When Given a Lemon

Part 39

I'm skidding down a very slick surface made of mud and frozen greenery, the wet foliage flying by me. I fell in my attempt to evade the bugs that had suddenly swarmed us from above just moments before.

“Shit!” I sputter as I land face first in a puddle of murky decaying plant matter, though happy I land in a puddle instead of on Lemon, or inside the Buzzballs nest like before. The ooze seeps into my mouth from my ill-timed cursing and I double curse myself silently as I try to spit the muck out.

I had hoped dodging the beasts would not have ended with me flying so far. Now I am quite a ways off from the path, more than forty steps from the dive bombing terrors that are still giving my companions a hard time up above. Wiping the muck from my face, I make to stand up, but the ground is slick and I slip down to my knees. Gravity, it seems, has it out for me and I am now entirely coated in cold muck and grime.

We are out in the unbroken wilderness, much farther westward than I had ever been previously; led here by news from another squad that had found “evidence of the big one” out this way. They should be court martialed. There isn't anything but mud and bugs out here.

The captain had wasted no time sending every able bodied and available squad out with him to dissect the area in question and that's where we spent the whole morning.

So far the only thing we and the three other squads with us have found are an unusually high number of the damn bugs. I hate these wretched insects!! I hate that I'm getting used to them! At first they were the terror I didn't ever want to face again, and now my brain registers them merely as a vicious nuisance. One to be wary of, for sure, but no longer a death sentence.

I'm being brainwashed by the military into believing that terror and monsters are a normal everyday occurrence!

Of course that doesn't make anything about our job of scouring the hillside for the massively insidious creature any easier.

My lower back is killing me. Enough so that I can barely feel the ache in my shins and knees when scraping them along the roots and stones hidden in the mud. It makes me wish the snow was still here. That at least cushioned me from everything I have the tendency to fall on when out here like this. Carefully getting back up, I still misstep and my foot goes a lot deeper into a puddle than expected. I catch myself barepalmed on the wet ground in front of me, grumbling as I pull my -amazingly- uninjured foot free of the mire, trying to ignore the sting in my palms.

I'd even take the freezing temperatures over this.

Merryl is up ahead. He had joined Kipol scouting further ahead.

We and the other squads had split ourselves up into subgroups. Kip and Merryl are acting as part of the advancing party while I'm somewhere in the middle along with Lemon, a kid named Chip, and three identical looking guys that swear they are not related.

Attempting to wipe the mud from my knees and thighs I try to stand again only to slip and land hard on my side this time. I hope no one can see me; this is beyond embarrassing by now.

How fucking hard can it be to stand?!
This damn mud is more slippery than ice is!

I have a feeling that I will be one large bruise by the time we are done here. For now I can already feel at least a dozen forming; one in the shape of the knife hilt that I landed on.

Despite all this, I’ve somehow managed to hold onto my spear. Though it's so coated with mud, no one would ever know what it truly was.

So far it's been my weapon of choice after the days of training I've had with Cayeol and Lemon, and later Lemon and Kipol, when I started to become more proficient. I can actually say that I’m fairly decent at wielding it, for a novice. At least I seem to be able to maneuver it better than I did the sword.