Missed Message

Krisiera ran hard, feet kicking up clods of dirt as she sped across the hillside, breath coming in ragged gasps. She clutched the wooden tube containing the message tightly in her right hand as though it were a baton she would pass off on the track. Her pulse raced within her no matter how much she tried to even out her breathing. This wasn’t a leisurely jog, this wasn’t training. This was real.

“This is so not what I signed up for.” Krisi muttered. When she’d said she’d been born in the wrong time period, that she’d wanted to be born into more interesting times, she hadn’t meant this. Definitely not this.

Online had become so incredibly unsafe that anything important had to now be physically ferried across continents. Oh, how far we’ve fallen. She leapt off a small cliff, landing hard, gasping in pain, but she shoved herself forward down the slope, letting gravity take her down just so long as she kept her legs under her enough to keep moving.

After what felt like an eternity, she reached a road, stumbling onto the asphalt and looking both ways before taking off towards where smoke curled above the treeline. Hoping no one came around the corner behind her. Praying she was still in time.

She reached the small, gated community, and her heart sank as she took in the lack of security guards, but there was no time to stop and ask what had happened. She threw herself at the double doors of the central big building, staggering inside as she looked for a receptionist. The desk was empty. She scanned all the signs on the walls, muttering their contents under her breath, with the word ‘no’ mixed in every so often.

“I don’t understand.” She whispered desperately. She picked her best guess and started jogging, keeping on eye out for a sign on the corner of a wall that would tell her where to turn and where to stop.

In front of a large door simply labeled ‘Command’, she paused, lifting her fist to knock. She swallowed before tapping the door several times in quick succession, just in case anyone inside couldn’t hear her wheezing breath out in the hall.

The door opened, and a security guard poked his head out, half-eaten donut in his hand and crumbs in his beard as his jaw worked.

“Can I ‘elp ‘ou?” He said, wads of slobbery donut pelting Kris in the face.

“Where is the General?” Kris demanded. The guard shrugged.

“It’s a power plant, innit?” he asked after swallowing. “Not a military installation. That’s down the road another twenty miles.”

Kris’s heart dropped through the floor. She didn’t have that kind of time.

Turned out, she didn’t have any time at all, as the ground shook and rumbled ominously beneath their feet.

“Take shelter–now!” Kris snapped. She turned and ran, leaving him to find whatever he deemed the best place to take any kind of shelter. Her heart slammed in her throat as the light coming through the windows grew ever brighter. She pushed her way through the nearest door, immediately falling down a set of stairs in her half-blinded state. Hopefully it was a basement. Hopefully it was enough.