Hey guys! Me again! So here's the next chappie, and all my love goes out to:
xxIbirilainxx & Pink and Black Cherry Blossom for their sparkling reviews. =3
On a major note, I have never been to America, so I'm going to be thumbsucking a lot of things. If I get anything grievously wrong, please let me know.
As always, RnR, and I'm also looking for a beta reader if anyone is willing. Just let me know!
And as always, I own nothing and wasn't planning on making any money from this... yet.
Smiles!
Arabella slinked silently through the forest, her footsteps making no sound. The air was crisp with a bite, giving hints at the changing of the seasons. She was carrying a bag, a hunting knife and her bow and arrow. After walking for an hour, she reached her 'plantation'.
What she and James did was plants the bushes close to each other and randomly as well to hide any human influence. All the bushes were planted in a kilometre square space and they all displayed proud patches of colourful round orbs, the ripe berries. She had been busy for half an hour when she heard the scream. Sprinting, she pulled removed the bow from her back, notching one arrow into the slot, keeping two extra in her hands for quick reload. Running towards the screams, she heard growls mixing in and found the sources on the other side of a rise.
It was a man trying to fight a fully grown bear and the bear was winning. The bear rose to his full height, roaring as he prepared to land the final blow. The man had cuts and bites all over him, clothes torn and pieces of beard missing. He had no weapons other than a pathetic spear.
Flash backs flew through her mind, and she forcefully threw them aside. Taking a steadying breath, Arabella crouched, took aim, and fired. The arrow flew true, burrowing through the skull and through its brain. It collapsed in on itself, as though it had simply deflated. The second arrow was already notched and pointed at the man when he saw her after a brief search to find out where his saviour came from. His hands shot up immediately and then he crumbled in pain.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I'm not gonna hurt you!" the man wheezed. Arabella replied in a crisp voice.
"Who are you and what are you doing out here?" Her voice was like ice.
"My name is William Lennox. I escaped from working from the Decepticons three weeks ago and I just picked a direction and started walking." Her bow lowered. She looked him. His general appearance spoke the truth. This man was tall, mussed brown hair with flecks of grey graced his hair. His beard was long and grizzled, with more grey than any other colour. His attire was too pitiful to describe and barely hung on what was left of his frame.
"Are you alone?" She called out. He nodded. Arabella's bow lowered.
"How hurt are you?" She called out.
"I think I have a dislocated shoulder, broken arm, strained muscles, twisted ankle, bruised ribs and cuts everywhere." She sighed. Blood was an easy thing to track. She walked down the embankment and closer to him.
"Let me have a look." The cuts were bleeding heavily and she couldn't see them properly under all the dirt. She shifted over to his shoulder, the arm hanging uselessly from the socket. "Look straight ahead, and tell me about yourself." She instructed as she gently touched the skin through the thin material.
"Well, I used to be married with a beautiful daughter na…" A painful scream resounded as the shoulder was clicked back into place. He looked at her with a shocked look. "Distraction. Brilliant tactic." He retorted. She looked him dead in the eye.
"Look, I don't have the things I need here to fix this. I will have to take you back to my base." He seemed to perk at the statement. "However, there are things that I need to do before we can do that. Sit tight for me." She tore the leftover shirt from him, slipping him her jacket to keep him warm. Grabbing two straight sticks, she made a splint for his arm and a sling. Picking up a large, forked branch, she cut off pieces to make a crutch. "Stay here. I have a local family to feed." Grabbing the large hunting knife, she cut off one of the large rear legs of the bear, dragging it off into the distance. After walking for five minutes, she stopped near a small cave. Dropping the carcass, she looked up to see the female wolf with her two cubs.
"Here. Follow the trail if you want more." She immediately turned and returned the way she came, briefly looking over her shoulder to see the mother and the cubs digging into the meat. She made her way back to Will and saw that he had collected a torn backpack and a water bottle. Moving to a nearby pine tree, she cut down one of the bushy branches and tied it with a small length of rope to her waist, effectively dragging it over her track as she walked. "Alright, grab your stuff. You are going to walk right in front of me so that I can cover those bloody tracks you are leaving everywhere. Get moving."
xxxxxPCxxxxx
The progress was slow and the trip took two hours. When they were starting to get close, she got rid of the branch and blindfolded him.
"Nothing personal, I'm just not taking chances." She had explained when she had received slight protest. She steered him for the rest of the way and only took the blindfold off when they had reached the infirmary. Helping him out of the jacket, she quickly ran back to the kitchen to get the water that she had set to boil when they had come in. Finding it a suitable temperature, she added Savlon and started cleaning the wounds. Letting him lay down on the bed, she gave him a sponge bath and shaved his head and beard.
Sometime during the process he had fallen asleep, so she made quick work of binding the wounds after applying a generous layer of honey to them. The honey acts like a disinfectant and also encouraged cell regeneration. He was lucky. His arm wasn't broken, but it was fractured. Placing a blanket over his sleeping form, she went to the store room to collect the box of men's clothing James had left behind and one of the several ice-packs that they had collected over time.
In a constant state of embarrassment, she had managed to dress him in the clean clothes in his unconscious state. Putting the ankle on the ice pack, she made sure that he would be snug before she left. Before she did, though, she left a note telling him not to explore and where the bathroom was if he needed it.
She had decided to preserve the berries with her dwindling supply of sugar and glass jars. They were great for a quick boost of energy when you needed it. After making all the necessary arrangements, she set the pot to simmer, and took some of her deer stew out of the fridge to reheat for the two of them. Pouring generous helpings of the thick broth into bowls, she made her way back to the infirmary to check on William. He had just started to wake up when she came in.
"How are you feeling William?" She asked, rather awkwardly. He smiled slightly.
"I haven't felt a bed this soft in years. And call me Will." He replied. Arabella blushed.
"Sorry. It's been a while since I've had any human contact. My name is Arabella, by the way."
"Ah. Was wondering when I was going to know what my saviour's name was." She smiled again.
"How's your appetite? Would you want to try eating something?" she asked, offering him a bowl of the steaming broth.
"With something that smells that good, who am I to say no?" He replied with a smile. Helping him sit up, she handed him the bowl. He struggled, his previously dislocated arm still sore, with his other wrist sprained. She immediately placed her food on a nearby table.
"Here. Let me help." Taking the bowl and spoon from him, she fed him in small bites to help everything go down smoothly. One empty bowl later, she helped him lay back down again, before taking her cooled broth. "Tell me about yourself, Will." She asked again.
"Well, as I said, I am William Lennox. I used to be a General in the Military before Megatron took over. I had a beautiful wife named Sarah, and a gorgeous daughter, Annabelle. She would've been 10 by now." He told her, a hollowness haunting his voice.
"I had been part of the special task force that worked with the Autobots fight the Decepticons. When Sentinal Prime betrayed us, it was the blow that ended the war. I was taken as Starscream's personal pet slave. How I hated it. I never found out if my family was still alive, if anyone I knew was still alive. It was horrible not knowing." He paused for a moment, his eyes hazy from the memories.
"They shipped us all up here two months ago. Or, nearby, at least. The other slaves where disappearing in groups, so it didn't take us long to figure out that these where the execution grounds. With a couple of weeks of planning, I snuck past their defences and just… ran. I ran and ran until I passed out. Luckily it was in a covered area. Ever since then I've just been running in the same direction every day. I was lucky if I found water, and made use of the little I remembered from basic survival tactics until I was attacked by that bear. And you know the rest from there."
She chewed slowly as she let his story sink in, pondering her current situation. She was quiet for a few moments longer before his voice interrupted her thoughts.
"And you? What's your story?" He asked gently, still clutching the bowl in his hand. Sighing, she leaned forward, took the empty bowl from him, stacking it on top of hers before placing it on the small table.
"Not much to tell, really. They came, annihilated everything and I ran. I barely survived the first two weeks. That's when I found James. James Weston. Together we got this entire setup up and running, him more the brains and me more the brawn. Well, not really. We were well balanced.
"We would do raids in the nearby towns to get what we needed, you know, hit a Wallmart or a camping store, but mostly we went for the libraries. The information never goes out of date, and we just grabbed anything that would be useful.
"We were doing good. Had a nice system up and running soon, but ****, the first couple of months were tough. Between the two of us, we figured things out pretty quickly though. He was like a brother to me." She sighed, memories bubbling up from all the jokes they had shared, the fun times, the times they actually laughed. And good Lord she missed him.
"It was in the fourth year that it… happened. We had gone separate ways for our foraging that day. I was on hunting detail. I was tracking a deer when I heard it." The crunching sounds. The sick, crunching sounds of bones breaking. "It sounded like some predator had maybe caught the deer I was tracking, but the…" she bit back her lip, the memory raw in her mind. "strips of cloth everywhere, the knife on the ground, the backpack, the han…" she stuttered, tears threatening to spill.
"Before I knew what I was doing, there was an arrow through the cougar's skull. I'm still not sure how I got that right." She paused, taking a breath to calm herself. "I skinned the bastard and buried what I could. The best thing I could do for a grave was a hole in the ground. No proper ceremony, no nothin'." Anger bubbled carefully beneath the surface. "At least I still have the bastard's fur. Arrow still attached. And from there on out, I've been on my own, surviving. At least I was well prepared when it did happen. There were no major incident from there on out. One run in with a pack of wolves, but that was sorted quick." She paused.
Soft snores had filled the room. She had been too involved with her storytelling to have taken notice of the ex-general falling asleep. Running a hand over her head, she looked at the sleeping soldier.
"Lennox, what am I going to do with you?" She sighed before leaving, turning off the light as she slipped out. It was close to midnight, and she simply got into her PJ's and slipped between the covers, pondering her situation before drifting off to sleep.
Just a by note, there is only, like, 5% of the world's population still alive. Just to give you a scale of the loneliness. Still, review and let me know if I've missed something!.