Damage & Decay

Chapter 36

Part Three: Lost Girls

"Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only one second without hope."

----

Bitter, exhausted, and angry, they moved away from the creek as fast as their horses could go, heading into the hills, seeking the safety of the high ground. When they were safe in a thick corpse of trees, and when Armin was convinced that there were no zoms nearby, they slid from the saddles and collapsed onto the thick grass. For several long minutes they lay there, unable to move, gasping like beached fish, running with sweat, barely able to think. Apache and Chief stood nearby, their legs trembling with tension and fear.

"Are you okay?" Armin asked when he had the breath.

"No." Eren groaned.

Armin turned his head so sharply that it looked like it was unscrewing from his shoulders. "Where are you hurt? Are you bit--?"

"No . . . it's not me. It's Nix!"

"At least we know she's alive, Eren. That's something. Hold on to that."

"They also know we're coming."

Armin managed to sit up. He was bleeding from a dozen small cuts, but he assure Eren that they were from the sharp fragments of stone that pelted him when the cliffs blew. He crawled over and pulled the canteen from his saddle, drank deeply, and then handed it to Eren. "They knew long before now," he said. "You can't rig charges like that and bring down that much stone without taking time to set it up. No, kiddo. . . . They knew we were onto them, and they set a very smart trap."

The water opened up Eren's parched throat, but he coughed and gagged on it.

"You sure you're okay?" Armin asked, peering curiously at him, his eyes darting to Eren's arms and legs. "You're positive you didn't--"

"I'm not bit," snapped Eren. "I want to go find Nix."

"We will," Armin promised. "But the horses are a step away from dead. Unless you want to chase them on foot, we have  to rest."

"How long?"

"At least an hour. Two would be better."

"Two hours!"

"Shhh . . . keep your voice down. Listen to me, Eren," Armin said, and his face was tight. "If we rest for two hours, we can catch up with them in maybe two more hours. If we don't rest, it'll take all day, if we catch up at all. This is a situation where slow is faster."

Eren glared at him, but then he growled and turned away. He knew that Armin was right, but every second they sat there felt like it was one less second for Nix. Seconds burned away into minutes, and it took centuries for enough minutes to gather into an hour, and then two. By the time Armin said they were ready to go, Eren was a half a tick away from screaming insanity.

"How come Charlie and the others didn't just hide behind the rocks and shoot us?"

Armin busied himself by putting the carpet coats back onto the horses.

"Armin?"

"I guess they didn't like their chances in a shoot-out," Armin said.

"Are you kidding? Six or seven against one?"

All Armin gave was a reply with a shrug, and Eren stared at his brother. What the hell did that mean?

"Besides," Armin said as e tightened the last of the straps, "the dynamite was a big bang, big enough to draw most of the dead toward the pass, which meant that it drew the away from the forest. If we'd been killed, they would never have risked shooting at us. It was a stupid risk even if he'd hit us, because it drew some of the zoms toward them. I expect Charlie's going to be pretty upset with the shooter."