My boots scrabbled in the mud, but I still couldn't get my body to do what I commanded. The Creeper leaned over me, his rancid breath filling my nose and making me cough harder. His gnarled claws reached for me and my heart spluttered with panic.
Something wet splattered onto my face and I managed to raise a hand to wipe it off. My fingers swam in front of me smeared red. Blood my brain supplied sluggishly as I focused my eyes on the Creeper in time to see him totter, a surprised expression frozen on his face. He crashed down on top of me, knocking the breath from my lungs once again.
A second passed and my lungs screamed, then someone pulled the Creeper's body off of me.
"Are you having a nap? You know there's a fight going on here, right?" Laurie teased, offering me a hand.
She pulled me to my feet and I stumbled as I regained control of my body. I doubled over, clutching my knees for support as my lungs heaved down air and I tried to stop coughing it back out. It was made harder by the amount of smoke swirling around us from the bush fires.
Laurie grabbed my shotgun from the ground and pressed it back into my grasp as I surveyed my surroundings.
I could see Coal, still on top of the King, pounding his fists down again and again. Alicia was only visible as a flicker of blond hair or swish of machete between the throng of Creepers surrounding her.
As I watched, a feral scream burst from Alicia's lips and the group around her spilled apart. She was surrounded by a pile of bodies, some still moving, and she climbed over them panting with exertion.
She turned towards her brother and took a step in his direction. A Creeper who had been hiding amongst his dying comrades, launched an attack from behind her. There was no time to warn her. My feet started moving before I consciously made any decisions. My shotgun was up and I screamed an animal challenge that spurred me forwards.
The Creeper turned, a look of surprise and horror fixed on his face. I wrenched the trigger back and the shotgun kicked hard against my shoulder. I was ready for it and I felt the pain with a fierce satisfaction as Alicia's attacker was thrown down into the mud.
Alicia turned, her green eyes connected with mine momentarily as they flared with understanding of what had just happened. I nodded in response and she gave me a grim smile. She snapped her head back around to the fight still taking place between Coal and the King and I followed her gaze with my heart pounding.
The beast beneath Coal had managed to get an arm free and he launched a punch hard enough to send Coal rolling to the side. He regained his feet almost instantly and ran forwards, jumping into the air as he aimed a kick at the Creeper King's face. There was a sickening crunch and the King went still, falling limply into the thick mud at Coal's feet.
The Creepers who still hung around the clearing stared with horror at their defeated King. There was a moment of total stillness and silence before they turned and scattered into the forest.
The silence hung heavily over us as we regained our breath. Alicia moved towards Coal who had slumped to the ground. She sank down next to him and tilted his head back to inspect his bloody face.
“Really? You just threw your bullets away?" she asked irritably, raising an eyebrow at him.
"You needed a distraction," he shrugged, like it was obvious he’d do that and far worse for her a hundred times over.
Laurie and I joined them and sat down too, ignoring the freezing mud that soaked into our clothes. It hardly made a difference anymore anyway.
The fires spluttered around the clearing as the moisture started to win against the flames and the smoke billowed even more determinedly.
I glanced down at my mud stained clothes and attempted to wipe the worst of it from my hands. All of us were pretty worse for wear. Coal was smothered in mud and blood, his face such a mess that I couldn't spot a patch of clean skin.
Alicia had fared better, her pants and boots were just as filthy as mine but her top half was surprisingly clean. The wound on Laurie's head was still bleeding and her hair was matted with blood down the left side of her face.
"So you knew she had the knife?" Laurie asked Coal as Alicia finished her inspection.
"No, but I presumed she had some sort of plan," he smiled.
“What the hell kind of plan would I have had if I didn't have that knife?" Alicia rolled her eyes.
“You always have a plan." He shrugged again as he reached for me. I leaned against him and he hissed with pain, I pulled away quickly and looked at him with concern. "It's fine, just a bruise. I had the crazy thought that I saw you fall from the tree tops." He smiled crookedly, pulling me under his arm again and I sat carefully without putting any weight on him.
"I didn't fall," I clarified. "A vine broke. Total accident."
"And I suppose you landed on your feet with a cat-like grace then?" Alicia teased.
“Something like that," I said to my boots. "Laurie really saved my ass," I added.
"Well I think the two of you saved me enough times," Alicia said, making guns with her fingers and miming shooting down from the sky. The look she gave me held something more than it had before and it took me a moment to realise it was respect.
"Is everyone okay? No serious injuries right?" Laurie asked.
“Might have a cracked rib or two, plus my good looks may be compromised," Coal said, indicating his bloodied face.
"Just this," Alicia said, raising her shirt to show a nasty run of four gashes along her side. "I think it was fingernails." She curled her lip in disgust.
We were generally bruised and covered in an array of scratches but our inspections didn't find signs of anything life threatening. I could feel a dull ache resounding through my brain from a lump on the back of my head.
"Any chance the GPS survived the crash?" Laurie asked as she moved towards the wreck of our truck.
Alicia went to help her search and I got to my feet, every muscle in my body protesting. I stretched and felt my shoulder pop excruciatingly. I tried to take a deep breath but pain blossomed again sending my vision dark momentarily.
I waited for the darkness to fade and glanced about at the dwindling fires that surrounded the clearing. The wind had dropped and the smoke was drifting up through the canopy. As the fuel was consumed, the soaked vegetation was better able to resist the flames and they were dying out.
Coal stood beside me and grimaced, a hand moving to his side.
I stepped towards him and laid my hand gently on top of his. He let out a breath and smiled reassuringly at me.
"I've had worse," he said.
“I hope not." I reached up and gently touched his face, looking at the damage. "You could have kept a hidden blade or something too you know." It was impossible to tell how badly he was hurt without cleaning him up, but one of his eyes was swelling and his lip was split.
"I offered him a fair fight." He narrowed his eyes slightly like my suggestion offended him.
“Well, honour won't do you much good if you're dead," I huffed. The concept of honour and morality seemed alien to the situation we’d just experienced.
"But I would have died honourably." He shrugged like it was an obvious choice to make and winced again.
"Don't talk like that," I muttered, kicking at the mud that clung to my boots. Coal caught my chin and turned my gaze to his.
"I was fairly sure I could beat him," he said, trying to reassure me.
"Fairly sure?" I replied scathingly.
"At least sixty percent."
Before I could protest his idea of good odds he pressed his lips to mine. I forgot all of my injuries and my heart stumbled mid beat before he pulled away just as quickly.
"Stop that right now!" Alicia called. "I'm already feeling unwell." She was walking back towards us holding the GPS. She shook her head disbelievingly at Coal. I could see Laurie staring at me with her mouth slightly open and I tried to avoid her eye.
"Any luck?" Coal asked, ignoring the looks they were giving us. His hand dropped from my face but he still stood close en
ough that I could feel the electricity passing between us.
"Yeah it's a go. We'll have to make it on foot obviously." Alicia waved a hand at the destroyed truck. "You think Hunter will wait if we're late?"
"Not for long. How're we doing on time?" Coal asked.
“We have about thirty five miles to cover before dawn in ten hours, maybe twelve if Hunter's feeling generous," Alicia said.
“Then let’s gather what we can carry from the supplies in the truck and get moving," Coal suggested.
We set about trying to find everything that had been flung from the truck bed. I retrieved my soggy jacket and put it on, trying to repress a shiver as the cold, damp material clung to my skin and made all of my cuts and scratches sting.
"Since when do Creepers drive anyway?" Alicia asked, pointing at the yellow monstrosity that had caused so much devastation.
"I've never heard of it before," Coal said, moving to look at the vehicle which had caught in a dip in the ground and fallen onto its side.
“What is it?" I asked.
"It's a tractor, we use them in the farms. They must have stolen it."
“It's a damn shame is what it is," Alicia said. "We can't make stuff like that anymore, seeing one ruined when there are so few of them..." She shook her head in disgust.
"Well at least they ruined theirs as well as ours," Laurie said.
I moved away from the tractor to stand over the Creeper King. There was something strange about him that I couldn't place my finger on. My eyes strayed to some of the other bodies nearby and something slid into place.
"He's not a Creeper," I said quietly.
There were little clues, some visual: he didn't have the slightly lengthened limbs that the Creepers all shared. Nor were his hands curved and bent from years of using them as weapons. Instead I could see callouses similar to those lining Coal's palms. The kind you got from using weapons and tools.
"I think you're right," Coal said behind me. "I thought it when we were fighting. He'd clearly had some training. Plus he drove that tractor and spoke well and actually put thought into the things I was saying to him."
"So why would a...non-Creeper, decide to join them?" I waved an arm around the clearing at the broken bodies surrounding us.
"No idea."
"Are you two planning on helping at all?" Alicia called across the clearing.
"Sorry." Coal raised his hands in surrender and started scouring the wreckage for anything useful. I noticed that he was limping slightly and frowned.
I looked at the King one more time, something about his decision to join the Creepers made me feel uneasy but I shrugged my shoulders and let it go. I had enough to think about without trying to solve that mystery too.
Just as I stated to turn away, his chest rose slightly. I watched intently until it happened again; he was still breathing.
I opened my mouth, about to tell Coal and then closed it again. The King was out for the count, beaten and alone. We'd be long gone before he woke and it didn't feel right to kill him in cold blood.
I turned my back on him and moved to help the others.
We piled up all that we had found and filled our packs with anything useful, mainly food and water. Alicia moved around the clearing, searching the bodies and retrieving any knives that she could find, plus the ammo that Coal had thrown into the mud.
“So do we just follow the road?" I asked.
“No, we're meeting Hunter at a new location and there's a much more direct route if we go straight through the forest," Alicia replied.
"Let's get moving then," Coal said, glancing up at the sky.
"When does it get dark?" Laurie asked, coming up behind Alicia. With the thick rain clouds it was already pretty dark anyway.
"Hmm...about six hours," Alicia said, also looking up at the sky through the dense, leafy covering.
“No cougars here though right?" I asked.
A glance passed between Coal and Alicia before she replied.
"No. No cougars," she said a little too quickly before turning away and marching into the forest. "We really need to get going."
The journey south was only hampered by the dense undergrowth and to an extent, by the injuries inflicted on us by the Creepers. My lungs didn't seem inclined to work properly after my fall. If I took a deep breath it sent shooting pains down my back and my head pounded in time with each step that I took. We ran when we could but Coal's injuries slowed him down too so we had to walk more often. I didn't say anything but I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up.
The dark green bushes sang with many sounds as we passed, signalling the things living within. We saw some of them: long black bugs with more legs than I could count scurried to and fro amongst the dead leaves littering our path, fat flies drifted lazily by and tiny midges swarmed in clouds which we avoided as best we could.
A yellow bush shifted and shimmered in a faint breeze before suddenly breaking apart and flying in hundreds of different directions, revealing the tiny insects that had made up the illusion.
Rats, chipmunks and squirrels were everywhere, constantly crossing our trail and leaping from branch to branch. Each leap seemed to carry them far further than I would have expected their little legs to be capable of and I wondered if the contamination had made them that way.
The forest held a serene beauty with only a faint hint of threat lurking in the dark spaces between the immense trunks. The trees walled us into the green prison like bars on a cage but it didn't feel like a cage at all.
It was beginning to feel familiar to me. Even the moist air felt natural, my lungs taking a healthy fill as I thought about it. I instantly regretted it as a spasm ran down my back and my vision swam from the pain, but it was beautiful even so.
The forest had grown in such a way as to protect itself and the creatures that inhabited it had followed suit, but that didn't make it unwelcoming. It seemed that anything would be welcome so long as it didn't pose a threat to the delicate balance and peace that surrounded us.
Life outside The Wall was harsh and maybe even cruel sometimes, but it was real. I couldn't imagine any reason that I would ever want to return to the parody of life that they lead within the city.
Exhaustion started to wear at our resolve to keep moving after a few hours. The aches and pains we’d all acquired during our eventful trip felt more raw and harder to bear as the miles wore on.
Coal was clearly bearing the worst of the injuries. He let out the occasional hiss of pain and his jaw was clenched in a permanent scowl that put a hard edge on his features.
The pounding of my head had become a throbbing. It pulsed in my ears and my vision was a little black around the edges making me worry that I might be concussed.
We pushed on as best we could but I could tell by Alicia's concerned frown that we weren't moving fast enough.
Laurie looked to be doing fairly well. The blood on her head had collected to matt some of her hair together which looked grisly amidst her golden blonde but aside from that she seemed to be uninjured.
Alicia was like a machine as she powered on in the lead; her feet never stumbled and she didn't even look tired. Her silvery hair, which had hung below her waist, now fell in jagged lengths. The shortest was just below her shoulders while the longer hair still hung well down her back. It suited her in a strange way.
Night fell like a blanket over us. It was grey and light one minute then dark and dim the next, like someone had switched the lights off. The chirping and scurrying sounds that accompanied the forest during the day changed and became harsher. The small mammals that made the woodland home in the daylight hid themselves away and bigger, stranger creatures took their place, moving quickly here and there in the dark.
The rustling of bushes and snapping of branches constantly drew my attention to the deep darkness outside the beams of our flashlights but nothing approached us directly.
The nocturnal animals were more vocal too, strange noises called out around us making me fli
nch more often than once.
I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched but Coal and Alicia seemed at ease in the darkness. The temperature was really starting to bug me too. I was soaked and the cold had taken root right down to my bones. My hands were firmly jammed inside my pockets but it was far past the point where that would have been any good to me.
We pushed on through the darkness for several more hours, talking occasionally in hushed tones but none of us feeling up for any more constant conversation.
My eyes were trying to close as we stumbled further and further along our makeshift trail and I had to remind myself of where we were to keep from laying down and sleeping.
More and more often I tripped as I failed to lift my feet high enough off of the ground and my mind spun dizzily.
Eventually my foot hooked into something well enough to relieve me of my balance, sending me tumbling down a sharp decline to the side of our path. I let out a surprised shout as I fell. Brambles and vines scratched and tore at me and I tried to cover my face before finally jarring to a stop, still tangled in the debris.
“Maya?" the others called down to me from a shorter distance away than I'd expected and I groaned as I pushed myself to my hands and knees.
“I'm okay, I just-" I began to call back but something shifted in the shadows ahead of me, something considerably bigger than an insect.
I gasped as the looming shadow approached me. The light from Coal's flashlight which I’d dropped as I fell, gave a small measure of illumination in my direction. I tugged at the brambles which had caught hold of my clothes and trapped me.
The animal moved nearer and the light bounced off of a set of big, pearly teeth and gleaming eyes as it stalked closer and closer.
I wriggled but the thorns held me still. I whimpered as my vulnerability sank in and shut my eyes tightly, turning my face from the creature. A waft of warm, strong-smelling breath filled my nostrils as the beast leaned in close. I could feel the air moving as it opened its huge jaws, ready to bite.
I opened my mouth to let out a scream just as a soft, wet tongue swiped my face. I spluttered as saliva got in my mouth and opened my eyes just in time to see a wet nose bump against my forehead.
Rebel Rising: A Dystopian Romance (Cage of Lies Book 1) Page 32
