My lungs were burning. I hadn't done this much running or had this much fear in a long, long time. My body ached and my muscles were sore. But my need to survive was stronger. I pushed though the pain and held on to whatever hope I had left. My mind raced as did my heart. I wasn't scared to die, but I was scared of dying alone in the dark unable to see when the death blow is coming. Unable to prepare myself. We stopped when Paris dropped a bottle of wine and the idiot just had to go back and get it. And of course it was so far out of reach, he pulled the dang generator off. And the lights went out. I felt Riddick's arms snake around my body as the others light bottles of liquor.
"What's happening?"
"You don't wanna know." I took that as a suffice answer. We circled around and Johns and the Holy man knew it.
"Why did we circle around?"
"Creators up ahead. Gave me some time to think."
"How many?"
"Only three."
"We can take 'em."
"It'll be hard. Especially with the girl bleeding." They all looked to me and I shook my head,
"Naw man my wound's clean." Then they looked to Fry who also shook her head.
"No, her." Riddick inclined to Jack.
"Aw, Jack…" I held onto the kid as she sobbed, "Why?"
"I thought you would take me more seriously if I was guy. I thought you would…" She broke down.
"Riddick and I'll go up ahead and scout it out." I didn't like the sound of that. Those two. Alone. Together. That was a dumb move on John's part. A few minutes later and I heard it. The fighting. The two were going at it. Then not a minute later I heard a blood curdling scream and Riddick reappeared.
"Where's Johns? Is he-"
"We're all gonna die out here aren't we?" Riddick moved close to us,
"Don't cry over Johns kid. Don't you dare cry over him." That's when it hit me. He knew that the girl would be an easy target and a huge risk. He tried to kill her. We kept moving until we got to what looked like a dried up ravine.
"Alright there's only gonna be one pace. Mine." We bolted off into the sea of bones as blue goo began to fall on us, "Don't look up." Of course Fry did,
"There killing each other."
"Well when you have nothing to eat on this planet but other creatures…" We kept going until the last of the Holy mans boys ankle got caught by a creature. I stabbed it with a make shift shiv I found and we picked him up and kept going. I sent them all ahead of me choosing to take the rear. Riddick looked back and gave me a look, saying don't be dumb. We kept going and stopped only once to breathe. We stood there and a creature's tail wrapped itself around the boys' neck yanking him up the column. The holy man cried for the boy. As they were reaching for him I felt something grip my ankle and then my feet were out from under me. I screamed and I saw Riddick turn around and his eyes shined with anger. He dropped the load and ran towards me. The creature dragged me back to the blood bath and Riddick was right on its heels. I turned my head to see a nice big, rocky bump coming up. And sure enough I hit my head on it and was out cold. I was left alone in my mind waiting and wondering if I would die. If I would ever get off this planet. If I would ever see Riddick again.
My mind wandered back to the night after we met. He had just gotten comfortable with the idea of having me around, "Riddick?"
"Hm?"
"Have you ever loved someone?" He seemed to tense at the question.
"A long, long, long time ago."
"What happened to her?"
"She died. Along with the rest of her people. All but one." I sat up and stood in front of the man sitting before me,
"That one person, it was you wasn't it?" He nodded. I felt so bad for him and I didn't know what came over me, but I leaned down and kissed him ever so softly on the lips. "I'm so sorry." My voice was but a whisper as Riddick slowly pulled me onto his lap, "I'm so," kiss, "so" kiss, "sorry." The next thing I knew his arms were wrapped around my waist and my hands were on his chest and I was kissing this huge powerful man. That's when times were good. That was the one thing that played through my mind. That was the one thing I wanted to remember if I were to die here and now.