Moonlit Retribution

Chapter Twenty-Four

After a surprisingly dreamless rest--if it can truly be called rest--I wake to the bitter scent of…something. Groaning, I peel my sticky eyes open, and instantly find them blurry and teary at the acrid smoke. I cough slightly, but the smoke isn’t heavy enough to cause me to panic yet. The blaze is in sight, as well as my gun resting about three feet to my left; and so is a pair of large, booted feet skittering around the flames. Mella, anxiously tending to the low, flickering flames.

She knows how to make a fire? I observe incredulously.

I expect to be surprised at her appearance, considering my last wakeful thoughts about her, but all I feel is a ho-hum sort of dismissal. I can’t bring myself to even enjoy the fact that I’m not dead yet.

The orange and red glow seems dull in my glazed-over eyes, but Mella’s sharp glare has the same piercing quality in my apathetic state as it had in my previous mindsets. She stares at me for a few moments, the reflections of the flames flickering eerily in her eyes, making them look like the pits of Hell itself.

Note to self: Passing out makes you excessively morbid.

The realization strikes me that if she’s alive, then Ríjez might be, too. But I tamp down the welling hope as soon as it rises in my heart. If you don’t have any expectations, you can’t be disappointed, after all.

Coughing once more, I sit up slightly, feeling the muscles of my torso and neck pull taut. “What the hell are you burning?” I croak tiredly.

She fixes me with a caustic sneer. “Whatever was on the ground,” she replies tartly.

“You do realize that a fire will only bring Drew and those guys coming back to us, right?” Not to mention alert the Rigs psychos. I begin to nervously eye the treetops, the pitch blackness of the night sky, as if some hidden seam will make itself apparent and spill forth a mass of ungodly beings to smite us all.

Apparently passing out also makes you poetic.

Her grin is positively evil as she says, “Oh, them? I don’t think they’re going to be mobile for quite awhile.”

I quirk a brow in curiosity. “You killed them?” I ask in slight admiration. The thought of her utilizing any form of lethal fighting is a bit intriguing. And kind of scary, now that I’m all alone with her.

She waves a hand, then flicks an errant strand of hair out of her eyes, the movement so clouded by the fire’s shadows that it makes her look like some kind of demon. “Oh, please. I’m not like you barbarians.” She levels her chin imperiously. “So mindless in your plunders… Ugh…” Her nose crinkles daintily in disgust. “No, they’re still alive. But certainly in no condition to be tracking any of us.”

“Where’s Ríjez?” I ask, looking about the small clearing she had made. A couple large, tan backpacks lie splayed against a boulder that I hadn’t noticed in my trek.

Her gaze suddenly closing up with caution, she says slowly, as if carefully choosing her words, “He wasn’t with the others.”

“So he’s hiding somewhere,” I deduce. “Where did you find them?”

She doesn’t reply, and I realize that she isn’t going to. Fine, then.

I finger the raw area of my ankle and find it layered with gauze. Blood is already seeping through the spongy material. “Anything else we can do for this?”

Mella shakes her head. “Not with this stuff. I grabbed as much as I could from both the lab and the kitchen. You’d be amazed at how low the supplies are,” she says in an oddly despondent tone.