Hello Sunshine

When Corrie gets under way, the first-aid kit has been thoroughly applied. Her scrapes have been cleaned with stingy-as-all-hell alcohol wipes, and the cheapo generic bandages that came with the kit have been stuck to some of them. The wire splint has been used, a little awkwardly with just the one hand. Also she had to go by the instructions, what with not having had to do this before. The point is that it's on. And it's not like an arm is going to stop her from walking.

The kit, sitting open and ransacked and now half-full of opened packages, looks suitably dire for that virtual tour, and Corrie snaps another picture of it. It's not her best work by a long shot, but she will definitely live to be able to show these to people.

So she packs it back up, and she walks. She tries to set a slower, more deliberate pace, not wanting to expend any more of her water as sweat than she absolutely has to, but a sense of oh-God-I'm-not-dying-out-here urgency keeps speeding her steps. Especially when...

...well...

 

The desert is... flickering. Shadows like long-lost travellers move on the horizon, and she hears voices whispering in the distance.

She almost trips over what seems to be a desiccated corpse that comes into her sight as she takes a step forwards, just to have it vanish into dust as her steps falter...

 

No. It wasn't there when she came this way before. It's not there now. See? It went away.

The dampness on her back has almost all evaporated, even with the increasingly-too-light pack on over it. But she's still sweating (is she ever). It's too early for hallucinations.

Corrie stomps extra hard on the dust where the body isn't. Looks like they show up when she doesn't drink enough, too.

 

For a moment, a body thrashes underfoot and wails inhumanly.

Dessicated skin clings to a too-thin frame and eyes buzzing out of sockets picked clean by vultures.

 

That gets a flinch from Corrie- unreal though it clearly is, she really doesn't like the sound of pain. After a moment, she grabs the spare camera again and photographs the boot-printed dust. Because there's nothing there, and she's going to document that.

Maybe she shouldn't ration her water quite this strictly. There's no point in conserving it if she's going to pass out and not be able to drink it or something, so she gulps down a significant portion of what's left.

Wouldn't it be great to have a bit of filthy dysentery water right now? The useless goddamn water tabs are still nestled safely in their foil wrap.

 

A voice gasps behind her, bony fingers brushing her ankle as a death rattle whispers into the air. "P. Please. T...thirsty. so thirsty-"

Another voice begins to issue from the cave, one she can hear even this far away, a young boy crying and screaming, sobbing for help, the voice jangling and echoing through the rocks.

 

A wild impulse wants to just dribble some water on the spot so maybe it would leave her alone, but since it's not real and she doesn't have enough as it is Corrie just grits her teeth and- and then doesn't pick up the pace, because that boy's voice is no better.

"Christ, shut up!" she shouts- a bit croaky, now, but perfectly understandable.

 

Silence.

Pure, blessed, silence.

Then dusty voices clamour on the wind, almost quiet enough that she can pretend they aren't they're... but just a little too clear for that.

"You hear me? You hear me? Can you hear me? Help me. PleAsE-"

https://soundcloud.com/user-709538218/hear-me-one

 

Wait, that actually worked?

For a little while anyway. Well, if they're going to actually listen to her... and it's not like anyone's here to complain about how weird she is, anyway.

"I can't help," she says, hesitantly, between her dry mouth and her uncertainty of whether talking to them somehow makes them real. "Don't have enough for me. What-" -at this point a rare breeze carries a bit of dust into her open mouth and she spends a few moments coughing, then takes another few swallows of water to clear that out. "What do you even want from me?"

 

Help me-save us, burns want to go home where's mom, I'm scared hush, I'm here I'm dying, why aren't you doing anything listen to me, hear my voice GET ME OUT OF HERE I don't want to die hear my voice let me out die die die die die why do you get to leave, I don't want to stay here-HELP ME PLEASE GOD SOMEONE HEAR ME, GET ME OUT-

https://soundcloud.com/user-709538218/help-chorus-3

 

OKAY THAT WAS A MISTAKE. Corrie cringes back, unwilling to go any further toward the cave if it's going to make that happen. There- wasn't there some kind of facility the other way? Why didn't she go that way, maybe they left some things behind, even something she can drink maybe, at least a damn roof-

-no. What's left of her rationality between the voices and the increasing disorientation tells her: it was further away. Tells her: there are explosives. Tells her: you're almost to the cave and already hearing things. Maybe you could have made it there if you'd started that way, but not now.

Tells her: The screaming isn't real. The heat exhaustion is real. Keep going.

She doesn't want to keep going. But she's not allowed to die out here.

 

https://soundcloud.com/user-709538218/help-chorus-2

The voices scream and howl, and the walk seems to drag on endlessly, the desert stretching out before her eyes, the singular sight of the tree, stark against the rocks, with the vulture still perched, hungry and watchful, upon one of the dead branches, in the center of Corrie's sight, a beacon, of... hope?

In what world is a vulture a sign of hope?

One voice grows stronger, echoing from the cave, a young boy yelling for help....

 

Vultures are perfectly fine birds, with an undeserved reputation based largely on their unlovely appearance. Lots of scavengers don't get that kind of flak. Corrie knows this, and she also knows that it's still incredibly incongruous how relieved she is to see the corpse-eating thing. The thought makes her laugh a little. "Where shall we gang and dine the-day?" as Dad's friend used to sing...

"Not here," she informs the bird, rather croakily. Then she takes another picture. Her destination, and the carrion bird that met her there. The focus is probably off, and the composition definitely sucks, but it's more ritual now than art. Reminding the universe that she had better be around to show these to people.

Then she wedges herself just inside the mouth of the cave, trying to stay away from both the precipitous drop on one side (which is all there is) and the murderous damned sunlight on the other. When she tries to celebrate this with a drink, she finds that no amount of sucking on the bite valve yields water anymore. There's just the bottle in the lunch bag for the rest of the day, now.

 

The vulture crows, loud, as she passes under it, head swivelling to follow.

The cave is chill, which makes the feverish heat of her burnt skin come blooming into her awareness, now that there's less to focus on, no more slow step, step, step towards hope and safety... even as a small hand tugs on the edge of her shirt.

 

It shouldn't be chilly right here at the surface... is there some kind of heatstroke equivalent to paradoxical undressing? Corrie doesn't remember ever hearing about something like that. Or maybe it's just the contrast making it feel this way. Or oh God what was that? Her head snaps over to glare at the location of the touch.

 

There's a young boy... or... part of one, staring out of the cave, hand curled in the fabric of her shirt.

Spoiler: eye gore, horror.

Even as she looks, his epidermis slowly begins to blacken and curl, baring his teeth and exposing slowly cooking muscle that slowly snaps and pulls away in blackening layers as he stares up with eyes that begin to bubble. One eye slowly seems to burst, sending thick, gelatinous goo dripping down his blackening cheek, taking the lens with it, oozing down in a slick, glistening wave of thick clear liquid that starts to bubble when it contacts the burning muscle tissue and blackening bones of his jaw.

His jaw moves, blackening ligaments flexing visibly, voice like a whispery crackling fire. "Are you going to die, too?"

 

Corrie's scream keeps her from even hearing that.

She's seen dead things before, even disgusting dead things. Every once in a while, she's even taken a bone or two back to clean. Those aren't people. They're certainly not children. Closer are the things she used to see sometimes before she swore off all intoxication, but those didn't take hold of her oh god oh god no

No amount of cool air is worth this- Corrie scrambles back out, forgetting to take it easy on the left arm. Pain, horror, disgust, and heat exhaustion jumble together in the pit of her stomach, and she feels her gorge rise... (( Rolls Resolve 3 + Composure 1 = 2 successes )) ...but manages, just barely, to calm it.

 

The boy flinches, more skin and flesh burning away as she flees, the image still burned into her retinas, bright as the fire that was flickering over his body...

She trips as her arm smacks against the tree, stumbling as a fresh bout of shooting pain rockets up her arm, but manages to keep her feet as she tries to reach anywhere but here.

 

It's the kind of pain that makes you tear up, but Corrie's eyes remain dry. In fact, everything about Corrie is dry now. The sweat has run out. It's bad, but as loopy as her overheated brain is there's only room for one thought at a time, and it's going to be the one that just flooded her with adrenaline.

 

The sky is beautiful, shifting. You think you see someone, in the distance, sitting with your things, watching you, then you blink and the fuzzy image vanishes.

Your pulse hammers away, fluttering like a butterfly, like a steady drumbeat, each flutter sending a throb through your head as it steadily gets harder, and harder to think of anything but escape. Your feet grow heavier, coordination growing more and more difficult.