Kimberly, near the top of the falls, raced out of sight.
I boosted myself onto the rock.
Kneeling on both sides of Connie, her mother and I lifted and dragged her until she was flat on her back. "That's fine, that's fine," Billie said. She sounded almost calm. "You're gonna be fine, honey. Everything's fine."
I wasn't so sure about that.
Connie was out cold, and bleeding from the side of her head. She was alive, though. Breathing. With so much bare skin showing, you couldn't miss all the parts of her that rose and fell. Here and there -- at the side of her neck, just under her sternum -- I could even see her skin throb with her heartbeat.
"What'll we do about her head?" I asked.
"There's her shirt."
I was almost kneeling on it. I snatched up the sopping T-shirt, folded it into a big, thick pad, and pressed it against the bloody side of Connie's head.
She moaned and started to turn her head away.
Billie put a hand against the other side to hold it steady. "That's all right, honey," she said. She began crying softly. With relief, I guess, because Connie had moaned -- a good sign. "You'll be fine, honey." She sniffed a couple of times. "You had an accident, but you'll be fine." With the hand that wasn't holding Connie's head, she wiped her eyes. She said to me, "Do you think her shoulder's broken?"
The top of Connie's shoulder had a nasty abrasion. She looked as if she'd skidded across a sidewalk on it, rubbing it raw. The shoulder didn't appear to be swollen much, though, or knocked out of shape.
"I don't think it's broken," I said. "Not that I've had that much experience with broken bones."
Connie squeezed her eyes tight and bared her teeth and moaned again.
Billie clutched the girl's good shoulder. "You're gonna be fine, honey." To me, she said, "Thank God you were with her. She might've drowned."
I shook my head. "That rock was just there, all of a sudden," I said. "I didn't have time to do anything about it. If I could've pushed her out of the way, or something. . . I just stood there like a jerk."
"You were great," Billie said. "It happened too fast, that's all."
"Did it just fall, or what?" I asked her. "Did you see?"
"It rolled off the edge of the falls."
"By itself?" I asked.
"Not hardly. I don't think so, anyway. I think somebody threw it -- or rolled it. Somebody up at the top of the falls, but far enough back to stay out of sight."
"Wesley or Thelma."
"I should think so."
"How is she?" At the sound of Kimberly's voice, I raised my head and saw her trotting down the slope.
"She's banged up pretty good," I said. "She's coming around, though."
"She'll be fine," Billie said.
"What'd you find up there?" I asked.
"Nothing." Kimberly squatted down for a better look at Connie, and her bare arm rubbed against mine. "How are you doing, Con?"
The answer she got was a groan of pain.
"She's so thick-headed," Kimberly said, "the rock probably didn't even dent her."
Connie murmured, "Fuck you."
With that, I'm sure we all figured Connie was well on her way to recovery.
"You didn't find anything up there?" Billie asked.
Kimberly shook her head. "I didn't do much searching, though. Just took a quick look around, then tried to see if I could find any footprints. Nothing. I wanted to get back and see how Connie was doing. And I didn't want to get myself jumped. There must be about a million hiding places up there. I didn't have anyone to watch my back, so it didn't seem smart to hang around."
"I could go up with you," I offered. "The two of us could do a search."
"Not gonna leave Billie and Con. Anyway, all our weapons are over there." She nodded toward the other side of the lagoon. "We've taken enough casualties for one day. What we've gotta do now is get ourselves back to the beach."
Which is what we did.
We waited a few minutes for Connie to recover some more. Then we helped her sit up. We needed a way to keep the bandage (her folded T-shirt) in place against the side of her head, so Billie volunteered my belt. While I held the bandage against the wound, Kimberly wrapped the belt around Connie's head -- making passes over the top and under the chin, then fastening the buckle.
Then we lowered Connie into the water. We floated her across the lagoon on her back, and helped her out on the other side.
I was only half a help; my belt being otherwise occupied, I needed one hand to keep my shorts from falling off.
We found our stuff where we'd left it. I removed one of the tomahawks from its sling, and used the rope as a belt for my shorts. Then I refilled my pockets. (We hadn't touched the food yet, but nobody wanted any.) It was agreed that Billie and I would work together on helping Connie back to camp, and Kimberly would take care of whatever weapons we couldn't manage. I put on my pink shirt, and stuck a tomahawk down the side of my rope belt.
Kimberly ended up in her Hawaiian shin, with her chest crossed by rope slings, a tomahawk at each hip, her Swiss Army knife tucked down the front of her bikini pants, four spears hugged against her side with her left arm, and the ax in her right hand.
I took one side of Connie; Billie took the other. We held her by the arms.
With Kimberly in the lead, we started downstream.
Connie whimpered and groaned and sometimes cried. With Billie and I holding her steady, though, she was able to stay on her feet and support her own weight, most of the time. Every now and then, she sagged and we had to struggle to keep her from going down.
We stuck to the stream; it was easier going than the jungle, and seemed like the most direct route back to the beach.
Sometimes, the stream was too narrow for the three of us to walk side by side. We always managed to keep Connie up, through places like that.
We only had real trouble once. That happened when we were making our way down a fairly easy slope. We would've been fine, but some damn bird suddenly flapped up out of nowhere and crossed right in front of us. It startled the hell out of us. Billie yelped. All three of us, I think, flinched and jumped. But then Billie had a foot slip out from under her. We tried to hold each other up, but we all fell down, splashing in the shallow water and landing on the rocks of the stream bed.
Only Kimberly, a few strides ahead of us, got away unscathed.
The rest of us weren't scathed in any major way -- not from that. It just added several new sore places to each of us.
Soon after that stupid fall, we hobbled out of the jungle and onto the clear, bright sand of our beach.
The big hunt was over.
We hadn't found our prey, but we'd been preyed upon.
Connie is mighty damn lucky to be alive.
All that was yesterday.
Andrew's lighter, in my pocket at the time of our fall into the stream, got soaked and stopped working. This had us very worried. A couple of hours in the sunlight yesterday afternoon dried it out, though, so we were able to get our campfire going again.
Connie is doing fairly well. The gash on the side of her head isn't large. It bled a lot for a while, then clotted and hasn't reopened. She's got quite a lump there, under her hair. She complains of fierce headaches and shoulder pains, but nothing serious has happened so far. I mean, she hasn't fainted or had dizzy spells or blurred vision.
We think she'll probably make a full recovery.
Agony, by the way, has improved her personality; she's in too much pain most of the time to be a bitch.
Also, she seems to be busy feeling sorry for herself and wanting everyone's sympathy. At least when she's awake.
She didn't have to do any guard duty last night. Kimberly, Billie and I took turns, with me taking the morning shift so I could work on my journal here.
Been writing like a madman, ever since dawn.
A while ago, Kimberly woke up. She came over to the fire and we said "Good morning" to each other. She asked how the journal's coming along. I said, "Fine. I'm just about caught up."