The dawn of the third day comes with a sore back and itching arm. Slowly and wearily, I sit upright. My arm, the one gnawed on by the alpha wolf, has swollen up about an inch. The punctures are dripping with a disgusting, viscous, yellowish liquid. I sigh, mentally punching myself for not wrapping it right when I first got bit. I may not be all that invested in medical technologies, but I don’t need a doctor to know the wound’s been infected.

“That looks painful.”

I glance overhead. Heidi looks plainly down at me. I narrow my eyes. “Well, it doesn’t hurt, but it stings like a bitch,” I reply.

“I thought you would be more likely to bandage yourself if I kept quiet, but apparently I was wrong,” she says. “You always hated when I told you to do things.”

“Maybe. But— ain’t much I can do about it now,” I sigh. “Except to maybe scrape off a few layers of tissue, then cauterize it with a hot knife. Now that... That’ll hurt.”

“Of course it will. You’re pressing a molten metal to your skin,” she says. “Well, Whatever you do— make sure you have the energy to walk. There is rumor we’ll be moving to the lakeshore today.”

“Today? W-Well at least let me bask in my accomplishment for a little bit. Jeezus.”

“The water hole?”

“Yeah, of course the water hole. I’m... proud of it.” I fold my arms.

“It dried out last night. We are traveling to the lakeshore out of necessity, not to dampen your ego— though that could use some dampening, as well.”

“Alright, alright. Fine, just... find me a knife, and stick the blade in the fire. I’ll cut the shit out and sear it up in one go.”

By the time I come back with the knife, I’ve really contemplated how necessary it is. For all I know, I could just be opening it up to even more infection. I’m no doctor, and it doesn’t look like anyone around me is one, either. But I ignore that fact as I put a stick between my teeth and get down to it. The first touch sends a disgusting seared smell up my nose, and waves of incredible pain up and down my arm. I resist the urge to scream the whole way. When I finally finish, I stick the blade into the ground, and flop over in defeat.

“You’re going to need to stitch it up,” I hear.

“Yeah, no shit,” I reply with a huff. “But I don’t have a needle, and I doubt anyone around here has one, either.”

Heidi sits down next to me.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t think so either,” she replies. “Are you going to wrap it now?”

“Fine,” I sigh. I take the knife again and shred away some long strands of cloth from my shirt. I wrap the wound twice and tie the fabric tightly in a knot.

“Can you walk?” she then asks.

“‘Course I can walk,” I retort.

“Good. Then we should move out,” she nods. “Now once we get there, our main priority is food, and tools.”

“We’ve got one of those,” I mutter.

“Yes, you are quite the tool, aren’t you.” She sighs. “We will use the tools to cut down trees so that we may build a wall around our encampment.”

“Fine,” I say. “Well once we get settled, our food’ll come from the lake. Fish, waterfowl, and whatever else comes by for water. Someone can use the bones from the carcass I butchered to make spearheads and fishing hooks.”

“Sounds reasonable,” she nods. She reaches her hand down and pulls me to my feet. “I took the liberty of putting out your fires. Robin and the one named Tom said they would guide people to the best part of the lake. Everyone who heard the announcement is probably out waiting at their camp by now.”

“So you’re saying I should hurry the hell up?” I mutter. “Alright, but first you gotta hand me that jacket of yours.”

“And why would I do that?” she asks.

“Because you don’t need two goddamn layers,” I reply. “Just give it here.”

She scowls with all her might, but does eventually hand it over. Her shirt under the jacket is a white v-necked tank top. I try my best not to stare at her. Her body is otherworldly alluring and I hate her for it.

“Thanks,” I say. I take the jacket and tie the sleeves at the armpits. I then move to the drying rack and start shoveling dried meats into the handmade pouch.

“Wh-What the hell are you doing?!” she bursts.

“Don’t worry about it,” I mutter. Once the drying rack is empty, I tie the pouch closed and toss it over to Heidi. I then swipe up all the leftover entrails and cleaned bones and wrap them in the pelt before taking the drying rack under my arm. That done, I look up again. “Hey, where the hell’s Robin’s camp, again? Not that I... knew to begin with.”

“Behind you, somewhere in that crowd of people,” she replies.

I turn around. Not too far away is this huge crowd, probably more than two hundred people, standing around somewhat huddled together. I can’t see Robin or Tom, though I’m sure they’re somewhere in there.

“They did tell me where to find the location, so we could leave before they do,” she continues.

“For the love of god, yes please,” I mutter.

It has to be around noon by the time we trudge our way through the densest part of the forest into the lakebed’s vicinity. When we finally reach the shore, Heidi slumps down exhausted into the grass and pulls the makeshift pouch onto her stomach. She unravels the knot and shovels her hand into its contents.

“I thought you were sticking to your guts with that vegan thing,” I mutter, taking a seat next to her.

“You have no right to talk about failed commitments,” she scoffs.

“Ouch. How the hell’re you so damn quick with these comebacks?” I say. “And hands off. Quit rubbing your greasy mitts on all the food. Pick what you want and scram.”

“Don’t rush me,” she jabs. “It all looks so... disgusting.”

“Even you can’t deny it smelled like heaven while it was out drying,” I reply. “Just close your damn eyes. I’ll pick one for you.”

She shrugs defeatedly, and surprisingly does as I say. Just as she leans back, I put a dried cut to her mouth. She grabs it from my hands and tears into it without another thought. She chews in silence for a good few seconds.

“Good, ain’t it?” I smirk.

“It is, and I hate you for it,” she scoffs.

“Welp—“ I stand back up, craning my spine backwards in a stiff stretch. “—I should probably get a fire going. Don’t have four-eyes’s specs to cheat the system, so I’ll have to, god help me, do it by hand.”

“You wouldn’t mind if I had anoth—“

“Yes, I do mind,” I say. “Close it. The rest ain’t for you.”

The stripped intestines I’d wrapped across the trees are surprisingly supple, like regular rope should be. But I braid every three strands, just to be safe. In the end I’m left with ten strands of rope, each about six feet long. I coil up nine of them, and take the tenth in-hand to begin making the fire.

After grabbing the wood I need, I set it all down in the circular clearing I’d made for it. Over a bigger split log covered in tinder, I begin twirling a stripped stick between my hands. But as I expected, after twenty minutes or so, I come to the conclusion that it isn’t working.

“Hey, Heidi,” I call. “I need you for something.”

“What for?” she responds.

“Just get over here.”

I wrap the rope about three times around the stick, then scrounge for the rock I picked up that has almost a bowl shape to it. Heidi sits down beside me.

“What on earth is this?” she asks.

“Something that’ll start our fire up again,” I reply.

“Why does this string feel... greasy?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I set the rock over the stick so it sits vertically on the log.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What do I do...?” she asks.

“Take both ends of the rope and pull ‘em back and forth. Like flossing your teeth,” I reply.

She begins pulling. The stick begins to slowly pivot.

“Faster,” I say.

“This— isn’t— easy,” she replies with strain in her voice.

“Unless you wanna go cold tonight, you will do this,” I say.

“You owe me— a goddamn— back massage after this,” she grunts.

“Sorry, but we ain’t back on touching terms just yet,” I mutter.

“And yet if I offered sex, you’d gladly accept,” she grunts.

“Hey, touching and screwing are two really different things,” I say.

“Is this thing even working?” She looks down to the contraption.

“Don’t even think of stopping. The minute you lose that friction, you’re back to square one.”

“I’ll— keep that in mind.”

Abut thirty seconds later, I begin to see smoke coming from under the rubbing stick. And thirty seconds after that, the tinder catches fire.

“Ohh, praise the lord,” Heidi exclaims, tossing the rope aside.

“Hey, stack up the fire, will you? Like a teepee.”

“Fuck off,” she huffs.

“That’s my girl,” I mutter. “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

In a matter of no time after that, we’re back to where we were— which is to say, back in the Stone Age. I figure as long as I’m sitting there, I might as well try my hand in making spearheads and whatnot. So I pull over the wolf skin to my side by the fire and take out a piece of some kinda bone, not really paying attention as to what it is. Bone’s a lot more brittle than I thought unfortunately, and I end up snapping most of what I carve just as soon as I make any progress. Eventually I get fed up and toss aside my most recent failure along with the crummy blade I’d been using. I lean back on my hands and loll my head to the side.

Heidi lays up against a tree at the edge of the clearing, staring out at the lake with a blank expression on her face. I figure I’ll punch myself for this later, but the sliver of humanity left in me that still gives a damn is telling me to quit being an ass. I let out a sigh.

“You doing alright, Heidi?” I ask.

“Are you really choosing now of all times to be considerate?” she mutters. She doesn’t move from her spot.

“Excuse me for trying,” I huff. “And yes, I am trying, despite your... preconceptions of the kind of person I’m supposedly nothing more than. Take it or leave it.”

“Then I will, though my preconceptions of you still haven’t changed. They go back to when we first met.”

“Yeah, that’s kinda what the word ‘preconceptions’ means,” I say. “So are we gonna do anything about this? Or are we gonna stay at each other’s throats the rest of our lives?”

“...I think—“

There is a loud shuffling coming from the forest. Along with it comes a shrill voice that screamed;

“Tr-e-e-e-vo-r-r-r—!!! He-e-e-e-l-p me-e-e!!!”

I stand up. Out from the foliage bursts Robin, beads of sweat dripping down his red, terror-soaked face. He takes bounds and leaps until he’s right on me. He grabs my shirt in an act of desperation. I have to push him off to keep me from falling over.

“Jesus, kid. What the hell happened?” I ask.

“W-W-Wolves, t-t-they attacked out of nowhere!” he shouts.

“Seriously?” I say. “N-No, they wouldn’t attack a group, right...?”

“T-T-They made everybody scatter. I-I think that’s what they wanted,” he mutters.

“How many?” I ask.

“Two? Three? I-I-I ran as...” He stops. His eyes roll to the back of his head, and his legs start to buckle. He collapses to the ground.

“Kid?! H-Hey, kid!”

I bend down and check his pulse. It’s rather elevated, but otherwise he seems fine. Just unconscious. I stand back up.

“You aren’t thinking of going and saving them, are you?” asks Heidi, rising to meet me.

“More meat,” I mutter. “I’ve got a feeling we’re gonna have a lotta mouths to feed soon enough.”

I scan the area. All I see are trees. Trees, and bushes. But mostly trees. Finally, I see movement far off in the distance. I take off running. I grip the pointed wolf femur in one hand, and keep myself from running into the greenery with the other. I burst forward, seeming to gather speed the longer I run. The further I go, the less focused my mind grows, as if a sense of primal instinct has begun to take control. I hardly have to think and my body reacts. I leap over fallen trees with minimal effort, my senses heightening, my awareness rising to levels higher than I’d ever f—

I trip on a root unseen. My inertia sends me tumbling deeper into the forest with no more control over my advancement. I’m slowed to a stop when my head comes into contact with a rather solid boulder. My vision swims, and I end up sitting in a daze while cursing myself for thinking I was remotely capable of more than what I am.

A low rumble jolts me back to reality. Though my eyes are still blurry, I can easily recognize the distinct shape of the predator with little help from my fucked up vision. I roll to the side just as the wolf dives for my neck. It barks and leaps at me again before I even finish rolling, and I stick out the bone shiv in a desperate attempt to protect myself. The wolf is right on top of me, when suddenly it’s jerked to the side. There’s a flash of white, and a woman’s deranged screaming cuts the beast’s noise as she drives a kitchen knife further into the animal. She tumbles along with the wolf, and continues to shriek in overwhelming bursts while it struggles, stabbing over and over with each outburst until the animal finally grows silent. She looks up at me, breathing heavily. Her face is doused with blood. I cautiously lift my hands to show I mean no harm.

“Th-Thanks for... Thanks for that, I...” I mutter, but I automatically stop just short of a full sentence. “W-Where’d you get that knife, by chance...?”

She gasps, and holds the knife behind her back. I recoil by instinct.

“W-Woah there, I didn’t mean to—“

“I... I was cutting vegetables,” she says with a light British accent. She seems to possess a defensive tone in her voice. She’s actually rather beautiful, or she would be had her face not been so heavily coated in blood. Her hair is blond, almost white in color, and her skin is even more pale than that. She seems almost frail, despite the threatening storm brewing behind ocean-blue eyes.

“Vegetables, huh...? Can I... Can I see it...?”

“N-No, you can’t.” She takes a step back.

“I’m—“ I slowly get to my feet. “...I’m not trying to start anything. I-It’s fine, you keep the knife. S-See? No problem here.”

She’s silent for the longest time. Finally, she nods. I take that as a sign I’m no longer in immediate danger.

“I-I’m Trevor,” I say. “And you are...?”

“Em.”

“‘M?’”

“E-M. Em.”

“Is that a... nickname, or s—“

“Just Em,” she says.

“Em it is, then,” I mutter. “Well, Em— I have a camp a minute off that way, just follow the sound of water. I gotta... I gotta see if anyone needs help.”

“They killed so many...” she mutters.

“Huh?”

“Attacking, devouring... So many people dead...” she says. She isn’t even looking at me anymore, instead staring just shy of me with a blank look. She idly twists the knife in the air behind her back. “Don’t go... or they’ll kill you too...”

“I’ll be fine. But... I could really use that knife you’ve got th—“

She steps back again.

“—Or... not,” I mutter. “I’ll make do with what I’ve got. Just get yourself to camp.”

She nods slowly. Without saying anything, she reaches down and grabs the wolf carcass by the tail and begins dragging it through the forest. She disappears into the thick moments later.

The predatory howls draw closer. Heart pounding, I struggle to keep a steady pace as I continue onward towards imminent danger. I’m already hating myself for this, but I know as long as I’m out here, I can probably save at least one person. Worst case scenario, I end up mauled to death by the two remaining wolves. The idea gives me the shudders.

Some few minutes of aimlessly running around later, I suddenly hear hasty footsteps coming directly from my left. I turn my head just in time to see a figure burst from the trees, not paying attention to what’s in front of them. We collide, and our combined momentums cause us both to go crashing to the ground.

“Ah, shit!” bursts the figure. “I— Wait a damn minute... Trevor, that you?”

“Tom...?”

Tom looks to me with a shocked expression. There’s a large gash over his brow, and his leg seems to have been chewed on a good bit as well. Other than that, he just seems startled.

“We’d better run, Trevor,” he says. “Bound to catch up with us any minute. I got’r attentions away from every’n else, but...”

A low growling causes us both to back away a pace. The first comes, a sly, skinny lupus with a deformed jaw and two darting orange eyes. It stops just before us, and another sound to our right causes me to jump. Out comes the second, slowly emerging from some brush. The second is large— very large. And all too familiar, as well. There’s no mistaking it with that scar of his. The wolf that attacked me yesterday has returned to finish what it started.

“Why the hell did you bring both of them, Tom?” I hiss.

“I know these creatures better’n most. Lot more feral, but they’re the same deep down,” he whispers back.

“Fine. Then how do you suggest we get out of this, Coyote Pete?”

“Don’t look ‘em in the eye, for one. But make yourself look big’n scary.” He puffs up his chest and begins to heavily stomp his feet on the ground. Right away I see that it isn’t working. But it doesn’t get through to Tom until the gnarled wolf starts snapping at him. He leaps away, actually surprised his plan didn’t work.

“These aren’t normal wolves, jackass,” I mutter.

“Got that much. Thought I’d try anyways,” he replies. He steps forward and quickly reels his leg around and kicks the skinny one in the side. With it not weighing much, it sails a good distance before regaining itself and scuttling back with a look of death in its eyes. I turn my attention to the second just in time for it to leap at me. I manage to get out of its way and jab it quickly with the shiv.

“Dammit, just finish that one off. Old scar-face is mine,” I say in Tom’s direction. I swing the shiv at the monster and it jostles with its paws, not sure what to do. I reach for it with the bone in hand and quickly stick the point in the bridge of its nose, drawing just a bit of blood as I reel backwards.

“Ya-a-a-h! Scram you lil mongrel!” Tom shouts at the deformed one.

“Quit kicking the poor thing and finish it off,” I holler.

“Can’t get close enough to the fuck’r,” he shouts back. “Scram! Go on, ‘git!”

The scrawny one hardly acknowledges him anymore. Instead, it’s staring daggers in my general direction— and I say ‘general direction,’ because its eyes don’t exactly meet in the middle. It begins to plod forward, passing Tom by without further consideration of him, and instead approaching me. Suddenly, my hand is lurched away and I find I’m no longer holding the bone shiv. While I was distracted, the large wolf came up and tore it from my grasps. A couple of my fingers are bleeding from where the alpha’s teeth grazed me. I look up and the large one has the shiv in its mouth.

“What the hell do you have against me...?” I mutter. Tom glances back and forth between the predators and I. I can practically see the few cogs he has in that empty skull turning a mile a minute. But out of all the options he has... I’m surprised to see him abruptly leap into the air, and body-slam the scrawny wolf with full force. It lets out a wounded cry as it struggles to escape what has devolved into Tom lying atop it, choke-holding the beast with his flexed left arm. I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing.

The alpha growls and takes a step back. The shiv drops from its mouth.

“Yeah, not so tough without your little buddy now, aren’t you,” I mutter. I snatch up the bone shiv and point it threateningly at the alpha. The wolf lowers its head. With a snap of its jaws, it turns around and bolts in the opposite direction. Moments later, the scrawny wolf breaks free, and takes off after its master.

“This ain’t right, Trev. This just ain’t right.” Tom shakes his head, pacing back and forth over the forest floor.

“Obviously they’re not the kind found back in our time,” I say. “They’re killing us for fun. That much can’t be denied, or they wouldn’t have taken on a group of so many people.”

“Don’t even know how many folks made it out,” he mutters. “Five died by the time I got two of ‘em away.”

“And who the hell knows how many the one I fought killed.” I pause. “Hey, did you know about the lady that brought a kitchen knife through?”

“Can’t say I did,” he replies.

“She cut it down. The one that attacked before I ran into you,” I say. “Stabbed it over and over like a goddamn psychopath.”

“Eh? Where’s she now?”

“Sent her to camp,” I reply. “In hindsight, I probably should’ve thought twice about that. You know the saying that someone’s got a screw loose? Well she’s got fifty.”

“Yeah, well...” Tom trails off.

“...Think anybody’s out there still?” I ask.

“‘Course,” he nods. “No point try’na find ‘em all, though. D’lose ourselves’n the thick. We’ll just pray... that some of ‘em make it to camp.”

“We’ve got fire down there,” I say. “We could make a smoke signal for the others.”

He nods. “ That sounds good.”

“We should... probably get back,” I continue. “Just to let everyone know we didn’t get mauled to death or something.”

“Heh, yea.”