Oasis

Hamadi's eyes were fixed on the animal tracks; he knew he was supposed to be afraid, but something—the thought of food perhaps—converted his fear to excitement. His days as a gourmet chef were over, but the instincts were still there. As his mind wandered through recipes of days past, his stomach began to protest. The loud yelp emitted from his grumpy stomach was loud enough to jolt Gabrielle, who was crouched to the ground beside him.

When she glanced up at him, her eyes may have met his, but he could tell she wasn't looking at him. Gabrielle was the quietest of the group; she trudged along with the rest of them, but she kept quiet. Every once in a while, when Hamadi would see her wipe tears from her eyes, he would glance at the others to see if anyone else noticed, and three pairs of sympathetic eyes would be peering back at him. Each one of them had lost family and sacrificed everything they'd known to be there, for the chance of mankind's survival. Everyone understood that they couldn't let pain interfere with progress, even Gabrielle, who sniffled when she thought no one was listening and let the tears fall when she thought no one was watching.

"Let's follow it," Chao suggested after a while. "Water and food are sure to be nearby."

"So is the animal," Anaya sighed. "I was so certain the scientists were right, but now I don't know what to think."

"We've come this far," Chao shrugged. "We have no food. No water and no other ideas. What else is there?"

Anaya and Raphael, as if sharing the same thought, both gazed up at the sky above them, but it was Anaya who spoke. "It's going to be dark soon. We don't want to go sneaking up on an unknown creature in the dark."

Raphael nodded in agreement. The sun was already dropping below the horizon, and he had already seen enough in the dark on Earth to scar him for life. "Let's just camp out here, where there a rocks to hide behind or throw, for the night. We can take off on an adventure tomorrow."

Gabrielle glanced at Hamadi's stomach, met his eyes absentmindedly, then turned to Raphael. "There's still a good two hours left of daylight. Do you know how far we can get in two hours?" Gabrielle pointed to Hamadi's stomach, and then to her own. "We need to make good use of time until we find more food. Then you can go back to sleep until one or whatever you did on Earth."

"You know nothing about me!" Raphael scowled. "You open your mouth once an hour and suddenly you know what's best?"

"Obviously I know more than you if you're willing to throw away two hours because you're scared of the dark."

"Knock it off," Chao rolled his eyes. "This isn't high school or a government meeting. This is our survival we're talking about—"

Hamadi nodded. "Yeah, we have to make decisions without ripping each other's heads off, otherwise we're never going to make it out here."

"We're like a herd now," Chao continued. "Or a tribe. We need trust and loyalty and friendship more than ever."

Gabrielle raised her eyebrow. "We need a plan." When all four sets of eyes glared at her, she waved them off with her hands. "I get what Chao is saying. He's right, but we really do need a plan."

So they compromised, instead of running off behind the phantom animal tracks or wasting the last two hours of daylight, they sat in a circle and began to formulate a plan.

Burnt, charred, and otherwise damaged remains of what used to be food were scattered throughout the ship. Chao picked through the rubble, sifting out food that might still be edible while the others stared in horror.

"Don't give up yet," Chao pleaded. "Some of this might be salvageable. We should look for the seeds too; the sooner we plant something the faster we can harvest crops."

"Looks like we split up for nothing," Hamadi shrugged. "Guess it would have been smart to check the ship before concluding the discussion."

Anaya nodded in agreement. "Let pack up all the supplies we can find. Then we can try to catch up with the others." Anaya glanced at the smoldering remains and sighed. "If the smoke plume from the crash was big and pronounced like a normal crash, we'd have an easier mark for returning here."

Raphael shook his head. "No need dwelling on something you can't control."

Anaya 's eyebrow shot up. "No?"

"No." Raphael held his position as though he knew what Anaya was thinking, but the rest of the group continued picking through the food idly.

"If we fan the flames, just a little right before we leave—"

Raphael sucked in a sharp breath then expelled the air rapidly. "Why would we waste time doing that?"

Anaya shrugged. "Who says it'll take a long time? There's no way we flew across the universe with no weapons... I'm sure a grenade or two will liven that smoke up in no time."

Raphael shrugged, glancing at the others for support. Hamadi shrugged his shoulders neutrally while Chao, barely listening, continued digging through the food. Only Gabrielle spoke up.

"What if we need shelter? The plume of smoke would give us a way to find our way back, but what would we be coming back too?"

Anaya smiled devilishly. "It'll serve as a beacon, for all survivors; the 5 who left, and any others that might be out there. There's no animal life, so the worse case scenario is rain, right? We should be ok without shelter for a while. Don't you think?"

---

---

The desert sand was hard and compact; their weight left no impression as they wandered forward looking for the other survivors. The terrain was rocky, with ragged hills that made it difficult to see into the distance. While the others babbled about how to find their lost companions and plotted the next steps to ensure their survival, Gabrielle mused at her husband's insistence that she only pack sensible shoes. If it hadn't been for his stubbornness she would have been nursing her feet along with her heart now. Anaya didn't seem to be bothered by the footwear she'd chose, though Gabrielle couldn't imagine the cute ballet flats being comfortable on the rocky terrain. Perhaps it was age that made the difference.

Chao groaned beside Gabrielle. "We're never going to find them!"

Gabrielle nodded in agreement. "I don't think this was part of The Survival Plan."

Chao's chuckled unexpectedly. "I wonder what all the people who planned this would think if they survived?"

"They'd probably lie to us and say everything was under control." Gabrielle frowned, though the friendly conversation was succeeding at dulling the ache in her heart.

"Wait, did you see that?" Chao pointed to the ground nearby.  "It"s a trail."

Despite it's hard surface, the ground before them bore a trail of contoured markings in the distinct shape of some type of paw. The prints continued as far as Chao could see in the distance.

"Hey, I think Chao found something." Gabrielle called out to the others, who rushed to see what all the fuss was about.

Chao, now kneeling on the ground, was inspecting the tracks carefully. "I wish I knew something about animal tracks..."

Hamadi knelt beside him, running his fingers over the ground. "Any chance the other survivors made this as a trail back to the crash site?" Everyone, including Hamadi, shook their head no.

"Doesn't make sense, they would have started before now. Plus why make such an elaborate mark? A simple X would have sufficed." Raphael clarified. "This has to be an animal."

"There are no animals," Anaya and Hamadi said in unison.

Raphael pointed at the start of the trail and let his finger follow the trail across the horizon. "That says otherwise."

Five pairs of eyes moved from the trail to each other and back as each person tried to process the fact that perhaps they were not alone, after all. The prints were not excessively large, suggesting an animal about the size of a labrador, but that didn't mean anyone was in a rush to be face to face with the creature.

"Ok, I really wish I hadn't blown up the rest of The Ark now." Anaya's eye drifted to the plume of smoke in the distance. That was twice she had messed up in just a short period of time.  She couldn't afford to mess up anymore; it might cost them their lives.

If it hadn't been for the sound of other people, Gabrielle might have stayed in her pod until she wasted away. One thousand years may have passed, but it felt like only minutes had passed since her son and husband had been sucked into the mob of angry people and sentenced to death. Before boarding the Ark, she'd felt nothing sympathy for those being left behind—who were they to condemn these people to certain death while saving themselves? Now, she felt no remorse; they deserved to die, but she didn't feel better. Starting over without her family had never been part of the deal.

Outside the bubble of misery she allowed to fill the pod, she could hear the sound of chaos. People shouting and screaming as though they had gone mad. It took a few minutes to compose herself,  but eventually, Gabrielle exited the pod to see what the all commotion was.

"What's going on?" she asked the first person she saw, a boy perhaps in his mid-twenties.

"They're trying to agree on what to do next," the boy shrugged. "To bad none of the elected officials made it."

"This is it? All that's left of humanity?" Gabrielle stared wide eyed at the people before her. There was exactly ten of them (including herself), and only one other person was female. "Looks like this is the end of the line for mankind, huh?"

The guy responded with silence. There was nothing left for them to do but survive; he had made peace with the seemly inevitable demise of mankind long ago. Now that it was a reality, he only wished hadn't given up the party lifestyle so soon—what good would a career and good health do for him now?

Most of the people were huddled together ahead of them, although there was a young man standing near his pod surveying the terrain and a teenager, tinkering with some electronic gadget. Gabrielle followed the young man's gaze toward the horizon for a second, then proceeded toward the "crowd." She could worry about the scenery, or lack thereof, later.

"I think we should look for other parts of the ship," one of men was saying. "There could be more survivors, and more supplies."

"And when you get lost on this little expedition?" another sneered. "No thanks, I'm staying here with the food."

"You're going to have to leave this spot eventually," another joined in.

"No need to cross that bridge til' we get there."

"Look I'm probably the oldest person here, so I think I should be in charge," the first man said.

Gabrielle studied his face, he didn't look that old. In fact they all seemed like children to her. She wrinkled her nose at the idea such immature companions. She wasn't going to follow him anywhere.

"And what exactly are you going to be in charge of?" she asked. "There's no way we repopulate this planet with only two women, especially when I am in my mid-thirties and nearly past child-bearing age. We're basically here to pass time until we die. If anything you should be standing here at the ship rationing food."

"Precisely," someone agreed. "We need to be concerned with the basics: food, water, shelter. Right now, not much else matters."

The man who had nominated himself as leader scowled—Gabrielle was now certain she was older. "I say we map the terrain. We can do a little, day by day, circling back to places we know. If we find more survivors we increase the chance of our own survival. Plus the scientists claimed there was vegetation, so there may already be food scattered across the planet."

The other female was the first to respond to the suggestion. "That may be true, but there's no need for all of us to go."

The boy with the large afro shook his head vigorously. "Don't you watch movies? The first rule is never split up. People always die when they split up."

A few people chuckled, but the young girl responded with a serious tone. "We're the only living creatures on the planet. Splitting up is probably the safest thing we can do. There's no chance of someone trying to become The Last Supreme Dictator if we're miles and miles apart."

"Fine. Do what you want." It was obvious in both his tone and the way his lips curled, trying to mask his frown; he was upset that the survivors had not unanimously elected him leader. He continued speaking as though she were there only nay-sayer in the group. "Those of you who agree with me, we can talk about strategy. The rest of you can go die a slow meaningless death."

I rolled my eyes at his melodrama as the crowd began to disperse. After a few moments had passed, half of the crowd had disappeared, following the so-called leader, and the other half had stayed with the pods. None of those who had stayed behind was speaking, until a young man with black hair and Chinese features broke the silence.

"I guess we should introduce ourselves..." He shrugged stretching his hand out for a handshake with no one in particular. "I'm Chao."

The other female returned his handshake and smiled warmly. "Anaya."

"I'm Hamadi," said the tallest man, his long hair swaying as his head bobbed.

"Raphael,"the other guy said.

"Gabrielle."

"Looks like its just us and the food." Chao said enthusiastically.

"Those idiots didn't even take supplies!" Raphael interjected. "Looks like our survivor count just got cut in half."

"Should we try to catch them?" Hamadi offered.

Anaya scoffed. "Landon said he was in charge and that he knew what he was doing. If they're dumb enough to follow him, let 'em." She pointed to the main part of the ship, which was still smoking and covered in scorch marks. "We have more important things to worry about."

"What if there isn't any food left? Did anyone check that it didn't all burn on impact?" Gabrielle watched the gray smoke drift upward and mix with the blue sky.

Perhaps they had split up for nothing.