Defiance of the Fall

He put the box on the small dining table and opened it , and first grabbed the small bottle of surgical spirit . By this time his face was drenched in sweat from the pain and his hands were already shaking . Putting all the things he needed next to him , he started to prepare for his treatment .

Slowly and gingerly he took off shirt and pants . Luckily the blood was still wet and hadn’t had time to coagulate and stick to his wounds . Still , the pain was a hundred times worse than ripping off a Band-Aid as he removed the clothing .

The claws of the beast had raked a long gash on his waist , and three additional but slightly smaller on his left thigh . There was finally the last wound on right calf . While the wounds looked ghastly , it actually did not seem as bad as he feared . The cuts seemed clean and straight , and the bleeding had somehow almost stopped by now , turning into a slow trickle . He could only hope that it meant that he was getting better , and not that he was running out of blood .

Knowing what came next he almost whimpered when grabbing a water bottle and a gauze swab . He carefully poured the water over the wound at his waist to clean out the blood and dirt , and the agony almost made him pass out . Gritting his teeth and blinking away the tears falling from his eyes , he then grabbed the alcoholic solution and poured some in the wound as well . The wound didn’t look inflamed , but he didn’t dare skip this part , even though it felt like he was being ripped in two from the alcohol .

His face was like a beet by now , sweat pouring down and veins throbbing out on his forehead . Finally , he took some surgical tape and taped the wound together , and then wrapped some bandages a few rounds around his waist .

The first part down , Zac just sat panting for a while . He closed his eyes and a wave of exhaustion hit him like a truck , almost making him pass out then and there . However , there were still wounds to treat so he roused himself again with some difficulty .

Zac did the same procedures on his legs , and by the time he was done his face had gone from red to a ghastly white . His hands were shaking so bad that he could barely grip the water bottle when he downed the last of its contents in a few big gulps . He was so weak he barely managed to make it to the back of the bed in the back , and as soon as he hit the pillow he passed out even though the suns still stood high in the sky .

It was still shining brightly through the window when Zac woke up . Was there no longer any night now that there was an additional sun up in the sky? He stretched a bit and found out that while far from healed , he did feel much better than he did before . His bandages were red with blood but not wet , so the bleeding seemed to have stopped . He also didn’t feel that intense pulsing agony anymore , and it was replaced by a lesser throbbing pain .

He still had problems keeping weight on his left leg through , and almost fell when moving toward the fridge . The second thing he noticed when waking up , beside his wounds improving , was a fiendish hunger as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks .

He ambled to the fridge and found out it didn't work anymore , and some food was already starting to spoil . The monster had probably broken something while creating the various dents in the mobile home . He picked up a few sausages they prepared yesterday before they ran out of firewood , and a couple of slices of bread . Then Zac finally relaxed with a bottle of water after he virtually had inhaled the food like a starving ghost .

The others still hadn’t returned . Zac was afraid they either were dead or had fled without looking back . Both scenarios were grim and the possibility of the second left a sour taste in his mouth . He took out his phone from his pocket , but it was mangled and bloodied beyond redemption , likely from one of his tumbles .

Luckily they had prepared an emergency phone in the camper in case something went wrong , and he opened a cupboard and took it out . The phone was in working order but it got no reception . This was weird as they had a decent signal yesterday . Even if they were camping and enjoying the wildness they wouldn’t stop at a spot with no reception , as no one was ready to go a whole day without surfing on their smartphones .

He also noticed from the time that three whole days , not one , had passed since the world went mad . He truly had blacked out hard after tending his wounds . The date only further reduced the chances of his travel mates and Hannah coming back . At least it also probably meant that the monsters kept to their territories and didn’t wander around as much as he feared . He wasn’t sure he would be able to handle another of those demon dogs at the moment , even with knowing their weaknesses from the last fight .