Homecoming

CHAPTER 24: Glass

Nothing about Earth seemed beautiful anymore. Every mile of tree-covered land was simply another mile she’d have to cross in order to save Luke, who was growing weaker by the moment.

Maybe we should have just died up there, with the rest of the Colony, she thought grimly. Maybe we never should have come here at all. But no, she wouldn’t allow them to die this way either: alone and terrified. Luke twitched in his sleep. She stood up, her legs shaky beneath her. Glass ran her hand down his stubbly cheek and touched his lips. The thought of his body shutting down made her chest seize with sadness. How could Earth just go on existing if Luke were gone? How could she? No. She couldn’t just let him fade away out here in the woods. She owed him more than that.

With every meter, Glass grew more adept at traveling this way, but as her muscles grew sore and her mind grew tired, she worried more and more that she was moving in the wrong direction. The compass told her she was heading south, but nothing looked familiar. Had they passed this way at all?

By midday, Glass was soaked in sweat. Her back ached, and her limbs were shaky with exhaustion. She had no idea how much farther it would be to camp. She had to rest. She stopped, pulled the harness over her head and nudged the sled up against a tree. Luke grunted in pain and stirred. She knelt down to his side.

“Hey,” she whispered, dropping a kiss on his forehead.

She could feel with her lips that he was still burning up. He’d had a fever for days. A wave of uncertainty crashed down on her again. How could she do this? How could she get him all the way back by herself? She was barely strong enough to lift him, let alone hold him up and fend off violent predators. If they were attacked again, she knew it would be the last time.

Glass stood with her hands on her hips and looked up at the sky. She exhaled slowly, trying to bring down her heart rate. She could do this. She had to do this. As she summoned her strength, her eyes ran down the trunk of the tree behind the sled. A few feet above her head, she saw something—an indentation paler than the ridged wood around it. Glass stood on her tiptoes and strained her neck to see. She squinted and pushed herself up as high as she could go. When she finally grasped what she was looking at, she let out a gasp of surprise, then laughed out loud right there in the forest, with no one but an unconscious Luke to hear her. In the middle of a landscape so wild and untouched it was as if people had never even walked the Earth, there was a message, carved into the bark by a human hand. She just could just make it out: R S.

It was as if a voice had reached out of the past to whisper to her, telling her everything would be all right. R and S had loved each other, right here under this tree, where Glass now fought for the boy she loved. Under other circumstances, she and Luke could have carved their initials just like them. But who were R and S, and how long ago had they sat here together? Were they young or old? First love, or old married couple? Maybe it was a couple from before the Cataclysm, who probably didn’t survive. People who probably didn’t know the extent of the horrors that awaited the human race. All they knew was that they loved each other enough to leave behind a symbol of their affection for generations to come. The sight of that long-forgotten emblem stirred something in Glass’s chest. This couple could never have known that one day a girl from space would stumble upon their carving. Would it have mattered to them? Probably not. Their love was all they cared about. All they should have cared about.

Glass looked down at Luke, whose chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. No matter how scared she was, no matter whether they made it back to camp or not, they were lucky to be alive right then, right there. That moment was all they had. If they wanted more, then she was going to have to fight for it—for both of them. She squatted down and slipped the rope over her shoulders again, a renewed energy coursing through her body.

They had to get back to safety. There was no way she was giving up now.

Glass pushed her way through a particularly thick copse of trees, then saw something that made her stomach flip. It was a lake. But could it be…? Surely all lakes on Earth looked somewhat similar. Suddenly, in the distance, she saw it. The remains of the charred dropships.

Glass let out a whoop and would’ve jumped up and down if she hadn’t been bone-tired. She was almost there. She couldn’t be more than a few miles from the camp. But as she stared up the steep incline on the far side of the lake, her heart sank. It would take hours to drag Luke around the water and back up to camp. Would he even make it that long? If not, she could only hope that her own body would quickly succumb to grief. She’d rather lie with Luke, still and peaceful in the forest forever, than spend the rest of her life with an even heavier burden than the sled—the weight of a broken heart.