Margot just hoped she would cover enough ground to make it free of this nightmare before her legs finally gave out.
Until then, she would run.
CHAPTER FOUR
Margot hadn’t exactly been a cardio freak back on Earth, but she did enjoy getting a good sweat going and her favorite Zumba and kickboxing classes at the gym were not only fun and social, but they had also left her with a fairly good level of cardiovascular fitness as a happy byproduct. She hadn’t realized exactly how good her stamina was, however, until she found herself running for her life until her lungs simply refused to cooperate any longer.
She finally hit the wall, slowing to a walk, then stopping, bending over and heaving, her ribcage painfully cramping up on her as she propped her hands on her knees, breathing as deep as her body would allow her.
It was hard, but even as her body screamed for more air, she forced herself to hold her breath and listen. Her heart was pounding in her head, but her ears could clearly make out the sounds of nature. Animals and insects were active here.
She was safe.
Or at least as safe as she could hope for, given the situation.
How far did I run?she wondered, finally taking a moment to assess her new surroundings in a non-panicked-flight kind of way.It has to be at least a mile. Maybe two?
In fact, she’d run closer to three miles, a distance she was more than capable of covering at a leisurely jog on a treadmill, but at a full sprint run? She’d never pushed herself like that in the gym, so it was an utterly unfathomable level of expenditure of both adrenaline and energy.
Margot’s body began to tremble. Not just from the strain and shock, but also something else she recognized. This was what runners called bonking. She’d done it before when engaged in an ill-advised fasting cleanse, but still foolishly going to the gym without easing up one bit. The tingling fingers, the lightheadedness. She knew what had to be done. She needed to spike her blood sugar, and soon.
“Food. I need food,” she muttered, looking around, fully aware that she had absolutely no idea which of these plants she could eat, and which might kill her.
And even if she had been trained in that sort of wilderness survival stuff, this wasn’t Earth. Those lessons would be moot. But she’d not eaten in how long now? Days? First the abduction, then the crash, all without food. As a result, her stomach was growling. And on top of that, she realized just how thirsty she was. Margot took another survey of the wild alien landscape surrounding her.
The area she now found herself in was different than where she’d run from. There were still a lot of trees, but a bit more spread out, affording her somewhat easier movement. And the ground, she realized, was firmer. Rockier.
It seemed that, in her abject terror, Margot had inadvertently run on a slightly downhill trajectory, her feet following the path that allowed her to run the fastest, while not consciously making that choice. It was rockier terrain, but that also meant moreopen space to run rather than dense bushes to work her way through or around.
There was an additional benefit to her course, though she hadn’t been aware of it. Water flowed downhill. And edible things often grew around water. That she’d learned as a little girl at her grandparents’ lake house, going out berry picking with her grandfather until their fingers and lips were stained purple.
She looked around, noting the dampness to some areas of the soil, her mouth suddenly feeling far dryer than she’d realized. Uncomfortably so. But this proved it. There was a water source nearby. All she had to do was find it.
“Okay, just have to look carefully. Grandpa said it flowed down and to look at the shape of the terrain. So stop, think, and pay attention.”
She took a deep breath, clearing her head, then spun a slow three-sixty, taking in the details of her environment with a clearer, non-panicked gaze. There, perhaps no more than a half mile away in the near distance, was a denser, greener patch of woodland, though it also sported deep burgundy foliage, and one thing was clear.
“That has to mean water,” she said, starting her feet moving again, this time at a normal pace.
Margot kept herself constrained to a slower rate of travel, making sure to keep her ears peeled and attentive to the sounds of nature around her. That, more than anything, she realized, would be her early warning system should the deadly, mindless beast be in the vicinity.
The trek only took her about fifteen minutes, the direction a ninety-degree deviation from her original heading. She wasn’t walking back toward the area she’d fled; she was merely redirecting to a parallel course.
She smelled the water even before she could see it. Margot moved faster, sheer need overriding her thoughts of safety. Itwas a stream, clear and fresh, winding through the trees at a leisurely pace. She hurried to the edge and dropped to her knees, filling her hands with water. She hesitated but a moment.
“Fuck it.”
Margot drank deep, the cool water tasting better than any sports drink she’d ever had, her desperately overtaxed body greedily absorbing every last drop and crying out for more. She drank and drank until a sharp cramp forced her to stop, sending her doubling over in pain. She heaved once, a trickle of water escaping her mouth with a small burp. But this wasn’t poisoning. She’d simply overindulged. Too much too quickly, nothing more. At least, she hoped that was the case.
Her thirst quenched, she sat on her rear and closed her eyes, breathing deep, taking in the smells and sounds around her. It was peaceful. Quiet. Calm. When she opened them once more, she saw the world with clear eyes and mind. Despite her initial arrival, she now took in the sights not as a terrifying and hostile place, but a fascinating new environment. One that she was very likely the first human to ever lay eyes on.
The trees with their burgundy, violet, and green foliage were actually quite magnificent, now that she wasn’t running for her life. And the shrubs and vines were equally colorful and alien. It was almost like she’d walked into a fantasy painting from one of her childhood books, only this place also had a much darker, dangerous side. One she’d been made painfully aware of not long ago at all. One that she’d be well-served not to forget.
Priorities crept back into the forefront of her mind. “I’d better find food. Can’t run on an empty tank,” she reasoned, climbing to her feet.
Margot began walking along the shore of the stream, her eyes fixed on the area along the water’s edge, searching for anything that might be edible. To her delight, it took no time at all to finda large stretch of berry shrubs. She picked one, the berry the size of her thumb, purple juice dripping from the end. She sniffed it.
Sweet.
