Ground Down

Chapter 29

The scratching hadn't stopped. It was the first thing that got through the fog persistently thickening inside her mind when she woke up or came back to, she could not tell whether it had been sleep or unconsciousness that had closed her eyes, but she could hear the scratching. The irregular scraping and screeching of large talons over metal. Damn wildlife. 

Raven blinked her eyes open, each eyelid heavy like a thousand stones, she could make out her own swollen skin and a white-ish blur that made her stomach clench and turn before the interior of the plane slowly came back to her. Its metal wall pressed against the back of her head. She tried moving her arm, uncooperative as if it had been pumped full of lead, she strained to breathe, eyes squeezing shut as she forced her head to the side to look down her shoulder. Her hand was still resting on the side of her rifle. Fingers limp on the trigger. God, they were heavy. She peeled her lips back trying to move them, felt the butt of the weapon dig into her ribs, her palm slapped limply down on it and she gave up with a strained exhale. 

Everything hurt. She was cold. Both sensations felt kinda numb with her head getting all foggy. Biology hadn't been her strongest subject, but she remembered enough of the symptoms of dehydration to know that was what caused the spinning and twisting, the sluggishness so leaden in her head. Two to three days. If she remembered right. A person could survive two to three days without liquid, they had taught her that, but, fuck, they hadn't mentioned how excruciating that would be. Her tongue was sandpaper in her mouth. It felt swollen. They had also taught her that animals learnt from the results of their behaviour, but, given the persistent scratching of claws impatiently dug into the metal plate that blocked off exit and entrance sure disagreed with that. 

From across her narrow little prison, John Murphy was glaring at her, limply leaning against the other wall with his head resting against the dent in it, one leg pulled up, his gun on his knee with his hand limp on its grip. It wasn't aimed at her anymore, it was just ready to aim at her again should she lift her rifle. That really heavy rifle Octavia had dug out of the back of the plane and then left to her when she had jumped out of the hatch. 

The metal plate shuddered, Murphy aimed at it, the gun shaking in his hands, but the metal bars that had once been part of the plane's upper structure that he had bent in front of it held. The animal on the other side threw a hissing and growling fit, she heard its sides thud and clunk against the debris. Another fit, that was. Raven tried to swallow. 

"Fucking radiation-infested abomination." Murphy put the gun back onto his knee. The wound on his head had dried. Finally. 

Raven narrowed her eyes at him. 

"If you say radiation-infested abomination one more time," she forced out through stiff lips. 

He raised a brow at her that pulled on every scratch and nick on his face because whatever was on the other side of that metal plate had gotten a good taste of him before he had managed to flee into her self-imposed prison and block off the only entrance and exit. Not that she had been able to get to it. Murphy scoffed at her. 

"Radiation-infested abomination. Radiation-infested abomination. Radiation-infested-"

Raven cut him off with a scream both anger and annoyance that died into a fit of dry, hacked coughs that brought blood hot and gross into her mouth. She spat at the floor, gagged, spat out again, and grabbed the rifle because he pulled on himself to get up and probably try to help her. She didn't need his help. He sunk back. She sunk back against the wall with her fingers slipping around the weapon and a taste in her mouth that qualified as beyond gross. 

He had helped her. In a way. She didn't remember much of the crash itself, she remembered going down, she remembered coming to on her back and feeling like she had been thrown into a pool of acid, she remembered screaming in pain, she remembered being unable to scream on because her muscles had all clenched, and coming to again to more pain. She remembered blood. She had been bleeding out on the floor and drowning in her own blood pooling in her throat when Murphy had barged in cursing and scrambling and added his blood to hers. He had propped her up against the wall once he had blocked out that radiation-infested abomination that had used him as a chew-toy, which had made her able to breathe, and he had tied off the gash in her thigh, he had wrapped her abdomen tight. And they had both been keeping each other company ever since.