Chapter Four: The Hitch-Hiker
We were going to die. There was no way around it.
Oh sure, we were going to make a valiant effort and all, but this was pretty much a disaster waiting to happen. Or well, I guess a disaster that had already happened. Or something. Point was, the situation sucked. And it was getting worse by the moment.
“You’re sure you’re blind?” I asked again and immediately regretted my idiotic question. Obviously Kevin would know if he was blind. Besides, I’d already asked him that like ten times (okay maybe more like twenty) already and he had to be getting annoyed by it by now. “I mean…not like you don’t know you can’t see, but…is it like…permanent?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, his voice quieter than usual. Of course that might have been due to the fact that he was a little bit out of breath. I suppose adding my weight and the weight of our meager supplies to his load would do that.
I hated that he had to carry me. I mean how pathetic is that? Sure piggy-back rides used to be cool when I was like 5 (okay shut up, so it was still fun at 15, but that was mainly cuz it annoyed AJ to no end--and hey, our publicity photographers loved the shit out of it) but I grew out of that. At my age it was just plain ridiculous to have to be carried. And I didn’t like being that *close* to anyone. Plus it was hard to not complain whenever he had to shift my weight a bit. Every little jostle would send a shockwave of pain through my body, but I didn’t want to annoy him any more than he probably already was. I knew damn well that I wasn’t a light burden for him to carry.
It wasn’t just the pain, though, that made me hate being carried. It was the fact that because Kevin had to lug me around, we had to leave behind the tent. It would be sorely missed if we weren’t found by nightfall, but we needed the bag so we could drag the water along. Water was more important and harder to come by than shelter, we’d decided. But the full gallon jug and the remainder of the second jug were just too heavy to add to Kevin’s load. So we’d left the tent behind and used the bag to drag the water, tent stakes, and shovel that had been left just outside our makeshift prison cell. It sure would have come in handy when we were breaking out, but at least we had it now. I wasn’t really all that sure why we’d really need it, but we decided that it would be good to have, just in case.
It wasn’t until Kevin tripped over a rail that I realized that I had forgotten to watch where he was walking. He barely managed to catch himself before we both went over.
“Sorry,” I apologized, feeling even lower then before. I wasn’t even keeping up my end of the bargain. He was supposed to be my legs and I was supposed to be his eyes. “Uh…you should probably move to the left some.”
“Thanks,” Kevin answered dryly as he carefully stepped to the left.
We rounded the bend and I was happy to announce, “We’re almost out!”
Kevin grunted in reply.
Moody.
His mood didn’t get any better even when we did get out of the cave thingie.
For that matter, neither did mine, really. We were so screwed. There was like nothing there. Nothing. No stores, no people, no paved road. Not even a Quick Mart (which I swear to God are everywhere…well, except here, of course). We were literally out in the middle of nowhere.
And to make things even better, my stomach was starting to rumble. A fine time to finally get my appetite back, huh?
I guess I was quiet too long because Kevin finally asked, “Which way?”
I had no idea. It all looked the same.
Endless rock hills--practically walls--and lots and lots of dirt or maybe it was sand. Little patches of green here and there, but mostly…aw hell, we were going to die.
“We’re not going to die,” Kevin assured me when I told him so. I wanted to believe him. Really I did. “Now, which way?”
I swallowed hard, trying to keep my fear in check. Where the hell were we? The show was in Phoenix, so presumably we were still in California. Or wait, no, damn my brain wasn’t working quite right. Phoenix is the capital of Arizona. Or is that Tucson? I don’t know; geography never really seemed that important. But presumably we were still in Arizona somewhere. And that state is full of deserts and mountains and stuff, I think. At least there was one good thing. A dirt road, such as it was. “There’s a road,” I heard myself telling him, my voice amazingly steady. “Um…it goes to our right.”
Kevin hesitated for a few moments and I could tell he was mulling over whether or not he wanted to tell me something. Finally he spit it out. “We shouldn’t follow the road.”
What did he mean we shouldn’t follow the road?! It was the only way we knew how to get out of there! Besides, wasn’t that like one of the first rules of wilderness survival--stick to the roads? Or better yet, stay where you are and wait for someone to come rescue you. Of course I saw the problem with that theory before Kevin even had a chance to say it.
But he did anyway.
“If Ed comes back…we can’t be on the road or he’ll find us.”
I wanted to argue. Oh, how bad I wanted to argue. “Maybe…Brian will be the one to come back. He won’t be able find us either,” I tried, though my heart wasn’t in the argument. Much as I wanted Brian to be the one coming back for us, I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
Kevin didn’t bother to answer, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to think about it, either. I didn’t want to think about what Ed could be doing to Brian.
“So…if not the road…” I looked around, my feeling of dread growing stronger. “I don’t know which way to point you,” I admitted. “It all looks the same.” And it all looked completely insurmountable. “It’s like…mountains…every direction.” I felt that damned lump growing in my throat and swallowed quickly, not giving it a chance to grow. “Kevin…I can’t climb, and you can’t carry me…”
“Watch me,” he practiacally growled. And I’m the one who’s supposed to be irrational? I couldn’t help but let out a single laugh, though it was more nerves than humor that caused it.
It seemed like forever that we stood there, absorbing the fact that we were completely and thoroughly screwed before I came up with another idea. “What if we followed like alongside the road and if we see someone coming…we hide? We could probably see a car coming from like a mile off.”
Before answering, Kevin sucked in his breath and held it for a few moments before slowly exhaling. He does that when he’s upset or pissed off. “Is there anywhere along the side of the road that we can hide?” he asked tersely.
There was a point. There were a few trees, but they were pretty sparse, really. And most of them were pathetically skinny things. Not exactly good for hiding behind. And if we could see a car coming from a mile off, chances were good that the people in the car would be able to see us from a mile off, too.
“No,” I admitted reluctantly. “But if we go away from the road…how are we going to find our way out of here? We don’t even have one of those direction finder thingies.”
“A compass?”
I was actually thinking of those OnStar GPS things, but yeah, he was probably right, a compass was probably more what we needed. “Yeah.”
Kevin thought for a few moments. “We’ll use the sun to navigate.”
It was so cool that he knew how to do that sort of shit.
Except…
“But you can’t see the sun.”
“I can basically tell where it is…besides, you can see it.”
“But…I don’t know how to do that navigation shi--stuff.”
“I’ll help.”
I nodded, still not feeling good about this. I still thought we stood a better chance of getting home if we stuck to the road.
Kevin removed his watch and handed it up to me.
“What time is it?” he asked.
I almost stupidly just told him to look for himself, but caught myself in time. “It’s almost nine? I don’t think this is right, Kevin. It’s too light out to be nine. It hasn’t even started getting dark yet.” It could be nine in the morning, I suppose, but the little AM/PM thing said it was PM.
Kevin shook his head. “It’s about 6, then,” he calculated. Duh, time zones. Didn’t the guy ever bother to change his watch to match where we were? “Which means the sun should be just about due west.”
Ok.
“We probably want to go south,” he continued. “So…if we put the sun at 12, the 9 should be pretty much due south.”
Huh?
I furrowed my brow for a moment trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. Then it clicked. Okay, so…I held the watch up and pointed it so that the 12 was pointing right at the sun. “We need to turn a bit to the left,” I informed Kevin. As he turned, I turned the watch so the 12 continued to point right at the sun. “Okay. There. We should be pointing south now.” I looked straight ahead.
I blinked.
Crap.
“Um…it’s pointing us right back into the cave. Maybe we should go like…west or something and then south.”
“Yeah,” Kevin agreed reluctantly. He turned back so that we were facing the sun. I had to squint a little, but didn’t argue about it. “As soon as we can, though, we need to start going south.”
As soon as we could turned out to be a couple hours. That whole time there was like a solid wall of rock in our way. We possibly could have climbed over it, but I figured that so long as we were facing the sun and there was relatively…well, flat is the wrong word, because it was hardly that, but the hills were climbable, unlike the wall.
Kevin made us stop every few minutes and would make me tell him the time and then would tell me how to adjust our position a bit so we continued going as close to directly west as possible. At least that’s what he explained each time we stopped, but I was pretty sure it was also because he was getting pretty exhausted by carrying me the whole time.
“What time is it?” Kevin panted as he stopped yet again. I was going to find some way that I could walk. We’d attack one of the trees or something and break off some branches that I could use for crutches. Or something.
“It’s about 8:30,” I informed him.
“The sun’s just about down, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Almost.”
“Then we should probably stop here…for the night.”
“Yeah…I guess.” Damn I wish we could have brought the tent. I wondered how long we were going to be out here. Though we’d walked for a couple hours, it really seemed that we were no better off than we’d been before. Worse maybe because we didn’t even have the road that we could potentially follow back to civilization. Now we really were in the middle of nothing. And even though we were in Arizona (I hope) it was really starting to get cold. I was having trouble not shivering, even.
“We’re going to die out here, aren’t we,” I surmised morbidly.
“We’re not going to die!” Kevin insisted, sounding annoyed as he set me down before letting himself flop to the ground. I wasn’t sure what he was sorry for, exactly, but I nodded before remembering that he couldn’t see. I watched as he slowly lay down on the cold hard ground and closed his eyes, his breath gradually slowing.
“Sorry,” I finally murmured, watching him for a few moments. When he didn’t respond I figured he’d already fallen asleep. I dumped our belongings out of the bag and draped it over him, though it was a poor excuse for a blanket.
Since I hadn’t really had to do any of the work, I was still pretty awake. So I set about trying to find a way that I could walk on my own.
My first attempt nearly sent me screaming to the ground as I tried for the first time in hours to put weight on my bad leg. I’d forgotten how bad it really hurt; the hours of inactivity had settled the fire to a dull roar, but just that one moment of putting weight on it brought it back up to a full-scale bonfire level.
I wanted so bad to take the easy route and let Kevin keep carrying my sorry ass back to civilization, but…at the same time, I didn’t want to burden him like that. If it weren’t for the fact he couldn’t see, I think I would have just made things easier on him and…disappeared. Or something. Then he could have gotten himself out of there a lot faster. And without me, he probably could have taken the tent with him since he would have been traveling a couple hundred pounds lighter.
But since he couldn’t see, disappearing wasn’t an option.
I sighed and went back to Operation Cursed Leg. I looked at my swollen knee and felt my stomach revolting again. It was still grotesquely oversized. It would probably feel at least a little better if I could somehow get my kneecap back where it was supposed to be rather than keeping it on the thigh where it currently resided. When I’d dislocated my knee the first time it’d gone right back into place and my leg hadn’t hurt at all. Or at least not much. It just wouldn’t bend. So if I could get it back in place, just maybe I wouldn’t have to use that shovel to attempt to chop the whole damn leg off.
But how was I supposed to do it? I looked around, my sights settling on a good sized stick. That would have to do. I put it in my mouth and bit down hard before grabbing the gross lump on my thigh and trying to shove it back where it belonged.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up. It was quite a bit darker than it had been what seemed like just moments before. And it was a whole lot colder.
I guess that meant it didn’t go so well, huh? I blinked a few times and spit the wood out of my mouth before sitting up and looking back at my leg. Unfortunately, there was still a big bulge where there shouldn’t be one.
Fine.
This was war.
Where the hell was that shovel?
I was going to beat that kneecap back into place if it was…
No.
I had to think rationally. Calmly.
I followed Kevin’s method of taking a few deep breaths.
Calm.
Okay. I could do this. I just had to figure out what I was doing wrong. Had I ever seen anyone put a knee back into place? No. So how the hell was I supposed to--calm. Have to remain calm. Serenity now! I laughed imagining Jerry Stiller yelling that at the top of his lungs. Great show, but hardly helpful…
Wait. ER was on after Seinfeld. I used to watch that sometimes when I was stuck in hotel rooms, too young to get into clubs and all...I started trying to focus on that show. It was in a hospital. Surely there had been a scene somewhere where the docs had had to relocate a knee…Unfortunately I’d only seen a handful of episodes.
Damn it.
SERENITY NOW!
Fuck. Why the hell didn’t I watch Dr. Quinn with my sisters? Other than that it was such a sappy snorefest?
Okay, wait. I remembered something from ER after all. One of the doctors had dislocated his shoulder. So another one had pulled his arm while…that was it!
I just needed to have someone pull my leg (sudden images of AJ asking me to pull his finger made me feel amazingly homesick, but I couldn’t let myself focus on that, I needed to focus on my leg) so I could pop the bone back in place.
“Kev?” I asked softly, trying to determine if he was really asleep or not.
There was no reply.
I sighed. It could wait until he woke up.
I lay back on the ground and shut my eyes, hoping that sleep would come for me as easily as it had for him. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get comfortable, and every time I tried to shift into a better position, the pain would flare up again.
Maybe I could wake him up. He would be able to go right back to sleep. I looked over at him sleeping soundly and vetoed the idea.
But maybe I could do it by myself after all. All I needed was something to hold my leg in place…like rope or something. If only the handcuffs could have been around my ankles or something. Okay so then I wouldn’t be able to walk even if my knee was in place. But damn…if only we had some rope or something.
Shoelaces were as close as I could come up with. I pulled the shoe off my good foot and began unlacing it. Within a few moments I had one lovely shoelace. I tied it around my ankle and looked for something else to secure it to. There wasn’t much to work with, but finally I settled on a tent stake. I plunged it into the ground and forced it as deep as I could. Then I tied the other end of the lace to the stake.
Here went nothing.
I closed my eyes and sucked in my breath before clenching my teeth and pulling my body backward, hoping to stretch out my leg enough that I could get the kneecap back in place.
FUCK!
It wasn’t that it hurt. It didn’t really. The problem was that it didn’t work.
I seriously curse all the times that I didn’t replace my damned sneakers when Kevin told me I needed to. Fucking shoelace. I know it was getting kinda ratty and all, but damn. Didn’t think it’d break in half that easy. I pulled the useless half-lace from my ankle. I unlaced the other shoe and tried again. With the same result. I cursed under my breath. So that was a completely useless idea. What else was new? And now I was out two shoelaces, too.
I began scouring the site for something else I could use to secure my leg in place.
At first it just seemed like there was nothing.
I was doomed to walk (or be carried around) the Earth with my kneecap on my thigh for all eternity.
Then it came to me. If I couldn’t tie it, fine, I’d have to secure it another way. Like wedging it between a rock and a hard place. And I saw just the spot to do the trick. It looked like there was just a little cubby hole where a bunch of rocks and boulders were leaning against a wall. If I caught my foot in that little hole and pulled…
“Kev?” I called softly one last time, hoping that he were actually awake and would save me a whole lot of effort. Unfortunately, he was still quite asleep. So it was on to Plan B.
I slid myself over to the boulder and lay down, sliding my bad foot into the small space between the boulders and the wall. I bent my good knee and scooted farther, until a large portion of my bad leg was tucked into that little hole. Then I tried to angle my body so that my foot would catch on something. After a little bit of maneuvering, it felt like it was held solid. So I took a deep breath, preparing myself for an onslaught of pain and pulled with all my weight.
I’m not sure what exactly happened, but in hindsight, I think I almost qualified for the Darwin Awards.
I swear to God, I saw stars. Not just one or two, but a whole damned solar system.
“Way to go, doofus,” AJ mocked, his hand flicking out and plinking me in the forehead.
“Shut up,” I growled at him, closing my eyes, hoping that the stars would go away. And AJ…especially because I swear he was beating me in the head. And stomach. What the fuck, AJ? All I wanted to do was sleep and he just kept poking and hitting me. Fortunately, when I didn’t open my eyes again, he got the idea and went away and let me sleep in peace.
The next thing I knew, Kevin was yelling my name. He sounded borderline hysterical. Why was he yelling at me? At least it got AJ to stop. But my head was pounding like it does when I’m nursing a dreadful hangover. “Not so loud,” I called back to Kevin, quietly.
Thankfully, he did stop yelling. “Nicky? Jesus, Nick. You scared the fuck out of me. I couldn’t find…”
He just said ‘fuck’. I laughed, greatly amused by the man that always chided me for using “foul language” saying it.
“Nicky?” he suddenly sounded very concerned.
I sleepily opened my eyes to look over at him. Except I couldn’t see him. Everything was really blurry. I blinked a few times, but it didn’t get any clearer. For some reason, I found that to be pretty funny, too. I honestly don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Nick?” I could see his exceedingly blurry form moving toward me, looking like some blob from outer space. “Nick, where are you?” Jesus, I was only a few fricking feet from him, couldn’t he see…? Oh yeah.
“A few feet to your right. No my right. Your left. No…wait.” I burst out laughing again, trying to figure out whether I was to his right or left. I don’t know why it was so funny, but it was…I think. Especially when the blob was moving closer.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, stifling my laughter and mentally taking an assessment. It had gotten really cold overnight. I started to sit up, but thought better of it as the whole world started to spin and I felt several rocks and a lot of dirt roll off me. I lay back down, hoping the dizziness would go away. Maybe I wasn’t quite so fine after all. Like things could get any worse? Of course, I’d thought that the day before. “Or not.”
“Not?” his voice got a whole lot quieter again. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Now there was a good question. “I…tried to fix my leg.” Which, come to think of it, didn’t seem to hurt so much this morning. Or was it still night? No, it was morning, I think. It was light out, anyway. I tested my leg a little by trying to bend it. It wouldn’t bend at all, but I didn’t really feel much pain anymore, just a really strange pressure. But no pain. Not in my leg anyway. My head was still throbbing. I reached up to rub my temple a little to try and alleviate the pain.
There was something kind of crusty on my face. Damn but I needed a shower. I started to brush whatever it was away, but it pulled at my skin and kinda hurt, so I left it alone. Slowly it dawned on me that the pounding in my head was probably caused by something, and I hadn’t been out drinking.
“I think I hit my head,” I realized aloud. “I think…it was bleeding.”
For a few moments he didn’t respond, and I wasn’t sure if he heard me. I wasn’t completely sure that I’d spoken, for that matter, but finally he did answer. “Is it still bleeding?”
I started to shake my head, but that caused the dizziness to turn to nausea. He couldn’t see me anyway, I reminded myself, grinning at my stupidity. “No…I don’t think so. Damn it’s so cold this morning.”
“It’s not cold, Nick…” The Kevinblob moved closer, slowly inching forward. “Where are you?”
I had to think for a moment. For some reason it was harder than usual. Stupid brain. “Near Phoenix, I think.”
For a few moments the Kevinblob stopped moving and I could hear it breathing in a long slow breath. “Am I about to step on you?” he sounded like he was talking through his teeth.
Why would he ask that? Probably one of those trick question thingies. I laughed. “Yooou’re goofieeee.” What the…did I really just say that? I laughed again. Damn but my brain wasn’t working right. The Kevin-shaped blob kicked something into my face. Jerk.
“Sorry. I can’t see.”
I knew that. Wait. “You can hear my thoughts?”
“What?”
“Just now, you could hear me call you a jerk?”
Kevin let out an exaggerated sigh, followed by an exasperated, “Nick, you said it out loud, of course I heard it.”
Oops. I snickered as he shuffled forward. “I think you’re about to step on my head,” I warned, finding that funnier than it should have been.
Kevinblob knelt down, reaching forward, almost poking me in the eye. So I bit him.
What? It made sense at the time, okay?!
“Damn it, Nick!” he hissed, flinching back for a moment. “Where did you get hit?”
“Um…my head, I think.”
“Thanks,” he answered dryly. Then his blobby hand was slowly reaching forward again. I fought the temptation to bite it and instead grabbed it and guided it to the spot on my temple.
“Ow,” I complained as his finger jabbed the spot. But he probed it again anyway. Then his hand was lying flat across my forehead.
“You’re burning up,” he assessed, sounding rather astonished.
“Nuh uh, it’s freezing out here…” I replied, shivering dramatically for effect.
“Christ…what happened? How did you hit your head?”
“I tried to fix my leg,” I reminded him. Duh. Or wait…something about AJ…?
Kevin shifted, moving toward my legs but stopped short. “Fucking christ…”
“You shouldn’t take the lord’s name in vain,” Brian chided.
“Yeah, duh, Kev,” I chimed in.
“What?” Kevin asked. I could hear him moving something and felt some of the strange pressure moving off my legs.
“What Brian said.”
I heard him suck in his breath. “Nicky…Brian’s not here.”
I laughed. Of course he wa…no, he wasn’t. I stopped laughing. I’d heard him. He’d been here. Brian was here just a moment ago. But he couldn’t have been, I realized. Oh God, he was dead, wasn’t he? Ed killed him…I’d just heard his ghost! I felt my eyes watering up. “He’s dead…”
“Who’s dead?” Kevin asked, in alarm.
“Brian…he’s…”
“No he’s not,” Kevin snapped. A moment later, he continued, but his voice sounded a lot gentler. “Brian’s fine. He’s just not here. Now hold still…I don’t want more rocks to fall on you.”
More rocks?
I tried to look down my body, but everything was blurry…but I couldn’t see my legs at all. I saw the Kevinblob moving stuff off me and realized he was right…I’d been half buried under what looked to be a lot of rubble.
“Can you slide back at all?” Kevin asked after a minute of moving stuff off me. The pressure on my had legs had let up tremendously so it was worth a try, I figured. I sat up a little and used my arms to pull myself back away from the rock heap. I could feel my legs again. And better yet, neither of them particularly hurt.
“Good. Okay, now hold on…”
To what? I had no idea, but whatever. While he went to do his thing I checked my leg. It still wouldn’t bend, but it seemed that I’d somehow managed to get my kneecap back in place. Go me. Even if I did take down half the damn mountain to do it. (Okay, like a millionth of the mountain, but still…)
“Drink some of this,” Kevin ordered, handing me the almost empty water jug. I obeyed, but only took a few sips. We had to conserve, I knew. “No. You need to drink more,” he insisted, tipping the water jug back up as I tried to lower it.
“Don’t we need to save it?”
“No, you’ve got to drink it, Nick. You’ve got a fever…you need to keep hydrated.”
Now that he mentioned it, my lips did feel really dry. But…what if we didn’t find the way back? I must have asked that aloud without realizing it because he answered.
“We will. We have to.”
“But…”
“We need to get to a doctor…I think we have to go back to the road.”
“What about Ed…what if he comes back?”
“I don’t know…but I think the road is our only choice…we can’t take the chance of getting lost out here. Not when you’re burning up like this.” I keep telling him, I’m freezing, not burning. “I hate to even move you, but we have no choice…”
“Sorry…”
“Don’t…it’s going to be okay. But, we better get moving. What time is it?”
I looked down at the watch, but…I couldn’t see the numbers at all. All I could see was the blurry blob.
“I don’t know…I can’t…I can’t see the little numbers.”
There was a long pause before Kevin spoke again, and when he did it was very slow and deliberate. “What do you mean you can’t see the numbers?”
“Everything’s all…blurry. I can’t see.”
Kevin sat heavily on the ground beside me. For what seemed like an eternity we just sat there. I could hear the hitches in his breath, but wasn’t sure if it was him trying to get his temper under control or if he was crying. When he lay down and rolled his back toward me, though, I had a pretty good idea that it was the latter.
“Kev?” I asked, softly. I wanted to say we were going to be okay, but I knew he wasn’t going to buy it. When he didn’t answer, I tried again. “Kev?”
And then he said the words I’d been dreading since the moment we’d started this journey. The words that, when coming from Kevin’s lips, proved that there really was no hope:
“We’re going to die.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
If you're trying to find the new updates to this story, they're not actually the last 2 (well one of them is, but erm...yeah. So I'm getting ready to update with a real new chapter, but in order to do so, I'm integrating a "companion" story into this one--you *might* have read the chapters from a story called "Turning Tables" but that story never actually made it into this archive, so they may be new to you...they're chapters 1 & 3 (Where is Everybody and Eye of the Beholder) in this fic.
Old A/N: /N: Okay, my beta reader felt I should say something to the effect of the following: There’s a spot in this chapter where Nick starts acting strange (who’s acting? He is strange…jk…sorta ;)) and too childish seeming. There’s a reason for it, and it will make sense…(I thought it did anyway, but…well, maybe I’ll be doing a bit of a rewrite if others agree with my beta ;))
For Nikki (thanks for reminding me people are still waiting for the next chapter…sorry it took a LOT longer than I hoped it would…)
