The Mountains of Mourning

Book 1 - Chapter 4 - Patrick

Walking back, he left as many signs of his passing as possible, breaking branches wherever he could. When he had to return here in a few hours, he wanted to be able to find the pod, and not have to search around. Hopefully, it would be day by then, and he would have some light.

Tarsus lay where he had left him, bleeding, sweating and utterly helpless on the ground, next to his tree. Patrick had been in such a hurry to reach Hyram's pod, he had entirely forgotten the predicament the poor kid had been in. Flung from his trunk, but with no way to get back up. He ran towards him, scooping him up and putting him on the blood slicked wood. This wasn't a suitable spot, but he had nothing better. The morning would come soon now, or so he hoped. He would set out to find water.

The kid groaned, his hands and face twitching restlessly. Patrick dragged the case closer and searched through the foil-wrapped packets of medicines. There had to be painkillers here. Every kit had them in abundance. He bit off a corner of a meal bar, chewing on the hard, dry grains to get them to soften and easier to swallow. It felt like trying to break down a piece of rock, but every tiniest bit of it tasted like sweet heaven.

The pink one, he decided. It had to be the pink hypo-spray. He administered it, and to his relief he saw the boy quiet down, his hands falling limp. Maybe too much. Maybe a narcotic, instead of a painkiller. Well, it was too late now. He was out.

The loud moan almost made him jump. It came from the opposite direction, not from Tarsus. Another survivor? Someone was walking through the bushes towards the fire, making more noise than he thought possible. Was whoever it was trying to hit as many trees as they could? The moaning raised the hairs on his arm. He knew he should run towards them, help them, bring them to his fire, but he stood there, feet rooted to the ground. Terror filled his mind without reason. He couldn't think, he couldn't move. There was only that dreadful, forlorn and deeply tortured sound no human throat should make.

He squinted at trees, trying to pierce the darkness there. Did the shadows there look deeper? They did seem to move a little, but was that the wind or something trying to break through? The darkness had become more than the lack of light. It breathed, it moved, it had become a creature all of its own. His heart drummed a loud staccato in his chest and it got harder to breathe with every beat.

He had to help whoever it was!

He couldn't.

They needed his help!

He couldn't! No matter how hard he would try, he couldn't help anyone. When were they going to learn that? Look at him. Here he was, helpless. The youngster behind him was counting on him to save him, but what could he do? Precisely, nothing. And Hyram, out there in the wilds, he.... Well, he didn't want to think about that yet. He couldn't help him either. He couldn't help anyone, ever. He couldn't even breathe right, he couldn't... he couldn't...

The creature that broke through the bushes drove that spike of terror even deeper into his brain. He had been expecting one of his crew, or maybe one of the refugees. He had been counting on having to deal with more dreadful injuries, and his overactive imagination had already conjured up all kinds of horrific images of the wounds they might have suffered. What he hadn't been expecting was something... else.

It was human-shaped, walking slowly, lumbering, on two legs. Rags that once must have been proper cloths hung over an emaciated frame, its arms sticking out wide in front of it, as if it tried to keep its balance. Green tinged skin stretched tight over a face that was nothing more than a skull, torn in places, showing the white of bone gleaming underneath. Yellow teeth, some broken to sharp points, were bared in a silent rictus, chomping and gnashing on air with ravenous hunger. The eyes that fixed him on the spot were too wide, too round, and rolled from side to side in its head, without a scrap of recognizable sanity left.