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Erin struggled to open her eyes, and when she did, the light was blinding, and for many moments, she couldn’t make sense of her surroundings. Images were fuzzy one moment and clear the next. Perhaps she had a concussion?
One thing was sure: no one knew where she was right now. If Erin wanted to survive, she needed to pull herself together and drag her own ass out of this screw-up. She had no other option.
Erin groaned. She would not be a poster child for the dangers of the wilds. Hells no.
Looking down at her body, her limbs were all askew. Or was that just her fuzzy brain? She was surrounded by granite rocks, and hadn’t landed in the bushes after all, which was likely a lucky move. From the ground, they appeared more like spindly branches than soft leafy bits, and imagining one of those branches impaling her wasn’t at all reassuring.
The smell of pine needles filled her nostrils as she tried to move her arms, and only the left responded, flopping around like a dead fish. “Fantastic. One working arm and one working leg. Halfway to being a functioning human,” she muttered. At least it didn’t hurt to move it. However, the more Erin moved her arm, the more natural the movements became, until, finally, a semblance of natural movement returned. Erin reached up and grasped the backpack strap, which was still in place and most likely why her back felt horridly distended, and slid the strap over her shoulder. Her right arm was trapped beneath her body, and she’d lost most of the feeling in it.
Free of the harness, Erin tested out her left leg. Pain shot up her leg, and she looked down, focused, and saw her left ankle was twisted, swollen, and bruised beyond reasonable use. “Well, at least it’s not bleeding,” she said out loud, trying to find a silver lining in her situation.
After a few attempts, her right leg proved functional, but painful to use. Erin slid it along the ground and curled it close to her body, and then used her left arm to leverage herself off the ground behind her and away from the backpack, unfortunately putting her face into the dirt. Erin’s right shoulder screamed in protest as the joint came back together, and she had to ignore the twist to her left leg that begged to be left alone. She quickly used her left arm and the strength in her right leg to lever her body into a sitting position, freeing her right arm from under the backpack.
When her right hand erupted in pain, Erin doubted the wisdom of her chosen course of action. The arm was still difficult to control, so she grabbed it with her left and laid it across her lap. Blood trickled from cuts on the central three knuckles, which had been kept in check until now by her own gravity. Woozy and nauseated from the motion, Erin knew she had to act and stay focused.
Using her good hand, she reached for her backpack and dragged it closer. The metal canteen hadn’t been damaged in the fall, and Erin grabbed it first. Using her teeth and her left hand, she unzipped the bag and located the smashed remains of the first aid kit. Its plastic case had helped cushion her fall, and splinters of sharp white littered the inside of her bag, spearing and ruining the lunch she’d brought to eat.
Sifting through the remains of the box, Erin found several alcohol swab packets, gauze pressure packets, and some fabric tape. Nothing else looked useful or intact. Using a similar one-handed and teeth technique, Erin ripped a strip of fabric from the bottom of her once white t-shirt to use as a bandage. After another look at her damaged hand, she ripped another one to serve as a washcloth. It would have to do.
Erin popped the top on the water bottle and gingerly rinsed off her fingers, mostly just trying to get the dirt off, swearing loudly when the pain got too intense to tolerate. The cool water felt soothing on her injured hand, but it also made her shiver slightly. She’d heard about needing to keep wounds sterile to prevent infection, and guessed the only way she would keep an infection out of these cuts would be an expensive shot from a hospital that would put her back a month’s salary. Maybe two. Great. So much for scraping together a deposit to get out of the slums.
Next, she wet one strip of the shirt and wiped her hand down. Besides the abrasions, the rest of her hand was okay, which was good news. Erin tore open the alcohol packets and wiped around the edges of the gashes. She let out a scream. The pain was so intense. The blood kept coming, so cleansing the wound didn’t seem to do much good. Finally, Erin held her fingers, so the gashes were mostly closed, pressed the clean packed gauze against the wounds, and then wrapped the other strip of the t-shirt around her fingers to hold them in place. The tape held decently, and after a few minutes, it appeared the bleeding was at least slowed.
Erin took a few sips of water and began pulling everything out of her backpack. Erin sorted all the trash and ruined items into the backpack’s front pocket. There was a sweater covered in squashed banana she wasn’t likely to use. She threw the remains of the fruit onto the ground some distance away, unwilling to eat it herself. She found some ibuprofen from the first aid kit and took four, hoping they’d help with the pain, and put the rest in the side pocket of the pack for easy access.
Assessing her right arm, besides the damage to her fingers and her sore shoulder, it was mostly bruises. Unfortunately, her shoulder was so sore it had almost no rotation. Erin sighed. At least her left arm was fully functional.
Now she turned her focus on to her legs. In her odd forward lean, her right leg was bent while her left was fully straightened in front of her. Feeling down the length of the right leg and moving all the joints, Erin concluded it was good to go, just unhappy and bruised like the rest of her. The left leg scared her. Her thigh was fine, however, a bit bruised. Erin bent her leg at the knee and pulled her foot closer, aware of the extreme swelling and discoloration around her ankle. Her exposed skin screamed at every moment of contact with the ground.
Erin debated for a few moments, and then gingerly removed her shoe. As soon as it was off, the relief was instantaneous. The pain didn’t go away, not by any means, but it no longer felt like it had a vise on her foot. She stowed the shoe in her backpack and peeled back the sock for a look. Black and blue bruising met her gaze, and she quickly put the sock back in place. Was it a sprain? A break? Nothing was poking out through the skin, and there was no bleeding, so that meant she had more time to treat it, right?
Erin knew there was no way she’d be walking on her left leg out of here. Therefore, she needed some sort of crutch. She looked at the briar patch, which had many long, dead branches. Erin wrested her backpack painfully onto her shoulders and then scooted herself over to a promising-looking bush. She found a thick and long branch and uprooted it rather easily, although the bark was rough on her hand.
Maneuvering herself onto her knees, Erin got up onto her right foot and then hobble up into a standing position with the makeshift crutch. It wasn’t ideal, but she was low on options.
Erin got her bearings and figured if she followed the cliff wall in the direction she’d come from, then eventually she’d find a way back to the main trail, and thus, back to her car. She’d run over two miles down the trail before the incident with the bear. Now the sun was almost directly overhead. “At this rate, I’d be lucky to make it back in time for my funeral,” she muttered to herself.
She sighed again and checked her bandage, relieved the wound wasn’t bleeding through. Erin hopped and blundered away from the base of the cliff and over to a slightly wooded area which was shaded and had less rubble underfoot. After just a short while, the briar branch showed signs of sagging, so Erin looked around and came upon a pine branch and switched it out. She had to be careful not to drag her left foot, which was a growing strain on her thigh.
As Erin navigated the woods, the sound of her own labored breathing mixed with the rustle of leaves underfoot and the distant chirping of birds. Eventually, she came to an area where the cliff receded, and Erin could make it up and over the terrain and back toward the trail. It was only mid-afternoon, but Erin still did not know how far she’d come.
Exhausted and sore, she laid down in the shade of a pair of lodgepole pines. A quick nap was just what she needed. Only a short one. The sound of a babbling brook somewhere in the distance caught her ears, but she didn’t remember it from her maps. Nonetheless, it lulled her to sleep.
Just as she was about to drift off, a mysterious noise jolted her back to wakefulness. Her heart raced as she tried to identify the sound. Was it just her imagination, or was there someone—or something—out there with her? She strained her ears, hoping it was just a harmless animal, but the uncertainty gnawed at her.
CHAPTER4
ERIN
Erin awoke to darkness surrounding her in a bed of soft moss that tickled her skin and a fuzzy pelt resting heavily over her limbs. Her ankle ached, but the once-sharp pain had faded into a dull throbbing. Everything about her body existed in a buffered state, thrumming to the steady beat of rhythmic drums and heat suffusing in the air. The brook which had lulled her to sleep no longer invaded her consciousness. Whether it was drowned out by the other noises or too far away to hear it now, Erin didn’t know.
Puzzling over the noises roused her groggy mind enough for Erin to find the strength to open her eyes. And when she did, she rubbed her eyes, certain she was hallucinating. The scene before her was so bizarre, so surreal, Erin knew she was lost in a dream. Sure, her ankle hurt badly, no doubt a remnant of her waking mind, but the rest…
Erin lay on a pallet at the edge of a meadow. In the center, a massive bonfire surged toward the sky in time with the drumbeats. She couldn’t see the drummers, but trusted they were somewhere past the throng of strangely clad dancers, swaying and pounding their feet to the ground in a circle around the fire. Their feet stomped so wildly, so fiercely, Erin could swear the ground itself shook. Instead of scaring her, it thrilled her to witness such an awesome show of force.
How lucky she was to see this theater of the bizarre, if only in her dreams.
There was no moon in this dreamscape, nor stars. The smoke from the bonfire hung in the air, enshrouding the small enclave. Every sound echoed back into the space, amplifying the grunts, hoots, and hollers of the dancers. If not for knowing it was a dream and seeing with her eyes the trees at the edge of the meadow, reassuring her they were indeed outside, this might be a formidable web to be caught within.
