My bad again. One should not post a story and exercise at the same time. Errors tend to occur. The ending is written (as previously stated) but I don't like it. Must work on it, flesh it out etc. Must post sloooowwwwerrr. Much slllloooowwwerrrrr. Must go slllooowwwwwerrrrrr.
Part 7
Sheppard's head snapped into the creature's massive cranium while his shoulders and thorax were punched in the opposite direction. Sheppard was thrown from his feet deeper into the forest, his coat collar hooked on the curved lower carnassal tooth of the beast.
The lightning dissipated. Thick blackness suddenly denied dilated eyes of usable light.
The sounds of tearing cloth and flesh mingled with frantic cries and sporadic gunfire.
"Shit!" Rodney screamed and scrambled for his holstered gun while pivoting on his knees. He drew and fired blindly in the direction of the creature. He paused when the screeching and tearing stopped.
Rain pelted the ground nothing more than a mere background hum to the deafening silence.
Teyla leaped over the Runner and Beckett and ran into the cloaking blackness of the forest in the direction in which the Colonel had been thrown and dragged.
McKay held his gun ready in trembling hands. He cocked his head to the side listening intently to the noises around him.
"Rodney?" Beckett called nervously just as his fingers found the smelling salts within a small container in his bag. He dragged them out and cracked one open.
"Keep working, Carson," McKay answered raising himself to his feet with both hands curled tightly around his revolver. He placed himself with uncertainty between Beckett, Ronon and the blackened forest where Sheppard, the Howler and Teyla disappeared.
His heart hammered wildly in his chest. He clasped the gun tightly and squeezed the grip with an intensity that left his fine forearm muscles bulging.
Where ever his eyes swung, the barrel followed. Rain hissed as it hit the heated short barrel.
"Telya!" Rodney called.
The sound of rain beating foliage filled the silence.
"Teyla? Colonel?" Rodney shouted again.
Rain pummeled the ground. The soft whisper of Beckett's hoarse voice urging Ronon to consciousness gurgled in the background.
"I am here, Dr. McKay. Do not shoot," Teyla answered as she melted from behind the sheet of fiercely falling rain, backpeddling, dragging the Colonel from under his arms.
Rodney's attention was suddenly split from Teyla and her burden to Beckett who unexpectedly let out a yelp and was flung backward.
McKay swung around, bringing his gun up level to fire at the creature that had somehow managed to circle around them frightfully fast. Instead, he found himself aiming at the Runner with his fingers, just mere millimeters from squeezing the trigger.
"Oh God," Rodney whispered, dropping his gun toward the ground, unabashed fear and immense relief thudding through his body.
Ronon staggered to his feet swinging blindly. McKay backed away.
"Ronon! Stop!" Teyla shouted with firm authority Rodney had never heard before. The Runner stopped moving and weaved in a circular motion in place.
Beckett rolled to his stomach and groaned as he pushed himself to his hands and knees spitting blood into the mud.
"You okay, Carson?" McKay asked; his eyes never stopped searching the thick blackness of the surrounding forest yet still kept the swaying Runner within his peripheral vision.
"Aye," Beckett whispered and lurched to his feet. He stood for a moment arms out trying to maintain his balance and then weaved and stumbled his way back to Rodney.
"Dr. Beckett, Colonel Sheppard needs your help," Teyla stated in her no-nonsense way. It seemed to snap the Scotsman from his daze. "Aye lass, seems to be the night for it. Bring him closer to Rodney's light." Beckett grabbed his own fallen light, missed and tried again. He lost his balance and nearly toppled forward onto his knees.
He clumsily shuffled forward and began to examine the Colonel.
An explosion of coughs burst forth, sending Beckett to his hands, submerging part of the flashlight into the soft mud of the trail. Carson fought for breath. After what seemed and eternity, the wracking coughs subsided. He managed to haul in a draught of air and straighten up.
"You must hurry, Doctor," Teyla ordered.
"Aye lass," Beckett mumbled again. He wiped his hands ineffectually against his soaked clothing swiping chunks of mud from his hands. He quickly and smoothly ran his hands over Sheppard's torso letting his touch see more than his eyes ever could in this storm and poor light.
He grimaced when a misaligned rib was palpated. Sheppard groaned and rolled his head. Blood and mud matted the back of the Colonel's head forcing Carson to run his hands over the scalp. He found a large knot already started to form.
"Easy, Colonel," Beckett muttered again, swinging his attention to the torn jacket at the shoulder that was tacky with warm blood. The doctor silently slapped large gauze squares under the shirt to cover the furrowing wounds that tore across the side and front of Sheppard's upper chest and arm. Beckett rotated the shoulder, feeling for any undo laxity or grating within the ball and socket joint.
Sheppard groaned again and suddenly snapped upright swinging.
Beckett was knocked backward into the mud, arms out flung to either side.
"Colonel Sheppard," Teyla called out in her cutting, commanding voice. Sheppard paused and grabbed at his side, falling back into the mud and curling up. "Wha? What happened?"
"Nothing. Can you stand?" Rodney asked.
McKay reached down trying to maintain his attention on the surrounding forest and grabbed the Colonel by his good upper arm. He helped Sheppard stagger to his feet. The colonel weaved a bit more and leaned heavily on McKay causing both men to stagger to the side.
"A little help here, Colonel," Rodney breathed nearly tumbling to the ground with the unexpected weight.
"Dr. Beckett," Teyla called, "gather your things we must leave this place." The Athosian watched as the medical doctor rolled to his stomach and again climbed unsteadily to his knees. Beckett started shoving his supplies quickly into his pack. He gathered the flashlights and pushed himself to trembling feet.
"Colonel Sheppard, are you capable of walking on your own?" Teyla asked.
"Ah, yeah sure," Sheppard muttered and stumbled once more into McKay, nearly knocking the astrophysicist to the ground.
"I've got'im," Rodney said as he slipped the Colonel's good arm around his shoulders.
"Ronon," Teyla pointedly turned the name into a question.
"I am good," Ronon answered with only a hint of his former self. He hefted his pistol in his good hand and continued to search the darkness for the elusive creature.
"Let us go. We must make for the gate," Telya led the way with Rodney and Sheppard behind her, followed by Beckett. Ronon brought up the rear.
Teyla led them swiftly down the path. With each step Sheppard's foot placements became more sure, more solid. After a few hundred yards, McKay merely had to keep the Colonel walking in the correct direction and answer the same repeated questions Sheppard mumbled every few steps.
Thunder shook the sky.
Lightning exposed more of the forest.
The Howler sprang at them from the left, dragging Teyla off her feet and into an unseen small stream before anyone could garner enough reaction to gasp.
Ronon fired his pistol.
Beckett dove belly first to the ground as red energy blasts scoured just above his shoulder.
McKay let go of Sheppard and fired in the direction of the creature.
The Howler sprung from the stream and into the shadowed depths of the forest.
The area was blanketed in suffocating darkness.
Sheppard started spiraling toward the ground.
Coughing, Beckett scrambled to his feet and rushed down the bank, arms windmilling, and into the stream. His feet slipped on the moss covered rocks and he fell hard onto his back and pack submerging under the icy water. The chill stole the breath from his lungs and squeezed his head in a vice like grip. He shot upward, flailing his arms and gasping for air. His foot hit something soft and pliable.
The doctor scrambled forward over his knees reaching for and grabbing a fistful of Teyla's coat. He hauled her up out of the water and lunged for the bank. They landed solidly in a tangled heap with Beckett partially on top of the unconscious Athosian.
"Carson?" McKay hollered. The astrophysicist stood a few yards away on the trail. He kept a tight grip on Sheppard while trying to keep Ronon from charging out after the beast.
"A moment, just a moment," Beckett whispered back hoarsely. A string of harsh coughs erupted without warning and seared his chest. They dropped him back to his hands and knees.
Teyla groaned and rolled her head while bending her knee.
Beckett quickly ran his hands over her head and neck. His hand came away slick with heavy warm blood after touching a large laceration just above and behind her left ear.
"Oh lass," Beckett mumbled. He ran his hands down her chest, to her abdomen finding nothing obviously broken or torn. He slid his hands quickly down her legs and arms finding nothing misaligned or terribly torn. The head wound, however, worried him.
"Okay, lass, time to wake up," Beckett tried to gently coax her awake by softly tapping her cheek. No success. The smelling salts failed. She twitched and moved but nothing that resembled coordinated conscious effort.
"Carson," Rodney spoke again. He stood on the path holding onto Sheppard's upper arm while gripping his revolver. He kept his eye on Ronon who stared into the forest as if willing the creature to try and attack again.
"She's out cold," Beckett's raspy voice trailed up over the small stream bank and back to McKay.
"Well, do something," McKay ordered.
"Like what," Beckett shot back.
"How should I know," McKay snapped. "You're the voodoo expert."
"Aye," Beckett whispered to himself. Under ideal circumstances or even under not so good situations, the doctor knew just how wrong it was to move an unsecured, unconscious patient. He knew the risks, understood the reasons behind not moving a person who had not been immobilized and feared what further damage he could do.
However, no one in medical school or in his years of residency or even in practice, ever indicated what to do when on an alien planet with a hell spawn demon attacking you in the middle of rain storm on the quarter moon.
It was somehow missed in his education.
Someone failed to mention the proper protocol as to what to do if some giant alien creature was trying to eat you while you traipsed through the woods minding your own damn business.
It was like Little Red Riding Hood---without Little Red and without the Grandma---and, well, without the basket---the blasted wolf was damn near smack on target. Well not really. So it really wasn't like Little Red Riding Hood at all….
"Carson?" Rodney's impatient sarcastic tone cut through Carson's wild thoughts.
Beckett found himself getting irritated.
He had a thing or two he'd like to teach to medical students if he ever had a chance. He'd teach a class about what you really saw when you left academia or your home galaxy for that matter. He'd teach them about life sucking creatures, populations bent on genocide in hopes of saving themselves, bugs that hated salt water and sucked life from their host. Oh, he would teach the students a thing or two about what really happened when they left the protective confines of the academic world and the comfortable little unknowns found on Earth.
"Dreadfully sorry, lass," Beckett muttered and with a sigh he sat Teyla up and draped her across the back of his shoulders clasping one of her wrists and one of her ankles across his chest in his hand. He then struggled to his feet, praying his knees remained in tact and pulled himself up the bank and back onto the path.
His quadriceps burned fiercely and his knees popped. The skin of his neck pinched under the rough folding of his coarse coat.
The icy rain matted his hair to his head.
When he straightened he came face to face with the business end of Ronon's fancy red firing gun.
"Ahh lad," Beckett wheezed, "I'm on your side."
"Oh." Ronon lowered his gun.
"Let's move it, people," Rodney ordered. He grabbed Sheppard by the upper arm and began leading them down the path toward the gate. The Colonel attempted to wrestle his arm free a few times but McKay's curt, "Knock it off." Had Sheppard cease his uncoordinated struggles.
The easy acquiescence from Sheppard frightened Carson on more levels than he cared to examine. The head wound was serious and their leader and friend was not in his right mind.
They had no more military aces. Ronon was running on blind instinct.
Carson hitched his gait, tossing Teyla slightly in the air to loosen the wrinkled folds of his coat that snared his skin. The Athosian's weight quickly settled heavily across his shoulders refolding pinched skin.
Beckett wheezed and huffed behind Rodney and the colonel practically jogging trying to keep up. His lower back burned, matching the complaint of his upper legs. His stomach knotted as abdominal muscles tightened and strained with the effort to keep his upper and lower body aligned. Exertional nausea bubbled his stomach. His chest tickled, threatening to erupt with another breath stealing bout of coughing.
Ronon brought up the rear searching the forest for any sign of the creature.
The DHD would be in the glade just behind the next bend in the trail.