The Survival

Chapter 43

Three days passed after my fight with Ed, I wish I could say that somehow we got out of the woods and now I'm waking up in the comfort of my bed, I could even go farther and say that it was all a nightmare and I was delusional, but it was nothing like that.

All we have been through is one hundred percent real, our pain, suffer and fear is there, and it isn't some illusion.

Nothing has changed these last three days, at least not for the better, Nathan is just as clueless as to why I had that fight with Ed and still doesn't know about my suspicions that him and Dylan are hiding something from all of us, I'm still trying to figure out what those two are planning but no success till now, we are still stuck in the same cave and we haven't tried any advance of leaving it because of Sarah's state which is getting worse.

No matter how much pills we give her, or the variety of them, she is not getting better and now no one else doubts that she was in fact poisoned and all because she fell into that trap.

I left the cave once, and it was to find the bear trap. It didn't take me long to discover it, the rain cleared some paths and the snow was not as uniform as it was before the storm. Many things surprised me about that devil engine, I first noticed how huge it was, it is a miracle how it didn't claw Sarah's leg. The second thing I noticed was a viscous liquid sticking to the teeth of the machine, which is rather interesting since the rain was supposed to clean it, but there it was. The third thing that surprised me was that the engine was fairly new and in good state, not a bit of rust was present, which made me wander that once again the mysterious owner of the woods and our tormentor attacks.

Or maybe it was just a bear hunter that came here, which may be good. Why good? Because it means we may have a chance of seeing a living soul that may help us escape... that is if we don't die by a famished bear.

Now, weird thing... bears hibernate during the winter, so why was the trap there? Perhaps, it wasn't for a bear, perhaps it was meticulous placed there as if waiting for us.

Beside there we have basically been starving for the last days, our food and energy is given to Sarah, my energetic bars were all for her and now there is nothing more left. Nathan keeps insisting that I should eat something that I can eat his food or the rest of food that he has because he doesn't want me to spend so much time without something edible in my stomach, but my patience has been running thin and I have been way too tired so I simple say no or ignore him, not wanting to cause a scene or hurt him.

However, something changed for the best, with Nathan's discover of the astonishing lagoon in the other cave everyone was able to take a bath. We were all dirty and in real need of cleaning, the most difficult part was getting Sarah into the lagoon but as soon as we managed to do that everything went smoothly.

"Why are they taking so long?" I break from my thoughts and look down only to see that Sarah was talking with me.

"What?" I answer her with another question because I was lost in my own mind.

"The boys. Why aren't they here yet?" I stop my movements on her hair and focus on the entrance of the cave. They left us for a while now with the intention of finding food, as they said we didn't have more food and it was necessary to find more. The nuts that Nathan and I found are all gone and there is no more food left, but the boys should be back by now and I don't like the idea of Nathan being alone with Dylan and Ed for so long.

"I don't know," I reply to her not knowing what more to say.

"Do you think that... they got l-lost?"

"I doubt it, they probably haven't found any food yet and they don't want to come back without finding something for us. The problem is that it's winter and it's really hard to find any type of food not only in this time of the year but also find some food that isn't burned by the snow."