That Moment

Flash Fiction

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There’s a moment when you realize that, however bad things may seem, everything is going to be okay. A moment of calm, when you just know. This was not one of those moments. Shit was hitting the fan, and nothing was going to be okay. They’d walked straight into this ambush like a bunch of green recruits. More than half of the squad had gone down in the first salvo.

Kylie’s heart hammered a staccato pulse against her ribs, her breath coming in short gasps as terror tore through her, threatening to shut her down. Shots rang out, the firefight still raging around her, the meager cover she’d managed to drag Brett behind pointless. He was bleeding out in front of her. She had no med kit, and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the three center-mass shots he’d taken.

How Brett’s chest was still moving, Kylie had no idea. Blood bubbled to the surface with every stuttered breath, each seeming it would be his last. She’d known better than to pull him to cover. She’d been uninjured until a blast caught her as she’d tried to pick him up. Even knowing he was a goner, she just couldn’t leave him out there. Not alone. Not here. So, she’d dragged his failing body behind the first scrawny trees of the forest from which her unit had just emerged. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before.

She lowered herself to the ground beside him, trying to stanch the flow of blood from her own leg wound with her wadded-up jacket. She almost wished she was Brett. At least he was unconscious and wouldn’t bleed out slowly, knowing he was going to die. Kylie pulled out her weapon. For protection, she told herself. Not to get it over with.

A wave of dizziness took her. Damn. She must have lost more blood than she thought. She tied her jacket tighter around the wound. Why bother? She was losing it for sure. One second, she was thinking of offing herself, the next engaging in an exercise in futility trying to save herself.

Kylie’s eyes drifted open. She must have blacked out. Pain stole her vision. She closed them again. Her mouth was dry. Dehydration from blood loss? She groped for her canteen. Drank a bit. Then drank some more. No point in trying to conserve it.

She opened her eyes again, only to see the front end of a blaster pointed directly at her face. A wall of yellow fur stood behind the back end of the blaster. Her own weapon must have slipped from her hand when she blacked out. She wouldn’t have been able to fire it in time anyway. She looked up, determined to at least look the Flelling in its eyes before it ended her.

“Your friend is dead.”

The translation of the Flelling’s words was tinny and without inflection coming through Kylie’s translation device. She let out a derisive snort, not daring to look at Brett to confirm it. “Captain obvious. Just get it over with.”

Instead of shooting, the alien knelt down beside Kylie, setting its weapon behind, out of her reach. It untied Kylie’s jacket, reached into a satchel at its side, then pulled out an auto-compress and applied it to her wound. “Can you walk?”

“What?” Was this alien taking her prisoner? The Enclave was infamous for it’s no survivor policy. For the outlaw band, it was kill or be killed. No compromise.

“I am not with them,” the Flelling said. “We were not aware of your operation here. I am with the Interspecies Corps. Your unit looks like it’s with Galactic. We would have walked into the same ambush, had your unit not done so first. I’m sorry for your losses, but they allowed us to come in prepared. We have eradicated this band, at least. They won’t be terrorizing the Lidarens any longer.”

The alien reached out a six-fingered hand, careful, Kylie noted, to keep its claws retracted. “Can you walk?” It repeated its earlier question.

“Yes, I think so,” Kylie answered, though she was by no means certain she was telling the truth. She took the proffered hand, falling back to the ground as her injured leg gave out beneath her. She blacked out again for a second, then gritted her teeth against the pain the effort had caused her.

The Flelling, twice Kylie’s size, effortlessly picked her up. “I’ll carry you. My name is Glikjak. I am a male of my species.”

“I’m Kylie. Female.” Kylie answered. As Glikjak began to walk back through the forest, Kylie caught sight of Brett’s still form. “What about my friend?”

“I am sorry, I cannot carry you both. But I have left a marker. Our team will bring him back so you can honor his service in whatever manner your species does so.”

“Thank you.” Kylie swallowed against the grief threatening to overwhelm her. “How many…”

Glikjak understood Kylie’s unfinished question. His steps faltered, his enormous body seeming to slump. “You are the only survivor. I am sorry.”

As the Flelling again picked up his pace, Kylie wished she had had the courage to press the trigger. Her entire unit, dead. All except her. She didn’t want to survive. Not after this.

“Kylie?”

Glikjak’s voice didn’t break through until the second time he said her name.

“Yeah?”

“I too, was the only survivor of my unit. I couldn’t go back to my own force. I couldn’t face it. That’s why I joined the Interspecies corps. Heal now. Live. I will be here to support you.”

Kylie’s thoughts went still. She didn’t exactly feel that things were going to be okay. This wasn’t that moment. But she thought that maybe, just maybe, she might someday find it.

---

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to post a story this weekend. I had planned to try to write this week, but my little dog, Jace, has been quite ill with both pancreatitis and a flareup of the autoimmune condition in his eyes (pyogranulomatous blepharitis in case you’re interested enough to look it up). Needless to say, this mama’s boy has been quite needy.

Jace right now

He’s still pretty needy, but is feeling better enough that he let me get through writing (and a quick edit, sorry if I missed anything) today.

I had no ideas when I booted up my laptop and opened Word. I really didn’t want to start with an outside prompt, so I stared at the blank page for a few minutes. And then the first sentence popped into my head and I started typing, only knowing I didn’t want to begin a story with things already going to work out. So I went in the opposite direction and didn’t resolve things happily, though I did end on a note of hope.

Though it wasn’t consciously in my mind, I think this theme of existential threat, relieved to some extent by a new hope, fits well with the current situation in the U.S.

I live in Canada, but I very much feel affected by what is happening in the States. Like its citizens (and much of the free world), I have been living with a sense of dread for so long it has felt that the cortisol raging through my system would never approach normal levels again.

And then came Kamala Harris. While nothing is guaranteed, her emergence as the Democratic nominee for President has injected a new sense of hope into the equation. I, like many others, feel I can breathe again. I feel as though this might not be “that moment,” but that it’s coming, perhaps as soon as November 5th.