Snippet #2402377

Helena had been walking for several hours. The small figure stood alone against the arid backdrop of the blasted landscape, a small streak of red from her wavy hair countering the beige of the rocks and dirt. The young woman was somewhat on the short side, dressed in scuffed and clearly well-used clothing, it having been quite inexpertly repaired many times. A small pack was pulled over her left shoulder and a cheesecloth scarf had been pulled over her head in an attempt to ward off sun stroke... not that, by the look of her, it was doing a brilliant job. She seemed pale, even moreso than an individual with red hair would be expected to be, with dark rings under her eyes. She did not look well, and in truth she was not.

The fever had been getting progressively worse since the beginning of the week, and as the days had gone by, it had gotten harder to make a lot of progress. She'd hoped to wait until nighttime, it would have been cooler at the very least...but the sight of searching mechs on the horizon for three nights running had forced her into movement, trying to cover as much distance as possible without the aid of an transport. The creatures tended to not move in such numbers in the daytime heat so she could travel in relative safety... but as the illness worsened the heat of the sun made walking nearly unbearable. The ground seemed to sway and distort, odd voices with no speaker seemed to carry on the wind with the dust and sand, accusing her of things.

Blame seemed to play a big part on some of her more abstract dreams. Her fault that her family had met the fate it had, her fault than many places she'd attempted to settle afterward and people who had shown her kindness had met awful fates at the hands of the outsiders.

Helena stopped, leaning upon a twisted road sign, and trying to catch her breath, a tide of diziness hitting her.

It was pretty embarrassing. Perhaps even funny in a dark sense. Survive the invasion. Survive years of running. Survive the harsh environment, the bandits, the creatures the heat the constant risk of starvation...and be wiped by an untreated cut she'd gotten from an old peach can of all things. She's been taking some tins from the pantry of one of the empty dwellings in one of the sparse hamlets that dotted the stretch of road, and one that had been left open had had a jagged, dirty edge and had sliced upon the underside of her arm.

In the arid place, water was at a premium, especially water not teeming with bacteria, and she had not dared risk the little water she had in cleaning the cut, so she had bound it in cloth to keep grit from it and went on with her travels. However it appeared that the strategy had gone wrong. Some sort of pathogen had used it to sneak into her body, and appeared to be busy making her life a misery. She had no medical supplies, and, feeling increasingly interrupted in her thoughts by the heat and the pounding in her head, she'd not rationed her water as strictly as she could have, and the canteen tied to her pack was empty. Dehydration had begun to set in, and she was facing a dim realization that she would probably collapse before she found any shelter.

The young woman chuckled. What a silly way to go. On the bright side, such a thing would mean that those things would never be able to exploit her for their infernal devices. By the time they found her she would be food for buzzards and not of any use to their cause. They could do many awful things with their dire machines, but to her knowledge they could not reach beyond the mortal coil.

Helena smirked in grim resignation.
"Here's to my victory over the monsters...they'll...they'll never get me now." she muttered, taking a few steps toward the road, before dropping to her knees, making a futile attempt to rise up again before falling completely, the view of the sky beginning to blur and spin before guttering out completely as she sank into unconsciousness.