i won't give up

"Cause even the stars, they burn. Some even fall to the Earth."

Dana wasn't sure which way to go. Maybe the best thing would have been to say still, to stay hidden. These Scavengers would never find her, especially at night. But she didn't have the time to wait. She had promised to be back in Eden in a few hours, she had promised her little brother and sister that she would bring them food. And Dana wasn't one to leave her promises unfulfilled.

The Scavengers made another pass in the room, almost as if they knew she was there. She barely thought of them as human at this point despite the fact they looked the same as everyone else. But in these times, people fell into two groups, Scavengers and everyone else. Dana remembered the world before. Before an errant asteroid fell and set the entire planet off kilter. Dana remembered gangs and would laugh at the thought now. She remembered growing up in a rough neighborhood in Philly. That was a joke. Philly didn't exist anymore. Sure the land was still there. That big cracked bell was still there. But Philly was gone. In its place was a no man's land. The edge of civilization. Philly was the southernmost point now of what was left of the U.S. The oceans had shifted and there was beach now. But the biggest change was the complete failure of what was left of the government. D.C. was felled by the asteroid and the federal government completely fell apart. The states became so focused on defending their territories that they left their citizens to fend for themselves. Two years later, the citizens overtook the government and brought in the current era of lawlessness.

Then the Scavengers came. People that were little more than animal. They took whatever they wanted and killed anything that moved. Dana had even seen them turn on each other out of sheer boredom. Technically, Dana was a Scavenger. Her parents had joined with the group, thinking it was the only way to ensure protection and food in this post-apocalyptic world. Within two weeks, her father had been killed and her mother was being passed around with as much courtesy as a cigarette. They ignored Dana because she looked so young, younger than she actually was. And while they were busy ignoring her, she had escaped with her two siblings. She had never been more appalled at humans and never been more determined to keep her younger siblings away from them.

Now here she was. Trapped inside a wall in the remains of the children's hospital. The place that she and her siblings had been born. The hospital was the first building her father's architecture firm had ever designed and he had framed the blueprints. Blueprints she had memorized before she could even read. This wall was her father's secret spot, a gap in the walls in one specific place that he put in all his buildings. The problem was the gap didn't go anywhere. It was an excellent hiding place but what Dana needed was an escape route.

This Scavenger group consisted of two women and one bury looking man. He looked like he ate children for dinner, which was all too entirely possible for Dana to be comfortable with. Three Scavengers, at least as far as she had seen. There were no food or supplies left, but they seemed interested in breaking down some of the equipment. It was impossible to tell if they were just bored and engaging in destruction for fun. Or if they had plans to use the equipment for something. It seemed ominous if they were breaking down medical equipment for a good reason but Dana didn't have time to worry about that. The three had left the room but she could here them banging around in the room next door. She closed her eyes and visualized the framed blueprints in her dad's office. Dana choked up for a moment, remembering the constant, nagging smell of Newports in her dad's office, the way the smell stuck to the corner chair she used to snuggle into while her father worked.

Dana shook her head, trying to literally clear the memories from her mind. The memories haunted her every night in her dreams. She didn't need them interfering with her mind in the daytime too. Specifically not when she was trying to escape from a group of Scavengers in an abandoned hospital. Dana tried again, closing her eyes and trying to remember exactly what was in the room next to her. She was in the wall of a random office on the third floor. And the rooms on all sides of her were offices too. Then she saw it, saw the blueprints as clear as if she were standing in her father's office. The elevators were two offices away. And where there used to be elevators, there should be an elevator shaft. For anyone else, this might not be a viable option but Dana was not just anyone. She was the girl that had been living in the bottom of elevator shafts with her siblings for the past year. She was the girl whose father had built those elevator shafts and this one, the girl who knew how to open this elevator shaft in 30 seconds.

Dana opened her eyes. The Scavengers sounded like they had moved on down to the next office, thankfully moving in the opposite direction from the elevator shaft. She realized this might be her only chance. She would have preferred to find something to use as a weapon, to take just a moment to calculate exactly how much time she needed, but the last few years had taught her take her moments whenever she got them. Dana took this moment. She raced out of the room, barely glancing to her left before turning right to the elevators. She hadn't seen anyone when she glanced but it was so quick she couldn't be sure. She got to the elevator quickly, jerking out the large magnet from her backpack while she ran. This was the secret, some sort of magnetized system inside the elevator doors. A large enough magnet and Dana could guide the doors open fairly easily. Once inside, Dana knew there would be an iron ladder stairwell that went directly down. Down to freedom.

Dana had opened the doors just wide enough to slip into the empty shaft when a hand suddenly grasped her shoulder. Times had been rough and Dana had been in plenty of altercations before with Scavengers. She was strong and tougher than they ever expected. She should have spun around and clocked the owner of that hand in the face. Except this hand was certainly not human. It was kind of human, with human skin and five fingers. But the fingers were warped, longer and thinner than any human hand should be. The skin was more orange than even any tanning bed could produce. Dana was frozen staring at that hand on her shoulder, terrified to see who that hand belonged to. Not that she had much choice for long. A second hand clamped down on her and tossed her back into the wall. Tossed would be a nice version, a human version of the force used.

It was just a wall, about six feet behind the elevator but it felt the same as the day she had fallen off the second floor balcony at her old house. The air was pushed out of her lungs and she was struggling to drag some new air back in. Her head bounced against the wall violently once causing her vision to blur. But she could see that the magnet was still stuck to the elevator door and the elevator was still open just wide enough for Dana to slip through. She tried to shake off the blurred vision and the realization that something other than human was shoving her around. It didn't really matter if Planet of the Apes had come to be, what mattered was her getting out of that building.

The orangey human thing came towards Dana again. A scary enough to sight to clear her mind and vision instantly. Adrenaline is good for that. Dana pretended to scoot away from the creature, carefully angling herself in a direct line with the gap in the elevator door. She knew jumping into the shaft would be a freefall, but she was only on the second floor and she was hoping the elevator was on the first. Just a one story fall really. Once again, she took advantage of her moment. The creature tired of chasing her around and lunged for her. Dana dove around him, basically sliding the ten feet she had created right into the elevator shaft. The fall was steeper than she realized, about two stories down before she hit the top of the elevator car. She vaguely cursed herself for forgetting the hospital had a basement. But there was no time to lament. She pulled open the elevator safety latch and once again thanked her father for his insight. Elevators with a manual door open in the event of an electrical outage. As Dana jumped out of the elevator and sprinted for the doors of the hospital, she saw three creatures emerge from the stairwell. Two with breasts and one burly looking one. Dana froze for the second time in the last ten minutes as realization washed over her. The three Scavengers. It was almost funny, all the times she had thought of Scavengers as barely human and the proof was standing in front of her that they were not.

The three creatures took one step towards Dana and her sense of self preservation kicked back in. She sprinted out the doors of the hospital, taking her preplanned evasive route until she was absolutely sure nothing was following her. She slowed to a cautious walk, checking her well hidden food traps as she did. Her mind wandered as she did. To all the times she had seen Scavengers, and she realized that usually she saw them in buildings her father had built. It occurred to her that she had more confrontations with Scavengers than other people that she interacted with, that maybe that was because they were both drawn to her father's buildings. It seemed preposterous at first but the more she thought back, the surer she was that it was true. The way her father made her watch pretty much every alien movie ever made. The way her father designed his buildings full of hiding places, secret passages, and escape hatches. The way he had made her memorize every plan. Now it seemed that maybe he knew something was coming and was trying to teach her how to protect herself.

Dana returned to her current hideout, a small room behind a false door in a supply closet in her old elementary school. Obviously one of her father's designs as well. Her little brother and sister were happy to see her and even happier to the carrots she had pulled up from one of her hidden gardens. But all Dana could think of was her father's favorite TV show, the one he used to watch over and over again. She had found the show interesting and fun and funny, but she never had even once believed that aliens were real. Until today. Today she found they were real and she was now facing the very real possibility her father was expecting them to come. And if they were searching her father's buildings for something, then it was very very possible they were searching for her and her siblings. Dana took a deep breath and realized she would have to fight this one alone. No fathers or Doctors here.

"We've got a lot to learn. God knows we're worth it."