Blood Trail

"Turns out you don't need to see what's killing you to fight back. You just need a rock and enough spite to swing it."

My feet hit the ground wrong with every stride.

The dust swallowed my bare soles, sucking at them like quicksand, turning each step into a battle against the earth itself. I'd lost my shoes somewhere — left them by the fire when I'd passed out, hadn't thought to grab them when the world went to hell. Now the fine particles worked between my toes, abraded the soft skin of my arches, turned running into a lurching, stumbling nightmare.

I couldn't see where I was going.

The darkness was absolute, a black so complete it felt solid, like I was pushing through curtains of ink. My arms pinwheeled for balance, my lungs burned with dust-thick air, and somewhere behind me — or beside me, or in front of me, I couldn't fucking tell anymore — things were screaming.

Human screams. Animal screams. Sounds that might have been either or neither, torn from throats by terror or teeth or both.

I ran anyway.

The camp had become a slaughterhouse of noise and chaos. Paul and Glenda had been somewhere to my right when I'd bolted, but I'd lost them within seconds, the darkness devouring any sense of direction or distance. For all I knew, I was running in circles. For all I knew, I was running straight into the jaws of whatever had attacked us.

My foot caught on something — a rock, my own stupid fucking panic — and I went down hard.

The impact drove the air from my lungs in a single explosive grunt. My hands scraped across the ground, palms tearing on grit and stone, my knees slamming into packed earth with a force that sent lightning bolts of pain shooting up my thighs. I sprawled in the dust, gasping, choking, my face pressed into particles that invaded my mouth and nose and threatened to suffocate me.

Get up. Get up get up get up—

Another scream ripped through the night, closer this time, and I scrambled forward on hands and knees like an animal, like the prey I'd become. The wind lashed at my exposed skin, each gust carrying a payload of grit that stung like a thousand tiny needles. I couldn't tell if the wetness on my face was tears or blood or both.

I pushed myself upright and staggered forward, my legs shaking so badly they barely held my weight.

"Where the fuck am I!?" The words came out as a hiss, frustration and fear tangling together in my throat.

Nothing answered. The blackness swallowed my voice whole, offered nothing in return but the howl of the wind and the distant sounds of chaos.

Then I saw it — a flash of colour against the void. The portal's rainbow hues, dancing across the dunes in a brief, brilliant display that lit up the landscape like a lightning strike. For one precious second, I could see — the rolling contours of the dust, the jagged outline of rocks in the distance, the path that might lead to safety.

The light vanished, and the darkness crashed back like a wave.

But I'd seen enough. I broke into a jog, heading toward where the portal had been, my feet finding a rhythm despite the treacherous ground. The colours meant Luke was there, or coming back, or doing something that might help. The colours meant hope.

Another scream tore through the air — high and shrill and absolutely terrified.

I kept moving.

"Good. I'm going in," Luke's voice carried through the darkness, and the world blazed with colour again, the portal's light washing across the landscape in swirling patterns of violet and gold.

I was close. Closer than I'd thought. The light revealed the Drop Zone maybe fifty metres ahead, the supply boxes casting long shadows across the dust. Safety. Shelter. Something solid to put between myself and whatever horrors prowled the night.

Then something hit my legs.

The impact was massive, brutal, a force like a wrecking ball swinging out of the darkness to sweep my feet from under me. I didn't fall so much as launch — my body spinning, tumbling, cartwheeling through space with no sense of up or down or anything except the sickening vertigo of complete loss of control.

"Whoa!" The yell tore from my throat, more reflex than intention.

The dune caught me eventually, but not gently. I rolled down the slope in a chaos of limbs and dust, my head cracking against the ground hard enough to scatter stars across my vision, my shoulders and hips taking impacts that would leave bruises for weeks — if I lived that long. Sand filled my mouth, my ears, my eyes. The world became nothing but grit and motion and the terrible knowledge that I was completely, utterly helpless.

I crashed to a stop at the bottom of the slope.

For a moment, I just lay there. Stunned. Broken. My body screamed at me from a dozen different points of damage, but none of it seemed quite real, the pain muffled by shock and adrenaline and the absolute certainty that this was how I was going to die.

Then I felt the breath on my neck.

Warm. Moist. Coming in slow, rhythmic puffs that stirred the fine hairs at my nape and sent a cascade of ice water flooding through my veins. Something was behind me. Something was right behind me, close enough to touch, close enough to—

A droplet of saliva landed on the tip of my ear.

It traced a slow path down the curve of the cartilage, warm and viscous, and I understood with horrible clarity that this wasn't a random splash of moisture. This was drool. This was hunger made liquid, anticipation given form. Whatever crouched behind me was savouring the moment, taking its time, enjoying the fear that must have been radiating off me in waves.

A growl rumbled through the darkness.

Not like Lois's warning. This was deeper, wetter, a sound that seemed to come from a chest far larger than any dog's. It vibrated through the ground beneath me, through my spine, through my skull. It was the sound of something that had never known fear, that had only ever been the thing that other creatures feared.

Shit. Shit shit shit—

My mind raced through options and found nothing. I couldn't see. Couldn't run. Couldn't fight something I couldn't identify, couldn't gauge the size or shape or number of. I was pinned by my own terror, frozen like a rabbit in headlights, waiting for the end to come.

It came.

Teeth sank into my calf.

The pain was beyond anything I'd ever experienced — beyond broken bones, beyond cuts, beyond the worst injuries of my life combined and multiplied by a thousand. The teeth weren't just sharp; they were serrated, designed to grip and tear, and they punched through my skin and into the muscle beneath with an ease that spoke of evolution perfected for exactly this purpose.

I screamed.

The sound that ripped from my throat wasn't human. It was primal, animal, a shriek of pure agony that seemed to tear something loose inside me. My back arched off the ground, my hands clawed at the dust, my whole body convulsing in a desperate attempt to escape the source of the pain.

Then the creature started moving.

It dragged me backward, my body bouncing and scraping across the rough ground as those teeth maintained their grip on my leg. Every rock I hit was a fresh explosion of pain. Every metre of distance was a new layer of skin abraded away, a new bruise forming, a new threshold of suffering crossed.

I flailed wildly — arms thrashing, free leg kicking at nothing, fingers scrabbling for purchase on ground that offered none. I couldn't see what had me. Couldn't feel anything except the white-hot agony radiating from my calf and the nauseating sensation of being hauled through the darkness like a piece of meat.

Because that's what I was now. Meat.

"Help!" The word came out gargled, choked by dust and fear and the blood I could taste in the back of my throat. "Someone fucking help me!"

The creature didn't slow. If anything, it seemed to speed up, the jolts coming faster as it dragged me across terrain that was growing rougher, more uneven. I could feel my leg tearing inside those jaws, the muscle separating, the tendons straining. Could feel the warmth of my own blood soaking through my trousers, leaving a trail behind us that anything could follow.

I was going to die here.

The thought arrived with a strange clarity, cutting through the panic like a blade. I was going to die in the dark, in the dust, in a world that shouldn't exist, and no one would ever know what happened to me. Brianne would never know. Mum would never know. My daughter would grow up without a father, and there wouldn't even be a grave to visit.

Something inside me snapped.

Not broke — snapped. A rubber band stretched past its limit, releasing energy that flooded through my system in a surge of desperate rage. I wasn't going to die like this. Wasn't going to be dragged off and devoured without a fight, without making this thing work for its meal.

I twisted my body, ignoring the scream of protest from my leg, and grabbed at the ground with both hands. My fingers found a rock — not big, maybe the size of my fist — and I wrenched it free from the dust and swung it blindly, putting every ounce of strength I had left into the blow.

Contact.

The rock connected with something solid, something that wasn't ground or my own body. A yelp split the air — surprised, pained — and suddenly the pressure on my leg was gone, the teeth withdrawing with a wet, sucking sound that made my stomach heave.

The creature released me.

I didn't question it. Didn't wait to see if it would come back. I dragged myself forward through the dust, my wounded leg trailing behind me like dead weight, my arms doing the work of propulsion while my ruined calf screamed with every movement. Blood soaked my trousers, warm and spreading, and I could feel myself getting weaker with each passing second.

A light appeared in the distance.

Small. Faint. But real — a tiny beacon in the absolute darkness that offered something my terror-drunk brain couldn't quite process.

Hope.

The light grew closer, or I grew closer to it, the distinction impossible to make in my current state. A shadow passed in front of the glow — movement, something approaching — and my body tensed, preparing for another attack, another set of teeth, another round of agony that I wasn't sure I could survive.

It's too late, I thought, sinking back into the dust as the figure drew near. My arms had given out. My strength was gone. Whatever came next, I'd face it lying in my own blood, too broken to run, too exhausted to fight.

I closed my eyes and waited for the end.

A rough tongue slopped across my face.

The sensation was so unexpected, so utterly wrong for the death I'd been anticipating, that my eyes flew open in pure confusion. Warm breath. Soft fur brushing against my cheek. A wet nose pressing insistently against my jaw.

"Lois found him!"

Glenda's voice. Real and human and the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard.

"Lois," I whispered, my hand reaching up to touch the golden fur that I could barely see in the faint glow of what I now realised was a phone's torch. "Is it really you?"

My fingers found her coat, sank into the softness, and something inside me cracked wide open. Tears spilled down my cheeks, mixing with the dust and the blood and the sweat, and I didn't care. I was alive. I was alive, and Lois had found me, and Glenda was here, and maybe — maybe — I wasn't going to die in the darkness after all.

"Kain," Glenda said, pushing Lois gently aside as she knelt next to me, her hands moving across my body with practised efficiency. "Kain, are you okay?"

"Is he alive?" Paul's voice, somewhere behind her, threaded with fear and desperate hope.

I tried to answer, tried to form words that would convey my current state, but what came out was a garbled mess of sounds that bore no resemblance to language. My jaw hurt. My throat hurt. Everything hurt, but nothing hurt as much as my leg, which had begun to throb with a deep, nauseating pulse that made me want to vomit.

I jerked my chin toward my calf, the best I could manage.

"Yes. But his leg is wounded. Come help me move him," Glenda called out, her voice shifting into something more controlled, more professional. The doctor taking over from the terrified woman.

The phone's light swept across my leg, and I made the mistake of looking.

The fabric of my trousers was shredded below the knee, the tatters dark with blood that gleamed wetly in the weak illumination. Beneath the torn cloth, my calf was a ruin — puncture wounds visible even from this angle, the flesh around them already swelling, blood still seeping from holes that looked impossibly deep.

"My leg!" The scream finally found its way past whatever had been blocking my throat, tearing loose in a spray of bloody saliva. The sight of the damage made it real in a way the pain alone hadn't, made it undeniable, made it something I could no longer push aside or ignore.

I bit down on my tongue to stop the sound, bit too hard, felt the copper flood my mouth.

"I think it's bleeding," I managed, the words thick and slurred.

"It is," Glenda confirmed, her tone carefully neutral despite what she must have been seeing. She turned to Paul, her voice sharpening with urgency. "We have to get him out of this dust storm."

Paul appeared in my field of vision, his face pale and drawn in the phone's glow. I saw him look at my leg, saw the colour drain further from his cheeks, saw the slight pause as he processed what he was seeing.

Is my leg that bad?

The question spiralled through my mind, spawning worse questions, darker possibilities. Would I lose it? Would I ever walk again? Would infection set in, here in this primitive place with no hospitals, no antibiotics, nothing but dust and determination?

"You hold the light, I'll help him," Paul said finally, taking the phone from Glenda and passing it back to her. He moved to my side, his hands sliding beneath my shoulders, his grip surprisingly strong.

"Try not to let him put pressure on the leg," Glenda instructed.

"Okay. We can seek shelter at the Drop Zone for now," Paul replied, his voice steadier now that he had a task, a purpose, something concrete to do. He looked down at me, his eyes meeting mine. "We're going to stand."

The next few minutes were a blur of agony.

Paul lifted me, my weight shifting onto my good leg while my wounded calf dangled uselessly, every jostle sending fresh waves of pain crashing through my nervous system. I bit down on my already-damaged tongue, tasted more blood, focused on that smaller pain to distract from the larger one.

We moved.

Each step was a negotiation between Paul's strength and my remaining balance, between forward progress and the constant threat of collapse. The wind howled around us, throwing dust into our faces, but it seemed weaker now, the storm beginning to subside. The phone's light carved a narrow path through the darkness, revealing the ground a few feet at a time.

I focused on that light. On the next step. On not passing out, not screaming, not giving in to the darkness that kept trying to pull me under.

I must be leaving a trail of blood, I thought, the realisation arriving with sickening certainty. Every predator within a kilometre would be able to track us now, would be able to follow the scent of my life draining into the dust.

My body shuddered, a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the cold.

Then the portal's light blazed to life, painting the night in swirling colours, and the Drop Zone materialised before us — supply boxes stacked in neat rows, the marker stones visible for the first time since the attack began.

"Paul!" Luke's voice rang out, filled with relief and concern.

"We're almost at the Drop Zone," Paul shouted back, his breath coming hard from the effort of supporting my weight.

"I need to check the house. I'll be back soon," Luke replied, his voice already fading as the portal's colours began to shift and swirl, preparing to receive him.

Then he was gone, and the darkness returned, and we were alone again — just me and Paul and Glenda and Lois, sheltering among the boxes while the wind slowly died and my blood slowly pooled in the dust beneath my ruined leg.

"Do you think we're safe here?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper as we settled between the larger crates, the supplies forming walls around us.

"Lois hasn't growled since we found you," Paul responded, attempting optimism that neither of us quite believed.

Glenda was already working on my leg, the phone's light revealing her hands as they moved with practised efficiency, assessing the damage, applying pressure to the worst of the bleeding.

"As soon as the wind calms, we need to get back to camp. Kain's leg needs care," she said firmly.

"Of course," Paul agreed, his head falling back against one of the boxes, exhaustion evident in every line of his body.

The fear was still there — coiled in my gut, humming through my veins — but it was duller now, muted by blood loss and shock and the simple fact that I was still alive. The pain in my leg had settled into a constant, throbbing ache, the kind of pain that became background noise if you let it.

I didn't feel safe. Not truly. The memory of those teeth sinking into my flesh, the sensation of being dragged through the darkness like a ragdoll — those things would live in my nightmares for the rest of my life, however long that turned out to be.

But I wasn't alone. That counted for something.

My eyes grew heavy, my consciousness beginning to drift. The last thing I heard before the darkness took me was Lois's soft whine and the steady rhythm of Glenda's breathing as she worked to save what was left of my leg.