Love Hate (Carl Grimes)

chapter six // wounded and 'saved'

Rose's POV:

A bright light surrounded by tall, spinning green figures is all I see. A sharp, indescribable pain in my side is all I feel. Rushing water and low moans is all I can hear. I can't think properly. I'm not quiet sure what happened. All  I know is, I feel like shit.

I know I should probably get up and try to figure things out, but I'm too relaxed. Despite the pain in my side and throbbing in my head, laying here is kind of relaxing. I haven't had a moment like this -just laying here, calm - since flesh eating monsters took over the world. Their moans were always too loud and disconcerting. Moans. Moans. I hear moans right now. Walkers usually moan. Walkers. Walkers. Walkers!

I jolt up, causing my head to throb and vision to blur. Not to mention the excruciating pain in my side. I look down, forcing my eyes to focus, and see my both ends of my arrow sticking out of me. The shaft of the arrow is wedged inside me. Well, damn. I think. No wonder this hurts.

I hear the moaning again. Taking my eyes off of my bitch of a wound, I look up to find a rotten male walker growling at me from the other side of the river. It starts crossing over and I expect it to be carried away by the water, but the current isn't as strong as I though. Slowly but surely, the walker makes its way towards me.

I look around, trying to locate my bow. I see it laying on the rock about a yard away from me. I crawl -with much difficulty - towards it and grab it. Instinctively, I reach behind me to grab an arrow from my quiver, but it's not there. I get a glance of something hanging on a tree branch about ten feet up the cliff. Sure enough, it's my quiver, but it's missing an arrow. And that arrow is. . . is sticking out of me. Great.

Well, gotta get the arrow out sometime, right? I take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes shut. I wrap my hand around the end of the arrow and pull as hard and fast as I can. This action sends an even worse aching and burning pain in my wound. I can feel the arrow moving and the feathers going through the hole, but I try my best to ignore the pain. I bite my lip so hard to keep from screaming that I taste blood. 

After what feels like forever, I get the arrow out and loaded in my bow. My wound doesn't hurt as bad now, but all the pain has definitely not gone away.

The walker has now crossed the river and is getting dangerously close to me. I lay down on back, ignoring my side screaming in protest. As I pull the bow string back the walker is growling right in front of me. I let the arrow fly and it pierces the rotten creature's eye. It's limp, decomposing corpse falls limp on top of me. It takes everything I have to push it off of me.

I wish I could sit here a little longer, but I need to get back to the prison. Back to my friends.

I push myself off the ground, causing my side to burn. I don't know how much longer I can try to ignore the pain, but I have too keep it up as long as I can. I peel my bloodstained sweater off of me, leaving me in a tight, grey tank top. A cold, harsh wind welcomes my newly exposed skin. I roll up the clothing and wrap it around my torso, making a tourniquet above the hole. I tear off the bottom part of my tank top and rip it in half. I fold the two parts into pads and place them on top of each hole. The top is tight enough to keep them in place.

The pain subsides a bit and I am hoping that after a while, the tourniquet will make the wound feel numb, although that might not be good.

I sling the bow across my chest and walk - more like limp - over to the edge of the cliff. It is slanted and the terrain is dirt and many low tree branches that can help me climb up.

Taking yet another deep breath, I place my foot about a foot higher in the dirt and grab a branch above me. I pull up on it and it brings me a little higher. One branch down, I don't know how many more to go.