Meghan: See

Cigarette smoke, sweet and heavy, drifted through the air as the group stopped for a breather. One of the scouts climbed the statue we were gathered around, looking around for possible attackers. Her slanted eyes squinted into sun and a playful breeze tossed her short black hair into her face. After a few minutes she slid down to talk to the captain, who crushed his cigarette thoughtfully under his boot while he listened to her report. I saw him glance my way and averted my gaze to study the massive stone structures around us. He flapped a hand my way and the man they’d appointed to watch me propelled me to the statue.
“Climb it.” He ordered, gesturing at the statue, “Tell us what you see.”
I nodded and climbed as quickly as I could, finding easy handholds in the spiraling metal that ornamented the stone statue. Once I was a few lengths up I looked out and over at the impressive landscape. The group was gathered below me in a tiny knot. The statue and the group were midway down a giant stone walkway that led to the ruins. Deep canyons fell to either side of the path, promising death to anyone clumsy enough to slip. Huge stone statues of ancient gods rose from the nothingness that was the canyons. They appeared to sit on nothing, just a grimacing face or spiked teeth rising from the dark to form islands. But I wasn’t here to sightsee. My eyes and my sight were the reason the group kept me around. When they found out I could sometimes see the danger that came for us, they killed everyone in the last group I ran with to use me. But I was alive, that was all that mattered. I settled on the statue of stone and iron and looked out to the road that we had traveled hours earlier to get to the ruins. My pupils shrunk to pinpoints and the view telescoped until I could see the grains of dust that coated the old path. My eyes flicked back and forth, looking for movement, and I caught a flash of color. I refocused until I could see them. They were running so fast, and there were so many. Madly dashing up the path, paying no heed to those knocked into the canyon, their red eyes focused single-mindedly on their goal.
I half slid half fell down the statue to land breathless in front of the captain.
“They’re coming.” I gasped.
“GO!!!” He screamed to his people. We ran up the path into the gaping mouth of the ruined temple. We spread out through the place, every member of the ragtag band for himself. I ran down a flight of stairs into a room with twin spiraling staircases. I took one of these and ran down a hallway. A few members of the group knew what I could do and would always follow me to my hiding places, reckoning that I was likely to survive and they would by proximity. This made hiding increasingly difficult. A black curtain passed over my eyes and I stopped running to collapse against a wall. I slid to the floor and pressed my hands to my eyes as images flicked across them.
I’m in a little room.
There are curtains
I’m hiding behind a curtain?
I’m hiding behind the door?
A girl lies in the center of the small room, one of the infected sitting on her legs and tearing savagely at her face. Another one comes in and drags another girl out from behind the door, they’re both screaming and there’s so much blood.
Wait, I’m hiding behind the door.
Or was it the curtains?
I blinked the pictures out of my eyes and climbed to my feet, feeling my way along the door in a partially blind state. I didn’t get the future pictures often, and I didn’t have time to sit and contemplate, much less wait until I could fully see. People from the group streamed past me as I entered yet another hallway. I felt blindly along the wall and turned the first doorknob I felt. I let myself into a small room and as I blinked spots out of my eyes the room identified itself as the one I’d seen earlier in the future picture. A few girls streamed in after me, the last one shutting the door firmly and setting her ear against it, listening intently. I looked around the tiny room, touching the space behind the door where I had hid in one of my pictures. Instead of hiding there, I crawled beneath a small ragged curtain that fell to the floor against one wall. Thankfully none of the other girls tried to join me, as it was the most obvious hiding place in the room, and not that invisible. The girl with her ear to the door pressed a finger to her lips, eyes bulging with panic. We all tried to hush our breathes and heartbeats as we heard the rapid thundering of feet running past the door. A small girl with brunette hair curled as small as she could behind the door. The door slammed inwards too fast for any of us to react. It caught the girl who had been listening in the forehead and knocked her to the ground. Before she could suck in a breath one of them was on her, clawing at her face and tearing out her intestines. I pressed my hands against my mouth to squish any horrified sounds I might make. I’d seen worse, but it seemed like every death was shiny and new. I was waiting for that cynicism and world weariness to set in and harden me against it, but it hadn’t happened yet. The girl behind the door wasn’t so good at suppression, and the tiny breathe she huffed drew the second infected like a fly to sugar. She pulled the girl out by an arm and when the screaming started I pressed my eyes to my knees.
And then they were gone.




-Meghan