May 24, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 18.85 Hours / 0.78 Days - 3:31 PM

Eury Morrissey

I held onto Kelly as we ran back to the others. For a single silent moment where all that I could hear was the sound of the pouring rain, and my heavy breathing, I was thankful. I was so glad that he had the strength to fight on. And that I was strong enough to protect him when he needed me the most. It was ten steps of happiness.

But, the sound of hundreds of footsteps gaining on at our backs dragged me back down to the concrete. I could hear the Banshee screeching out, spurring her infected on. Alaska and Davis met us halfway while Boyde provided continuous cover fire. Davis rushed to take Kelly out of my hands as Alaska went to grab me. I didn’t know how weak I felt until I was in her arms. My body had always been against me for years, but never as bad as these last few days. Fever. Hypoxia. Stress. Everything was just piling higher and higher and higher.

Davis was dragging Kelly behind him. Kelly’s eyes were dull, but at this moment we had bigger problems than that. All that mattered was that he was still alive. That he was still breathing. Everything else we could deal with when we got out of here. Now that there was a chance, as slim as it was, we needed to go, and not look back until we were safe again.

Step after step, I found running to be near impossible but I kept my mouth shut. We were getting close, close enough that I knew I couldn’t stop.

“Get on,” Alaska said.

“What?”

“Get on my back, let’s go!” This wasn’t the time to argue, so I jumped onto her back and let her carry me.

I hated it. Partly out of embarrassment, partly out of pride. But, more than anything else, it was Alaska’s ragged breathing that upset me the most. Her eyes were trained solely on the old girdered bridge ahead, never daring to glance back at the horde. We were less than three hundred feet away from open territory. Our way out of town.

That was when a realization hit me. Kelly’s windbreaker was ripped to shreds. Alaska’s jeans and her too-big boots were soaked. The clothes Davis and Kelly had on were terribly thin. There were no buildings to hide in and wait out the torrential downpour. None of us were prepared for this rain, and we still had a long way to go without any proper cover. And at this point, everyone looked as exhausted as I was. Fifteen miles of running while being chased? We couldn’t even make it fifteen minutes before we’d be caught and devoured. Or worse.

And yet, everyone just kept staring forward, charging toward what I knew to be certain death, and none of them seemed to mind.

Were they waiting for someone to say something?

Were they waiting for me to say something?

They didn’t want to die. None of us did, so why would they just continue running toward its waiting maw?

We were closer to the bridge now. The rust colored girders were dark brown, soaking wet. It was a bridge that I had seen so many times as a kid. By far, it was the most familiar sight in all of Sheridan for me. I knew that if I walked this road for long enough, I’d eventually get home. That was the way, right there. Yet, it couldn’t be the path we took.

When Wren screamed out again, she sounded sorrowful yet brimming with rage.

Had she found Teddy?

I ignored it. The distance to the bridge was shrinking, but so was the distance between us and the infected at our backs. They’d be on us soon if we didn’t do something fast—

Then, it came to me.

“This way!” I said.

I suddenly pushed myself off of Alaska’s back, breaking off to the right of the road, then vaulted over the steel divider. I slid down the gravel embankment leading to the river.

Alaska was hot on my heels but stopped before following me down. “What the hell are you doing, Eury!”

“This is the only way! Get everyone down here.”

Boyde arrived a second after Alaska, followed by Davis and Kelly.

“Get Kelly down here now! We don’t have time to argue,” I repeated.

“But the river?” Alaska cringed at taking the dive, more for my sake than for her. “There’s no way either of you can swim in your condition!”

“There’s no way we can outrun them either!”

Alaska glanced behind her. Between the mob and the river, Alaska decided the river was the lesser of the two evils. Boyde, Davis and Kelly followed. It was hard to watch how the two of them had to help Kelly get down the bank. I had no doubt that his body was messed up during that fight, but I didn’t think it would’ve shaken him that much. His movements looked mechanical like he was operating on nothing more than autopilot. I wished I could snap my fingers and make it disappear, but we’d need to survive this mess before we could start solving that problem. For now, my focus was on getting us out of here.

With all of us at the river’s edge, I braced myself for what I knew was coming next.

I led the charge into the fast-moving river, pushing my legs against the onslaught of water. Four feet in, the water finally managed to sweep my feet out from beneath me, and I lost all control to the river. Sharp spikes of cold speared my chest. The shock knocked out what little air I had in my lungs. Behind us, it sounded like a landslide as a tide of infected tumbled down the gravel bank. But that quickly became the least of my worries. My tank bag was dragging me down, and the cold had already sapped the energy from my muscles. I could barely keep my head above water, no matter how much I kicked.

That was until Alaska came to my rescue for the hundredth time today. She wrapped her hand around my chest, pulling me up onto my back. “Lay there as best you can, get your arms around your chest,” she said. I sputtered the freezing water out of my mouth as she turned her attention to the boys. “Group up!”

The tumultuous sky above disappeared as we floated beneath the bridge. It was a moment of reprieve from the rain, but as we crossed back into the open, it wasn’t just rain falling from the sky. Infected fell from the bridge at the command of the Banshee. Most of them succumbed to the cold like we had, their damaged bodies failing to recover from the shock. The few who managed began their assault. The water around us exploded into grasping hands and snapping jaws.

A long time ago, I watched a triathlon on TV. It was a perfect example of survival of the fittest. Everyone, competitors and friends alike, were blindly fighting through the water, unsure of what they were doing other than paddling and kicking. In the river, like the competitors on the screen, we were doing anything and everything we could to stay alive. It was the survival of the fittest after all.

After a few seconds of wrestling with the woman who had climbed on me, I managed to pull the handgun from the holster.

Bang!

With a single shot, I was free from her grip. Alaska, who had pulled away from me when they fell down on us, had drawn several infected away from me. She struggled for a moment before she was dragged underwater as three of them piled onto her.

BOOM!

But, with a single blast from her shotgun, they floated away dead in the water.

In the fight, my cannula had been pulled loose, forcing me to search around in the water for it. At that moment, my mind spit out another worry that I hadn’t even considered.

My concentrator. Where the hell is my concentrator?

There was no way I’d make it back to my parent’s place without it, even if we somehow made it out of this freezing river. I had just enough time to jam my waterlogged cannula back into my nose. Back on the bridge, Wren screamed out. At the riverbank, the few infected that weren’t plunging into the water had crouched down to drink at the river’s edge.

That cannot be good.

Everything was happening too fast. The river, the infected, everything was just happening all at once and I couldn’t keep any of it straight. But then, Kelly’s voice called out “Hel—” He was barely louder than the splashing water and infected bearing down on him. I started swimming as fast as I could to get to Kelly. But even though the shock had run its course, my muscles were weaker than paper paddles, and nothing changed the fact that I sank like a rock every time I had tried to swim in recent memory.

I was halfway across the river when Kelly’s head disappeared beneath the water.

“Kelly!”

No, no no! Where the hell is he!

“Kelly!”

Don’t you mean where’s your concentrator? That’s what you’re truly worried about, isn’t it?

The thought was disgusting, but I couldn’t argue against—

Bang! Bang!

Boyde, who was much closer to Kelly, dumped a couple of shots into an infected trying to sink him, freeing him up to help Kelly. Meanwhile Davis, a strong swimmer in his own right, kept himself above water despite an infected fiending to bite him.

All I could think about was my survival from second to second. I cared about Kelly. Of course, I did. But it was obvious that when the chips were down and it was me or him...

Whether it was guilt or self-serving survival, I kicked like I was chased by a shark and struggled through the water until I was at Kelly’s side. His face was still under, and his legs were kicking furiously to keep his arms up above water. I did my best, trying to propel him up with me.

“Bwah!” He sucked in a deep breath the moment his head cleared the surface.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Is the concentrator alright?” That was the first thing he said.

So selfless as always. If it were me, I didn’t think I’d be able to do the same. It made me feel like I was still the same self-serving person when all of this began.

I wanted to bite my lip. “Yeah… It’s fine,” I said, trying to take his mind off it. We had bigger things to worry about. His wide-eyed panic didn’t subside though. “Just lay on your back as best as you can. We need to get the hell out of this river as soon as possible.”

“Something’s got!—” Alaska, who had fallen to the back of the group, suddenly slipped under too.

Infected? A cramp? Was she too exhausted because of carrying you? Because she was protecting you?

“Go! I can handle myself!” Kelly shouted to me after seeing the indecision on my face. The second time, he showed me how little I had changed.

I started swimming against the current, searching through the dark water for Alaska. Hopefully, she’d still be floating downriver, even if she was trapped below the surface.

“Boyde! Alaska went under!” I called out for him. Out of all of us, Boyde was in the best shape and swam like he had webbed feet.

If it wasn’t life or death, it would’ve almost been funny to watch Boyde working so hard and not move an inch forward in the water. I kept paddling towards her as well, but it was irrelevant, because as the bridge disappeared behind the bend of the river, Alaska, drenched and screeching in pain, resurfaced a hundred feet behind us.

Now that she was floating downstream again, Boyde intercepted her, but the moment he did, she yelled at him.

“Ugghhhh! Don’t fucking touch me!”

Not resisting the current anymore, they drifted toward me and I caught onto Boyde’s sleeve. “What happened?” I asked.

“I dunno, but I—fuuuuuuck!—got pulled under, and now my arm is—ugggh!” She had her right arm pulled in close to her body like the wing of an injured bird, and she winced with every kick to keep herself afloat.

“I think you might’ve broken it, what the hell were you—” That was when I suddenly found myself falling.

It was funny, I didn’t even hear the waterfall—my mind was racing too fast to pay attention to more than one thing at a time—but I definitely felt it when I smacked down into the water ten feet below.

The wind was knocked completely out of me. My entire body now rolled in pain. I think I might’ve blacked out for a moment, only coming to when my shoulder smashed off a rock at the bottom of the river. I gasped and screamed all at once. The agony in my shoulder was distracting, but I tried my best to ignore it and search for Alaska. She was floating on her back, but certainly down for the count from how log-still she was. I needed to take control. And the first step was to do what Alaska would do.

“Feet downstream! On your backs!” I managed to actually sound like I knew what I was doing.

Boyde had already wrangled Alaska while Davis supported Kelly, which meant I had to fend for myself. Dizzy, freezing, and thrashed around by the rapids, I wished that I had someone there to support me.

Maybe it was just desserts. I was only concerned with myself at that moment, so why would I deserve to have anyone concerned for me.

I had no way of knowing how long we were thrown around in the river for. It could’ve been minutes or an hour, but finally, the river began to calm down. Between hypothermia, hypoxia, exhaustion, and melancholia; it was impossible to choose which was the worst. That was not even considering all the bruises, cuts, and the probable concussion I gathered along the way. The river slowed as it began to pool in a wide meandering bend. The rain was still pelting down while we pulled ourselves out of the water and onto the stony beach.

Finally back on dry land, I laid there for a moment in a pathetic attempt to get my bearings. Beneath my frozen skin, I could tell the fever that I thought was gone was already rearing its ugly head as a violent shiver.

“Ughhhaahh!” Alaska howled when Boyde pulled her out of the water.

I forced my way to my feet and ran over to her. “Oh good God that’s—” I had to stop before I said another word. Alaska’s forearm was twisted around, almost backwards at her elbow like someone wound it like a clock. “What the hell do we do?” Davis sounded hysterical, pacing back and forth like it would solve anything.

But Davis was right. Trauma care was more of Alaska’s specialty than mine. The thought of screwing her up even more made me dizzier, but she wasn’t in the right frame of my mind and I was the next best thing.

“Splint. We need to wrap that thing now.” I said more to myself, then out loud to them. “Kelly, I need some branches.” He looked at me like the words barely registered, so I pointed to the branches near him.

Kelly stared at me for a moment too long before he nodded.

“Davis, I need a belt, or shoelaces, whatever you’ve got to strap it all down.”

Davis stared at Boyde, who looked taken aback until he realized he was the only one among us that wore a belt. At least he wasn’t reluctant to give it up though. He took it off and handed it to me.

A few seconds later, Kelly returned with some branches I think he hacked with his sword.

With everything I needed, I immediately got to work. I had Boyde and Davis hold on to her. Once I rallied some courage with a few quick breaths, which Alaska did as well when she figured what was about to happen, I set her arm straight. Snap! Alaska was instantly possessed with pain. She kicked and squirmed, and the memories of Chuck came to mind. As I wrapped her arm tightly, I discreetly checked her for any other wounds. As far as I could tell she was bite-free, I think. Minutes later, satisfied with my slapdash splint work, I stood.

After surveying the rest of the group, I came to a quick assessment—we all looked like shit. Kelly was staring into the forest, and I couldn’t tell if he was concussed or scared. Davis looked tired and beaten up, no doubt from helping Kelly. Alaska looked as good as someone with a double fracture could be. And Boyde looked like a guard dog just shy of having rabies.

As for me, I knew the concentrator on Kelly’s back was good for twelve hours, which I had no doubt that I’d need. I took off my tank bag and turned my O2 down. Judging by the half-filled gauge, and the slightly increased airflow, I was able to guess at the time—quarter past four—since my watch hadn’t survived the river. At the new rate, this tank should last me until at least midnight. After that, if I ran the concentrator as low as I could, it could get me well into the next day.

There might be a way that this works. It was actually possible.

And it’s all thanks to Kelly sacrificing his well-being for yours.

I shook my head as I slipped my bag back on.

You don’t have time for this Eury. This isn’t the time, nor is it the place. You have a job to do. These people are depending on you. Your friends are depending on you. Just move on for now. If you survive, you’ll have time to hate yourself then.

And so, I set about figuring out where we were and how far away from my parent’s place we were. The small inlet that we had landed on was at the base of a steep wooded hill. Climbing would be difficult even in the best of cases and right now, we were not in the best of cases. While it would be a little rockier, we could head back downstream, try to get back on the road and walk from there. But, unless the mob of infected that forced us into the river to begin with magically disappeared, that option was off the table. We could cross the river. No matter how far downstream we had gone, I knew that the highway would be directly across from us eventually. The only problem was that there weren’t many places to go from there. It would just become a race against time to find somewhere that I could get more O2. That, or find somewhere I could go comatose and hope that liquid didn’t build up in my lungs too quickly.

Even considering that option made my blood boil. The way I saw it, no matter how difficult or impossible, the hill and the mountain was our only option. And if I were to die along the way, then at least it would be with dignity and grit. I recognized the mountains, but not enough to map out exactly where we were by them. After all, when you really get down to it, the mountains all looked about the same to me. The sun covered by the blanket of dark clouds took it out as a guiding option. Leaving me with only one choice.

“My parent’s place is this way,” I said, pointing away from the river.

“How do you know that?” Davis asked. Of course, the only one else who seemed to be fully together was the only one to question my leadership. If I was Alaska, maybe I would have said “Because I said so” or something along those lines. All I could muster was, “It’s my best guess.”

Davis didn’t look convinced, only daunted by the climb in front of us. “If… if you say so.”

“Are you okay to move?” I asked Alaska.

She was leaning against Boyde, looking extremely blue-lipped and out of it but, after a few seconds, she looked up at me and our eyes met. “I think so.”

“Okay. Get ready, I’ll grab Kelly.”

I needed someone to add a little more time in the oven for my half-baked plan. I needed Kelly to fight me on this one, poke holes in it until the water came out like a sieve. That would be the only way that we had a hope in hell of surviving this. As it was now, there was no way this could work, and yet there was nothing and no-one to help me figure it out. Except for him. I thought he could be the one again when I saw how familiar he looked. The roundness of his shoulders, the ridiculous balaclava that hid his surfer hair, even the shape of his just-about-muscular legs. I wanted to believe he was still there to be my crutch, but when I looked into his eyes, my heart dropped.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

And I couldn’t tell if he had complete faith in me, or if he had just given up.

May 24, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 17.87 Hours / 0.75 - 4:20 PM