Chapter 2
That night the girl slept under a tree a few feet away from the pit she had crawled from. Upon seeing the desert she'd been consumed with an exhaustion she couldn't ignore. It had taken all her remaining energy and control of the pain that was running in slow waves through her arm to simply crawl underneath the nearest tree, curl up, and fall into a deadened sleep.
She woke the next morning to a strange sound. It was a grinding sort of a croak that suddenly sounded next to her ear.
The girl sat up abruptly, startling another offended growl-croak from the creature that had been sitting by her head. A pair of crystal blue eyes stared at her from a flat blue face. It was a frog. A large horn jutted from between and below its eyes, and a smaller one was directly in between its eyes.
The girl watched it hesitantly. A horned frog? What the heck did a frog need with a pair of horns? Then the thought ran through her head. Maybe it was a new type of animal, one that hadn't existed before. Suddenly, the frog lunged forward, slamming into her arm.
The girl felt the blood drain from her face as she groaned and scrambled backwards. Pain as poignant as poison raced up and down her arm, and her arm shook as she clutched at it. It hurt! It hurt so much. Tears ached at the edges of her eyes as she tried to shove another grown back down her throat. The frog growl-croaked as her again, and lunged. No! Why wouldn't it stop attacking her! A new frighteningly powerful energy surged through her and suddenly she was on her feet and running past it towards the desert.
She tripped.
The girl gasped, and her vision went partially black as she landed on her injured arm. For a moment all the girl could do was lay there and tremble. Her temperature rose, and she realized her skin was no covered in sand. In fact, it burned. Rising back onto her knees, she turned and looked back at the forest. The horned monster was no longer chasing her. Instead it hopped steadily farther into the undergrowth.
An irrational thought popped into her head. The frog was the only living thing she'd seen since she'd woken up. If it was gone, she would be alone. Shaking, she managed to rise to her feet and stumble forward. This time she managed to reach her tree again before her knees buckled.
The frog was nearly out of view now, and a dry almost animal sound left her throat. She realized she was crying. Immediately she stopped, gripping the soft brown moss that covered the tree.
Just because it was horned, didn't mean it wasn't normal. The sign could be a hoax. There's no way an asteroid could wipe out humanity. Just because the frog was gone, it didn't mean that she was alone. It didn't mean she was alone. Her eyes strayed to the lavender grass beneath her feet and then to the pale blue purple sky. Finally she turned and looked back at the wasteland of sand.
Who was she kidding?
Everyone else was dead.
Weary with this knowledge, the girl rose to her feet again and shuffled along to the next tree. In the distance she heard a growl-croak, and she paused turning herself a little more to the right to follow where the sound had come from. Letting go of her tree she shuffled forward some more.
The sun had risen to the peak of the sky when she reached water. Whether it was some deep hidden instinct, or unconsciously she realized that frogs needed water, it was following the horned frog that had saved her life. When she reached the stream she was nearly delirious from the pain that ate at her arm.
Her vision was blurred, and as she saw the stream her knees collapsed again. She had to crawl the last few feet before she touched the water. Keeping her arm wrapped up in her shirt she lowered it into the water slowly, hissing as the cold water stung. As the cold started to number her hand the girl sighed. Her eyes drifted slowly closed again.
The girl gasped as she woke up. Immediately she started shivering. The sun was gone, and her arm had grown icy cold underneath the water. When she pulled her hand out of the water it was numb. Breathing hard, she put her injured hand under her armpit. Fire. Her body cried out. She needed to get warm.
Holding her hand there, she started to paw at the ground for small twigs. They were soft and covered in brown moss, just like the trees were. As the girl tried to stand again, her vision swamp and she swayed. It was then that she realized that she was also hungry. Ravenously hungry.
The girl shook her head, trying to clear it. She couldn't think about that right now. As she leaned against a tree she realized that she'd been doing that all day. She laughed at herself for a moment. What was she going to do when she didn't have any trees to lean against anymore? Just fall over in the nice itchy sand.
Moving back from the stream she cleared away a little section of ground. Searching the banks of the river, she found mid-sized rocks and formed them in a circle on the cleared ground. Then she placed the twigs in a small teepee.
As she finished, she sat back on her heels. Now all she had to do was light it. She looked at her hands, and the slight shakes that ran through them as she continued to shiver. Light it? She had no way to light it.
She clenched her hands. This was so stupid. After all that happened, she was going to die here in the jungle because she accidentally fell asleep by the river. She had to find a way to light it in the dark. She had to light it.
Fumbling, she patted at her pockets. Did she have anything? Flint, anything? In the next moment her hand touched something small, plastic and square-shaped in her pocket.
No. It couldn't be.
The girl pulled it out of her pocket and examined it dimly in the darkness. Then she pressed her finger against the top edge and ran it down the side. The lighter hissed to life, and a small warm light warmed her face. The girl's lips formed a soft round oh.
A few minutes later the kindling was lit and as it grew stronger she added a few tree limbs she had chopped down with the axe she had retrieved from the hillside of the pit.
As the fire grew stronger, her shivering subsided and she allowed herself to relax as she watched the stream over the firelight. Her stomach growled.
As she had built the fire, she had taken a few moment to drink as much water as she could bare. Now though, she had to find food. The girl glanced at a remaining tree branch next to her. They said that it was possible to eat moss.
Taking the axe, the girl started to scrape a little of the brown moss off the branch. She lifted it to her nose and took a light sniff.
It smelled spongy.
And…slightly like an almond. It almost reminded her of almond extract. After a moment, she stuck her tongue out and touched the moss with the tip. It was slimy. The girl sighed; it wasn't very appetizing despite the almond smell.
She popped it into her mouth and chewed slowly, savoring the taste for anything bitter that might indicate it was poisonous. To her surprise, the moss tasted rich and slightly nutty. It slid down her tongue far too quickly. It was like peanut butter cotton candy, but more solid, and it tasted more like almonds than peanuts, but it wasn't exactly an almond flavor either. It was just almondy. The girl's head spun a happy spin, as she tried to pinpoint exactly what the moss reminded her of.
Taking another piece of what she had just decided to call nut-moss she pinched it between her fingers. A bit of water dripped from between her thumb and forefinger. This could be very useful in the future. The girl popped the bit of fuzz into her mouth, her shriveled stomach encouraging her on.
She took her axe and started scraping off moss until she had collected a handful-sized mound of moss. Taking a mouthful-sized mound, she fit as much in her mouth as she could.
Crunch.
The girl felt the blood drain from her face as she felt something squirm in her mouth and go still.
A sudden stubbornness kept her mouth shut. Her lip trembled a little and she fought the gag reflex that rose from deep in her throat. Protein. She started to gag, and then slapped a hand across her mouth to stop herself. Protein. She needed protein. Her own words to herself sounded strained and ridiculous, but she ignored those thoughts, because if nothing else, she was alive, which was something a lot of other people weren't. She had to make sure to stay that way.
Quickly, she chewed and swallowed. Something spiny scraped against her tongue as it went down.
A large shudder ran through her and she walked back to the stream. Kneeling, she brought up several handfuls of water to her mouth. After she finished clearing her mouth of the bug's sensation she rose, feeling queasy. On her hands and knees, she crawled back to her small fire.
Sitting in front of the fire with her back to a tree, the girl looked ruefully at the mound of moss that was left. It seemed that she was done for the night.
Her stomach filled at least a little, the girl looked to her arm. The shirt was soaked and grimy. She grimaced, she would need to take it off, but she had nothing to replace it with.
Slowly she undid her knot and started to peel off the cloth. She hissed as it stuck to the fragile skin and little drops of blood ran down her arm. A few more seconds of pain and it came all the way off.
She inspected the wound, which had started to heal. The cut ran from the dip in her palm, next to her thumb, down the center of her hand and down half her forearm, running to the left. The wound gaped at her, like some rabid animal drooling spittle.
If this got infected, she would die.
The words went through her body like a shockwave, and a memory flashed before her eyes.
"Take this with every meal for the next week, okay? So, three a day. It'll fight the infection and you'll be better in no time."
A chubby woman in a doctor's smock stood before her, holding a clipboard. The girl sat on one of those plastic beds they have in family clinics. The doctor handed her a piece of paper with a prescription on it and the girl nodded, fingering the edge of the paper. The chubby woman smiled at her.
"So how is Eric doing? I heard from your mother that he got a job with NASA recently. You must be so excited for him."
Smiling quietly, the girl spoke, "He is excited. He's wanted this for a long time." The girl fingered the paper between her pointer and thumb. "We're both still surprised he's managed to get this good a job with him being so young though…"
As quickly as the memory had come, it ended, and the girl blinked. The memory seemed almost dream-like. It was so surreal and different from the forest around her. Eric? Who was Eric? She couldn't remember, but thinking about how she felt in the memory, he must have been someone important to her. Her brother? Her boyfriend? No matter how hard she thought, she just couldn't remember.
The girl looked back at the wound on her arm. Now that she could look closer, she noticed that the edges had started to swell slightly. This needed antibiotics, something.
After a moment her eyes flashed down to the moss. A thread of information ran into her head. Sphagnum moss was used in World War I as wound dressing. Usually it was dried. But she didn't have that much time. And this definitely wasn't Sphagnum moss.
Staring at the moss, she decided. She really didn't have many other options. She would have to sterilize it first. The girl grimaced. Actually, she should have done that when she first ate the stuff. She covered her mouth, feeling queasy again.
After another moment, it passed though. Raising her head, she looked around. She would need something to put it in to sterilize it. She couldn't make it too complicated because she didn't have energy. She glances at the pile of wood she had chopped recently. None of the branches she had chopped were big enough to make a bowl out of, but if she got a bigger branch then maybe it would work.
But the fact was that she just didn't have the energy.
The girl leaned back against the tree, staring at the angry, groaning wound. At this point, the best she could do was wash it in the stream and dry it next to the fire. Wrapping the wet shirt around her arm one more time, with more than a little disgust, she crawled back to the stream with the moss cupped gently in her wounded hand. Once there, she scrubbed hard with her left hand and brought the pile back to her fire.
She fell asleep again before it dried.
Something was burning. It smelled like burned cookies. Eric must have been trying to make some and forgot about the timer again. Dang. Now the house would smell like burned cookies for the rest of the day. Wait, cookies? Eric didn't make cookies.
Awareness shot through the girl, and she sat up with a muffled cry. The moss, which she had placed on a rock near the fire, was starting to flicker with light. Wild with panic, the girl yanked her stiff damp shirt off her arm and patted at the moss with it. She frowned. It was still flickering. That's when she realized the light was coming from the rising sun in the distance. Leaning forward she smelled the moss. It did smell like almond cookies. Touching it, she found it soft and dry, even hot to the touch.
Sighing with relief, she removed the rock from beside the fire with her wet shirt. Looking from the dried moss to her arm, she realized that she would need something to secure the moss to her arm.
She looked at the wet shirt. Well. She didn't need sleeves.
Taking her axe, she carefully pressed the corner against the shoulder of her shirt and started to tear at it. Then she repeated this with the other side. Tearing the sleeves into long strips, she set them on the rock next to the fire.
While she waited she crawled back to the river and found a mid sized rock which she pushed partially into the water. Taking a smaller, slightly rough rock, she placed the remains of her shirt on the rock, and started rubbing lightly on it with some sand from the river with the other rock.
The water started to turn pink with dried blood. Frowning she scrubbed harder. As she pressed hard into the shirt a gray black mist rose into the water, overwhelming the pinkness.
The girl frowned. Dye?
She looked at her hands, smelling them. It was musty. Rubbing her fingers on her shirt she picked up some of the black substance and rubbed it between her fingers.
It was smooth, almost silky. She smelled it again. It was the same musty smell. It must be the shirt dye, she concluded. Still, she was uneasy because the dye reminded her of the black bile she had coughed up when she woke. Hopefully that had just been whatever had accumulated in her lungs while she slept, however gross that might be.
The girl scrubbed with a renewed vigor now, until the water around her shirt was clear again.
Upon finishing that, she probed the edges of her wound, cleaning carefully, and gently rinsed it out with some more water.
Lifting the shirt out of the water, she squeezed it with her left and scooted back to her fire, dragging the mid-sized rock behind her. She spread the shirt on top of it in front of the fire and then picked up the newly dried strips of cloth that had been made from her sleeves.
Patting the brown moss to be certain she wouldn't burn herself, and carefully placed it in strips down the wound. Taking the lines of cloth she tied the moss to her arm until the entire wound was covered. It was the best she could do for now.
The girl eyed her shirt. There was one other thing she could do.
Taking the axe, she tore at the bottom of her shirt, taking off two inches of the hem all the way around. Holding the ring of cloth her raised it over her head, and behind her right shoulder. It cradled her right arm. Now it would be a little easier to remember not to use her right arm and reinjure it.
She leaned back against the trunk of the mossy tree, watching the sun rise over her small fire. It was time to think long term.
The girl opened her cargo pocket with her left hand, and pulled out the map she had taken.
She had a vague sort of guess that the map might hold the location of the other teams. The girl frowned, realizing what she had just thought. Other teams? That was right, there were other teams. At least one for every state? She couldn't quite remember.
If it was true that there were other teams out there, her best chance of survival was to find one of them. She looked at the map, taking in the fragile flutter of the paper, and the red and green dots spread across the map. Was red a team, or was green? What else did the dot of the other color indicate?
The girl eyes went to the top of the map. If she looked at what color dot indicated her team then she would know which color meant what. A cold sense of dread touched her as she stared at the tips of Michigan's fingers. The middle one stuck out a little like it was flipping her off. Nothing. There was nothing at the top of the map.
Taking a deep breath to dilute the panic that churned within her, she told herself that she could just search all the dots and find out first hand what they were. As she looked at the map her fear and frustration deepened her as she realized something else. This was a map of the entire United States. A little dot on this map could be miles and miles of terrain.
The girl put a hand over her mouth and fought a sob of pure exhaustion. She would have to search each of the areas, but the fact was there was no guarantee that anyone else would even be alive.