Chained - Everything you know is a lie...
Page 38
Chapter Thirty Eight
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, raising an eyebrow at him.
"You needed a distraction," he shrugged.
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 it 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, 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 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 knife 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.
"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 had 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 said 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 enough 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.
"Let's gather what we can carry from the supplies in the truck," 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. I tried 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 get 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. 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.
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."