The Quick and the Dead

[Macha*]

((Lisa Cooper, continued from Open Grave.))

Lisa sat with her bare legs stretched out in front of her and used her hand to keep the sun out of her eyes as she studied her surroundings. Damp hair clung to her face and her clothes. Her other hand was rested on the scythe lying between her and the daypack. The contents of the light tan canvas sack lay sprawled out around her. Discarded wrappers and emptied boxes. The jerky was eaten in the town. The rest was eaten on the way from the chapel to the river. Her empty canteen was in the pocket of her shorts. She had gone to the river to fill it but had gotten sidetracked. Once she had climbed up the far bank and retrieved her scythe she had forgotten. She remembered a half-kilometre away when her clothes began to dry and kept on walking. Salted horse meat was all that was left. Lisa had never tasted horse before but she could make a reasonable assumption. She took two large bites. It tasted as well as you can imagine horse meat would taste. She spat the contents of her mouth on the ground beside her and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

In the distance Lisa could spot the river and a few buildings on the other side. A ranch perhaps. Her clothes and hair were still damp but slowly drying in the hot sun. Something moved and she rolled over onto her stomach. Her chin pressed against the hard ground. She waited in silence. She stood and looked. Nothing was moving. She put the bag over her shoulders and picked up the scythe. She decided the litter was too indistinct to give away her position. It took her hours to walk from the chapel in the sun. It would take her longer to walk back. She pressed on.

The sun set quickly. Cold desert winds chilled her to the bone. After some forty minutes she picked up the remains of an old rail road track. She walked along the wooden planks. The voice cut the silence and told her the dead. She stopped and cried hoarse sobs. She had tried to treat it like a game. People had died. Around twenty minutes later she found the strength to continue walking. Around twenty later she saw flashes of light off in the distance. She kept hers off and in the bag. She stopped and listened. They were out of earshot. Once she was sure they were gone she moved.

She hiked along the length of the railroad with her hand tightly gripped on the handle of the scythe. As she walked she studied the ground. The tracks were half buried under dirt and sand. The strap on her sandal broke and she stopped. She moved off of the tracks and tried to fix it. Nothing she could do. She walked the rest of the way barefoot. The collar around her neck felt tighter all of a sudden. She took a few deep breaths and continued along. She had dried off by this point and that made the cold more bearable. She walked besides the tracks now. A deep cut from a splinter wept blood on the ground behind her. She took a few more deep breaths. She walked across the tracks and started breathing. She dropped her scythe but kept the canvas sack and the empty canteen. She was a fair ways from the edge of her map. She tugged at the bulky collar. She needed more room to breathe.

One sharp pull was all it took for the blades inside the collar to dig into her neck but it was not enough to kill her instantly. Blood poured from the cut in her neck. She was flailing and gurgling. She was coughing blood. Her first instinct was to struggle harder against the collar.

At some point she crumpled to the ground in a heap. Gargled moans escaped her throat. Her vision ocluded and she felt numb. Blood trickled from her neck onto beads of volcanic gravel.

F15: Lisa Cooper - DECEASED