Evan and Leylah rushed to help, easing the body down. Lucy pulled on her glasses, studying Dmitri.

  “I see brain activity. He’s not dead yet.” Lucy spun, searching the group before pointing at Elias. “You. Over here now.”

  Elias raised an eyebrow and didn’t move, but Savannah shoved him toward Lucy. Elias pursed his lips but moved forward as Lucy kept barking orders to Reggie. “I need my healers’ quarters cleaned now if you want Dmitri to live.” She knelt in front of the body as she kept looking at Reggie. “Get it cleared out. Be efficient, be fast. You.” She pointed at Elias as Reggie gestured toward Shrub to follow him. “Kneel. You’re doing the chest compressions because you and Dmitri came together, so you should be leveled the same in strength.”

  “But I—”

  “Have you done chest compressions before?” Lucy asked.

  “I, uh… yes?” Elias placed his two palms together as Lucy ripped open Dmitri’s shirt and tapped on his sternum.

  “Thirty compressions right here, break his ribs if you have to, but get his heart pumping. I’ll be doing breaths. Go.” Elias hesitated for a moment, and Lucy glared at him. “Damn you, Elias, if you hesitate, I will consider this murder. I don’t care about the history between you two. You will help him, or I will kick you out of this camp myself.”

  Elias glared at her, but started doing the chest compressions. Lucy glared back, not keeping her eyes off him until she bent down to breathe into Dmitri’s mouth. Richard couldn’t help but wonder how much of a miracle worker Lucy actually was. With everything Richard saw, he could only see Dmitri’s dead body.

  “There is no sugarcoating this,” Elwyndor said to the others. “Reggie reported that the farms are destroyed. Everything in the other silo is gone. We are down to less than two years of food and a corrupted farm. We will not have a fall harvest; we will have to focus on our winter season. There are perhaps two, two and a half months to purify the farm and get things planted before the first heavy frost hits.”

  “Can’t we just focus on purifying certain areas of the farm?” Amber asked.

  “No, that’s not how it works.” That came from the man Richard had never seen before. “Once the farms get corrupted, you have to get it out. Whatever remains within the walls will spread faster than we have resources to cure it, especially when the corruption senses plants. We cure it all, or we kiss our winter crops goodbye.”

  Elwyndor sighed. “I miss Diana.”

  Richard had never heard that name before in his life. The weight that came with Elwyndor’s words, though, when everyone seemed to bow their heads in grief. Richard glanced around, wondering who the hell this person was. He remembered Claw was called Fang in a different timeline. Could the same apply here? Or was it actually a person he had never met, like the man who answered Amber? This man had clearly seen things in his time. Richard studied Amber, Claw, and Leylah, checking to see if they knew who Diana was, but he couldn’t pick up from their faces what they knew.

  Elias kept up the chest compressions, and Lucy kept breathing into Dmitri’s mouth. Richard tried to remain optimistic. He had seen Lucy bring people back from conditions he didn’t think possible, but he still couldn’t help but see Dmitri’s blue-tinged lips and think the man was dead.

  The door opened again, and Reggie popped his head inside. “Lucy, it’s clear. We killed all the stray locusts we found. Come on.”

  “Elias, you carry him,” Lucy said.

  “Why me?”

  “Because Reggie is better with the sword than you, and I need his sword arm free to protect us. Stop asking and start doing,” Lucy said.

  Elias kept glaring at her as he scooped Dmitri up. Lucy and Elias rushed up the stairs, and Reggie helped Elias pull Dmitri back out into the open. And there was nothing for Richard to do but watch them go.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The silence that settled over the silo was stifling. Richard glanced at the closed door, remembering a far too recent memory of what it felt like to have even a few locusts fall on his body and start gnawing away. He flinched, going back to rubbing his forehead to get out the sensation of a bug biting through his skull into his brain. It was one feeling he never wanted to experience again.

  “Hey,” Marcus said, leaning next to Richard, not really looking at him.

  “Marcus?”

  The scavenger leader sighed. “Let me tell you what’ll happen for the next few weeks. The purifying concoctions will need master items from deep in the forest.” Marcus trailed off as though expecting Richard to put the clues together himself.

  “So… I’m not going?” Richard asked.

  Marcus flinched. “No. You’re not. For your own safety. I can’t allow it. Fortunately, there will be plenty of things for you to do here at camp.”

  Richard raised an eyebrow with a slight smile on his face. “Farming?” When Marcus did not join in the joke, Richard’s smile evaporated. “Wait…”

  “We always need help with farming. If Reggie’s reports are even half true, every hand will be needed on the farmlands. The locusts devastated base camp.”

  Now was not the time to complain about farming. He should be glad to be alive. Then again, he had already died, and Chaos made sure that he remained alive.

  “Farming, then.”

  “We’re all going to be farmers until the rot is taken care of,” Marcus said with a solemn air. Richard rubbed his still stubbly chin, studying the shelves that held the last remaining food in the camp.

  “When’s the last time a locust swarm attacked?” Richard asked. Marcus blew out all the air in his lungs.

  “No idea. Eddie?” Marcus asked.

  The man now turned around. “Yeah?”

  “Last locust swarm?”

  Eddie closed one eye as he thought. Richard studied this man a bit more. His skin was leathery, like it had been baking in the sun for years. Something in the back of Richard’s mind itched. This man couldn’t be much older than thirty-five, yet he held himself like he were so much older.

  “I’d say about fifteen years so, give or take a few years,” Eddie said.

  Richard stifled a gasp and hid it by coughing. Fifteen years? He vaguely remembered Dmitri mentioning a farmer who had been here almost twenty years that had died a while back. That must be this farmer somehow.

  “So we’ve survived something like this before?” Kian asked.

  Eddie shrugged. “Sure, we survived. As we always have. With heavy, heavy casualties and a healthy dose of survival instinct that leans more on begging Order for a miracle than anything else.” His words brought another wave of solemnity that no one dared break.

  Richard kept studying Eddie, things not adding up. The man practically admitted to being here for at least fifteen years, but that would mean Eddie would have arrived at Kaelune when he was a teenager. No one had been that young.

  Richard rubbed his chin again, his stubble reminding him of something else. Marcus told him that everyone aged slower here, including his hair. Maybe that was the answer. Eddie slowed his growth, just like everyone else.

  The door opened, and everyone turned to see Reggie stick his head inside. “Leylah, plans change. We’re on dinner duty so we can keep searching in the kitchen for stray locusts. Everyone else, follow the three of us. The mess hall has been checked for strays, but it’s better to remain alert and together.”

  Leylah didn’t hesitate as she climbed the stairs. The rest of them trickled toward the opening, and Richard mentally prepared himself to see the camp’s state.

  The only word that Richard could think of to describe what he saw was devastation. The farmland was black with locust bodies scattered around the camp. Richard hadn’t noticed before, because he was too busy focusing on the bugs eating him, but they were enormous. About the size of his fist, with streaks of black. The young crops had been devoured completely, and a sticky black substance covered the farmland. Richard was careful where he stepped and noticed that one of the barracks had fallen in on itself.

  “The biggest concern right now is singular locusts who have broken from the group. Thankfully, one is not much of a threat, but keep your eyes open. A good punch should kill one. We will always post a guard to make sure the swarm doesn’t come back.”

  The camp was silent. Not even the wind was blowing. Elwyndor looked at the destruction with tears in her eyes. It was a constant reminder that they were on the brink of extinction.

  “What tips do you have to survive this time, Eddie?” Richard couldn’t help but ask.

  Eddie kept walking, almost as if he didn’t hear the question, until he finally spoke. “I told you. Pray for a miracle.”

  “But is there anything we can do?” Richard asked again.

  “Think about it, Richard. The apocalypse just hit us with the worst thing to happen and still keep us alive. The only thing we can do is pray that bad luck does not come in threes as we rebuild from this.”

  Richard kept quiet. He hated that answer. He didn’t want to hope that another bad thing wouldn’t happen to them. As long as Dmitri had survived, they wouldn’t have lost anyone. They would have just lost… half their food in the locust swarm. They had lost half their members with the wall breach. Richard could hope they rebuild, but he also had to admit that if they hoped to survive, there better not be another cataclysmic event. But waiting for Order? Or even Chaos? That was not something he wanted to place a bet on.