Groaning, I pick myself off the ground, studiously ignoring the complaints of my stomach. Ríjez helps me up, catches me when I stumble. “I’m alright,” I croak unintelligibly, then clear my throat and try again with a little more success. My throat is parched, and the burn hasn’t been quenched with time. I wish for a giant bottle of Pepto Bismol or maybe just a pitcher of water, but I know that I’ll have to wait to get to the complex before getting a safe swig of water. If we ever return to the complex, that is. Somehow, it doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do.
Mella gives me a thorough once-over, then hands me--of all things--a handkerchief. “Here. Try to clean yourself up and we’ll be on our way.” She turns back to the trailer to avoid the scene. “And please, just keep it,” she says disgustedly.
Rolling my eyes, I wipe myself as clean as possible and just end up using grass to get most of it off…and pocket the mostly clean handkerchief. Hey, you never know when it’ll be useful.
“Are you going to be okay for this?” Ríjez asks, his hand resting on my lower back to keep me steady. “You could always just stay here while we…” he trails off uncertainly, but I wave him off.
“I’ll be fine. Really. If you think this is bad, I won’t even mention the Flu of ’06 Incident,” I say dismissively.
He wants to argue; it’s written all over his face. But he must figure that I’ll just stubbornly ignore his concerns and go on anyway. Smart move on his part. Nodding, he leads me back to the trailer, and we slowly make our way to the pit.
After about another twenty minutes, the trees begin to thin out, and a few thin cords of tripwire in other sections of the woods catch my eye. We’re close, and since we don’t feel like being weighed down by the trailer, Ríjez and I leave Mella in the thicker vegetation. We cautiously inch forward, ever aware that the next step we take could be our last. And now that we’re aware of the acid traps, I keep a sharp eye out for anything dangling in the trees. All I see is a mess of dead leaves and broken branches; more tree limbs lie on the ground than attached to their respective trunks. We finally decide that, after snapping two trip wires, evading the resulting barbed wire nets, and dodging a dead-fall tree trunk, we have successfully disassembled whatever traps are in the thirty yard radius and usher Mella and the body-loaded trailer into the clearing.
We go about doing this for several more minutes--find a clearing, search it, set off the traps, continue on. I have no idea how far the pit is, but I’m sure that we’re getting closer. And I’m right, for once. After the fourth clearing, we stumble into large area of level ground and quickly deduce where the pit that has Dev’s body decaying in it is; it’s right on the edge of the clearing, partly obscured by brush and thicket, and the single boulder that had allowed me to heave Ríjez out of the pit.
Cautiously, all three of us approach the depression, even though we had told Mella to stay behind. My skin is tingling with apprehension, and the burn in my esophagus intensifies with my anxiety. The dead, dry grass crumbles noisily beneath my boots. I feel like an arrow is going to come sailing out of the air at any given moment. It dawns on me just how defenseless we have made ourselves; we’re in an open clearing, weighed down by luggage, and armed with only one gun. Not the best survival scenario.
For some odd reason, we reach the pit with no trouble. I refuse to look into the hole, fearing a repeat episode of my vomiting, but Mella and Ríjez crouch down to better examine it. I expect them to be discussing the corrosive effects of the acid or how long it would take for it to completely dissolve a body, but all I hear is the sharp intake of a breath.
“Mister Ríjez,” Mella says caustically, “you know better than to lie to me.”
“Fucking hell…” Ríjez whistles through his teeth, ignoring her statement. “Invasion of the body snatchers.”
I want to shush them because of the audio systems wired throughout the area, but as I turn to look at what they are talking about, I can’t keep my thoughts barricaded inside my head. “Where’s Dev?” I ask stupidly, bending down as if the closer proximity will yield his melted body.
Neither of them answers.
Panic threatens to steal my breath and sanity. My muscles tense up as I await an arrow to come whistling out of the trees and lodge itself through my brain, or someone to shove me into the pit that’s still filled with the clear liquid. Whatever it is has eaten about a couple more feet into the soil, so it’s still active.
Maybe that’s Rigs’s strategy: kill one, get more to come help, and finish off those who arrive. It seems a bit sadistic. Maybe something Andy would have tried.
Ríjez whistles through his teeth again, contemplating. “What now?”
I turn to Mella, whose expression is dark with thought, the inner cogs of her brain trying to fit together and turn the mechanism properly. “Mel?” I ask cautiously.
She turns to me, her gray eyes roving between me and Ríjez, calculating. “We can’t go back,” she says stiffly.
I scrunch my brow at this, but Ríjez beats me at verbalization. “We’ve deduced that,” he says irritably. “I meant with…this.”
Mella fixes her gaze back on the empty bottom of the pit and shrugs dismissively. “Something obviously got here before we did. You two know more about what’s in these woods than I do. Maybe even Rigs got him. Andy always said that they barely ever come out of their establishment. They may have taken your companion for sustenance.”
My face pulls into a frown of disgust. And there goes my appetite…
“I doubt that,” Ríjez counters. “They’re more likely to burn him at the stake than eat him. Real big on religion and salvation and all the jazz. They wouldn’t want to ‘taint their souls’ with such an act. And there’s no natural carnivore that still exists in these woods that would have taken him for food.”
“That we know of” is the unspoken remainder of his statement.
The reduction of the culprits makes my body tighten in apprehension. “So…what? Did this stuff completely dissolve him?” I ask, hoping that this is the case. The alternatives are too terrifying to think of.
“Of course not,” Mella scoffs. “This isn’t even an acid. It’s a base. Probably sodium hydroxide.” She catches my look of bafflement, then continues slowly, as if explaining to a child that their doggy just ran away. “And while bases are good for dissolving organic material, it wouldn’t completely break down a whole body in the amount of time you’re alluding to. And his clothing would still be down there, or at least the metal parts.”
“That’s nice…” I squirm uncomfortably, fighting the fierce urge to back out of the clearing, into the woods where it feels ten times safer. Which is rather ridiculous considering that just yesterday I was terrified of the woods’ foreboding presence. Funny how these feelings can change when subjected to new, more frightening events.
“Alright, so Dev’s body isn’t here. We’re still dumping Andy, right?” I ask nervously, wringing my hands in the loose folds of my jacket.
Ríjez eyes me skeptically, then nods once. “Yes. There isn’t much else we can do about him. And whatever took Dev might still be in the area, so we need to make this quick.”
So it can just take Andy, too?
Refusing to stay any longer than necessary, though my conscience nags me with the moral repercussions on my psyche, we head back to the edge of the clearing, leaving Mella to ooh and ahh over the acid/base/whatever the hell it is. Pulling the trailer over, we carefully dump Andy’s stiff, bloody body into the pit while Mella keeps the girl’s body from falling in. The corpse hit’s the bottom with a wet smack, face first, arms and legs splayed out haphazardly. I almost expect to hear the body start to sizzle away, but that doesn’t happen. Exposed areas on his neck begin to turn bright pink, and as the liquid eats away at the flesh, it darkens to the red of exposed muscle. I turn away before I can see what becomes of the rest of the corpse, even though I kind of want to see if it really can dissolve an entire body. Chalk it up to morbid curiosity. Or a deep need to see that it was possible that Dev was just eaten up by the acid (base, whatever!) and wasn’t taken away by something else with more malicious intent.
Mella looks at me with a cold expression, sizing me up. For what, I have no idea, but I square my shoulders and cross my arms defensively anyway. “Well?” I snap. “What is it?”
Pursing her lips, she flicks a wary gaze between me and an anxious-looking Ríjez. “I need a favor of you. Both of you.” It’s a statement, but it comes out more like a plea.
My eyebrows raise against my volition. Since when does she need anyone to do anything for her? Forget that, since when does she ask?
“Yeah?” Ríjez answers uncertainly. It sounds like he’s just as unsettled as I am.
“This,” she says, “whatever’s happening right now…I don’t think we need to worry the complex with it.”
“I thought we already established that we aren’t going back.”
Mella glares sharply at Ríjez. “We obviously need to go back to fetch some supplies. Even with you oh-so extensive knowledge of these woods, we’ll still need basic provisions. Hart and I will go back, but I want you to stay here--”
“What?” he shouts savagely. “And leave me here to fend for myself, then?”
“Hush yourself. I was about to say that we’d come back for you once we’re done, but with that kind of attitude, I’d hardly want you as a companion of any sort.”
“Feeling’s mutual, wench.”
And Mom and Dad are at it again. I roll my eyes. Sighing, I hold my hands in the air, signaling for them to calm down. Of course, they ignore me until I’m shrieking at them to shut up.
“Idiots! You two are how many years older than me and yet you’re the ones acting like children. Shut. The fuck. Up,” I grit out through my teeth.
I receive twin sets of glares that feel as corrosive as the liquid in the pit.
“Alright, alright…” Ríjez growls. “I’ll stay here. But if you two aren’t back by dusk, I’m going back whether you like it or not.”
Clenching her jaw, Mella nods. “Good to know that you’re still trainable.”
Ríjez grits his teeth and fists his hands at his sides, shaking with rage.
Like fucking rabid mutts...
“Don’t even start,” I warn lowly.
Mella must finally see just how furious she has made Ríjez, and no matter how snappy and arrogant she is, I’m sure that she wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of his fists. “Fine.” She shrugs coolly. “There’s more effective ways to entertain oneself.”
Silence descends on the clearing like thick sap. Even the wind refuses to break it with its moaning tirade. We’re all reluctant to leave each other’s presence--safety in numbers and whatnot. And leaving Ríjez by himself--even with his gun--makes my chest tighten with worry.
I turn my attention back to the trailer, not sure why until my gaze lands on the girl’s supine corpse,
“What are we going to do about the girl?” I ask.
Mella sighs, rubbing her arms. I forget that the relatively thin clothing she’s wearing has nothing on the frigid air. “I was thinking that I’d keep her in the lab for Nolan.”
I scrunch my brow. “For what?” I ask disgustedly. “I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who’d enjoy that kind of thing.”
“Not for that, you twit,” she huffs irritably. “For scientific purposes. Research. No matter how much of a nut you think he is, there is a great deal of brilliance in that man. If we leave it for him, he’ll know what to do with it. What to look for.”
I want to point out that she had just told us she was our only sane doctor. But, in the name of peace, I keep my mouth firmly sealed.
Eying her warily, Ríjez finally nods while I stand there silently. “Alright then. Leaving a body as a present. That’s new.”
“Unless if you’d like for us to leave her here to keep you company, of course,” she says snidely. “I mean, since you obviously didn’t get enough from Vessa. We wouldn’t want to deprive you of your manly needs.”
“Mel! For God’s sake, just let it go!”
“Fine, fine. We’ll just be going then.” She turns towards the trailer and throws a look over her shoulder. “Well? Come on, Hart.”
I look back at Ríjez, who just shrugs and waves me off, shouldering the gun and turning back to the pit. Anger radiates off of him in such intense waves that I wonder why I can’t feel their heat. Without a word, I obediently trail after Mella, leaving him alone in silence.
Well...at least it's longer than usual. That's gotta be a plus, right? ^_^;
P.S.--I'm a terrible chemistry student, so if anyone cares to correct me on my acid/base references, please do so. Seriously. Actually, that goes for anything regarding this story: plot, characters, grammar, spelling, swearing, chronological errors, etc. If you've got beef with anything at all regarding this story, tell me.
I probably should've told y'all that awhile ago. *facepalm* I'm gonna go make some coffee...