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It was the smell of our sweat and the dried blood caked on our arms that drew the bugs to us. Up to our waists in stagnant water, packs lifted high above our heads, we tried to ignore them and failed.
The flare went up 100 yards in front of us.
That was the sign.
We made it to the end of the swamp and tossed our packs onto the shore. Climbing out of the purple muck, brushing skinsects off each other, we set off into the dense thickets in two teams, on parallel paths. We only had five minutes to get the mortars set up.
The radio buzzed. Alpha team had lost their shells in the swamp. Delirious, I asked Clem if he had heard the same thing or if it was just my imagination. He looked at me, eyes glazed; the toxins from the bugs were in us now. We were the last hope for us all.
I shook my head, I needed to focus. Clem was staring at the sky, awestruck by the twin sunsets, not responding to any commands. My hands blurred in front of me. If I didn’t get these mortars shot the evac team wouldn’t be able to lift off. It was all up to me.
Wait, what was up to me? What was I doing? The yellow mist trailing off the swamp curled around my ankles and made patterns as I walked. Pretty patterns.
“Poe!” My name. It was Clem, shaking me out of my reverie, mortars in hand. The second flare lit the sky.
This planet was one living organism and we never should have come. This was not going to be our new home and we had wasted a year and over a hundred lives finding that out. Impossible to predict how intertwined the animals, insects, plant life and land were.
Impossible to predict the effects of the twin suns on our psyche and the venom of the skinsects on our sanity.
From above, through data points and readings and probes, this planet fit the bill based on what we knew about this star system. The data was wrong.
Clem shot the mortars, distracting the planet long enough for the evac ship to liftoff in the periwinkle dusk. Left behind so that they could live, we gave into the swarm that surrounded us. A more beautiful death you could not imagine.
Written daily using the #vss365 word prompts on twitter, compiled weekly into a story of exactly 400 words.
#sign #parallel #imagination #awestruck #reverie #predict #periwinkle
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