After another monotonous day, in which they wended indirectly north, they arrived within sight of the ocean.
A promontory extended about forty feet high, overlooking the deceptively calm blue waters. What little waves there were splashed onto the jagged rocks below. Except for a lethargic breeze, everything was still: the sky a cloudless blue and the few boats, occupied by the corpses of fishermen drifting a set distance from the shore.
Then Chloe did something incredibly stupid.
She scampered to the edge of the cliff, trying to climb down to the shoreline. Rushing down like a lemming, and that observation proved too prophetic for Alec's comfort, because the ground rumbled under her.
The stupid human had dislodged some large rocks in her mad dash: some large, heavy rocks which were now tumbling down after her.
He dropped Felix and jumped down after her, clearing over any more potential rockslides, but the law of gravity meant that he moved slower than he ordinarily would. Meanwhile, Chloe had heard the rocks crashing down, but her reflexes were slow from blood loss and whatever human conditions presently affected her. She scooted away, closer to Alec's direction, and he had just reached her when the heaviest boulders struck.
He pushed her down, covering her fragile body with his. The boulders smashed into pieces on his back. The cliffside buried them.
After several nerve-shattering minutes, the earth was silent once more.
Alec shrugged off the rocks that pinned them down. The cracks in his own stonelike skin sealed themselves; the trivial pain fled. He climbed to a stand and reached for Chloe to help her up.
He was not alarmed when he smelled her blood, assuming she must have scratched herself on one of the smaller sharp rocks that rained down warning of the cliff wall's imminent collapse. She lay, her eyes spread wide open in her shock, her mouth molded open in an O. She twitched and gasped, but she did not sit up.
"Chloe." Alec pulled her up. He was surprised at the dead weight - at the resistance. Underneath her the rocks were smeared with blood. Too much blood for a minor cut.
"Are you okay?" he tried asking. She gulped but emitted no sound. "Answer me."
Why did she not talk? This human always wanted to talk, and now he was commanding her to talk and she wouldn't.
He imagined she would be too bruised to walk, so he lifted her up. When his hand passed under her head, he noticed a mushy spot where her skull had dented. Her dark hair was matted with blood and white matter: pieces of skull and her brains.
He had shielded her from the rocks above but he must have . . . the rocks must have . . . she must have landed too hard on the shore.
He hoisted her over the shoulder and scrambled up the shore, mincing carefully around the unstable land. He had to find humans. They could fix this, right? They made advances in healing head trauma. If he could find a doctor . . .
They should have been heading north all along, where logic dictated they would more likely find survivors. But he and Felix had taken Chloe further south instead, in effect isolating themselves on the peninsula. Then they mindlessly roamed east, then continued to roam east because Chloe had to see the ocean . . .
He stopped, realizing he should go back and get Felix. He could not leave him. But he might not have time . . .
His fingers skated down to Chloe's wrist. Checking for a pulse was one of the few medical things he knew how to do.
She was moving so she had to have a pulse.
The artery gave two weak flutters and then stopped.
He waited. He counted seconds because it was the only accurate way to track the passage of time.
The seconds racked up to a half an hour, then an hour. Not a single beat.