Against The Darkness (Cimmerian Moon) Read Online Free

aliens rushing to get us, so I ease up just a little. I
lift off my knees and crawl to him on my feet and hands, closing the distance.
    I reach for his
hands and try to move them from his ankle. “Let me see.”
    He uses a hand
to bat mine away. “Naw, I’m fine.” But when he rises, putting weight on his
ankle, he again winces and lifts his foot off the ground.
    “You are not
okay.” I reach for his ankle and this time he puts his hand on mine and looks
down at me. If I hadn’t known he was in pain there would be no mistaking it
now. His face is dark red and his eyes are watery. “I can handle this,” he says,
through gritted teeth.
    “I won’t hurt
you. My mother is a nurse.”
    He grunts, but
let go of my hand. “That doesn’t mean you know what to do.”
    I lower myself
to a knee and lift up his dripping pant leg to assess his ankle. It’s wet, with
lines of dirt on his red and swollen skin. “Yeah it does. I’ve been helping her
out in the clinic since I was seven. I can take care of a twisted ankle.” I
touch lightly around his skin, making sure I don’t feel any protruding bones. Feeling
none, I pull away.
    “Is that the
diagnosis? Twisted ankle?”
    I sit back on
my heels. “That’s what it looks like. We’ll have to take it slow. We don’t want
to aggravate it.” Which means it’ll take us longer to get back to the others
and we’d have to stay put for the night. I take in a deep breath. We just added
another day to our journey home.
    He turns and
tries to walk away from me but it appears more like hobbling. “You can run
ahead and tell everyone that I’m coming. I’ll be back well before darkness
falls.”
    I humph. As
far as I’m concerned, darkness fell the minute the aliens came.
    He waves his
hand through the air. “Go on. Make sure everyone knows we can still leave on
time.”
    Rising, I don’t
concern myself with the mud stains on my knees. Those stains will blend in with
the rest of the dirt and grime. In two strides I’m by his side, lifting up his
heavy arm and putting it around my shoulder. He tries to protest and pull away,
but I don’t let him go.
    “That’s not
what I’m going to do. We’re supposed to split up only if you’re down and can’t
move. And only then can I leave you and return with help,” I say, reciting the
rules that we heard every morning before a new scouting team went out for the
day.
    He peers down to
me, scowling. His piercing gray eyes flicker with disappointment. “You can’t
hold me.”
    I adjust my
body under his weight. “Think of me as a crutch. We’ll be back in no time.”
    He takes a
step and limps, leaning on me. He’s heavy, but I do my best to hold him up.
    “I thought I
was the crutch. Isn’t that what you called me?”
    Argh .
I did. When we returned from our first scouting mission. “I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean it.”
    He limps along
with me helping. “You did, but it’s okay. I was…still am.”
    “No. It wasn’t
nice. I was frustrated. I just want to get home.”
    “Me too.”
    I realize now
that I don’t know much about him, although we’ve had band together since the
sixth grade. To me he’s always been “Big Wade”, the tuba player.
    “Do you think
your family survived?” I ask.
    “I know they
did.”
    “You sound so
sure.”
    “I am. We’re
hunters. We can survive this.”
    He says “this”
as though it’s just a mere power outage or something else we’re used to dealing
with.
    “So you mean
to tell me that you know how to hunt and we’ve been eating stale bread for two
weeks?” I say, trying to lighten the mood.
    He grunts and
presses down on me. My legs shake under his weight. “This isn’t going to work.”
    He tries to stop
but I won’t let him. I nod toward the trees up ahead. “You can make it to the
trees. I’d feel better if we got out of the open.”
    He straightens
and keeps going. He can do it, but he’s having a hard time, his breaths coming out
strained and hard. We make