Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (reading list txt) 📗

The cat-thing sprang right over me, its tawny underbelly less than half a foot over my head. My dive brought me over the stream banks and I rolled over as fast as I could, ready for the beast’s return. When I looked, there was nothing there.

The cool water of the stream brought instant relief to my wounds. A shudder ran through me and I lay back in the water, letting it cascade over my body. The frigid liquid whisked away the pain and heat from the stings and had the added effect of slowing my pounding heartbeat. A wave of exhaustion settled over me and I relaxed, folding my hands under my head as I stared at the sky. I wasn’t sure how much venom had entered my body, or how much. The only way to see how this would affect me was time. All in all, it wasn’t a terrible way to go. If the venom was making its way through my circulatory system, falling asleep like this was pretty nice. The water carried away the stink from the wounds and the temperature relieved the growing fever inside of me. While I waited for god or nature to decide whether or not my life would end that day, I reflected on what a strange end to a long life this was.

“I’m sorry, Fiona.”

At least she would think that I was still out here somewhere. Perhaps my bones would go undiscovered for a while, or the stream would cover them in gravel and sand. Marcus had already taken on being the man of the house, he would be able to take care of his mothers and ensure that a settlement was properly established. Eliza...well, Eliza would probably dance a jig all the way to my unmarked grave. Before I could think anything else, the world went black.

I woke up with a sharp pain in my cheek. I opened one eye to see a brightly colored bird of some kind quirking its head at me one way and the other. “Mmph, piss off.” I growled at the thing. It danced back a couple of inches...and flew atop my head and resumed its pecking. I flexed my hands and the tips of my fingers had gone numb but they were mobile and I swatted my assailant away. I pushed myself on to my elbows and found that my muscles worked. I flexed my toes. Those worked too. The sun was dipping lower in the sky. I had been out for at least an hour or two. Examining my wounds showed that the progress of the venom had slowed. The stings themselves were still red and puffy but the skin around them had settled down to my regular tone. My head pounded and my stomach threatened to bring up the remnants of my stomach, but it didn’t feel like I was in immediate danger of dropping dead.

With no other obvious source of food and extremely limited water, my time was up. Rationing food had caused me to lose a good amount of muscle and fat; I didn’t have nearly the reserves that I used to. As it was I would require medical treatment for the stings-adding severe dehydration and malnutrition to that was going to make recovery that much harder. Time to get that fire going.

Chapter Twenty

I spent the remainder of the day carrying the utility spade everywhere I went. There were no guarantees of it being remotely effective as a defensive weapon if the cat-thing or something worse showed up, but the psychosomatic sense of security it provided made me feel better. I scanned the ground for any more dried animal dung and found quite a few the further I walked from the shelter. I gathered as many piles as I could hold. I thought that I might be able to use it as some kind of border for my camp, make the place stink badly enough that cat-thing and friends wouldn’t want to come anywhere near me. I deposited my fetid treasure at camp and after procuring a fresh set of bugs and dispatching them to their maker along with a hearty compilation of plants and grass, I decided to explore. There wasn’t much to see. The area around the shelter entrance had clearly suffered because of the storms. I ran across a few weathered tree stumps, too broken and battered to be of any use to me. I determined that I could set a fire a little under six hundred feet from the shelter’s cameras that would grow big enough to get someone’s attention. Not that I was going to count out six hundred feet. Even I didn’t give that much of a crap about precise measurements. Close enough would do, that is if I didn’t manage to turn myself into a piece of charcoal first.

My kingdom for a tree.

On my second circumnavigation of the shelter’s entrance, I saw something just over the horizon that answered my prayers. I jogged over and found myself looking at a small cluster of brush, sprinkled sparingly with thin trees. It was as if a pocket of nature had stood up in defiance of the climate disaster and held on for dear life. I gave the area a cursory inspection. Meeting one large predator was more than enough for one day. As no immediate threat presented itself, I noticed something odd. The sounds of small animals filled the little forest. They had silenced themselves when I drew close but if I stood stock still, I could hear the voices of prey animals return to the air. My stomach growled at the idea of something more substantial to eat than the tiny crabs. I reassured it by promising myself a dinner of whatever was out here after I planned out my signal fire.

The trees were young, not much bigger around than my arms. I shook one vigorously and was rewarded with a shower of some kind of nut. I twirled one between my fingers.