I grabbed a sharp rock and ground it into my thigh in an attempt to keep myself awake. I looked out at the forest. The sounds seemed inordinately loud to my exhausted ears. Above every other noise was the weirdly rhythmic high-pitched screech of cicadas. I put my hands on my ears to try to block out the sound, but it was no use. This was how I was going to die then. All alone with a million insects screaming out my death knell.I knew the world was so much larger than this, so much bigger than my personal tragedy. I wasn’t the first to lose a loved one in this war and certainly wasn’t the first to lose my own life. I thought again of the smoking remains of the cabin.All year I’d worried about bad things happening to faceless Rez operatives and the nameless families who hadn’t been able to flee the cities in time. But now it was happening to me. I couldn’t hold off sleep much longer, and the allergies would descend the moment I closed my eyes.It would be a quick but painful way to die.
