Try Not to Get Eaten

"The bloke who ruined my life sent me crutches with a note telling me to stay alive. I still don't know if that's kindness or quality control."

I woke to silence and the particular quality of light that meant I'd slept far longer than intended.

Sunlight streamed through the caravan windows at a steep angle, painting golden rectangles across the floor that had shifted well past their morning positions. The camp sounds filtering through the thin walls weren't the quiet stirrings of early risers but the established rhythms of a day already well underway — distant voices, the clatter of activity, life continuing without me.

Henri was gone from his bed, which meant someone had collected him at some point. Paul, probably. Or Karen. Someone who'd checked on me and decided to let me sleep while they got on with the business of survival.

My leg announced itself before I'd fully sat up — not the sharp agony of fresh injury, but the deep ache of tissue that was healing and resented being disturbed. Two days since the shadow panther had tried to make a meal of my calf. Two days of river water and desperate hope and whatever dark bargain I'd struck at the lagoon. The wound was better. Not healed, but better.

I swung my legs off the mattress and tested my weight on the floor. The protest was immediate but manageable. I could stand. Could probably walk, after a fashion, though every step would cost me.

The caravan felt smaller in the late morning light, its walls pressing in with the claustrophobic intimacy of prolonged confinement. I needed air. Needed to move, to do something other than lie here cataloguing my failures while the rest of the camp worked to keep us all alive.

I pushed open the door and stepped outside, squinting against the brightness.

That's when I saw them.

Crutches. Proper aluminium crutches with padded grips and adjustable height settings, leaning against the caravan's exterior wall like they'd been waiting for me. The kind you'd find in a hospital supply room or a physiotherapy clinic, impossibly mundane and impossibly welcome.

A piece of paper had been tucked into the grip of the left crutch, folded once and secured with a strip of tape. I retrieved it with fingers that felt clumsy, unfolding it to reveal a handwritten note in script I didn't recognise.

Heard about the leg. These should help until it heals properly. Try not to get eaten by anything else in the meantime. — L

Luke.

I stared at the note for longer than the words warranted, trying to reconcile this small act of consideration with everything else I knew about the man. Luke, who'd shoved me through a portal without warning. Luke, who'd taken advantage of Grant and Sarah who believed they were on a temporary assignment. Luke, who collected people for this dimension like specimens for a display case.

Luke, who'd apparently thought about my injury and done something about it.

The crutches were exactly the right height. Of course they were. Luke had probably noted my measurements during one of our brief interactions, filed the information away for future use. The gesture felt calculated even as it solved an immediate problem — a reminder that I was being watched, assessed, managed.

But my leg didn't care about motivations. My leg cared about not having to support my full weight with every step.

I tucked the note into my pocket and tested the crutches properly, swinging forward a few paces on the packed sand near my caravan. The relief was immediate. For the first time since the attack, I could move without feeling like my calf was being slowly peeled apart.

Try not to get eaten by anything else.

Despite everything, the corner of my mouth twitched upward.

Movement at the edge of camp caught my attention. Nial was heading toward the perimeter, his stride carrying the purposeful energy of someone with somewhere to be.

"Nial!" I called out, my voice rougher than expected from disuse. "Where are you headed?"

He turned, surprise flickering across his features when he saw me upright and mobile. His gaze dropped to the crutches, then back to my face.

"Drop Zone. Paul wants eyes on the fencing supplies — Beatrix was supposed to bring them through hours ago." He paused, something shifting in his expression. "You should be resting."

"I've been resting." I made my way toward him, the crutches finding their rhythm on the harder ground. "I've done nothing but rest. I'm going mad in that caravan."

"Your leg—"

"Is healing. And these help." I lifted one crutch slightly in demonstration. "I can make it to the Drop Zone."

Nial's jaw tightened, the look of a man weighing arguments he knew he'd lose. "It's a long walk. The sand's loose in places. You'll be exhausted before we're halfway there."

"Then I'll rest when we get there." I kept moving, kept closing the distance between us, making it clear that turning back wasn't an option I was considering. "I need to do something useful, Nial. I can't just lie around while everyone else works."

"You were nearly killed two days ago."

"And I'm still here." The words came out sharper than I'd intended. "Look, I know I can't carry fence posts or dig holes or do any of the actual work. But I can at least be there. I can help figure out logistics, keep track of inventory, something. Anything."

Nial studied me for a long moment, his expression caught between frustration and something that might have been respect.

"You're a stubborn bastard, you know that?"

"So I've been told."

He shook his head, but I could see the fight draining out of him. "Fine. But if you collapse halfway there, I'm not carrying you back."

"Fair enough."

We set off together, Nial adjusting his pace without comment to match my halting progress. The crutches weren't designed for sand — every swing forward required effort, the rubber tips sinking into the loose ground, my arms burning with the strain of propelling myself across terrain that seemed actively hostile to assisted mobility.

But I was moving. I was outside. I was doing something other than staring at caravan walls and drowning in my own thoughts.

The journey to the Drop Zone took three times as long as it should have.

By the time we crested the final hill, sweat had soaked through my shirt and my shoulders felt like they'd been worked over with a cricket bat. I'd stopped to rest more times than I wanted to count, each pause accompanied by Nial's pointed silence — he didn't say "I told you so," but his expression said it loudly enough.

The Drop Zone sprawled before us, the familiar chaotic jumble of crates and packages and vehicles that had accumulated since the settlement's founding. The portal shimmered in the distance, its colours muted in the light but still visible, still wrong, still a wound in reality that refused to scab over.

But something was different today.

Movement near the portal caught my attention — a flurry of activity that stood out against the relative stillness. Beatrix stood beside a motorhome, her posture rigid with the particular tension of someone dealing with an unexpected complication. Paul loomed over a figure sprawled on the ground in front of the vehicle, his body language broadcasting concern and urgency in equal measure.

I squinted against the glare, trying to make sense of the tableau.

The figure on the ground was a man — that much was clear. He lay on his back in the dust, limbs arranged in the boneless sprawl of someone who'd either fallen or been placed there without much care for comfort. His movements were sluggish, uncoordinated, the motions of a person fighting their way up from the bottom of a deep well.

"Everything okay?" Nial's voice cut through my focus, noticing I'd stopped moving.

I drew in a breath that tasted of dust and distance.

"Yeah," I replied, the word barely more than a whisper. "But something's going on down there."

Nial followed my gaze, his eyes narrowing as he took in the scene. For a moment he was still, processing what he was seeing.

Then his entire body went rigid.

"Shit! Adrian. What the hell are you doing here?"

The exclamation hit the air like a gunshot. Before I could process the words, Nial was already moving, his longer stride eating up the distance between us and the prone figure. He dropped into a crouch before the man, hands finding shoulders, delivering sharp slaps to a face that seemed to be having trouble staying conscious.

I followed as quickly as the crutches would allow, my mind racing to connect dots that refused to align.

Adrian. The name meant nothing to me — another stranger in a dimension that seemed determined to collect them. But the way Nial had said it, the recognition that had flared in his voice, suggested history. Connection. The kind of prior relationship that made this encounter something more than coincidence.

The man on the ground was coming around, his features resolving into something approaching awareness. He was maybe late thirties, with the kind of face that might have been handsome before whatever substance was currently swimming through his bloodstream had slackened its muscles and glazed its eyes.

The smell reached me before I got close enough to help.

Marijuana. The unmistakable sweetness of recently smoked cannabis, thick and cloying, wrapping around my sinuses with aggressive familiarity. My nose twitched, a sneeze building behind my eyes, and I had to turn away briefly to let it explode into my elbow.

"Not surprising," Luke's voice drifted over from somewhere near the portal, casual and unconcerned. "Hobart's a small place."

I turned toward the sound, finding him standing near the portal's edge with the relaxed posture of someone observing rather than participating. Our eyes met briefly, and something flickered across his expression — acknowledgment, maybe, or just the satisfaction of seeing his gift being put to use. He glanced at the crutches, nodded once, and returned his attention to the chaos unfolding around Adrian.

The comment about Hobart landed with the weight of explanation — Nial and Adrian knew each other from back home. Tasmania's population was small enough that connections overlapped, that degrees of separation compressed into something approaching inevitability. Of course they knew each other.

Paul turned toward us, his eyes carrying the particular exhaustion of a man who'd been dealing with problems since before sunrise and could see no end in sight.

"Can you two take him back to camp?" he asked, the request framed as a question but carrying the weight of an order.

Nial was already hauling Adrian upright, his grip on the other man's shoulders firm despite the frustration that radiated from every line of his body.

"Let's get you to camp," he said, the words balanced between reassurance and command.

I looked down at my crutches, then back at Adrian's unsteady form. Supporting another person's weight wasn't exactly compatible with my current mobility situation.

"We'll come back," I offered instead, the words directed at Paul but really an acknowledgment of my own uselessness.

Adrian's head lolled in Nial's direction, his eyes finding focus with visible effort. Recognition flickered there — not of the situation, but of the man holding him upright. His jaw tightened with the stubborn determination of the chemically impaired.

"I'm just getting the rest of my gear," he insisted, the words slurring around their edges but carrying enough force to suggest he meant them.

He lurched toward a ute parked nearby — the vehicle he must have arrived in, dragged through the portal along with its driver in whatever violent transaction had deposited him here. His hands grasped at the door handle with the desperate coordination of someone clinging to the last fragments of a life that had just been torn away.

Nial tried to intercept, his voice rising with the frustration of a man who'd already exceeded his patience quota for the day. The argument that followed was loud and circular, two people talking past each other in the universal language of stress and incomprehension.

I watched from a few feet away, my weight balanced on the crutches, my own frustration building with each passing second.

The sun had climbed toward its peak, heat pressing down with the weight of a physical presence. We'd come here for fencing supplies — materials that would protect the camp, that would give us a fighting chance against the predators that prowled the darkness. Instead, we were wrangling a stoned stranger who couldn't accept that his old life had ended the moment he'd crossed that portal's threshold.

Another victim, I thought, watching Adrian stumble toward the ute's door. Another person stolen from Earth without consent or explanation.

The driver's door slammed shut, the sound echoing across the landscape like punctuation. The engine roared to life, and suddenly everything was happening too fast — dust billowing, Nial positioning himself at the front of the vehicle with his hands on the bonnet, Adrian apparently too impaired to understand that he couldn't just drive away from an inter-dimensional kidnapping.

Through the chaos, I caught a glimpse of Beatrix stepping back through the portal, her form swallowed by colours, returning to Earth for whatever errand required her attention there.

The ute lurched forward, and Nial somehow managed to wrangle himself into the passenger side alongside Adrian, his face set in the grim determination of someone who refused to let the situation spiral further out of control.

"Kain!" Nial's voice barely carried above the engine noise. "Come on!"

He was gesturing for me to join them, to pile into the vehicle and help manage whatever disaster was unfolding.

But even if I'd wanted to, the crutches made it impossible. I couldn't run. Could barely walk at any reasonable speed. The gap between me and the moving vehicle widened with every second, and jumping into a ute while balancing on aluminium supports wasn't a skill I'd ever had cause to develop.

"I'm all good. I'll stay here and wait for the fencing supplies to arrive," I called out, raising one crutch in a wave that was half farewell and half acknowledgment of my own limitations.

The ute was already accelerating, kicking up a trail of dust as it headed back toward camp with its unwilling passenger. Nial's face appeared briefly in the side mirror — frustration warring with understanding — before the vehicle crested a dune and disappeared from view.

Silence descended like a held breath being released.

I stood alone in the Drop Zone, balanced on crutches that had arrived from a man I couldn't quite figure out, surrounded by scattered supplies and the weight of everything I'd been trying not to think about. The portal shimmered in the distance, beautiful and terrible, a doorway that only opened in one direction for people like me.

The sun beat down.

The dust settled.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, a familiar whisper began to stir.