Requiem for a Soldier (Requiem #1)

Chapter 1: Awakening

Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska

Mid-March, present day

Tayja

I am running. Running faster than I've ever run before, my feet pounding the ground so hard that at any moment, I ought to lift off the ground and take flight. Screams are stuck in my throat, terror blinding me to the wicked branches tearing at my clothes and holding me back, keeping me trapped on the ground. I am being chased by the figure from my nightmares. The figure from my reality. I'm about to break free, about to return to the skies when a loud BANG explodes behind me. Now I am falling, falling, falling into a deep dark hole. A hand seizes my throat and suddenly everything is black, nothingness, nonexistent, null. Is this what it feels like to die? Is this how they felt?

~~~

A blinding light greets me the next time I dare to open my eyes. Brilliant whiteness overpowers my vision and I close my eyes to block out the intense glare. My brain is muddled and dim, my thoughts as viscous as crystallizing honey. My head feels like it weighs three times too much and the weight might pull me over backward. My skin is hot, but I'm shivering. I feel like death incarnate. The light from the other side of my eyelids dims significantly. I open my eyes again to see a figure standing above me with no face. I hear myself screaming as I lose consciousness again.

~~~

My eyes drift open slowly, my head still hazy. I have no memory of where I am. I'm not entirely sure who or what I am. I don't really care, either. But I feel like I should. 

I'm staring at something off to my left side. A variegated brown blur, indistinct but for the darker streaks running through it. I blink a few times and with a stabbing pain as my eyes focus, the murky shape becomes the wall of a rustic log cabin. My head spins as my eyes drift upward, searching for relief from the razor-sharp clarity. The ceiling is a void of darkness. My eyes slide closed as I feel the vacuum above sucking my body up, up, into the void and I succumb to the blackness.

March 26

This time I wake slowly, awareness dawning so gradually that by the time I realize I'm staring at a lamp, I don't know if it's been twenty seconds or two hours. My head feels clear at last, but I am overwhelmingly tired. I have vague memories of waking here before and feeling sick. 

But where is here? I don't know this place. Dread begins to creep into my body, making me dizzy with fear and scaring away tiredness for a moment. I mentally pull myself together and take stock of the situation, something I know I've had to do before to survive. My eyes dart around the room, taking in as much information as they can. I seem to be in a cabin. I am lying in a warm bed nestled between the silkiest sheets I've ever touched. A window to my left reveals that darkness has enveloped the cabin. Did I see light from this window before? Snow is stuck to the glass panes, peering in at me. A snowy evergreen branch slaps the window, the sight of it sparking something in me.  

The memory of running suddenly hits and sends me curling up into myself with a familiar terror. They are chasing me. I am being hunted. They won't stop until I'm dead too.

My body is shivering in fear when I remember the new plan to keep me safe. I'm moving to Alaska. A plane took me from Seattle to Fairbanks, I slept in a motel room just down the road from the airport, and I remember the helicopter we took the next morning. But I can't remember anything after the helicopter. The memory of running resurges, but I tamp it down. I dream about running in terror most nights. That was just another dream.