An Inch Of Infinity (Short Version)

CHAPTER 65- Desperate

We walk to the village, into a building and retrieve a map.

We follow the map to the middle of the island, but where a hospital is supposed to be, is a landslide, it could take hours to dig the hospital out.

"Let's get to work." I say. We jog back to camp and get shovels. Then we ran back. We dig all day and far into the night. We hit the wall only an hour after starting, but we take forever to find a door or a window.

"I give up!" yells Kiki, frustrated, and she throws her shovel against the wall. It cracks. Soon we are hitting the wall with our shovels until we get a hole, which we claw at with our hands until Kadek can fit through. He can't see, so we keep clawing and go in ourselves. It's dark and smells like earth. The air seems to have suspince in it. We turn on the flashlights, but the beams are so small it's almost impossible to see anyways. I head to a cabinet and rummage through it.

"What are we looking for?" I asked, breaking the eerie silence.

"We should be looking for a clear liquid, or some sort of recipe." replies one of the boys, about eighteen years old. I look around. All the vials are tinted with color, none are clear. I open a drawer. It has lots of files, written in another language.

"Can you guys still read Indonesian?" I ask, I feel like I'm in a horror movie or book, waiting for someone, or something to jump around the corner. I step on broken glass. Why is there broken glass? As I look around, I see a stain of what looked like dark brown, but now seems red. Blood. It smears to the floor and around the corner, I step towards it. Around the corner is a giant slug slowly moving, leaving an ugly reddish trail. I relax, I was a bit too quick to assume something bad had happened. Maybe it's because of our mission, and what the Keeper has been up to.

"What did you say?" called a voice. I jump a mile. I try to play it off, unsuccessfully.

"Oh, uh, I found some papers and I was wondering if you could read them." I call into the darkness. Footsteps walk towards me. I wonder how that slug got in, it was huge. I am overreacting and just push it out of my mind.

I lead Maiki to the drawer. I hand him the stack of papers, he skims through, muttering under his breath.

"Can you read them?' I ask. He flashes me a smile.

"Can you read English?" He laughs. I am relieved. I want to get out of here, now. Maiki holds up a page.

"This one is a list of ingredients for the antidote." he says triumphantly. I wonder where the door is. I haven't seen it yet.

"Ok, let's get an antidote mixed up." I say.

"We need a lot of stuff," he starts, but I just snatch the list. He had written the translations on the side with a pen.

We need water, a lot of different herbs, and light infused citric acids. What's light infused citric acid? Maiki pulls a bottle off of the shelf, in it a cloudy white liquid sloshes around.

"We use light infused citric acid often." he explains. "It is mostly full of vitamin D, and is a long process of filling the citric acid with the vitamins from the sun." I nod, as if that makes sense. How do you make a drink out of sunlight?

We searched around and found a few of the herbs. I say we need Emma, and they agree. We head back for her. She is in quarantine. She isn't sick, but nobody wants to take that chance. She is released to us and we search for the rest of the herbs. She finds all but one. The sky blue mushroom. It isn't edible, but when injected with certain herbs, it becomes just the antidote we need. And they don't grow in indonesia. They don't grow anywhere. They have been extinct for almost a decade.

Emma starts to cry. We can't save Coral, or anyone else.

"Wait, what do we need from the mushroom?" I ask. Emma says something that seems to come from another language. I'm guessing that it's a scientific word.

"Is there another way to get that?" I ask. Her face brightens.I take that as a good sign.

"There just might!" She exclaims. She looks through the bottiny book, but finds nothing.

We go back to the camp. Just as we are getting close enough to see the boats, a young man runs up to us. He has a mask on and he has a wild look in his eyes.

"NO! GO BACK! THE DISEASE HAS SPREAD! " he cries. We all stop. Emma steps forward. She's usually shy around people she doesn't know well, so I'm shocked when she speaks.

"We can stop it, find a cure. I just need one of the bottiny volumes." she proclaims. The boy pauses.

"I can get it for you. What does it look like?" He asks her. Emma stops, as if to pull up a mental image and then gives a detailed description of the book.

"It has a deep brown cover made of what looks like pleather, with the words 'fungi and mushrooms' on it in a bold, shiny, golden font. It should be near the door on a shelf in either the greenhouse or the botiny tent. We have two copies, I only need one." She says. He nods, and I can practically see him drawing the book in his mind. He darts off. We all pace as we wait. About an hour later he joggs back, a heavy volume tucked under his arm. Emma quietly thanks him and flips through to a certain chapter. All I can do is pray that there is a way to fix this, get everyone better. If Coral dies, I don't know what I will do.

"Kari! Kari! LOOK!" Emma screams. We all jump. Kiki, who had already fallen asleep against a tree jumped at a weird angle and fell over. She glares at us as she stands. I stifle a smile.

"We need juice from a genipap!" Emma exclaimes. I stare at her. This time, the boy who brought us the book, surely not knowing when to leave, asked the question.

"What the heck is a genipap?" He demands, confusion filling his voice.

"It's a fruit that most commonly grows in the territory of South America, but we just call that Block 2. It comes from the genipap tree, it is a thick skinned fruit, it's often considered a berry. Although edible, most people prefer to not eat it because of multiple reasons, including that it's both an acquired taste, and the seeds can make you barf. Furthermore," she tries to continue but I interrupt. If I don't, she will not stop. Ever.

"If they only grow in block 2, how are we supposed to get them?" I ask bluntly.

"If you had let me finish, I said they only GROW in block 2. Not that they can only be found in block 2." she concludes. I stare at her. She sighs.

"They might have some in the kitchen." she says, clearly exasperated.

"Then what are we waiting for?" I ask and push past the boy trying to stop us.