May Flowers

[Macha*]

[April Stone, continued from All Along the Watchtower.]

Her damp shoes made faint squelching sounds as she trudged through the dark jungle, crushing the plants underfoot as she traversed the muddy ground. Out of the sunglight, the jungle was vast, dark, and icy cold, and the further April travelled, the rarer the cracks in the canopy, the few slivers of warm sunlight, got. In her jacket and- April cursed her own stupidity- not a whole lot else, April felt ice cold. She felt vulnerable. If my classmates don’t kill me, she thought, this cold will.

Every chirping cricket, every rustling leaf, every branch that brushed against her body made her more nervous. Her teeth began to chatter and April wrapped her arms around her shuddering body, trying to get out of the darkness and into the light as quickly as she could. Pulling the earbuds of her iPod out of her pocket, she plugged one in her ear. The song that played was far too fitting, and a small smile tugged at her chapped lips.

In the distance, there was a faint light. A clearing, with a small, stone building she could just make out amongst the trees and plants. April breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank God,” she muttered, and began to slowly walk forwards, before something stopped her. In the glint of the sunlight, she noticed the thin string stretched across the path at string height. She didn’t need to see anything else to know the place was booby-trapped. Fantastic, she thought, as she took a slow step backwards, pulled her pistol out of her waistband, and fired once. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. Disappointed, April pushed the pistol back into her waistband and stepped over the wire, landing awkwardly on her ankle and letting out a loud yelp as pain seared up her leg. Cautiously, she limped forwards, only to notice a large, suspicious pile of leaves spread out in front of her.

“Must have been an old army base. Vietnam or somewhere,” She was thinking out loud, but she wasn't sure anyone cared. winced in pain and added. “Shit, my ankle’s killing me.”

April may not have been the sharpest tool in the box, but she had no intention of going any further into the traps.

So, she clambered back over the trip wire, fell ass-deep into the mud, and breathed heavily. Then, she laughed. God, this was ridiculous. She pulled herself back up to her feet, her jeans and arms covered in mud but hey, it was better than the alternative.

April put her weight on her good leg, spat on the ground, turned to her right, and started walking through off the path. It was thicker, and harder to walk through than the paths, but that also meant there was less chance of falling into another pit. It might have been easier if she hadn’t hurt her foot, but no one was perfect.

After- she was going by a rough estimate here- about fourty minutes of dragging her bad leg behind her, she stood on the edge of a slope. Off in the distance, she could just make out the silhouette of something peeking over the forest canopy. A helipad, perhaps. It was a few hours away, at least. She could have made it, before she hurt her leg, but now she wasn’t so sure.

So, where was she? April’s tired eyes surveyed her map- ruined from the sweat of running and the heat, April made a mental note to never keep paper in her pockets again- but it was no use. There was no way she was going to be able to find out where she was in this jungle.

She closed her hand into a fist, crushing the map into a ball, and threw it as far as she could. It landed, softly, in the grass at the bottom of the hill. April sighed and threw her bag down the hill. She got a faint sense of Déjà vu.

April sat on the edge of the slope, closed her eyes, and pushed herself down. The rocks dug in her back and her legs as she slid down, drawing blood. She fell in a heap on the floor, clenched her teeth in pain and closed her eyes.

--

Fall down seven times, get up eight. April wasn’t sure where she had heard that before, but assumed it was from a kid’s cartoon. With effort, she got herself back to her feet and limped forwards, and the foliage began to let up. She smiled, and felt the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.

She bent down, picked up her bag, shouldered it, groaned and slowly, carefully, began to stumble forwards. Every inch of her body throbbed with pain, and she was screaming at herself for being an idiot, but at least she was alive. That was more than she could say for Ben, or Dougal.

Sighing, she noted that she hadn’t seen anyone for hours. None since she’d left the guard tower, in fact. She must have been way off the beaten track. That wasn’t a bad thing, per se, but it was getting late, and dark. Whilst stifling, the cameras had reminded her she wasn’t the only one on this island. It seemed as though she was in a relative blind spot. She wasn’t in the mood to take any kind of advantage of that though, and lacking the means to stage an elaborate rescue operation, she just dusted herself down and took a sip from her last bottle of water, the lukewarm liquid momentarily soothing her hoarse throat.

She had no plan, no allies, and no shirt, but for once, April was hopeful.

The pain in her ankle beginning to subside, she shakily walked out of the jungle, and towards the large metal structure.

[April Stone, continued in Will I Never Be Lonely Again?]