kore_logs | It scares the hell out of me...

Who: Meyer & Ned, possibly Bruce & Charlie later.
Where: Starting near the woods. A little too close to the woods.
When: Late evening, Day 81
What: Meyer got a little too close to an angry sabertooth tiger, and unfortunate mauling occurred. Ned is his rescuer.
Warnings: Tiger attacks, and all the blood and pain that they entail. Swearing. Angst.

Lying there, facedown in the dirt, unable or unwilling to move -- was he supposed to be playing dead? He couldn't remember. What had seemed very important at the time now seemed like nothing more than a hazy, half-formed thought. There was something you were supposed to do in a situation like this. There was a protocol, a way to survive being attacked by an animal, but Meyer didn't recall it.

He knew what to do when people attacked, knew that if you were outnumbered or overpowered to curl yourself into a tight ball and protect your head and neck, protect your vital organs. He'd managed to curl himself into a ball of sorts, protecting his face, but there was a screaming pain in his abdomen -- maybe his ribs, he didn't know -- that prevented him from curling himself up entirely.

Motionless, barely breathing -- was he not breathing on purpose, or was he losing the need to breathe? -- he wanted to reach for the gun that had been knocked out of his hand after firing one shot. The animal had been on him in seconds, knocking him to the ground, although from the noise it had made, the outraged and pained roar, he might have shot it. He hoped so.

Maybe someone would hear the shot. Maybe someone would come. Maybe he'd die here. That thought enraged him; he'd fought tooth and nail to live his whole life, and now this. He moved his head slightly, trying to see if the tiger was still there; it was. It was watching him from a slight distance, and for a moment he thought about going for his gun, about finishing off the animal completely -- if he was going to die, he could take the damn thing with him -- but he couldn't seem to get up the strength to do. There was blood, he realized, blood all across his back where the tiger's claws had gouged him, blood trickling down his sides and onto the dirt, but that, he thought grimly, wasn't his problem. No, it was the problem of whoever showed up and discovered this scene, once the tiger gave up its waiting game and ate him like he knew it intended to.

He let his eyes slip closed. He let his breathing grow stiller. He hoped he looked dead. He wondered if he might be.

Threaded | Flat

Ned lingers near the edge of the woods after everyone else has dispersed. He is looking over the tilled soil as the last of the daylight fades, checking that everything is as it should be. All the equipment has been put away, all the volunteers gone home, all the seeds planted and watered and waiting for the dawn to start growing. He wishes, not for the first time, that he still had whatever power he possessed for that one brief week, to make things grow by sheer force of will. Praying won't do any good, he knows, but he looks over the rows in the ground all the same, hoping for their tenacity and success.

That reverie is interrupted by the violent report of a gunshot from within the woods. For a second, Ned freezes. Experience tells him not to go in the woods and instinct tells him to head away from the sound of gunfire. But he stays where he is. What if someone is in trouble in there? Someone he knows, someone he cares about? He thinks about Jesse, dying in the woods with no one to help him, and makes his choice.

He doesn't have to go far before he spots the two of them. Ned has never seen one of the tigers this close to the edge of the woods - never seen one of them at all, actually. Perhaps they are encroaching on the town because their prey is getting hunted by the captives, or perhaps it's the start of some new sick experiment. Maybe it's bad luck. In any case there's a saber-toothed tiger right there and a huddled body on the ground. Ned can see blood on the man's shirt, see that he's not moving.

Then he recognizes Meyer, and his stomach clenches with panic.

The tiger is creeping closer to Meyer, cautious but predatory. It is barely putting weight onto one of its back legs, and Ned spots a trickle of blood running down from its haunch. Without thinking, without further hesitation, Ned runs over, puts himself between the tiger and the curled-up body of his friend. There's a broken branch on the ground nearby and he picks it up, swinging it in front of him like a baseball bat. That's what people always did in the books - the boys' adventure and wilderness survival stories - when they ran into mountain lions. Saber-toothed tigers can't be all that different, can they?

"Why d-d-don't you p-pick on someone your own size, huh?" he bellows. The tiger hesitates, sizes him up. Ned does his best to look big and terrifying. His whole body is shaking with fear but he holds his ground. The thing must be quite hungry, or else aggravated over its injury, because it lunges for him regardless. He swings the branch, manages to hit it squarely in the ear. Pain blossoms in his arm, hot and sharp; Ned glances down to see his sleeve shredded, three long claw-marks on his upper arm.

The tiger is reeling, disoriented from the blow, and Ned spots Meyer's gun on the ground between them. He lunges for it, fires off a shot in the tiger's direction. His hands are shaking so badly that he almost misses it entirely, hitting it in one of its front paws. Apparently, that is the last straw for the thing. It turns and runs off, back into the forest, its gait unsteady.

Ned drops the gun immediately, turning back towards Meyer and sinking to his knees. The man hasn't moved, doesn't look like he's breathing.

"Shit," he says under his breath, hands hovering indecisively in the air. Should he feel for a pulse? What if he's dead and in doing so, Ned brings him back? He knows already that if he did that, he wouldn't have the heart to touch him again, to kill him a second time, and then someone else would have to die. "Oh God, please don't be dead, Meyer, c'mon. C-can you hear me?"

Ned's message reaches Charlie like a punch in the gut. There was too much to take in - too much information all at once and by the time it's even started it's over. He's left dumbstruck, staring at his watch not even sure if what he saw was true.

But it doesn't take him long.

He's overly familiar with the feeling that follows. He may be better at controlling it these days, but it doesn't mean those fits of rage which have plagues him almost his whole life had ever gone away. And this one is a slow burn, starting in his gut and moving through him until he's shaking with it.

He's not sure how he manages to find his shoes, only that he got them on somehow. For all he knows he might have left the front door open and he couldn't give less of a fuck.

He barges straight through the clinic door, looking nothing less than wild and practically boiling over.

"Where the FUCK is he?!"

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Some time later... a Chawlee!