Eliza and I stumbled over to my friends who were clustered in the center between the 2 walls of the canyon, trying to avoid the rocks falling from the sides.
"Well don't we have have rotten luck," Bryan muttered dodging out of the way of a rock that nearly brained him.
"We need to move to a wider part of the canyon!" Eliza screamed at us. "We're too close to the walls here! Follow me!"
She dashed away and we followed, though not quite as fast. It was difficult trying to navigate around the big pieces of medal, and besides that we had two leg injuries and a concussion we had to deal with. Kayla and Flora were helping Carly while Hayden and Bryan supported James. I just tried to ignore the pain in my head as I ran. I was not going to pass out again!
Rocks continued raining down on us. Several little pebbles scraped my arms and face and I was constantly forced to dodge the bigger ones that might have done permanent damage. Finally we broke into a wider area where our only problem was the shaking ground. Carly and James collapsed in the center. The rest of us huddled together around them.
We didn't move until the shaking stopped. It seemed like an eternity before that happened though. Next to me I could feel Flora trembling. But, then again, that might have just been me. When the earthquake ended my head still felt like it had been put in a blender. My thoughts were jumbled, I was blinking spots out of my eyes, and it seemed like the sides of the canyon were trying to achieve lift off.
When my vision finally cleared I realized I was on the ground, but so was everybody else. Good. I don't want anyone knowing this concussion doesn't seem to be getting better.
We sat in silence for a while. Just taking comfort from the fact that we were all still alive.
"What do we do now?" I coughed, noticing for the first time that I was extremely thirsty. I could hardly swallow. "And do we have any water?"
I glanced around at everybody, they all just shook their heads.
"We must have left it back at the plane," Kayla finally replied. "Someone should go back and retrieve the supplies that we found."
"Why don't we just all go back?" Bryan asked.
"Well, two of you have leg injuries so that makes it really hard to move around a lot," Erica responded as if it should have been obvious, which it was. Bryan opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it. After being screamed at this morning he was probably pretty wary of disagreeing with anybody.
"So how about Bryan, Flora, Erica, and I go get the stuff and Tessa and Hayden can keep an eye on James and Carly," Kayla stood up, ready to set out. Bryan, Flora, and Erica all followed suit. Soon they had all turned the corner and were out of sight.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, for just a minute my headache seemed to subside a bit and I could think clearly. My concussion must not have been getting much better because I could've sworn I heard growling somewhere behind me. I just figured it was me hallucinating though.
But something in the back of my mind made me suddenly alert. My eyes snapped open as I tried to remember.
What had I been doing right before the earthquake? I had been talking to Eliza...
"Guys!" I jumped up, startling Hayden who was sitting next to me. I looked at him and tried to calm down. "We need to be ready and alert!"
"Why?" Hayden sounded worried. "What's wrong?"
"It's something Eliza told me, something about there being a lot more scary stuff down here then you'd think." I struggled to think, had she told me anything else? I didn't think so. "I'm not sure what kind a scary stuff but she was pretty worried about it."
Carly screamed. I looked at her. She was shaking and pointing at something behind me. I turned and would have screamed too if I could convince my body to work properly.
"Well," James started, his voice unusually high. "I think the scary stuff found us."
Standing about 10 yards away was an animal that could only be described with one word, monster.
