The Huntress Descent

The Storm: Chatper Twelve

Sleep refused to come. The cough instead did. Maggie did her best to help me, but without drinking all of our rations of water, there wasn't much more do be done. At one point, I managed to doze off. My head slumping to the side as I no longer had the strength to keep it upright. It didn't last long. Minutes past before the coughing returned in full bloom producing yellow mucus from the back of my throat.

Preoccupied with my own predicament, I didn't register the whispers in the dark. Movement from the corner of my eye woke me to the pale light of the early morning.

Poe returned. His face blank. Dried tears staining his face. Not a word spoken from him.

He stopped by us, facing the direction the looked directly into the valley. He didn't interact with us, he didn't even look at us. His eyes fixated on the area where WICKED intended to meet us.

Maggie and Maya scrambled up, stuffing the few belongings we had back into the packs. Taking Poe's lack of interaction as a cue that they were leaving. Maya helped me from the floor.

"We better get moving. Today is the day," Maya said as she hooked her pack over her shoulder.

Whilst we had been waiting for Poe to return, they had spent some time redistributing our remaining supplies into the three bags. We counted enough to get us to the checkpoint. Enough to last a day more. The urgency to get to our salvation heightened with the dwindling number.

Maggie walked up to Poe and gave him his pack with his share of the supplies. He glanced down and without a word took it from her grasp. He slung it over his shoulder and continued to stare into the valley, as if nothing had happened.

For me, there wasn't a discussion. It was clear that I barely had the strength to keep myself upright. There was no way I could carry a pack as well. We were still scratching our heads as to how I managed it for the day I searched for them. I concluded pure spite. Maggie suggested stupidity.

We joined Poe by the edge of the cliff and studied the final part of our journey. One glance to the wasteland in the daylight didn't make the situation any better. There was still nothing out there. No tree, no hill. Certainly nothing that resembled a checkpoint.

"There's that girl group there." Maggie pointed down below. In the distance, a couple of miles out on the flat surface was the girl group walking straight ahead. "And look, there's another at the base."

I strained upward to spot the smaller group a mile or two west, heading the same direction as the girls.

"Wow, look how many of them survived," Maya said in a disheartened tone.

Lottie's death fresh in everyone's mind. I could only imagine what was going through their heads from seeing the size of the other groups. For the trio, it must have been a kick in the teeth to see so many of the other groups and have only them to survive their trials. How they wished that more of their friends, my friends, had the same opportunities as them. Why WICKED were adamant only a few would be allowed to be selected? In fact, I felt the same way. Remembering didn't mean I hadn't lost anyone. I lost the same friends and co-survivors. I too felt that this whole situation was unfair.

I cleared my throat. "We gotta keep moving. Just cause there's nothing there doesn't mean anything who knows what WICKED is up to? Come on."

The sky didn't lighten much as the morning tickled on. Clouds blew in from the west, grey and thick. Clouds. Last time that happened...

Maybe this storm wouldn't be as bad as the last. Maybe.

We followed the obvious trail that led down to the valley below, switching back and forth like a jagged scar on the mountain face. From a rough estimate, it would take us hours to reach the bottom of the mountain. Running was out of the question. The slopes turned out to be incredibly steep and slippery. Any wrong move from each of others resulted in injury. Or worse, death. That was a risk I was not willing to take. The ending was close, why do something silly at the last minute?