Into Oblivion

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

       As the pieces of Hope’s vision phased back into reality she rubbed her neck and found she had goosebumps. She sat up and put her back to an empty wagon; trying to reduce the weight she put on her legs. She sighed and looked around; the air was thick with dust, as if the quarry itself didn’t want her to see what lay ahead. As she rose, she covered her mouth with her sleeve. She inhaled. She then took a better look at her surroundings; she had landed on a ledge, and directly in front of her was a huge chasm. She exhaled and reflected on how lucky she was; although maybe death would have been preferable in her circumstances. Suddenly Hope felt dizzy; and she felt extreme pain in her thigh. She reached out and felt her gunshot wound, pain surged up her leg as her hand connected with her thigh. Slowly she pulled her hand away and looked at it; blood was running down onto her wrist. She ripped off the sleeve she wasn’t using to purify her breathing air and tied it tightly around her wound. She was no doctor, but she knew that if she didn’t get medicine soon blood poisoning would probably finish her off before the cleavers could even find her again. This thought frightened her into moving, she staggered towards a mine shaft that was relatively close to her and began her long walk through the darkness towards anyone, or anything that could help her.

      After about three hours of blindly wandering around in the silent, pitch black caves Hope finally emerged near a barren hill, her energy supply had been completely sapped. Between running from the cleavers, falling down a quarry and wandering through a cave for three hours, it was amazing she could move at all. The light blinded her as she emerged from the cavern; even if it was only early morning.  She staggered towards the bottom of the barren hill and tripped over a bit of dead, shrivelled wood; she could no longer get back up.  She saw a bush of herbs in the distance and crawled, half conscious, towards them; she didn’t even know if they would help her now. Suddenly, the allure of death hit her; she could be free from this existence, free from the terror that it brought. As much as she wanted to curl up and die at that moment a primal desire to survive was taking over her thought processes; giving her the will to go on. She kept on crawling. As she reached the herbs she noticed that her vision was steadily going white. She no longer cared what the herbs were, and bit them while they were still attached to their stalk. She chewed until they were mush and swallowed them; it was still like swallowing thorns, even in their mushy state. Suddenly her vision flared orange and everything started to spin. She heard a distorted voice in the distance. Hope got frightened. Then, for the second time in a day, everything went black.