71

Chapter 71

"Ouch."
I peek out through one eye, ready to close it if I don't like what I see.
The first thing my brain registers is a moderately familiar face, a couple feet from mine.
"She's alive!" Glass cries, and I hear more warm voices, footsteps coming from all directions. That means lots of people. Surrounding me.
"Nope," I protest, closing my eye again, and letting my head thud back to the ground from which I hadn't even realized it had left. "Nope, I'm dead. Too bad." I grimace when the pain finally registers. I didn't even know it was possible to have bruises in so many places- I have bruises on my bruises!
Obviously, my attempt at feigning death has failed, so I give up, and open both my eyes, sit up, blinking at the sudden onrush of voices and light.
My nostrils flare at the sudden, distinctive scent of heavy campfire smoke, as well as the welcome, mouthwateringly familiar odor of roasting meat. Food...
It's dark out, but with a pale grey haze in the distance, sometime in the naked hours of the morning. The wall of the mountain rises up on my right, towering and sheer. My eyes drift a little ahead, up the slope, and my suspicions are confirmed- A thirty foot gap of blackness breaks the trail ahead.
Glass gently lies me back down on the ground, and begins to explain what has happened for the survivors that were stranded.
So I was right; The surviving groups and families had congregated before the break in the path, and for the days we had went ahead, me and Coal, they had broken in a system, and pooled their resources, which had only lasted a day, as Glass told me, before all the food and water was gone completely. Since me and Coal had went on ahead, ten more of the survivor's number had perished of famine and dehydration, freezing rain and snow- Seven of them had been children.
Now, according to Glass, there are merely twenty one remaining survivors. Twenty one of them are middle-aged (Read: Old).
Apparently I had a broken rib, but he patched that up before I woke, as well the many uncountable other scratches and gashes and scars and bruises I've acquired, though all the medicine in the world will fix the soreness in my body, which he says will be there for at least a couple days, and I know from experience will be there much longer than that.
He explains to me what has happened over the past few days, all that has come to pass, while I zone out and wrack my brain, trying to remember something that seems important. What had I been doing before I passed out...? Wasn't... No-
I sit up, ignoring the protesting of every muscle, every fiber in my body, blinking and rubbing my eyes, trying to recall what was so important.
Does anything really matter anymore?