Dorthy

Seven

Fight is one of the first impulses of a threatened animal. Depending on the creature, the response to being cornered can be instantaneous and instinctive. And deadly.

Alternatively, the urge to flee can be the primary response to potential injury or death.

When the half eaten figure of her friend stood over her, attempting to say her name, Dorothy chose the latter. She didn't take the time to correct him or ask if he needed assistance.

She ran.

She forced herself to disregard the look of longing on Julian's face. It didn't matter what he wanted. It couldn't. She could see his muscles! She could see the ligaments doing their best to stay connected when they had been almost chewed through. Bone. Dorothy could see bone!

She was back in the cover of the trees before she had taken a breath. She was far enough from the bus to not be able to see it before she had taken a second. The cannibals, if that's what they were, had vanished in the opposite direction, and she had to put distance between them. Julian should not have been standing, let along speaking, and Dorothy wanted to leave him far behind too.

When she had taken and expelled her third breath, the pain in her ankle became too much for her to ignore and she had to stop. She sank to the ground, taking shelter in a ditch that was nowhere near deep enough to effectively hide her. She broke some branches off a bush and held them around her for camouflage.

Then, as silently as she could, Dorothy sobbed.

She was adept at crying with barely making a sound and with tears that were more a red rimmed eye than a soaked cheek. She had the chance to perfect her skills multiple times with her aunt and uncle when the emotions suppressed from the loss of her parents bubbled to the surface.

The episode lasted only briefly. She was also proficient at controlling her errant emotions.

When she was able to see once more without sentiment clouding her sight, Dorothy peered through the branches, listening intently for sounds of movement. There were none. Slowly, she lowered them, keeping herself flat against the bottom if the dip.

She needed to take stock of her situation. Be practical. Be sensible – she usually did that so well. She had to find out where she was and what had happened. And she needed to stay alive.

She woke suddenly. Darkness had fallen, creeping up on her while the sleep she hadn't needed had taken her anyway. The forest obscured the sky in the main, but she could still see it was a cloudless night. The lack of any street lighting enabled the stars to be much more visible than she was used to but she couldn't see a moon. She stretched out, groaning softly.

"Dorthy!"

Dorothy froze, grogginess dulling her body's natural responses. She could neither fight nor flee. She could only stare.

"Dorthy!"

Julian was standing at the lip of the ditch, looking down. His head was practically resting on his shoulder, the tendons on the opposite side dangling where they snapped. He looked to be trying to push it up every so often, but he couldn't grip properly, so his hand slipped over his face. His other hand reached out to her.

"Stay away!" she snapped, backing up along the gully.

"Dorthy!" he followed her movement, his feet shuffling. At any moment, he was likely to fall in, on top of her.

"Go away! Leave me alone!"

"Dorthy!"

"Dorothy! I'm Dorothy! Why can't you ever get my name right?"

"Dorthy."

Dorothy stopped moving. Julian wasn't attacking her. Although he was in worse shape than the road kill she occasionally passed when she was driving along the motorways, he could still have hurt her. Yet, he wasn't trying to.

Dorothy loved to watch horror films and would laugh at her friend, Sara, who would keep a cushion or pillow handy for when she was too afraid to watch the screen. She knew what happened if you were bitten by a zombie or vampire or other supernatural creature. Not that she thought there was anything supernatural going on. The bus had been caught up in the storm and had been dropped somewhere she didn't recognise. It had sent those men crazy and they'd attacked the passengers. Still, she was not one to believe in any of the bizarre things that occurred in her favourite movie genre.

But...

If you were bitten by a zombie, you became one. It was the same for vampires and werewolves.

And Julian had clearly been bitten. He hardly had any neck left, yet he was walking and, almost, talking. Did that mean...? Could he be...?

"Are you ok?" she asked him. Maybe he could still hold a conversation. He would be traumatised by the attack and needed her help. PTSD, that was it. He was shell-shocked.

And, to think, she had run from him and been afraid.

"Dorthy," he said, sadness apparent in his tone.

"Julian," she said, climbing out of the ditch.

She didn't bother to correct his mistaken pronunciation of her name. She could see his throat move as he spoke. She wanted to minimise the image. She took his hand and squeezed it.

"Let's see if we can get you some help, shall we?"

"Dorthy," he answered.

Dorothy sighed. She preferred 'Dottie' to' Dorthy', but it was too late to tell Julian that. She doubted he would be able to process the information.