FLARE

Why oh why did she say it was fine?

Gaunt grimaced as she finally dragged herself out from under the train car. Stupid. Now it was too late to say anything, Kiki probably already left. And there wasn’t any point in giving that kind of impression to Spike, or that freak Lyre, for no reason.

Her palms were raw from where they gripped twisted metal, scrabbled on asphalt. Her body protested as she tried to shove herself to her feet, so instead she met it halfway and sat herself upright. Gaunt tried to get her breathing under control. I should go soon.

She sat there anyway. Leaving the trainwreck made it feel more real, that hey, maybe there really isn’t a way out this time. Maybe I’ll actually die. Staying, she could pretend there was a first-aid kit somewhere in the rubble that wasn’t completely decimated, some real bandages, a bottle of fucking vodka, literally anything. But all she got for her efforts were a few old linens. That, and the crowbar she found by the tracks.

Breathing under control, she pulled one of the rags out from her bag. She poured a little water on it from her canteen, trying to squeeze it out as best she could, and then gasped as she poured some directly onto the site. It still wasn’t particularly clean, but that’s the best she could do without disinfectant. Wincing, she fumbled with the ends for a good minute before she managed to awkwardly tie it around her midriff. Blood wicked across the edges, but didn’t quite start bleeding through.

It was a big cloth. It still barely covered the injury. Don’t think about it.

Well, there wasn’t anything else she could waste her time with. Cautiously, she brought her legs around to a kneeling position, then staggered to her feet. The cloth held. She picked up the crowbar from where it was leaning against the wreck, and gripped it firmly. Even if it was just a crowbar, and not anything she really needed right then, it was nice to feel protected from whatever else may cross her path. With one last glance back, she set off.

Even as she stepped around bits of sheet metal and plastic, her injury didn’t slow her much. A cursory examination told her it wasn’t so deep, just wide, and sensitive as hell. That said, given the state of things, “about a week” without serious consequences was really pushing it. Stupid.

Really, someone should have called for help and she should be in a hospital right now. Even in the ass-end of nowhere, there had to be someone. But Gaunt hadn’t seen a single person in the hour or so after crawling out of the train car and that wasn’t changing as she walked away, either. Buildings and power lines and infrastructure all chopped up into bits, forming thick mounds of rubble. Something big had clearly happened, bigger than the train crash, and it was up to Gaunt alone to make it out.

She craned her neck towards the skyscraper. Far, but at least she knew where it was. If she skimped on sleeping, she could make it there a little faster. Between her experience on rocky turf and her high-quality boots, she was making good progress; in some ways, it was lucky that she knew her way around rough terrain.

In other ways, it was incredibly stupid of her to go backpacking with a bunch of randos she’d never met before. Granted, it could have been worse; she could have been assaulted or kidnapped and then left to die. But this wasn’t exactly at the top of her list, either.

People pleaser, that’s what they called it. Yes, I’ll help you with that assignment. Yes, I can watch your kids for a bit. Yes, I’d love to go backpacking with you with little-to-no preparation whatsoever, on the other side of the country. Gaunt knew this was a bad thing, and she knew she should stop, but she never did. It was… too much feedback, when she tried. Kept her up at night, so to speak. And look where that got her: completely alone, anyway.

So stupid. She scoffed, and sidestepped a lone beer bottle. In doing so, her gaze fell on a slope set nearby. Stairs, leading underground.

That would’ve been the subway. Being reinforced, it wouldn’t have collapsed save a full-on natural disaster, so the only danger below would be whatever vagrants and vermin sheltered there. None of which Gaunt was particularly fond of the idea of, especially in her state.

With that said, her bag was feeling lighter than she would have liked. She took it off, cracked it open. She hadn’t gotten a chance to refill, and only had food and water for two days or so. She wouldn’t make it as it was.

The tunnels would have stuff in them. Maybe vending machines. Maybe first-aid stations. And if people knew about… whatever happened.

What happened?

Her mind drew a blank. Trauma? It wasn’t out of the question that she was forgetting something that would do more harm than good. But shouldn’t she remember something, between waking up at the train yard and standing in line for a ticket that morning?

This wasn’t the time. She could think about that later, it was probably just stress.

Whatever the case, Gaunt reasoned, people probably knew something was up and ran to the subway to get the hell out, no matter what the protocol actually was. And desperate people tended to leave behind valuable things.

It would be worth a shot, at least. Swearing, she shouldered her bag and descended.

The first door she found was glass, blown clean open. As was the rest of the wall, actually, also glass. She gingerly brushed some of the shards away with her sleeve and stepped through, clutching her stomach. The interior was a mess, packaging and spoiled food scattered everywhere. Unfortunately, the shelf for over-the-counter drugs was stripped bare. Interestingly enough, though, much of the food was intact. A lot of it was nutritionally poor or overly salted, but it would do for energy in a pinch. She grabbed a few bags of salted nuts, some gummies, and the last bag of jerky.

If there was food, maybe there was water, too. Heading over to the next aisle, Gaunt’s hopes were nearly dashed as she witnessed the fallen shelf, impaling all the bottles in sight. She trudged over to the shelf and, gritting her teeth, lifted it anyway. Only a couple small juice boxes were intact, and she wasted no time scooping them up.

Nothing else, after a cursory glance, proved too interesting. After checking under the pharmaceutical shelf for anything other than Band-Aids, Gaunt called the job done and stepped back towards the tunnel hallway.

After the next flight of stairs, a light pang traced through her forehead. Strange, as she didn’t think she lost so much blood. But again, she could chalk it up to general stress. Gently shaking her head, she looked to the far wall.

Several posters lined the tunnel. She started reading one of them before she regained her focus. Skimming over, her fingers twitched as she made out a light box with a caduceus on it, but lost interest when she read the letters AED. Not what she was looking for. Impatiently, she scanned all the way to the end and saw something red, with a smudge of white on it.

Eagerly, she hopped into the tracks and hauled herself over. Pulling herself over the ledge, however, revealed it only to be a fire extinguisher. Gaunt swore, snatching it up and throwing it directly onto the tracks.

She shuffled back through the tracks to the stairs. Nothing much else in the tunnel. Maybe there would be something upstairs she forgot about.

Turning to her right, she was met with a ticket booth (was that there when she entered? Maybe she entered from the left). She reached for the door handle, missed, then got it on her second try. Locked. Cursing some more, she swung the crowbar through a window, shattering it. She brushed a little bit of glass from the sill absently, and shoved herself through, her wound scraping against the edge as she did so.

Her eyes roved over the various objects scattered within. Nothing good, nothing good – a flicker of something brushed just on the edge of her vision. Gaunt tried to look at it, lazily drawing her attention around, before it fully registered and she swung the crowbar around her. It smashed directly into a cabinet, sending a judder through her arms.

Didn’t get it. She didn’t see it anymore, though. Prying the crowbar out, her eyes fell on a small medical kit next to it on the wall. She snatched it up and shoved it hastily into the main compartment of her bag.

With that done, she turned back to the window and crawled through, landing roughly on her left shoulder. Her midsection felt slightly damp. She could deal with that later. She stood up, and nearly fell over before placing a hand on the wall. That was everything, it was time to go.

Which way did she come from, though? All the passages looked the same. She ran over to the closest one. No, that went down, she wanted one that went up. The next one also went down. The third didn’t, so she ran through and hoped for the best.

As she did, the thing from before brushed past her vision again. It took a moment for Gaunt to realise, thinking what was that? Wasn’t there something unusual about it? Before she wound the crowbar behind her to smash into it. It dropped straight to the ground, nothing to be seen. Probably ran off, then.

Back in an open room, she searched for the next place to go. Only one hall, the other blocked off. I don’t remember being here before. Now starting to pant from the exertion, she staggered over to the open hallway. There had to be some way out.

And true enough, there was a beam of light shining down the end of the passage. In her haste, Gaunt tripped forward onto the stairs, and didn’t quite lift herself back up, instead opting to scramble up them on all fours. Finally back in the light of day, she wheezed, still on her knees. Buckling, she collapsed onto her side. Dimly, she knew she should be getting somewhere safe, but she couldn’t bring herself to do much at all.

Gradually, her thoughts returned back to her. The thin ache of her stomach was brought back to the forefront of her mind. Shit. The injury. Too exhausted to swear, she agonisingly rolled herself over into a sitting position, and peeled her shirt up.

The bandage was nearly soaked through, and more was oozing around the sides. She shrugged the backpack off her shoulders, and rifled through it. Main compartment, it was thankfully still there. She pulled out the medical kit and opened it.

Bandages, of course, and gauze as well. Pulling those aside revealed some disinfectant, and which she let out a weak breath of relief. There was also a needle with thread, and some naloxone, although Gaunt didn’t figure she needed either at the moment. She dumped some disinfectant on the gauze – maybe a little more than she would have liked – and threw the cloth aside to bury later. She let out a vicious hiss as the gauze touched flesh, but forced herself to dig into the wound despite the recoil.

That over, she took some of the bandage and painstakingly wrapped it around herself. Tightening it as much as she could bear, she knotted several times over until she was satisfied it would hold. Why did I do this to myself?

Gas. It hit her like her crowbar punched through that window. Gas leak. No wonder she got lost.

Gaunt shook her head. Last time she’d ever go underground. No contingency plan, didn’t even consider the possibility. At least it was worth it.

She checked the rest of the contents of her bag, just to be sure. All the snacks were intact. The juice boxes looked smaller than when she first got them, but she couldn’t be sure if that was the gas or just overblown optimism. She zipped all the compartments back up and put it on, then lifted herself to her feet, using her arms to push off her knees. She’d need water soon.

But that could wait. It was getting dark, and judging from the looming tower, she’d made alright progress. Maybe if she was in good shape she’d push herself, but she figured it was due time for her lungs to get a break.

She soon came across an old shop, walls mostly intact, even if the ceiling was gone. Not a terrible spot to set up camp. Setting her bag aside, she started shifting some of the demolished furniture into a crude sleeping arrangement. Once she designed the mass of splintered wood and torn fabric to her liking, she remembered the phone.

It wasn’t hers. Actually, she couldn’t begin to imagine how she even got it; probably some weird circumstance that happened on the train ride. And the fact that none of them supposedly knew each other either was… strange, to say the least. But she really needed to get in touch with Kiki. At this rate, maybe she’d make it to the tower, maybe not. Depends on whether the disinfectant did its job or not. But judging from what she’d seen so far, the ground was a little more traversable here; hopefully she could move a little faster tomorrow.

Bringing the phone out, Gaunt found there was still a connection. Made sense; the cell tower outside seemed, miraculously, largely intact. She smiled a little as she leaned over to her discarded bag.

Tearing open a pack of gummies and a granola bar, trying not to strain her injury so much with each breath, Gaunt opened the chat and started typing a message.