Chapter Thirteen:

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Her pack saved her from the stab of hitting the water. She screamed only to inhale the liquid. Norah choked and hacked only to take in more of the flood around her. The current picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her over the jungle floor.

Water. I need to get out of the water!

She opened her eyes to the burn of the dirty swamp. Norah flailed as she tried to right herself and find air only to have her body slam up against a tree. Once again, saved by the crash with her pack.

Drowning wasn’t her first concern–the shriekers were. And if anyone were to ask her why at that moment, she would tell him that it was her fear that trumped all else. The fear flooded her veins despite the restriction of her lungs.

Norah struggled to find the surface, her legs kicking beneath her, her arms flailing everywhere, anywhere, to lift herself above the rush or to find something to latch on to.

She couldn’t see. She could only feel the pain as she sucked in water and her mind clouded. The pain crushed her senses and yet her fear remained.

I need to get out of the water.

Her body slammed into a rock, jerking her in her last moments of consciousness. Norah slipped her pack off of her shoulders and grasped for a handhold on the surface that her body continued to scrape across. Each muscle screamed as her nails grappled at the hard barrier until she found a piece to clutch.

Darkness descended around her and the fear vanished. She pictured Stryker’s eyes.

She trembled as she fought against the current with her last ounce of strength. Her fingers slipped.

Something grabbed her hair and yanked her above the water and away from the undercurrent. Norah felt her back slice across the jagged edge until she was lifted completely out of the water. The hand in her hair continued to haul her over the slick, muddy ground.

She coughed and twisted. Rolled and vomited. Her entire body wrenched, it still thought she was drowning.

“Stryker,” she croaked and then coughed some more. The rain splashed her face. Norah fought against it as she blinked away the piercing blindness. Her neck was yanked. “Stop.”

It came out as a wail.

Her body was a rock. She looked up into the downpour to see clouds.

They’re purple. And grey. The sky seemed to open up like a mouth filled with lightning teeth and bit at the air. A dull light, so bright compared to the shade of the jungle canopy that a spark of realization flooded her mind.

Mud sluiced over her neck, back, and butt. The hand in her hair twisted. She felt the soil enter the opening of her clothes and slip over her skin.

The sky.

I can see the sky.

Norah looked above her and screamed. Robert?

She kicked her legs and dug her boots into the dirt beneath her, her heels slipped, she reached up and clawed at the hand clutching her hair. Her nails sank into wet, loose flesh. Everything went into overdrive as the use of her limbs came back. Norah fought the hold on her hair. An animalistic violence, a raw energy possessed her. I’m so over this!

The monster hefted her up and over a solid floor of concrete and the sky vanished as the ship loomed above her. Her hands found the sag of flesh and pulled, she felt the skin rip in her hands just enough to make the ghoul pause and adjust.

Norah reached down and pulled Stryker’s dagger out of her holster.

She stabbed and sawed at anything and everything that kept her attached to the shrieker dragging her across the platform. Something wet and thick gushed out over her scalp and over her face as she kept slamming the knife above and over her head.

A shriek pierced the air.

The weight lifted.

Norah twisted and vomited up a stomach full of water, ration, and bile. She flinched as the thing beside her continued to screech.

Her eyes lifted to see Robert floundering about, dancing a frenetic death dance. She squeezed the hilt of the knife in her hand, wishing by-god that she still had her pistol. The hand that had held her captive was stabbed and slashed to bits but there was no blood nor bone.

She launched at the beast and stabbed at the flesh suit it was wearing.

“Look what you’ve done,” she screamed as her knife went in. “You can’t have his body.” Black liquid spilled out everywhere, wet and fluid as water.

Norah ignored the migraine that was coming on and battled the ghoul to the ground. Empty eye-sockets stared up at her, thick and bulged out until a pair of glassy, glazed eyes appeared. She pressed her blade into the shrieker’s fake chest. Robert’s chest. And popped it a new opening.

A white, clawed, thin-fingered hand ripped out of her former co-worker’s neck and grabbed her throat. She didn’t have time to gasp as she was launched into the air. Her back hit the ground with a snap.

Norah groaned and lifted her head. She lifted her hand and felt the warm spew of blood at the back of her skull. Every fiber in her screamed to give up but her mind kept reminding her to get out of the water.

She struggled to her knees, holding her head, poised to defend herself–to the death–if it came to that but saw no sign of her assailant. Only the blur of white as it vanished over the ledge. Her fingers tightened on her weapon as she watched the spot where the ghoul had disappeared.

Norah sputtered and hitched, her body shook but she remained tense and ready, every instinct in her ready to fight. Several minutes passed but she searched and waited for the creature’s return.

Her eyes scanned the area, her ears filled with the roar of the storm, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Anticipation kept her rooted and waiting.

Stryker had given her the chance to live again but it was up to her to stay alive.

She counted the lightning in her head, she counted the pulses of thunder, she was aware of her heartbeat. It wasn’t until she felt the warm drip of blood trickle from her nostril that she realized she had been standing perfectly still in a place that could cost her, her life.

Norah wiped the back of her hand over her mouth only to lift it before her eyes. Blood. Of course. She slowly rose up onto her feet and grinned. And heaved over in a horrible laughter she couldn’t contain.

She glanced at the ship next to her, a beacon for a hundred bolts, and gradually made her way around it to the entrance. Her ears prickled but she didn’t hear another shriek. The ruined palm of her hand slid across the wet metal of the ship’s exterior until she faced the panel that held the keypad.

All of this for water.

Norah pushed up the dashboard and leaned her forehead next to it, her cheek slid while she took a breath and rested against her salvation. All of this for fucking water. She typed in the key code and closed her eyes.

The door zipped open next to her just as tears drifted from her eyes. She gripped the dagger in her hand and shuffled to the entryway, her eyes blinded by the interior’s bright LED lights. Her boots squelched. Mud and blood dripped down her body.

She wondered if she had actually made it to the ship or if this was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. She took a step forward into the light, sparing a glance at the bulkhead beneath her.

I must be alive, she thought, as she saw the dirty tracks she was leaving in the ship.

Norah paused a couple steps into the ship. Her back stiffened.

Everything in her told her to seal the door, to save herself, to leave. She knew enough to fly a ship and even if she didn’t...she’d learn–and fast.

But something was behind her.

And it needed to die.