Inside my head, I told myself not to panic. I had to play it cool. “Colin, are you playing another joke on me?” I chuckled nervously. I thought that if I pretended I wasn’t all alone, whoever was watching me would get scared off.
In my gut, I knew who was watching me. A searing pain shot through my organs when I thought about the cannibals, hiding from my view, their mouths salivating at the sight of me. If I kept up this façade and hyped it up correctly, I wouldn’t have to worry. But if I didn’t, well, that would be the difference between me living and me dying.
“Colin, this isn’t funny!” I snapped, placing my hands on my hips.
“Who’s Colin?” a deep, raspy voice hissed.
“Colin,” I said, weakly.
“No Colin here.”
My legs began trembling. My heart was already racing-thumping-pounding, and I thought for a moment it might leap out of my chest. Perspiration formed on my palms and all of the cuts on my hands stung.
Bravely, I took a deep breath, then took small quiet steps forward and heard footsteps behind me. Cannibal or not, whoever was behind me was not even trying to be light on their feet. It also seemed to me they were flaunting the fact that they knew I could not escape.
The sound of clinking metal filled my ears. One tap. Two taps. Three. I had reached the point where my stomach bottomed out, and was also having a difficult time breathing. More clinking. More heavy footsteps.
Petrified, I couldn’t even muster up the courage to look over my shoulder. Why? Because I don’t think wanted to be face to face with their own death. And what my murderer looked like was the last thing on my mind.
Unfortunately, my death was inevitable. Better that I admitted it to myself than fantasized about hope. For me, there wasn’t any hope. Without a weapon, even if I kicked, punched, and screamed, I would be overthrown. My attacker was a man, I knew that from the sound of his voice. Women cannibals didn’t live very long, since they were usually the first ones the men picked off when they couldn’t find people like me.
Silently, I made a promise to myself. I promised that no matter what happened during the next few seconds, that I would not go down without a fight.
He moved in closer, and closer. Finally, he was so close that I felt the heat from his body. He let out raspy, ragged breaths, and the warm air from his mouth trailed along the back of my neck and brought on fresh goose bumps. Even though my instincts told me to run, I couldn’t. It was almost like my feet were cemented to the ground.
He let out another long breath. When I inhaled, the rotten, musty scent crept up my nostrils. Vomit inched its way up the back of my throat and I swallowed hard to keep it down. Mentally, I kept giving myself words of wisdom. Be calm. Be bold. And don’t give away any implication that you might be thinking of making an attack—like a lioness—patiently waiting to pounce on her prey.
The only difference was that in this case, I was the prey.A type of situation like this always worked out best if the attacker was surprised. So I waited. Then I felt a cold, sharp object inching down my spine. As soon as the coldness disappeared, I knew that that was an open opportunity for me to try and save myself.
Crouching down, I stuck my right leg out, pivoting it around in a carousel movement and swiped the man’s feet out from under him by his ankles. I paid close attention, waiting for the thud his body would make when it hit the ground. When the body smacking the ground echoed from behind me, I took off sprinting.
With each flex of my muscles, and each pound of my feet stomping into the ground, every cut on my leg burned with such an intensity that it felt like I was being jabbed repeatedly with a branding iron. “HELP!” I shrieked. “HELP!” The only sound that I heard was the echo of my own voice. Who was I kidding? There was nobody out here. There was no one to help me.
After I had put a good amount of distance between myself and the man who was trying to kill me, I stopped, hunching over to catch my breath. Should I turn around or shouldn’t? I toyed with that notion. Yeah, I wanted to look.
Turning on my heel, I gazed out into the vast, desolate plains to
see nothing. My mouth dropped open. “What the?” Where did he go? I surveyed every angle and still couldn’t wrap my head around it. “I know there was someone behind me.”
No…….
There was no way I imagined it. I was not crazy. His raspy breathing and terrifying voice made my blood run cold. The cold object he traced along my spine made every hair on my arm stand up. And his rancid breath that stunk like a rotting corpse—Ugh—I still had an acid aftertaste lining my throat from the vomit.
Convinced he was still watching me, I spun around.“Where are you?” I shouted. Maybe I had given him the opportunity to move closer. “Are you afraid?” That was a brave question for me to ask. Then again, if I took him down once, maybe I would be able to take him down again.
Spinning again, still confused, I had to stop. For one thing, I was getting dizzy and for another thing I had to come to the realization that I was out here alone.
Once the silence set in, a faint rumbling sound rippled across the desert. Glancing at my feet, my eyes centered on a small, flat rock on the ground. The rock was vibrating. “What is going on?” The way the rock vibrated reminded me of the movies that had natural disasters in them, specifically earthquakes.
In most of the earthquake movies I’d seen, the viewer always knew it was coming. Right before it hit, the camera zoomed in on an object. Dishes in the cupboard jingled. A glass of water on a table started rippling. The rock at my feet reminded me of that. But earthquakes? Here? I couldn’t re
member if we’d ever had one. If we did, it was decades before The Great Famine, and decades before I was born.
The rock vibrated harder, moving back and forth like a swing on a swing set. Then it flipped completely over onto its opposite side.
The sound of someone calling my name hung in the air. “Georgina!” I lifted my head when I heard my name. A group of four people were stampeding toward me.
Squinting, I tried to make out the first person in the group. Midnight hair. Muscular build. Colin. “Colin!” He was okay. I was so relieved. But what or who was he running from? Oh no!