Surviving

Chapter 11

Under the trees, away from the light of the fire burning at the centre of the ape village, the wind chilled you to the bone. The darkness seemed to swallow you whole in its icy embrace, the trees blotting out the little light from the moon and stars, leaving you to stumble blindly along the forest floor.
You had planned to walk throughout the night, knowing that it was dangerous to be alone in the woods without a shelter, but the cold sapped the strength from your bones and stumbling your way over hidden logs and bushes became harder with each step you took.

“Screw this” you muttered, flopping down against a tree trunk. “Breaking an ankle won’t get me to the hut faster” As if in response, a light pattern of rain started up, slowly but surely beginning to drench you.
“Shit’s sake!” you hissed, staring up towards the tree canopy angrily. “You sure as hell aren’t making this easy for me!” Still grumbling, you began pulling branches together, forming a crude shelter that you promptly crawled into to escape the worsening weather. “Can’t catch a break, I swear” you muttered angrily, tossing and turning on the muddy ground. You doubted you’d sleep well like this but exhaustion wins against even the worst conditions and before long, consciousness had abandoned you.

An animal attack isn’t like in the movies. There was no struggle for survival. There was only a bone-deep fear, prey-instincts triggering in a way that left you shaking and terrified. There was no warning for you, huddled beneath your makeshift shelter, sleeping fitfully. There was a sharp, burning pain in your leg and then, all at once, you were yanked from the relative warmth of your pile of leaves and dragged out into the icy cold slush of the forest floor. Your scream of terror was ear-piercing and drawn out.

There was a vicious snarl above you and the pain in your foot disappeared for a moment. You immediately curled up into a foetal position, hands clutching your head, face-down in the dirt. A heavy weight landed on your back, startling another cry out of you. The animal above you moved and then there was a burning pain down the right side of your body. You could only gasp weakly at this new pain. You reached an arm back, vaguely trying to shove the beast off you. Claws sliced through your arm and you quickly wrenched it back. The animal, seeing its opportunity, immediately lunged at the vulnerable point of your shoulder, crunching down on the bone and tearing through muscle. You screamed in agony, your entire body jerking with the pain. It then began to shake you, causing near-constant waves of agony to go through your body.

You may have blacked out for a moment because next you knew, the shaking had stopped. The animal let go of your shoulder, allowing your body to drop limply to the ground. You lay there, barely daring to breath lest it take that as encouragement to attack you again. It felt like years before the light pat of feet in mud signalled its exit. You lay there in the mud, blackness taking over your vision and then you knew no more.

An animal attack isn’t like in the movies, no benevolent entity shows up afterwards to take you to their cosy house in the woods and bandage up your wounds. And so you had the wonderful experience of waking up an indeterminable amount of time later by yourself, in the middle of nowhere, bleeding out into the mud.

You felt like throwing up, either due to blood loss or the splitting headache you had contracted, you weren’t sure. All you knew as you lay there in the pouring rain, shivering in pain and shock and staring up at the clouds blocking the stars, was that this was where you would die.

“See you soon" you whispered up at the clouds.

Another thing that the movies don’t tell you: Dying isn’t that easy.

You realised this after about half an hour of laying in a puddle of blood and mud and coming to the conclusion that this may take a lot longer than you had expected. You squirmed a little on the cold, slushy ground, trying to get remotely comfortable. You failed, miserably.

Eventually, tiring of feeling your blood seeping sluggishly into the ground, you decided that your time may be spent more productively if you were to try and move. And if that caused you to bleed out faster, all the better. With many a groan of agony, you managed to pull yourself over to a tree and get yourself into a more or less vertical position. Halfway through the process you realised you wouldn’t be in this situation if Koba wasn’t such a grudge holding arsehole. “Fuck you, Koba" you muttered under your breath, “Fuck you”

Throughout that long, agonising night, it became something of a mantra with every painful step you took.

“Fuck you, Koba”

“Fuck you....Koba"

“Fuck....you....”

“.....Koba....."