Tension at home part 2
Packing a life is mostly deciding what you're willing to lose. Mom took the house while I handled the garage and pantry, moving faster than I'd ever seen her move through paperwork. Six patrolled between the truck and front porch while One limped around the edge of the property on its damaged leg, stopping every few meters to scan the fences, road and tree line. I'd recovered One before leaving Arcadia, something I was increasingly grateful for now that half my original little mechanical army was gone.
I carried two toolboxes outside at once and discovered they barely felt heavy. That still felt wrong. Useful, but wrong.
Inside, Mom had already filled one bag with medicine, identification papers, insurance records and whatever financial documents she thought might survive the collapse of normal life. Another box held clothing and food. I stopped beside the stairs.
Leona: "Mom."
Elara: "What?"
Leona: "Pack the memories too."
She looked at me.
Leona: "Photos. Dad's things. Your parents. Kira and me when we were kids. Anything that can't be bought again."
For a second she didn't move. Then her expression softened.
Elara: "I thought you said only essentials."
Leona: "Those are essentials."
Mom nodded and disappeared toward the bedrooms. I returned outside.
The sky was getting brighter now, gray-blue spreading slowly over the farm while distant aircraft moved west. Occasionally the emergency radio inside the stolen GHCA truck erupted with fragments of orders, evacuation zones and units being redirected toward Arcadia. Nobody sounded confident anymore.
Six crossed the porch. One suddenly stopped near the barn. Its optic turned. Then the rabbits started screaming.
I froze. Rabbit screams are unpleasant even when they come from ordinary animals. Hybrid voices make it worse because they contain enough humanity to leave absolutely no room for pretending you heard something else. Another scream came from the barn. Then another.
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Leona: "Fuck."
One transmitted movement. Small contacts. Several. I grabbed Dad's staff.
Mom came out of the house carrying a box of family albums.
Elara: "What happened?"
Leona: "Something's in the barn."
Her face changed immediately.
Elara: "The rabbits?"
Another scream answered for me. I pointed toward the truck.
Leona: "Keep packing. Don't come out there."
Elara: "Leona—"
Leona: "Mom, please."
She hesitated. I understood why. The last time she'd watched me leave the house, I'd been a tiny F-Rank rabbit who couldn't legally protect herself from half the things living on our own property. That wasn't the body standing in front of her anymore.
Leona: "I can handle a few."
At least I hoped so. I looked toward the drones.
Leona: "Six, truck and house. One, perimeter. Anything comes toward Mom, make noise and hit it."
Neither drone understood the emotional importance of the command, but they understood patrol zones and hostile-contact instructions. Good enough. I ran toward the barn.
The smell reached me first. Blood. Not much. Enough.
Inside, the livestock rabbits were panicking against their enclosures. Broadback Whites and two smaller meat lines crowded away from the rear wall, bodies pressing against one another while ears flattened and voices overlapped in frightened cries. They weren't brilliant animals. Generations of selective breeding had made sure of that. They understood simple speech, routines, feeding schedules and fear, but abstract planning had never been something anyone wanted from a creature legally bred for meat.
Something black moved along the rafters. Small. One of the Matriarch's Progeny. Then another disappeared behind a feed bin. They were already here.
Arcadia was hours away on foot. That realization landed harder than the sight of them. The swarm wasn't merely escaping. It was spreading.
I tightened my grip on the staff, but the spiders retreated deeper into the barn before I could reach them. I could hunt them. I could also spend ten minutes hunting three while thirty more arrived through the fields.
The rabbits screamed again. I looked at the cages. We couldn't take them. There were too many, and loading trailers would take time we didn't have. Leaving them locked inside meant guaranteeing their deaths the moment the swarm reached the farm properly. Outside, they probably wouldn't survive either. Domestic breeds were not famous for wilderness competence. But probably was better than a locked door.
I crossed to the first enclosure. One rabbit backed away from me. Another stared.
Leona: "Yeah. I know."
I unlocked the gate. They didn't move. Of course they didn't. Their entire lives had been walls, feed troughs and people deciding where they belonged.
I opened it wider.
Leona: "Go."
Nothing. I opened the next enclosure. Then the next. Metal latches clicked one after another until every cage and pen in the barn stood open.
Some rabbits cautiously stepped out. Others remained inside, confused. One Broadback White sniffed the doorway as if freedom were a suspicious new type of feed. I almost laughed. Almost.
Leona: "Come on. Outside."
I started opening the exterior barn doors. Morning light spilled across the floor. That finally convinced a few of them. One rabbit ran. Another followed. Then several more pushed after them, white and brown bodies spilling into the yard, scattering toward grass, fences and whatever future happened to exist beyond the farm.
Some would probably die. Coyotes. Hunger. The swarm. Their own complete lack of survival instinct. I knew that. But nobody was going to eat them in a locked cage today.
I stood beside the open barn door while the last frightened hybrids decided whether to leave the only world they'd ever known.
Leona: "Your odds suck."
One of them looked at me.
Leona: "Still better than staying."
I stepped aside. The gate was open.