The Apocalypse Ocean by Tobias S. Buckell, Pablo Defendini Page A

and they gunned down everything. 
    Anything.
    Kay stared at the chaos, and suddenly understood.
    The pit.
    The pit.
    They were shoving people toward the pit. Shooting and shoving. Shooting and shoving. Bodies tumbled over the edge.
    She watched. Every body. Every shot she could. Her eyes wide. She didn’t know what else to do. There was nowhere to run. The Lords had them all trapped in this small canyon. There was only the pit, or the point of a weapon.
    They all died.
    Some begged and pleaded, dropped to their knees.
    Others, like many Ox-men, only stood there, waiting mutely.
    And then whatever it was that had held Kay frozen faded away, and she yanked herself back behind the boulder.
    She sat with her back to the Ox-man, and thought that he must have died from exertion. He hadn’t stirred this entire time.
    Well, he’d been lucky, she thought. Dying while still thinking the world made some sort of sense.
    The padding footsteps of non-human feet echoed against the rock, and she started to push herself back across the dirt.
    A large, hairy hand grabbed her from behind and clamped over her mouth, then spun her around. Large brown eyes stared at hers. The Ox-man wasn’t dead. The sound woke him.
    Shush, he indicated with his finger.
    Then the Ox-man quietly pushed her against the depression in the sand his body had created. He carefully lay down over her, smothering and crushing her.
    She could barely breathe, her ribs crushed by his weight. She panicked, wanting to scream and push. But that impulse vanished when she heard the footsteps.
    Feet kicked the Ox-man, who didn’t stir.
    Kay didn’t know the Lord’s language well, but she thought she heard “… dead?”
    Another Lord responded. Kay couldn’t focus to try and understand. A second later the crack of a gunshot shattered everything and translated his response for her.
    “… move …” the Lord asked.
    For a terrifying moment Kay felt the body of the Ox-man shift as the two Lords pushed and shoved at it, trying to drag it back to the pit. She waited for the body to roll off her, and for them to discover her.
    But then they stopped. They couldn’t move the body.
    “… later …”
    She listened to the footsteps slap away.
    Trapped under the massive bulk and completely unable to move, Kay fought to keep breathing as the Ox-man’s blood trickled down her neck and soaked her tunic.

Chapter Fifteen

     
    Kay couldn’t move. She tried to push the body of the Ox-man off her, but the three hundred pounds of muscle and hair didn’t budge.
    When the Lords came back to move the body they would find her. Then she would be just as dead as if she hadn’t been hidden.
    She cried for a while. But that hurt her ribs.
    She started to dig. The dirt by the boulder was mixed with sand, and looser. That’s why the Ox-man had settled into it and left a depression.
    Dig.
    With her left arm Kay began to scoop the sandy dirt down toward her elbow, and then wiggle it down to her side.
    It was excruciatingly slow work, and she kept expecting to hear footsteps. But none came. There were still gunshots popping in the distance. More executions.
    For an hour and a half Kay dug until fresh air suddenly filled her nostrils and the Ox-man’s body shifted slowly off into the depression she’d dug and just slightly off her.
    It was enough. Now she began to dig with her right hand, and in twenty minutes broke half her body free.
    She scrabbled and pulled, grabbing nearby rock and popping a fingernail as she flailed, but she finally pulled free.
    For a long moment she sat near the Ox-man, panting.
    “Now what?” she whispered to the empty air.
    The sun had set and there were no moons out. Kay peeked around the boulder, and saw no more living people. Just Lords, awkwardly dragging bodies to the lip of the pit.
    She couldn’t run for it.
    But she could climb out of the low canyon, Kay realized, looking up at the rock. If she was lucky. As long as she didn’t knock any rocks