Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
PENNY
It takes us another two days to finally reach the edge of the desert. Silver says it’s taking us longer than he expected because the wagon slows us down, but with so many people and horses, we need to bring all that water. It doesn’t take me long to realize why.
With only sand around us and the sun beating down from above, it gets hot really fast. I’m wearing my lightest dress and a small scarf over my nose and mouth to stop any sand from blowing in.
The guys are all wearing scarves over their faces as well, with lightweight tunics and pants.
We rotate much more often to make sure that the horses are being evenly used, and by the first night, we’re all exhausted.
Moving through the desert in this heat just drains the energy from you.
Luckily, when the sun goes down, so does the temperature. In fact, it goes down a bit too low and I find myself shivering as I press myself to Brax’s chest under the blanket. He pulls me close, whispering in my ear, “I’ll warm you up, Baby.”
He starts to kiss down my neck, but I stop him. “Brax, I’m so tired and my skin feels gross, can we just cuddle tonight?”
“Of course, Baby. I’m pretty exhausted too, let’s get some sleep.
” Indy pushes against my back as he snuggles into me and I reach over my head to find Ryker’s face and keep my hand pressed to his cheek.
He presses his hand over mine, making me smile.
I love having my three men so close. I peek out to see Silver on the other side of Indy, not quite touching but close enough that he shouldn’t get too cold.
I find myself falling asleep really fast but am woken by a strange noise.
I’m not sure if I’ve been asleep for a few seconds or a few hours.
I slowly sit up and glance around us but don’t see or hear anything, although it’s extremely dark out here.
I wait for a minute and when I don’t hear it anymore, I lay back down.
I try to remember what the noise sounded like.
It was like something large moving in the sand.
Maybe it was one of the guys moving around in their sleep.
Yeah, that’s probably it, I think as I drift off back to sleep.
The next day is more of the same, and so is the next one and the one after that, and the one after that.
I think we’re close to day six in the desert, when Silver tells us we’re not quite halfway, and I’m really starting to regret not going around it, even if it would take more than twice the length of time.
I knew the desert would be hot, but I didn’t realize how boring it was and how dirty I would feel all the time.
I would kill for a dip in a pond right now.
Ryker helps me come up with games to play while we travel, as I spy doesn’t really work out here. I chat with all four of the men, getting to know them on an even deeper level than I did before, and if it wasn’t for the blasted sand, I would probably be enjoying our time together.
That night, I find myself a little restless as we lay in bed.
I can hear the deep breaths of my men around me and I’m not sure why I can’t fall asleep tonight.
Every day in the sun is exhausting, but I find my mind seems to be rather awake tonight.
I can’t stop thinking about Silver. The more time I spend with him, the more I find myself craving him, and I feel absolutely terrible about it.
I have three amazing mates, all who are giving me all the time and devotion they possibly can, and yet here I am, lusting after a fourth man.
On several occasions, they have implied that they are not only okay with me having another mate, but it’s something that they would want, for safety.
But I’m having the hardest time reading Silver.
Sometimes I’m so sure that when he looks at me, he wants me.
But then he will make an excuse to change the conversation away from whatever we were talking about.
I just don’t know what to make of it all.
I’m tempted to ask him, but if I’m being honest, I’m too embarrassed.
He’ll probably laugh at me for not knowing the difference between a friendship and something more.
I’m pulled from my thoughts when I hear a noise, the same one I heard on the first night in the desert.
I haven’t heard it since and had forgotten about it until now.
Slowly, I sit up and scan my surroundings, but can’t see anything in the dim light of the moon.
I hear it again, and it sounds like something being dragged through the sand.
I glance around me and see all four men close by, fast asleep, so I slowly peel myself free from their grasp and climb out of bed.
I’m wearing a lightweight linen nighty that ends just above my knees and has short sleeves. It’s a little warmer than my ones with spaghetti straps that I was wearing before we reached the desert.
As I climb out of bed, I wrap my arms around myself with a bit of a chill.
It’s a bit windy tonight, so I reach down and grab my scarf from where I shoved it in my pillowcase and wrap it around my nose and mouth before I take a few slow steps around our campsite to see what the noise is.
At first, I can’t see anything, so I move to check on each of the horses and make sure they’re okay.
They all seem perfectly calm and I start to wonder if I just imagined the noise.
I decide to check the other side of the camp and as I get closer, I realize that there’s something laying across the ground.
At first I dismiss it as a small sand dune, but I realize now that there wasn’t one here when we set up our camp.
Did it just rise up while we were sleeping?
I’m not really sure how sand dunes are formed, but I suppose it could be possible.
As I move closer, I see the texture looks different from sand, and as I slowly reach my hand out to touch it, I hear Silver yell behind me, “Penny, no! Don’t touch—”
Before he can finish his sentence, my hand makes contact with the large mass in front of me, which turns out not to be a sand dune.
Large six inch spikes shoot out of its entire body, like it’s a relative of wolverine.
I scream as one spike goes straight through the palm of my hand and out the other side, and before I can pull away, the creature starts moving.
It feels like it’s about to rip my hand open and I quickly reach out and grab a different spike with my free hand to take the pressure off of it.
But the creature, which I’m now thinking is a giant worm with spikes, starts to move even faster.
I can hear all four men screaming behind me, but this thing is moving fast. The spikes are roughly eighteen inches apart, and I quickly lift my dragging feet and find a place to put them where they’re not going to get injured.
“Brax! Indy! Ry! Silver!” I yell at the top of my lungs.
“Help! I can’t get my hand free!” I yell trying to use the leverage of my other hand to pull my hand free, but it doesn’t work, and soon all I can do is hang on as the worm picks up speed and moves over the sand at what must be around a hundred miles per hour.
It goes up and down sand dunes as it moves, and I have no idea what to do.
I pull frantically at my hand but nothing seems to work, so I hold tight with my other hand and find a way to rest my elbows and knees down without making contact with any more spikes and just hold on tightly.
I can’t even glance behind me to see if the men are following, but there’s no way a horse could go this fast. Even if they could, they can’t just take off and leave the wagon.
Every moment I’m taken further and further away from my mates, and my heart starts to ache as my stomach clenches. How am I ever going to find them?
The worst part is the worm doesn’t even seem to be going in a straight line, it seems like it’s zigzagging all over the place. I wonder what he eats out here, maybe he’s looking for his food source. Oh god… please don’t tell me this giant sand worm eats human flesh.
At this point, I’m sure I’ve been stuck on this thing for several hours and I decide to make another attempt at pulling myself free as he slows down a little.
I move my free hand and place my palm flat right beside my other hand so I have better leverage and this time, when I yank my hand, it slowly starts to slide up the spike, causing me to scream in pain.
I grit my teeth and after an agonizing twenty seconds, my hand finally slides free and I quickly pull it up to my chest. Too late I realize my mistake.
I’m no longer holding on to the worm and suddenly I’m falling backwards as it carries on its path.
I land with an, “Oomph.” On my back in the sand, I clutch my injured hand and lay there staring up at the starry sky as I breathe heavily. My men will find me soon, I just need to wait. They’ll always come for me.
They’ll find you soon, I tell myself for the fiftieth time today.
After falling off of the worm I must have fallen asleep, and when I woke I was in the exact same position, but with the sun beating down on me.
I was upset and panicked to see that I was alone.
My hand was throbbing and I could see it was still actively bleeding, so I ripped off a piece of my dress to wrap around it.
I was lucky I hadn’t bled out while I slept. What a stupid mistake.
I’m glad I still have my scarf to wrap around my nose and mouth to keep some of the sand out and as I turn in a circle, I see that the worm’s path is completely gone now. I’m not even sure which direction I had come from. It takes me all of ten seconds to see nothing but sand in every direction.
I remember when I was a kid in Girl Scouts, they always told us if you got lost in the forest just to stay still and somebody would come find you.
So I decide that would work best here, so I wait…
and wait… and wait. And when the next night falls, and nobody shows up, I start to panic.
I had only been on that worm for a couple hours, but it’s been a day and nobody had found me yet. Are they as frantic as I am right now?
Based on where the sun was rising and setting, I know which way we had entered the desert and which way we were heading.
But if my men hadn’t found me by now, that meant that they could have been miles and miles either north or south of me.
I have no idea what to do. Except I couldn’t go back west because if they were behind me, they would have run into me by now.
If I went north, and they were south of me, it would be almost impossible to meet up with them.
It’s the same if I went south and they were north.
My only hope was to keep on moving east and hope that I can make it out of the desert or meet up with them before I die from dehydration.
I really wanted to walk at night as it was so much cooler but it was hard without any sun to direct me.
But I knew that by that second afternoon, I was fighting a losing battle.
Not only was my mouth the driest it has ever been in my life, but I could feel my body slowing down.
A couple of times, I had seen things that I knew couldn’t possibly exist out here.
Like a shiny purple jeep and a buffet table full of chicken wings.
I think my brain was just starting to show me things that I wanted to see.
Although why chicken wings specifically, I wasn’t sure.
I mean, I like them, but they weren’t something I was craving right now.
Really water was what I was so desperate for.
I spend each night curled in a tiny ball, trying to keep warm.
And when I wake on the third day, I realize the sun is way past midday and I know I don’t have much longer left out here.
They’ll find you soon, I tell myself again.
I’d say it out loud except my mouth and throat are so dry I can’t spare any extra moisture.
I stare down at the sand as I put one foot in front of the other, but I know how slow I’m going now.
And when the sand suddenly rushes up to meet my face, it’s all I can do to turn my head so I don’t smash it.
Did I just fall down?
Luckily it’s just sand, so I don’t hurt myself more than just knocking the wind out of me, and I slowly roll myself to my back, the hot sand too much for my face.
The sun burns into my eyes, so I turn my head to the side and stare off into the distance, my arms spread to my sides as I take a few deep breaths.
Is this what dying feels like? My whole body hurts.
I know I’m burnt from not being covered up, but this pain is a lot deeper than that.
It’s like every muscle in my body is screaming at me.
My eyes slowly blink closed and I force them back open.
I have to stay awake, just a little longer, they’ll find me.
They’ll find me… they’ll… my train of thought stops as I see something dark in the distance.
All I can do is watch as the dark blob gets closer and closer until I realize it’s the outline of a person.
Are they running towards me? As they get nearer, I can tell it’s a man and as he drops down on his knees right beside me, I let out the tiniest whisper, “Indy?”