Disclaimer: I don't own The Hills Have Eyes.

Thanks so much to Berry's Ambitions for your kind review! I appreciate it very much! Now, I hope that this chapter is up to par! It was kind of painful to write, to be honest. Lol. Thanks so much for reading!

Edge
Chapter Eleven: Swallowed By Sand

"Ha ha! David, don't tell me you haven't rode a horse before?"

"Don't make fun of me! Haven't you seen what they can do - "

"Are you scared?"

"Psh, no, no - ah! Don't bite me, horse!"

A giggle, a flash of blonde hair. "Come on. Jose's just playing around.."

"Fine...but only for you, Lila."

Napoleon cracked his eyes open, an aching forming in his entire being. He was remiss to be pulled from the memory, dreamlike in its quality as it played across his unconscious mind, but he was nonetheless. Groaning, he tried to pull himself to his feet, hands shaky as they attempted to support his slim frame.

He remembered people saying, "Everything hurts," and now he knew what they were talking about.

Training to be a soldier was one thing. Being in an actual battle...against these...creatures was another.

The sun was shrinking behind the hills, darkening the already frightening landscape. For a moment, he wasn't sure about what happened or his location or anything like that, and then in came back, piece by piece, like a puzzle.

The mutants had ambushed them. Mutants, that could be the only word used to describe such creatures, such inhuman-seeming things. People - and he used the term people as roughly as he could - that dwelled in the hills and made their lives there. If he could even call that living. Cold-hearted monsters, the lot of them. He did not care if he was making a broad generalization. From what he had seen in his short time in the hills, these people were far past redemption, far past his pity. They had killed his comrades, one by one, as if they were mere pedestrians rather than armed soldiers.

He remembered the sheer and utter terror as he saw Missy ripped away from him, the coldness that had gone over him when he learned what could possibly be her fate, the shock when he saw Spitter's neck split open as if it were protected with nothing but tissue paper.

Memories flashed through his mind, interspersing with each other seamlessly. He was surprised at this, figuring that the scrambling of his brain would have done something to his memory bank, but he supposed he was wrong.

Groaning, he rolled over on his back and glanced up at the quickly darkening sky. To his left, the cliff jutted up a few feet - okay, more than a few feet. It would take someone as skilled as Delmar or Stump to make the climb back up to the top, for they were the only ones skilled enough to go without ropes...

A sharp pang in his chest jarred him as their names crossed his mind.

Napoleon squinted his eyes shut, hating himself even more for being as useful as a rag doll in the actual fight. Things had not been in their favor. Even though they had those hill-dwellers outnumbered, they were clearly skilled. Their raw, animal instinct trumping the clinical and practiced moves the soldiers had been taught in training.

That large one seemed to be the leader. Then, flanked by a mutant with a cleaver and a woman with a bow and quiver of crudely made arrows, they made their purpose painfully obvious. Napoleon felt his head start to hurt just thinking about it.

They had attacked. Bullets would last only so long, not to mention these things were damn hard to hit when they were moving. The mutants were also good at hiding behind things, blending into the surroundings as seamlessly as if they were made of rock themselves. They had managed to take the cleaver wielding one down only when he made the mistake of appearing behind Crank hacking down with his knife. The bullets then tore through him, as if fueled by the soldiers' hatred.

Distracted and concerned about Crank's health, Delmar had turned around, only to be shot with an arrow in the back. Napoleon had assumed it had struck neatly into one of his lungs because Delmar was down in a matter of seconds, gasping for breath and holding his chest. The second struck home as well, putting him down like he was an animal.

This course of events put Crank in a blind rage. He started shooting about, crazed, eyes wheeling, screaming for his fallen comrade. This was his mistake. He did not see the bigger mutant until it was too late, and his head was caved in by one massive blow with a nearby rock.

Napoleon had started thinking then. He had fired all his bullets into the one they had already killed, and trying to take out the archer, who scampered up to the highest rock around as soon as the fight broke out. He looked up, searching for the aforementioned mutant, glancing at her just as she peeked over a rock, stretching an arrow back expertly.

The target being Stump, who was in the process of taking cover behind a nearby rock.

The name of his friend was hardly out of his mouth when the arrow hit him squarely in the chest, cutting through bone and muscle. Claiming his heart. Killing him instantly.

Napoleon felt like vomiting. They had been slaughtered as if they were cattle, caged in and ready to be killed for meat. He had looked desperately for the one remaining member of their team, hoping beyond all hope that she was still standing.

And she was, using the last of her bullets to put lead into the archer. The woman screamed, rocking her head back, and leapt down from her perch as if she were a cat. Blood gushed from a wound on her upper thigh. Good. Maybe Amber got an artery. The mutant, displaying remarkable resilience, cocked an arrow, aiming directly for Amber's head just as the monstrous leader was charging at Napoleon.

Saving both himself and Amber, Napoleon had rushed out of the grasping path of the leader's hands. He knocked into her, messing up the archer's aim in the process, and Amber's helmet had fallen off, revealing her messy blonde hair, coming out of its usual ponytail and falling around her face in tangled waves.

The grin that came over the large mutant was terrifying as he made the connection.

He had looked up at the archer at that moment, eyes glittering, and the first arrow hit Amber squarely in the back. She had paused, stunned, reaching for the arrow that pierced her and trying to get it out.

He had shouted her name, his voice cracking in several places, and paused in horror.

The second arrow hit her just under her shoulder blade...so close to her lung...

And she was down.

In his panic, he had not seen her breathing. He felt as if things were going in slow motion as he watched Amber's still form, unmoving and crumpled at his feet. No breath to indicate her life. Feeling a blind rage much like Crank had earlier, Napoleon had charged then, aiming to take the leader down.

Easily, the head mutant had grasped his thin shoulders and hurled him off the side of the cliff.

Napoleon had remembered the feel of flying, and then falling. He knew he was going to die, he just knew it. The airborne moment was fleeting, and he felt himself crashing into the ground, losing consciousness just moments after.

The ground, Napoleon now realized, that wasn't technically the ground.

He managed to get himself to his feet. The lone survivor of his unit.

There was a certain hollowness he felt as he gazed out at the darkening desert.

I should be dead.

And he wanted to be, more than anything.

As Napoleon glanced down at the land below, he grasped his dogtags and ran his finger over the little wooden horse that nested between them.

Then, something caught his eye.

A flash of movement, down below. A woman, being chased by a man. A woman that looked all too familiar...

"Missy!" he gasped under his breath.

And there she was, carrying a small girl on her shoulders, escaping from the very man that had killed his friends. She fell just after another figure threw something at the leader. He almost cried out her name, but figured that would get him killed.

Somehow, just seeing Missy fight like that, reestablished the sudden, burning desire to live.

More figures came. There was a small, wiry one; one with tangled long hair; one with a bowler hat; one as large as the man who had almost killed Napoleon; a man with a brace supporting his head and neck...

They started exchanging words. Napoleon had no idea what they were saying, though he could tell it wasn't friendly. There was a scuffle in which the large mutant leader tried to take back Missy, and the little girl desperately tried to pull her back. It all ended when the large mutant that was on the more heavily numbered side pulled them both back, and...was that an ax he was wielding?

Things escalated, and then calmed down, reminding him vaguely of how brutal an ocean could be and then transform into something completely tranquil. Napoleon could hardly make out anything else but clearly these people had hatred for one another. The large mutant retreated back into the hill, while the other ones looked at each other in questioning.

The scraggly haired one pointed to the exact area where Napoleon was standing. He stiffened, but did not move. They weren't shouting at him or coming to kill him, so maybe they weren't worried about him, since he'd be dead soon anyway.

After a shuffling of bodies, Missy's limp form was handed to the wild haired man, and then they were leaving...

Wait, Napoleon thought abruptly, leaving?

He had no idea where they were going. A worry struck him so deeply in his chest that it felt like that mutant woman had landed an arrow there. Were they going to do with Missy what that colonel said? Were these new set of people just as bad as the ones that lived where Napoleon now stood?

He knew one thing. He could not let this happen. He could not let this take place. He had lost all of his friends in the span of only a few hours, and Missy was the only one left. A fierce protectiveness stole over him.

He would save her.

First, though, he had to get down from here.

The way down was steep, but he could make out the few places that would be safe if used for handholds and footholds. He knew instinctively that he had to leave from here before dark fell. If he spent a night out here, he could very well die of exposure or something equally as horrifying. Or, the mutants could spot him and then kill him.

Then there would be no hope for Missy.

That lone thought was what gave Napoleon the drive to head down the cliff.

It was shaky going at first. After all, it was a very long way down and Napoleon was by no means an experienced climber. His knees felt like jello as he dropped himself down onto the next ledge, which was surprisingly large and held his weight nicely, and also allowed his hands to be free for a moment. Taking a few deep breaths, he gazed down.

One step forward, two steps back comes to mind, he thought achingly.

Though he had made it a few feet down, the path to get to the ground was awfully steep, and he hated that he kept imagining himself falling, crushing his head on the rocks below. Millions of images from movies flashed through his mind. Headshot after headshot after headshot. It was going to happen to him, it was going to happen to him -

Napoleon slapped himself across the face hard enough to knock some sense into his brain. The scrambling, manic thoughts were not going to get him down this cliff. They were not going to save Missy.

They were not going to get him back to Lila.

The horse around his neck seemed to weigh more than usual as he lowered himself down the edge of his current perch. His feet scrambled for a foothold and then found one. He tested it a few times, making sure it was stable, before moving his hands down to grip at the rocks beneath his original position. His breath was coming out in desperate pants, and he tried to calm himself yet again.

His progress was slow, but still, it was progress. Ledge after ledge, handhold after handhold, prayer after prayer, he stayed true to his mission to get down the ledge. It seemed impossible, but eventually the ground seemed closer and he could feel the fading heat rising from the earth below.

So close...so, so close...

Napoleon hadn't realized he was so near the ground until he glanced down, being able to see a close up of the sand for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. As if to make a comparison to where he once was, he looked up and saw where he had first woken up after the massacre, yards and yards above him. He exhaled shakily, blowing his bangs out of his face.

A few more inches, just a few more inches.

And he dropped.

He fell for only a few seconds, landing on his feet but nearly twisting his ankle in the process. Familiar stabbings of pain sounded around the bones of his foot. Though, the sand felt like a granted wish as it closed around his boots. Napoleon threw his arms out as if they were wings, to steady himself.

A relieved shudder passed over him.

"Good job, David! Jose seems to like you."

"Get...me...down...from...here!"

"But it looks like you two are bonding!"

"If this is your definition of bonding, then you need a new dictionary!"

Napoleon was motivated by the rest of the memory flooding back from before. He remembered the smell of Lila's shampoo - cucumber and mint - and the glint of her gray eyes when she found out something particularly interesting. He remembered the feel of her loose waves of blonde hair, soft beneath his fingers. That drawling Southern accent of hers...

And he missed her more than anything in the world.

Steely determination setting into his bones, he continued walking. He made his way around to where he saw the scuffle from before, noting the slight pattern of blood here and there. The door leading inside to what looked like a series of mines was still shut, and Napoleon could just feel the foreboding sense of peril coming from behind it.

The desert wind wasn't blustery enough to wipe away their tracks. Many sets of footprints led away from the door, and off into the desert. Some were defined in their tracks, while there were a set of dragging footsteps, interspersed with droplets of blood mixing with the sand. A chill wove its way into Napoleon's spine.

He glanced around, looking for some form of a weapon, and he saw that there was a wooden board laid haphazardly against a far cliff wall. Quietly, he moved towards it and grasped it in his hands. It had a good weight, and felt like it was supposed to be used for that purpose.

Napoleon's eyes found the trail of footprints. All the horrors aside, luck was with him at this particular moment. The moon was lifting into the darkening sky and he saw it was full; its light would be enough to illuminate the entire plane of desert as he walked.

With no further reason to delay, he set off.

"You'll come back soon, right?"

"You bet."

Napoleon intended on keeping his promise.

End Chapter Eleven.