The woman, little more than a girl, lay there sobbing and gasping for breath and coughing up crud. “Just stay here!” he told her. “I’m going to try and save others!”
He did manage to get two more, in one case moving back down the riverbank some distance. All three were young women. One who seemed half-drowned and not long for the world he fought desperately to save.
It was Spotty.
None of the Families knew how to swim, but some things all warriors were taught, including how to keep someone from choking and the way to clear water from the lungs. He worked on her, pressing rhythmically on her abdomen, then blowing in her mouth, forcing the water up, forcing air in to displace it. He was afraid he was going to lose her, but then she coughed and turned half over and threw up a lot of water. He hadn’t thought anybody could breathe that much water and live.
When she could sit up, still occasionally coughing and puking but obviously a survivor, he squatted down close to her and said, “Just stay here. I have saved two more and maybe I can get others!”
She tried to protest but that just brought on more wracking coughs, so she tried to hold on to him with a grip so tight it startled him.
Gently, he tried to pry her hand off his arm. “I’ll be back, I swear,” he told her in a gentle tone, and she relaxed. Still, when he got up, she managed by sheer force of will to get to her feet as well. He reached out to steady her, knowing that, if she could, she was going to follow him.
By the time he surveyed the river again, there didn’t seem to be very many bodies left in sight and none with any signs of life either in them or clinging to them. Still, the sight sickened him. They were Family, and he felt each loss as if it had been one of his own immediate circle of friends. He even felt slightly guilty that he hadn’t been there, little that he might have done.
Spotty seemed to grow a bit stronger with each step, but he knew she was running on sheer nervous energy and couldn’t keep it up for long. The second girl that he’d rescued was just sitting there now, staring out at the water, almost curled up in a ball. He had seen this before. She was in shock, and would be in some danger until she collapsed and slept it off. She was called Froggy because she had an unusually deep voice for a girl.
He turned to Spotty. “Are you up to caring for her? I have one more to get just up here. If you can see to her, then I can get the other one and maybe we can make plans.”
Spotty had recovered some of her wits and nodded, although it was clear that she didn’t want him to leave. Duty now came first, and she accepted it.
The third girl was called Leaf because of the way her hair naturally draped over her head. She’d seemed the best off of the lot when he’d dragged her in; that was why he’d been confident enough to leave her to see to the others.
He found her sitting there, very natural-looking, staring out at the river. It was so natural that it wasn’t until he touched her and saw her open, unblinking eyes that he realized she was dead.
He said a little prayer for her, closed her eyes, and laid her out on the ground. There wasn’t much else he could do now but head back to the other two, which he did in some haste, now suddenly fearing that if Leaf could die like that, so could they.
Both were, however, still alive, much to his relief. “She was alive when I pulled her out, but she was dead when I returned,” he explained. “I do not see any more, but more may have made it farther down. Can you speak? Can you tell me what happened?”
Spotty’s voice was so raspy that it sounded worse than Froggy’s ever had, and speaking was clearly painful for her. “Some Hunters, some crazy, wild folk, they came out of the flowers when the demons came,” Spotty told him. “We fought with them, but they were crazy and began to kill. They kept fighting until they were hacked almost to pieces.” Her tone was flat, her eyes almost blank, as if she were, relating something she’d heard, not lived through. “They got into our kraal. Some of the babies—”
Her voice trailed off, and it was clear she couldn’t go on.
“What about the rest of the Family?” he pressed, feeling guilty for doing it to her. But he had to know, and Froggy wasn’t in any shape to talk yet.
“Father Alex screamed for us to scatter,” she told him. “The warriors made as much of a line as they could to preserve our way out, but then more Hunters came from the south and we were trapped between. Many of us jumped or fell in the river, having no place to go. Others—I don’t know. Many surely did scatter into the darkness, but how many I can’t say.”
At least he understood the situation. There were always Hunters around of one kind or another, mostly scavenging, feeding off the weak, dead, and dying, trying to figure out how to get a better meal. Being trapped there had obviously brought some in, maybe trapped as well by the new river the demons had made. Then, when the demons went to their groves and began doing whatever it was they did, anyone hiding in there was flushed out. It was always said that to spend even one night in those groves was to go forever mad. Maybe it was true.
“Well, we’re not going anywhere tonight,” he told them. “Both of you come away from the river. I will stand guard as well as I can, but I think we are probably safe for the night here on this side of the river. Get some sleep.”
“And then what?” she asked him in that same flat tone.
“I don’t know, but it will be easier to find out in the daylight,” was all he could think to answer.
They slept on grass in the brush, exhausted, unable to stay awake. Littlefeet intended to stay awake himself, but he, too, had had a very long day, and in any case he was no match right now for any Hunters that might come along. In spite of his wishes, he nodded off himself.
In his mind, in his dreams, he saw it all again, this time not through demon eyes but through someone else’s, someone human. It was horrible, nightmarish, brutal and hopeless. He saw many of his friends get taken down, some of the women grabbed and eaten alive, two Hunters munching on a screeching baby before several women and two warriors fell on them and hacked them to bits with knives and sharp cooking rocks.
With a start he realized that he was seeing it all replayed through Spotty’s eyes, inside her nightmares. He knew this not because he saw anything to indicate it, but because he saw her finally isolated, pushed into the water, struggling and coming up grabbing onto Rockhand’s body, and then, panicked and thrashing, sensing rather than hearing someone on the other shore, someone drilling into her frightened brain, “Kick! Kick and hold on!”
Somehow he and Spotty had been connected, at least as strongly as he’d been in his dreams to the passing demons. Her being one of the survivors was not as much the marvelous coincidence it first seemed, although it still might be the work of God’s hand. She had heard him while others had not, heard him in her mind, and this had given her the will and strength to make it to him.
It was well past sunup when he awoke and found the two girls still lying there near him. He nervously stared at each, but saw that both breathed; their chests went up and down, and there was some movement now and again. He relaxed.
He thought about scavenging for some food, but decided to wait. He didn’t want to wake them, not now, but he had the feeling that, whatever they did from now on, they should do together; that it was better to be a little hungry than to split up.