6 Princess

"Don't these people know janitors are exposed to more hazards than most job sites? I'm no average civilian. ExplorerTech didn't train no fools," Sia grumbles to herself.

She is ordered out of the way as the group moves the supplies into a dark building. She slowly follows the group to the opening of the building. The scattered rubble within can be seen through the broken windows. She stops at the entrance when she smells the awful scent coming from inside.

"This can't be…" She moves off to the side and opens her backpack.

She pulls out her respirator and safety goggles to slide them over her head.

"Contaminated air is NOT going to catch me unawares."

Vanessa scoffs at her covered face before passing by with her two companions.

"Can't even walk into a building without fear, Princess?"

Sia rolls her eyes and continues on following behind them. She pulls her black gloves out of her pocket as she looks at the black moldy walls. There are weird yellow sacs on the ceiling and broken spider webs that can be seen in other rooms.

"Eyes open everyone, we're only staying a night in this hellhole then back on the road!" she heard Eli call out to his men.

She can't see much in her peripheral, but she feels confident she wouldn't contract anything from inhalation or any materials dripping into her eyes. Which is all she cares about at this point. She trips on some of the debris on the ground, but catches herself on the nearest wall.

Vanessa looks back at her with a frown and pauses. Wordlessly, She raises her weapon from hip level toward Sia's face.

Sia doesn't notice Vanessa's hardened gaze and looks at the sticky goop smeared on her black gloves.

The two men notice Vanessa stop moving and quickly turn, raising their bat and crowbar.

Sia shakes her left hand until the goop flicks off and is shoved forward into the sticky wall.

"Aaah. Come on! Sorry, but that's…I was not in your way!"

Vanessa shoots behind Sia. The weapon discharges and Sia drops to the ground holding her head with goop-covered gloves.

"Noo!"

The creature behind her screams with outrage and erratically swipes at the humans. Unknowingly, Sia dodged the powerful swipe of the praying mantis.

Greg swings his crowbar at its injured form and knocks it on the head. It cries out again. Vanessa releases a few more rounds as Raymond grabs Sia's arms and drags her forward.

"Aaaaaaaaah!"

"Come on, move out of the way. You're gonna get yourself squashed."

They look over to see the large creature collapse and lay still. Raymond releases Sia and she tries to stay up on her wobbly legs while gripping his biceps with sticky hands.

"Thank you so much," she whimpers.

Green slime drips off her hood and down the back of her green jumpsuit. She shakes herself a little bit, but none of it comes off. The rest of the men pass by, stepping over the insect corpse to get the rest of the supplies. Eli pats Vanessa's shoulder in congratulations.

"Welp, that was a close one. Must have been from upstairs."

Everyone goes on with their business as Sia's sticky form stomps around the building. No one seems bothered by the incident. Her companions sit in the only room without large open windows on all sides. All the supplies are stacked in one corner, and some of the soldier-like men are conversing with each other. Sia ignores them all as she scrapes away the insect blood as best she can.

"Look a little constricted there, Princess," Vanessa says plopping down across from her.

Sia squints from behind her goggles and continues scraping goop onto the wall.

"You look in need of a good showering," Vanessa continues with a chuckle while eyeing the guys.

They each put down their sacks at the wall to lean on and take out food jars. Water is passed around in a jug for everyone to share. Sia wrinkles her nose at the murky water and lays her gloves down on the ground to sprinkle some water from her jug down on top of them.

"That's a waste. Better keep it all for yourself."

She ignores Vanessa as she pours a bit over the top of her head to trickle down her back. It's better to be clean than sorry. That's what her supervisor used to say. Sia doesn't regret wearing her uniform. She can't imagine what the goop might feel like inside her eyes or directly on her skin.

When she is done she lays down the half-empty jug and looks into her bag for food. She finds dried strips of meat, a jar of something pickled, and a bruised orange. She takes out the orange, drops the peel into her bag, and shoves half of it into her mouth. The juice spills out onto her face as Vanessa raises a brow at her.

'This woman always has something to say,' Sia thinks to herself. 'I wonder what her problem is.'

The guys are conversing between themselves as Vanessa turns to watch the rest of the mercenaries settle down across the room. Everyone is camping out in the one secure room. The rest of the building's windows and broken ceilings are too dangerous to situate yourself in. The room has two exits, but one leads you outside while the other leads you deeper into the building.

Two men are posted at each exit, and as the sun sets the chatter dwindles and everyone goes silent. Sia takes the chance to pretend to sleep and talk with Lil Putter.

"What was that creature?"

MANTIDAE

MOST COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE PRAYING MANTIS

"But those things are small and..."

Lil Putter didn't know anything about the current situation but knew countless things about the past. It seems restricted by something whenever she inquired about current or future matters. After finding out that Praying Mantis "blood" isn't poisonous, she lets the matter drop.

Sia "wakes up" in the middle of the night and sees the guard shift change. The shorter young man that always stays nearby Eli is going on guard duty. She looks around while sitting up and makes eye contact with the dark male that helped her get out of the way of the Mantis, Raymond.

"Is he old enough to be guarding us?" she whispers to Raymond.

He raises both his eyebrows and looks at who she is pointing at.

"Isn't he a too young for all this?"

Raymond glances over at the male and smirks before saying, "Even teenagers have a lot of responsibilities. They would after all that has happened. We can't pamper them like the generations before. Either man up or die."

"You got that, Princess?" Vanessa adds.

Sia rolls her eyes and looks over at the young man holding a long rifle and looking out the side exit. She puts on her goggles and respirator seeing that they'd dried. She pulls her hood back onto her head and rubs at her arms for a little warmth.

"How much longer are we traveling with these guys?" Sia asks her two companions.

"Well, another two days probably until we split up and start trekking toward the ice lands."

"Ice lands? Huh?"

"After the attacks ended, it screwed up the weather around the worst hit areas. Around here, it became hotter than usual, drier. Around there, the cold lasts longer and many people were pushed out by the oppressive winters. Animals, too."

Coldstone City was a summer retreat that many people went to in order to visit the large wildlife preservation that held very unique animals. On the other side of the preservation sat Sear City, a city built along a mountain dedicated to ski pleasures and winter adventures. If the cold has extended two hours down past Coldstone then all the animals are probably dead by now.

'Why would they bomb an animal preservation area?'

"So, how are we supposed to get through all the cold intact?" Sia says, looking at his clothing.

"We're going to take a truck from these fine gentlemen and hope to meet your people along the way. If not, we turn back and rejoin the caravan."

Sia nods and awkwardly smiles at Raymond.

"Yea, I'm sure we'll come across them. They couldn't be that far ahead of us. A truck would definitely overtake them eventually."

"Hopefully you remember the route correctly."

"Yeaaaa."

Sia gets up in order to stop the conversation from going further. She can see Raymond is curious to know more about her people. She dusts off her bottom and walks toward one of the exits. The young man in the blue scarf is leaning against the outside wall like a responsible night watchman. Sia purses her lip at the focused gaze and swallows whatever she was going to say.

'This kid is way too serious,' she thinks before sitting at the entrance and stretching out her legs.

The boy watches her for a second, then looks off in another direction. Sia stretches then pulls some of the dried meat she put in her pocket out to chew on. The rustle catches the boys notice. Sia looks at him nervously and shoves the stuff back into her deep pocket. Her hand sits in her pocket wrapped around the food.

She swallows the lump in her throat and asks, "Do you want any?"

He stares at her silently then looks off into the darkness again.

'Okaaay,' she averts her gaze and pulls her hand from her pocket.

She ends up dozing off a few times. The last time she shakes herself awake she looks over at the boy to see if he noticed her asleep. He has gone from standing to sitting with his gun resting on his raised knee. He isn't paying her any mind. Slowly she gets up, pulls the bag from her pocket and tosses it onto the ground nearby him before shambling off back to her companions.

Ika flinches at the rustle of a plastic bag hitting the ground nearby his right leg. He must have dozed off for a bit. He looks over to where the odd female had sat, but she is gone. It's almost morning. He stands up to stretch and grabs a plastic bag off the ground. Looking inside, he sees two strips of meat left over. He wraps the strips back up and puts them into one of his many pants pockets.

Unusually, nothing happens in the night and they are not disturbed while moving the supplies back onto their vehicles. They are halfway to their next checkpoint when the lead vehicle hits something. Their front tire explodes.

"Let's go! We can't camp out in the open people!" Eli yells at the men changing the tire.

"This is the worst possible area to be stuck," he says before spitting down on the mutated roadkill.

Looking up into the sky, he can see large shadows flying in their direction.

"Eyes up! Incoming!"