"Rodney! Pick up the pace," John bellowed as they scrambled over and around one of the rocky paths strewn with boulders of all sizes.
Rodney was busy hiking himself over a very large boulder and blurted back to John, "I'm doing the best I can maneuvering through this Devil's Marble Yard!!" Then he lost his balance.
Rodney made a vain clutch at rock and air then spilled over slightly backwards, head first, ultimately landing on his right shoulder with all the air being knocked out of him. As he concentrated on sucking in some much needed air he heard a clatter behind him. Turning his head slightly he noticed the familiar slim black shape that could only be his laptop slide out of his pack and through an opening between the rocks.
"No no no…" rambled Rodney as he threw out a desperate hand to grab his beloved computer.
"What the hell Rodney, leave it, we don't have time to stop!" John bounded effortlessly over the boulder that Rodney had taken a header and was now quickly moving to grab Rodney's vest to pull him up.
Teyla and Ronon had both heard John and stopped but were nervously waiting for the two members of their team to begin moving again. They were both unsettled by the tremors that had been building in strength since they departed the ravine.
"Ah-ha, got it!" Rodney exclaimed in excitement as he began withdrawing his arm that was shoulder deep in between the boulders.
But as luck would have it a very strong tremor caught him off guard and the laptop slipped from his grasp.
"Dammit to hell!"
John had had it. He struggled to get a hold on Rodney's vest in all the shaking but finally got enough of a grip to haul him up. Yet he wasn't quick enough.
The shaking intensified. John lost his hold; Rodney fell back to the ground while John stuttered step to maintain just being vertical. Then suddenly the boulders started to shift.
Teyla watching all of this by Ronon's side from afar felt very uneasy as the tremors started and she saw John lose his hold on Rodney. Then her heart fluttered as she noticed the boulders shifting.
"John, Rodney, you must move. You must move now!" She wondered if they could even hear her over the roar of the ground around them as it began to take on a life of its own. Then to her horror the ground beneath them began separating.
Rodney heard a faint yell from Teyla but couldn't make out what she was saying. All he could do right now was ride out the bucking of the earth on his hands and knees and hoped that it would stop soon. However, that hoping was all for naught as he heard the boulder above him began to scrape and he knew he had to move and move now.
John had his back pressed against the rocks holding out both arms to stay upright when he looked left as he heard Teyla say…something, but his attention was quickly drawn back to Rodney as he saw out of the corner of his eye a lot of movement and it all wasn't coming from Rodney unfortunately.
Rodney had managed to put his hands on the rock in front of him and began to stand up. He was so focused on not falling again that he didn't see what the others saw. The ground beneath him had started to separate. What he did see was the large boulder to his right tumbling directly towards him.
John and the rest of his team could only watch in horror as the boulder slammed into Rodney. It came down scraping his right arm and then continued down clipping his right leg. What they heard next scared them to the core, the piercing scream that escaped Rodney's lips, no earthquake would cover up the pain that their friend was in.
Rodney dropped to his left knee clutching his other leg. Tears welled up; his vision blurred as he tracked down to see the damage.
"Oh…AW!" This was so not good he thought, as all his nerve endings were on fire from his hip down. He felt like his hip had popped out of its socket, but that wasn't the only thing. His hands trembled down as far as he could to the outside of his thigh and with a gasp his fingers came away slicked red.
Rodney's eyes cleared a bit and looked down to see his pants had a long gash where he'd just touched. The rock must have gouged out a path across his leg as it traveled down. Still, he also knew that just by looking at his foot and how it laid slightly in an opposite direction than his knee that he had indeed broken his leg.
"Rodney!" His name came in three different octaves and he snapped his head back to see where his friends were.
They had all made their move towards their injured friend but their path was quickly diverted as the ground that each of them stood on shifted. Ronon and Teyla dropped as their ground shifted upwards along with Rodney's leaving John going the other direction. It stopped for a moment and then Teyla, Ronon and Rodney's newly created cliff broke again sending Rodney sideways sliding and screaming along the way until he skidded to a halt when the earthquake finally stopped.
Teyla and Ronon peered over the ledge and saw John about twenty feet below them holding his head; apparently he had hit it in the shift but didn't lose consciousness thankfully.
"Sheppard! You okay?" Ronon yelled down to him.
John shook his head but then regretted it and a muscle spasm in his neck made his head snap and send a pain to the top of his head.
"I'm ok!" he yelled back, "I think." He mumbled that last part to himself. "Are you and Teyla ok?"
"We are uninjured," Teyla informed him.
"Rodney?" He didn't hear anything so yelled a little harder, "Rodney!" Still nothing.
"He's unconscious John. The last shift moved him harshly, no doubt aggravating his injuries," Teyla said this as her gaze strayed away from John and settled on Rodney's unmoving body.
"Where is he?" John missed the second shift that sent Rodney away from them.
"He's closer to you than us…he's about eight feet above you." Ronon told John plainly.
"Ok," John said as he struggled to stand. "I'm going to work my way to him."
That's when he thought it would be a cinch to reach his friend, but then realized on top of the easy eight-foot climb he had a ten-foot crevasse he now had to figure in.
"Um, you all don't have a rope with you do ya?" John said as he surveyed the terrain.
"Hang on." Ronon got up walked away and came back. "How about this?" In his hand he held a vine.
"It will have to do." John said motioning him to throw it down.
"John, be careful," said Teyla.
John knotted a loop and began to throw over to Rodney's cliff. It took a couple times but he had pretty good aim and snagged the looped vine on an outcrop.
"Alright, here goes nothing," with that said, he swung over hitting his feet against the side and began to climb.
His head was pounding with the effort as he pulled himself up and over the cliff side. Rolling on to his back and taking a small breather he shut his eyes to ease the ache in his head. Then he quickly pulled it together and scrambled over to his friend.
Rodney was lying on his stomach with his face looking out towards him. If it hadn't been for the unnatural angle of his right leg John would have believed Rodney had just passed out and was sleeping peacefully. However, that was not the case.
John placed his hand on his neck looking for a pulse. It was fast and a little irregular. He shook him a bit.
"Rodney?" he got no answer, the scientist was apparently out of it. All the better really, it would give him time to check out his injuries and hopefully set his leg before he woke up. However he knew that most of his injuries were on his right side, the side that was away from him tucked up against the rock, so it would require moving him and he didn't like that idea.
"Ok, here we go Rodney, nice and slow," he said it out loud more for himself than anything.
He turned Rodney's head to lie on his left side and was greeted with the angry and now bleeding cut over his eye that had once been bandaged but had been tore off. He continued by grasping the man's right shoulder and right hip. He pulled slowly towards him so that he was now lying on his back. This movement elicited a whimpering 'mhmf' from Rodney but he still didn't stir. What he had to do next was get his leg in alignment so he could set it.
He gently moved his hand down Rodney's right leg, quickly noticing the gash along his thigh. It looked bad but he really wanted to get the leg set to save his friend some added pain while he was still out, so he quickly assessed the rest of the leg and found the break.
Directly below the knee his hands felt the depression on the outside and the protrusion of the bone to the inside. John quickly took his knife and slit the pants to the knee to see if the bone had gone through then skin. To his relief it had not.
Through all this, Rodney made little whimpers of pain and had gasped when John started moving his leg. John felt bad but it was now or never. He grasped Rodney's ankle and put his left hand around his knee. He pulled quickly. Rodney cried out and almost came to a sitting position, suddenly opened his eyes looked at John and promptly fell back breathing rapidly, yet to John's surprise he didn't lose consciousness.
"John, what's happening? Is Rodney ok?" Teyla sounded extremely worried.
"Its ok, I had to set Rodney's leg. He seems to be conscious now," he yelled back.
"mh..mh…h..he's…rrrightt here ya know…ah..ah," Rodney said through the pain.
John's attention quickly turned back to his friend lying on the ground writhing in pain. He noticed Rodney's right hand kneading the top of his right leg while the other clenched and unclenched in the dirt.
"Hey there buddy, how you feeling?" John felt stupid asking but it was one of those standard things.
"Are you ssserriouss…I'mmm dying hhhhere," Rodney managed to squeak out.
"You're going to be ok, but first I've got to stop the bleeding of your thigh and find something to splint your leg." John said quickly as he was already pulling out a field dressing.
He took his knife again and slit the pants up to Rodney's mid thigh to get a clear look at the gash. It dug diagonally from the top of his thigh and around to the side. Nasty was a nice word to describe it. John quickly pressed the bandage to the cut to staunch the blood flow, which caused Rodney to grind his already clenched teeth. To his credit, Rodney tried his best not to cry out.
John looked up to Rodney's face and noticed tears of pain tracking down the dirt on his face from the corner of his eyes.
"Hang in there Rodney, the worst is almost over."
All he got from Rodney was a ragged breath and a shaky "sure."
John quickly spied some broken branches that he could use to splint the leg. He broke them to size and came back to a panting and trembling Rodney. He knew he was going into shock.
"Rodney, I'm back. I'll make this quick."
John tore off some strips from his own shirt to use to bind the splint. He slid them under the knee and worked them down into position behind his calf. He then set the boards on either side of the leg. He glanced up at Rodney who was just hanging on and then got to tying off the strips of cloth.
Rodney arched and then fell silent. The pain, obviously too much to deal with anymore, won out as unconsciousness enveloped him again.
John set back and sighed. He then began to take off his jacket to cover Rodney. He also took Rodney's nearby pack and gently placed it under his friend's legs, trying to elevate and stave off the shock that had come on.
"Sheppard, can he be moved?" Ronon did not like feeling useless in these types of situations.
"Not right yet, he's out of it again since I set his leg. Plus I haven't had a chance to check him thoroughly. See if you all can radio Atlantis. Both Rodney and I have lost our radios it seems."
"Atlantis, come in, do you read? Come in Atlantis!" Teyla was only getting static still. "I can't reach them. It still is just static."
"Ok, then I want you to head back to the jumper and see if you the jumper's signal can break through. Ronon I want you to start building a backboard so we can try and get Rodney out of here."
"I'm on my way John. I'll be back shortly; we can't be more than half a mile away now. Hopefully the path has not changed too much…"
Ronon, finally happy that he'd been given a task went straight to it.
John turned back to Rodney and let out a sigh as he scanned his friend's body. "Hang in there buddy, we'll get you fixed up and out of here in no time."
John only hoped it would be sooner rather later…considering aftershocks would be imminent.
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TBC