LOVELY LITTLE MONSTERS

Chapter Five

"My leg hurts." Sam winced as we trudged onward through the seemingly endless concrete corridors, dragging his left leg painstakingly behind him. Eric kept up by slowing his own steps and shuffling his feet.

I motioned for Jack, Roger and Simon to go on without us and knelt down to be eye-level with the slightly taller twin. His skin was nearly transclucent with sickness. I feared the worst, and when he rolled up the pant leg of his outfit these worries were only confirmed. I held my breath. Eric looked about ready to pass out, though he had no reason for it other than disbelief. Sam met my eyes in an unasked question. I shook my head almost imperceptibly. Of course he'd be alright. Of course infection hadn't set in. Of course.

When he told us all three days before that the bullet had got him in the leg, I had thought it might turn out this way. Now we played the waiting game; this was perhaps the worst game of all. Worse than this terrible game of hide and go seek we played with our capturers. Worse than the battle with our own minds over sanity and insanity-which may or may not have already been lost long ago. In this new game we could only watch. There were two possible ends to this: life and death. Death would be horrible. Life would maybe be even worse. Depending on the circumstances; I wasn't all that sure yet.

Jack and I argued often after Bill and Maurice's deaths. Although, we kept it quiet, and during watch, when everyone else was sleeping.

"This is all our fault." I half-heartedly whispered to the darkness, "I can't believe they...they're..."

"Our fault?" He would growl back, "This is your fault, Ralph. It was your idea to escape, not mine."

"You wanna be the only leader then, from now on?" I spat, "Do you want to take care of them and tell them all that it's going to be alright? I know you're good at lying Jack. So why don't you?"

There was never an answer. Nobody wanted to be in charge of marching corpses.

I never really questioned why we never had to eat. Not once during our adventure did anyone ever complain about hunger. I was starting to think it was the shock of everything that had happened, but there was that other answer-the right one-that kept nagging at the back of my head. I didn't want to open the door for that possibility if I didn't have to. Sighing, I kicked a stray chunk of grey stone that had fallen from an uncertain origin. it clattered against the narrow wall and bounced behind us. Our progress was slow and meandering, tapering at some points to near nothingness. I wished Piggy was here. I wished I could talk to him again. He was always smarter than I was, better at knowing what to do.

Simon had all but claimed my right arm. He clutched on to it for dear life, shivering and muttering things under his breath about hope. I pulled him a little closer and let out a breath. He snapped out of his trance and looked up at me.

"Ralph I'm having weird dreams." He confessed worriedly.

"Dreams?" I frowned. Maybe Piggy was in them. Simon seemed to sense where my thoughts were headed and shook his head profusely.

"Nightmares." He breathed. "Last night I had a dream about dying. At least, I think it was about dying, Ralph. It was scary. There were white walls and everything was loud and screamed at me." Simon's eyes were wide with fear as he added, "Ralph, what if it's real? I'm scared of dying."

"You won't die. I won't let you die." I asserted. "It was only a nightmare."

"Isn't this a nightmare, too?" Roger grumbled from directly behind me. Jack snorted in laughter.

"Stop being so freaking deep all the time, Roger. That's stupid." He shot at his right-hand-man, "You sound like an idiot when he talk like that."

"I don't think so." Eric spoke up hollowly. I dropped back in the formation enough to see Roger give Eric a quick, formal nod of recognition and Eric flinch back. I never understood why the twins and Roger never really got along, why they were so uncomfortable around each other. Maybe it had something to do with that question and the real answer. Maybe it was one of those things that was better to ignore. If I thought about it too hard I might hurt myself and, consequently, everyone else in the process.

By the end of the fifth day, Roger had puked five and a half times and all of us were holding our noses. The halls were opening up more as we went, but that in no way helped dissipate the horrible stench emanating from Sam's wound. I'd had to help him cut the fabric out of it earlier in the day. The skin was rotten and putrid and, overall, infected. I looked at him when I was done with meager, fake, assurance glittering in my eyes. But he knew better. We exchanged a smile, exchanged a reassuring look, but he knew what was happening. He had always been a little brighter than Eric, after all. But I'm pretty sure that had nothing to do with it.

I was surprised that no one had launched another attack on us so far. After all, we were probably at our weakest. Especially our supposed vampire, who was perhaps even sicker than Sam was with all of his vomiting. It would be easy to track us here. Even easier to kill us. But no one showed up and I didn't object.

"Ralph." Sam moaned, "I can't walk much farther. Please, can we stop? Just for now. Like, five minutes...just five minutes."

I stopped and so did the rest of the procession. Jack and Roger huddled at the outskirts of the circle, the former supporting the very nauseous latter by the shoulder. The motion of halting seemed to spin him around even more, and he gagged. I looked away.

Simon glanced up at me with wide green eyes. I nodded.

Yes, Sam is dying. Yes, he won't make it.

Five minutes quickly turned into five hours, and when we woke up after our restless sleeping we got back on our feet and left Eric to mourn over the body of his brother Sam.

Agh. Gomen for the sucky chapter. Gomen for not updating in forever. Gomen for a lot of things. -

I am so sorry.

That I am not a very good updater.

AGHagAhghagahg.

Emotional issues and laziness, BEGONE!

It didn't work.

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