. The eyes above the mask were dark brown, compassionate. “You need to get back to bed.”

On a silver nameplate above one breast was the word CAPTAIN; the rest of the name swam and blurred. She reached out for the gray metal desk to steady herself. She could not feel the desk under her hand. “Are you ... a doctor?” She was shocked by the reedy rasp that was her voice.

“No. Military. Special Forces. I need to get you back into bed.” Firmly, the captain took her arm.

“Where am I?”

“The outskirts. Two hundred feet down.”

As she walked along the corridor on her warm feet, the captain’s guiding hand on her arm, she remembered. The high-low two-note shriek of sirens. The apocalyptic rumble. The sidewalk lurching under her feet. The edges of the building she was running to becoming a shimmer.

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