Systems In Chaos: Dissention

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Vladimir closed his eyes and tried the best he could to keep his heavy panting down to quiet breaths as he hid behind the large roots of a giant tree. He was laying in the mud, forcing his body down into the soaked ground as much as he could. He was dripping in sweat, and heaving in gasps of air.

He ears perked up as he listened intently on the splattering of a dozen pairs of feet in the dirty puddles on the small forest track running past the other side of the tree that he was hiding behind.

Blood from a fresh wound above his right eye ran down his head and dripping into the brown muck. A stream of the crimson liquid leaked into his left eye, he tried to wipe it away but only succeeded in adding a layer of mud to it. Vladimir covered his mouth with his free hand and turned his face into the mud to do whatever he could to silence the coughing fit that was just about to seize him.

The mud bubbled and splattered, rather loudly. The stamping combat boots stopped dead, right on the other side of the tree.

Shit! Fuck! Gorram it! Valdimir yelled at himself. All of a sudden he felt a convulsion in his other arm as a delirious Garen was taken by a loud coughing fit. Vladimir slapped his muddy and bloody free hand over his shivering and sick friend. Garen stopped coughing but started mumbling something indistinguishable to himself quietly.

Vladimir clenched his teeth so hard that he thought that they might break and shatter on him. He moved his hand to his storm-blaster and raised it towards the ridge of the tree’s roots.

Come on you sons o’ bitches! Come get us! He screamed in his head, daring the six Hadi warriors to come over the roots and straight into his line of fire. He waited five seconds, then ten and then he waited thirty seconds, but no one came. No one came hurdling over to try and stab them and leave the two of them dead, sinking in the mud, somewhere inside this forest where no one would ever find their bodies.

“I can’t hear anything, you fool. You’re gettin’ jumpy at the rain and the jungle critters.” Vladimir heard a voice not too far from him hiss at the others.

“Shut up, idiot, I know I heard someone. It sounded like coughing,” another barked back.

“I couldn’t hear anything either,” a third admitted. After a pause he continued, his voice a little more cautious than before, “Did anyone else hear coughing?”

Another pause, this time it was longer.

“No? Alright, let’s get moving again. We’ve wasted enough time already.” Vladimir could barely hear the several grunts of approval over the pitter-patter of the rain hitting the leaves and dripping down to the soaked forest floor.

The Hadi started to move off, but Vlad heard the quiet mutters of the one whom had been overruled by the others. As the Hadi ran off into the forest once more Vladimir tried to concentrate hard on the splashing of footsteps, trying to count how many were moving off. He didn’t want to get up out of his hiding place to find that two or so had stayed behind to make sure, but with all the noise it was impossible for him to determine just how many had moved out. It sounded like all of them.

It didn’t matter in the end; he didn’t have much of a choice. He couldn’t stay here soaking in the freezing cold mud, not if he wanted to avoid getting pneumonia or having his cuts and scrapes become infected. So he decided that he couldn’t stay laying there in his condition, let alone Garen and the state he was in.

It took some effort for him to get moving again, his joints had almost frozen in the mire, but, groaning, he lifted himself up and peered over the giant outcropped root he had been hiding behind. He saw no one. Taking a deep breath to calm himself down he lifted Garen up and put him on his back. He wrapped the commando’s arms around his neck and held his feet around his waist. Vladimir piggybacked his sick comrade through the shin deep mud around the tree and up onto the path which, thankfully, was only wet and muddy but not deep at all.