THEY POISONED THE FOOD

[DeJaVu]

20 January 3073 FSN is pleased to publish this fifteen-part excerpt of a journal recently unearthed on Kentares, dating from the Kentares Massacre itself. In these dark times, the knowledge that we have always fought against the darkness is comforting as we fight against the encroaching zealotry of the Word of Blake.
They poisoned the food, the bastards.
Hakama felt it first, when we broke into the packet of rations he’d found. He lasted three hours, moaning, before he died, shitting himself to death in sweats and convulsions. Dulles and Riley were next. The rest of us—George and Marley and me—seem okay. We’re only eating what we’ve already tested. Hakama’s pack and the others we buried. George wanted to burn them, but I didn’t want to make the smoke. The Dracs might have seen it—most everything had burned out around here, and a new fire might be noticed.
Marley though we should take the food with us. It might be Fuller and the others back at the mine might have a way to clean it, let a couple people live a little longer. I talked him out of it, but it wasn’t hard. We were already carrying all we could. There wasn’t any way we could carry any more, not without switching to a car, and the Dracs were all over the roads.
Hakama didn’t get to kill any Dracs before he went. I took his rifle, and the others took his bullets. It gives us each a hundred and twenty rounds. I don’t know if I could shoot a hundred and twenty Dracs. I’d only fired about a dozen rounds through the rifle at all.
I wanted to try, as we walked away from their bodies.