Hell On Earth

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

 

Amanda's POV:

My eyes snapped open at the rustling of the branches. Where was I? Why did my whole body hurt, my ankle especially? What happened? And then I remembered. I swore and looked around for the source of the noise. A bird finally caught my eye and I realized that was what was making the noise. "You trying to scare me senseless, bird?" I mumbled. As I moved to look at my ankle, pain shot up my leg. I swore loudly before realizing I probably shouldn't do that.

 

I couldn't make any loud noises as I slowly and very painfully moved my leg around a bit. After taking a long look, I concluded it was definitely broken. It was purple and green and swollen to twice its size. It hurt anytime I tried to move it and there was positively a bone sticking out of my foot where it shouldn't be. There was no way I was going anywhere for quite a while.

 

I ended up deciding to just try and get some more rest because I was in way too much pain to even think about moving. I closed my eyes and went to sleep, regardless that the sun was still high above the horizon. I woke up as the sun set, and I heard very faint birds, not many, but a few. It was almost reassuring that there was other life out there besides me. As I moved my ankle around, I noticed it hurt slightly less than before, but not near well enough for me to actually walk.

 

I sighed and looked around me for some food. I was starving, and I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten. I spotted some berries on a nearby bush, but I was no environmentalist, so I didn't know if they were poisonous or not. Plus, I couldn't really climb down the tree anyway. I then thought about my backpack, and got excited for just a second before I realized I had left it back where I had slept off, when I had heard the gunshots. I mentally reprimanded myself while still looking around. I finally realized I was going to die if I didn't eat something, and right now that something was the possibly poisonous berries. So I could die of starvation without knowing there were perfectly good berries right next to me or die eating poison. Tough choices. There was still a good chance the berries were okay, so I ended up trying to find a way down the tree without killing myself.

 

I finally decided to just climb down with only one leg, and I went very slowly. I slowly slid down from my position to the branch below me. I was sort of grateful now that I didn't have my backpack to get caught on branches, but then again, if I had my backpack I wouldn't have to do any of this, I would have food right next to me. I finally got to the branch below me and proceeded to keep sliding down branches until I was probably ten feet from the ground and there weren't any more sturdy branches. I was going to have to jump the rest of the way.

 

I readied myself and jumped down, landing on one leg and collapsing. I put all my weight on one leg landing, and so my knee buckled and gave out, sending me crashing to the ground. I somehow didn't hurt my ankle because I threw my arms out to protect my fall. I slowed my heart rate and took deep breaths to calm myself as I sat on the ground, preparing myself to head for the berries.

 

After a few minutes I slowly stood up, putting all my weight on my right leg. I limped to the berries and just started stuffing them in my mouth. At first it felt really good, but after a few minutes of continually shoving them in my mouth, I threw up. I collapsed and wiped my mouth. I wasn't very hungry anymore, but I was thirsty. So I limped around a bit looking for a water source, but found none. Now I was really dead. I think I remember from my environmental class that a human can live without food for like a week, but only two days or something without water. The last time I had drunk water was early yesterday. And it was night the day after. Almost one day over. One to go. It was almost pitch black when I decided to climb back up the tree to try and get some more rest. I slowly and painfully climbed back up and got back to my original branch. I was very tired, but I knew I had to try some medical technique on my ankle or it would never heal.

I studied it for a while and finally decided to wrap it up in something and maybe try and push the bone back in tomorrow. I had nothing to wrap it with however, so I ended up stretching leaves around it, hoping that would be good enough. At last I could sleep, and I did just that.

A/N

  Thank you to everyone for all of the support, this is awesome that we have 650+ reads! If I get past 700 with this chapter, I may even do another update by the end of the month! I never expected this little project to go so far, and this is just the beginning. There will be more books if I ever get around to it, and I just can't wait to see how far we can take this. Thanks again for all of the support, I'm just so grateful. I'm planning to have 3-4 more updates by the end of March,  especially with February vacation around the corner. I'm so sorry for not updating for a while, but we just moved so it has been very crazy. We are almost settled in this new house which means I have more time to write, and as I hinted before, there will probably be another book being posted on here by the end of this month. That will be sort of a side project, but I think it's pretty cool, so I'll probably let you people see what you think. If it is up by the next chapter, I'll have a link to it at the end of the chapter. This is a long A/N, but I just wanted to let you guys (And girls I guess) know what was going on, and when my updates are coming. Thanks for reading, and please comment or vote, that'd be awesome!