Chapter 7
“Monty, for the last time, please stop trying to find a plant or root that will get us all high. We need to focus on things we can actually eat that will get us through the winter.”
The shaggy-haired boy gave Clarke a guilty grin before nodding and ducking around a tree to continue searching for edible vegetation. The blonde shook her head knowing that even if she gave him another ten stern warnings he would still wind up gathering anything he saw that he thought would give them a good trip.
Another week had passed since the attack. Things had been quiet, with no new threats made against the camp from grounders or by whoever the masked people were. With each day being colder than the last, Clarke and Bellamy had agreed that their top priority right now had to be finding rations they could stockpile. That meant having groups of hunters and gathers daring to not only leave the confines of the camp walls but going further out into the surrounding forest than they had previously risked. Neither young leader liked it, but both recognized that it wouldn’t matter who attacked them next if their group was all half-dead from starvation. And though neither of them pressed the issue with the other, Clarke and Bellamy also each had a personal motive weighing in on their decision to send groups out.
For the eldest Blake, he was intent on fully taking advantage of their need to explore further from camp in the hopes of finding some trace of his sister. The odds that Octavia would suddenly be found were slim and he knew that, but that wasn’t going to stop Bellamy from searching for even the smallest sign that she was still alive and out there. The need for food was what drove him to agree to allowing groups of the remaining 100 to venture out from the slight safety their walls offered them. But his personal desire to not give up on Octavia was what had him leading each and every hunting party that went out. After all, she was his sister and therefore his responsibility.
Clarke, in turn, took charge of leading every group that went out in scavenging. And like her co-leader, she too had a personal drive behind her desire to be out searching the forest. Whereas Bellamy was still focused on finding just one person, Clarke was determined to unearth any clue as to where the 33 of their group had been taken. The brief search that had been conducted while she had still been unconscious had only gone as far as the river. Once the tracks had been lost nothing further had been explored. But now that their need for rations had increased with winter creeping ever closer, she was given the opportunity to search farther and wider than ever before for the missing teens. Of course, collecting anything that would help them survive was the priority on each trip, but she still was able to look for any signs of vehicles or human life.
Clarke also was using the expeditions as a chance to gain more familiarity in general with their surroundings. Each time she went out with a group, she brought along the map that they’d been sent down with. Using all the land navigation skills she could remember from her time in Earth Studies up on the Ark, Clarke had added detailed markings and routes to the map. There were still so many unknowns in the world around them, but she was at least starting to get a strong bearing on navigating it.
The blonde was also gaining a new level of perception. Up on the Ark paying close attention to one’s surroundings wasn’t a necessity. Extreme attention to detail was only required in medbay when helping her mother. But now that Clarke was down on the ground, she found herself slowly learning to hone her senses. It felt like so long ago that she had been standing in the clearing while her friends gathered rations, much like they were now. Really it had only been a few weeks since that day, but the memory of her hair standing up on edge as Raven told her they were being watched was fresh. At that time, she hadn’t been able to detect anything that would confirm Raven’s suspicions. That feeling of helplessness and not knowing was one that did not sit well with Clarke. So she worked to constantly be trying to see, hear, and even smell anything out of place. By no means had she developed some sort of super tracker skills, but she knew that she was getting better.
She’d been out with a gathering team every day for the past four days, and she’d spent every one of them making sure to pay attention to every little detail. Which was why the branches of a tree about one hundred yards away shifting slightly caught her attention. There was hardly any wind today, barely a breeze. None of the other trees had swayed. The back of her neck seemed to prickle. She had no way to prove it, other than what her own gut was telling her, but Clarke knew that her group was being watched.
Part of her wanted to find a way to alert the others that they needed to go back to camp, but everyone would be suspicious. They’d barely been gone for two hours. And the other part of her wanted to wait and see if anything would actually happen. The grounders had not mounted any sort of attack against their group in weeks. And Clarke was certain it was the grounders watching and not the masked group because whoever was observing them was doing so from a tree. Classic grounder tactics. The young leader never wanted to make a conscious choice that would put her people at risk, but as she weighed her options, it became clear that trying to leave and triggering a mass panic would probably be more dangerous than just continuing on with their gathering.
Clarke turned her body away so it wasn’t directly facing the tree that she believed was hiding a grounder. She did her best to be as subtle as possible. She wanted to keep eyes on it just in case, but she also didn’t want to alert whoever was watching that she had noticed. It was such a thin line to try to walk and the blonde could feel her heart racing. Using every technique she knew, Clarke did her best to steady her breathing and calm down. Having her blood rushing in her ears would not make hearing anything out of place any easier. She scanned the forest around her and made sure that she had eyes on everyone in the group.
Monty, Chloe, Sam, Murphy, Kyle, Megan, and Alex.
With everyone accounted for, Clarke was able to let out a deep breath. That split second of calm was shattered by Sam’s yell of alarm.
Clarke sprinted over to where the younger boy was kneeling next to Monty. The pair had been pulling some sort of berries from a bush. The rest of the group circled around them. Clarke dropped down next to Sam and did a visual sweep of Monty.
The boy had tears spilling out of his wide, panicked eyes. He was trying to gasp for breath but it was like his throat was closing up.
“What did he eat?” Clarke may have been seized internally with panic, but her voice was steady and clear.
“No- nothing. He didn’t eat anything.” Sam’s voice quivered and tears were threatening to leak out the corners of his eyes.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes, yes. He hadn’t eaten anything since you told him to stop trying to get high.”
Clarke’s mind was spinning. He seemed to be suffering some sort of attack or allergy. But if he hadn’t ingested anything, then what could be causing it? All her years in medical with her mother couldn’t help her here. Causes for this sort of reaction were limited to food allergies when you lived in a tin can in space.
Monty’s eyes began to roll backward. He wasn’t getting any air and if Clarke didn’t do something now, he was going to die. Ripping her backpack off her back she began digging for something she could use to puncture his throat and get him airflow.
“Sam, I need you to search his body. Hands, arms, legs. Look for any sort of tear in his clothing with a scratch, puncture, or bite mark on the skin.” Clarke felt her hand close around a pen at the very bottom of her bag. It had been out of ink after the first week. It would have to do.
The blonde glanced at the group gathered around watching. Everyone had varying expressions of shock and horror on their faces. Everyone but Murphy, of course.
“Murphy. Get down here and open up your canteen.”
The authority the blonde spoke with had the boy only pausing for a moment before complying.
“Dump the water over the tube of the pen, my knife, and my hands.”
Murphy did as he was asked. Clarke went to pull her hands back, but he gripped her wrist and pulled a flask out of his back pocket.
“Alcohol cleans better than water, right? It’s some of Monty’s moonshine.”
Clarke nodded and Murphy doused her hands in the foul-smelling liquid. Neither of them made mention of the slight shake to Clarke’s hands.
“Alright, now I need you to hold his head steady between your knees and grip his shoulders tightly. Don’t let him move, Murphy.”
The boy nodded and positioned himself. Monty was no longer moving. Clarke knew they were running out of time. She gripped the handle of her knife tightly and began her incision. She had never performed this emergency procedure before, and she’d only seen her mom do it a handful of times. It was an extreme last resort up on the Ark where there were countless options in medbay. Down here, this was Clarke’s only option.
She finished the cut and pushed the tube of the pen into the wound. There was so much blood. She worried for a moment that she’d nicked an artery and sped up the boy’s death. But then the gentle whistle of airflow could be heard. Monty’s chest raised as his lungs inflated. His face slowly returned to its normal color. But the boy didn’t wake, and as Clarke checked his wrist for a pulse, she felt that it was still racing.
“Clarke!”
The blonde jumped. She’d tuned out everything around her and now sound came rushing back. Chloe was throwing up a few yards away in a bush as Megan held back her hair. Murphy was still holding Monty tight, his face whiter than a ghost. And Sam was looking at Monty’s leg in shock and horror.
“What is it, Sam?”
The boy didn’t answer. Clarke looked at Murphy meaningfully and then back at her hand that was holding the pen in place in Monty’s throat. Murphy swallowed hard, somehow paling even further, before nodding. He released one of the younger boy’s shoulders to replace Clarke’s hand with his own. Clarke moved down to look at what Sam had found and felt her stomach drop.
Something had stung Monty. The stinger was still buried deep in his leg. It stuck out a good inch and was bright blue. The skin around the wound was a deep purple with spirals of black spreading out from it. Poison.
Once again, Clarke felt out of her depth. There was nothing on the Ark that was poisonous, let alone creatures that went around stinging people. But this was the ground and there were probably a million different things that could kill them at any time. The blonde may not have any experience, but she knew the basics of medicine. Everything about this wound said that the poison was spreading and was going to kill Monty, whether he was getting air in his lungs or not. So Clarke acted on instinct.
Sam flung himself out of the way and Clarke moved to straddle Monty’s upper thigh. Using her own weight and legs to brace him to keep the leg still, she used her knife to cut away his pants up to his knee. Grasping the stinger firmly, she pulled it free at the same angle it appeared to have entered the leg. That would stop any more poison from entering the bloodstream, but there was certainly already some in Monty if the spider web-looking, black threads under his skin were anything to go by. Cursing under her breath, Clarke saw only one option. If Monty lived he may very well wish he hadn’t because once he was conscious, she was sure what she was about to do was going to hurt like a bitch.
“Sam, go help Murphy brace him. If he wakes up, I can’t have him moving. Especially with the pen still providing him with air.”
Clarke looked up to see who was still present around her. Kyle looked a little green, but his gaze had not wavered.
“Kyle, pin down his other leg and keep as much pressure on his hips as you can.”
The red-haired boy didn’t hesitate or question, he just dropped to the ground next to Clarke and did as she instructed. Once he was in place, Clarke turned her focus back to Monty’s leg. The black was slowly spreading higher; it was almost to his knee. Now or never.
Clarke used her knife to make a long cut into the more meaty portion of Monty’s calf. The area was swollen from whatever poison had entered him, and blood immediately began to pour from the wound. Clarke focused on pushing at the areas where she could visually see the effects of the poison, trying to force it to exit his system with the blood from the cut she’d made. It was a balancing act; she couldn’t allow him to lose too much blood, but she had to make sure that the poison was out.
Thankfully, whatever foreign substance had entered him maintained its black hue when it met the oxidized air, meaning that Clarke could see it when it began to flow out with the blood. Monty had regained some level of consciousness and was moaning loudly while the three boys assisting Clarke held him still. The blonde heard him and felt his movements, but it was as if she was just subconsciously noting him. Hearing him make noises was a positive sign that his throat may be opening back up as the poison left his system. But her main focus remained on his leg, her gaze never wavering. The sounds of Chloe continuing to throw up and one of the others swearing softly didn’t even register for Clarke. For all her practice at being perceptive and aware of her surroundings, everything ceased to exist except her patient when she was in the doctor zone.
Clarke didn’t know how long she let Monty’s leg bleed. It could have been less than sixty seconds or it could have been hours. She wasn’t aware of time passing, she just focused on the volume of blood that was coming out with the poison, making sure that it wasn’t too much. Eventually, she saw no more black, and the bleeding had begun to slow. Monty’s moans became sharper to her ears, but she noticed that the boy was at least no longer attempting to thrash beneath her.
“Kyle, go in my pack and grab the mini medkit. I need bandages and my hands are a mess.”
Once more the younger boy did as asked. Clarke dumped some water on her hands and Monty’s leg to wash away excess blood before bandaging the cut tightly. She then turned to meet Monty’s terrified gaze.
“Hey there. You’re alright. I know you’re scared and everything probably hurts a lot right now, but I need you to try to lay still for me. I had to make a tiny hole in your neck to help get some air to your lungs, and right now that hole is still open. So I need you to not move, okay?”
Clarke’s voice had gone from steady and authoritative to gentle and kind. One tone while being the doctor and another for talking to the patient. Sounding calm sometimes did more than the actual words being said did. Monty gave the smallest of nods at Clarke’s words and she smiled at him.
“You really are gonna be okay. Something stung you and your body had a pretty severe reaction to the toxin. But good news is that we got you breathing and I got the toxin out. You’re gonna be pretty sore and may not be able to talk too well for a bit, but it’s nothing that won’t heal. And most importantly, you’re going to live.”
Despite the tremendous amount of pain that he must have been feeling, and the pen still jutting out of his throat, Monty managed a weak smile that reached his watery eyes. Clarke let out a small sigh of relief before turning away from his gaze. He didn’t need to see it as her composure slipped. The first aid kit she carried in her bag was a smaller version of the large one in her tent at the camp. She needed all the supplies she had available to her if she was gonna stitch up both of the wounds she’d given Monty while trying to save him. There was no way that the group could get him safely back to the camp in his current state. So she’d have to send a runner. Clarke stood and faced the group of kids huddled around her.
“Alright. Monty is going to be okay. But I do need to stitch up his wounds and soon because of the risk of infection. However, we can’t move him, and the stuff I need is in the main med kit back at camp. So here’s the plan. Murphy, you’re with me. We’re gonna stay right here with Monty. Chloe and Megan, you gather up everything we’ve collected so far and bring it back to camp. As much as you can carry. Today may have taken a crazy turn, but the objective hasn’t changed. We need those rations. Alex, you act as a lookout for them and help carry what you can as well. Make sure all three of you make it safely back to camp. Sam and Kyle, I need you to run, as fast as you possibly can, back to camp. Get my kit. Get more moonshine as well, if you can. Then get back here and bring back extra hands. Strong hands. Got it?”
Everyone seemed to stare at Clarke in shock. Clarke raised an eyebrow after a moment of silence. Murphy coughed like he was trying to cover a laugh. Everyone else finally moved, taking off in different directions with mumbled affirmatives. Clarke turned to give Murphy a questioning look and the normally broody teen smirked in return.
“You totally just traumatized them all and definitely gave them some whiplash.”
“Excuse me, what?”
Murphy actually laughed, something Clarke had never heard him do. He was careful to not jostle the pen he was still stabilizing, but the rest of his body shook with humor at the affronted expression the blonde wore.
“You may have been acting as their leader for a bit now, Princess, but they’ve never actually seen you go full ‘in charge’ mode. You went from escorting a gathering group to bloody, bossy doctor real quick, and then you acted like it was nothing. Just barked out orders on who was gonna do what.”
Clarke rolled her eyes at the boy’s depiction of what had just unfolded, but she couldn’t deny that he was right. She’d just performed medical procedures, that would probably be considered emergency trauma surgery, in the middle of the damn forest. Monty was lying on the ground with a gash in his leg and a pen in his throat, and it was all her doing. Of course, she’d only done what she had to do to save him, but now that the adrenaline was fading, the reality of her actions hit her. Stumbling to her feet, Clarke moved away from the two boys and promptly hurled her guts up into the closest bush.
After rinsing her mouth out repeatedly, and then using some more water on her hands to try to get off Monty’s blood that was still staining them, Clarke knelt back down beside Murphy.
“You all good?”
Clarke nodded once. She appreciated that Murphy didn’t push her on it. Raven or Bellamy would probably be freaking out right now, but the boy beside her just accepted the answer. He was someone Clarke had judged to be potentially dangerous. A loose cannon, always sulking around with a chip on his shoulder that made him constantly angry enough to burst at any moment. She’d noticed that for however hard she judged him to be, Murphy was always choosing to join the gathering group rather than tag along with the hunters and their makeshift weapons. And today he had done exactly what she’d asked of him and hadn’t waivered once in helping her to save Monty. Perhaps, Clarke thought to herself as she studied the boy, she had judged him too soon.
“So now what?”
“Now we wait for our friends to come back with the supplies I need to make sure Monty is stabilized enough to move.”
Clarke looked down and gave the boy in question a small smile. He tried to return it, but his eyes were drooping with exhaustion. She carefully checked his pulse and was happy to find that it had slowed down to a more normal rate and was strong. He was out of the woods for now and letting him rest was probably best.
“Good. So we’ll just sit here, holding a pen in a dude’s throat, and hope that whatever stung him doesn’t come back for us. And that no masked assholes or grounders decide to make an appearance.”
Clarke gave Murphy a disapproving look at his words. Monty may be fading, but hearing such things would only panic the boy and that wasn’t something any of them needed.
“I doubt whatever stung him is coming back. Its stinger broke off in his leg, so even if it was still around, I don’t know it would be able to do much of anything without it.”
Clarke chose not address the second portion of Murphy’s statement, but his words reminded her that before all the chaos broke out, she was certain that they were being watched. If the grounders were still around, now would be an optimal time for them to attack, if that was their goal. Monty couldn’t move and Clarke had only her knife. She wasn’t sure if Murphy had anything else on him that could be used as a weapon, but even if he did, their odds wouldn’t be great against a grounder. She scanned the trees surrounding them, but there was no sign of anyone. Rather than worry about the potential for a fight they wouldn’t win, Clarke turned her attention back to her company.
Monty’s eyes were now closed fully. She wasn’t sure if he was asleep or passed out. Judging by the fact that he didn’t stir as she gently probed at his neck, she went with the latter. Any swelling that he’d had in his throat seemed to have reduced enough that the pen was probably doing more harm than good at this point. She didn’t need him getting some sort of infection. Turning back to her mini aid kit, Clarke pulled out some gauze and her last length of bandages.
“Alright Murphy, I’m gonna have you pull the pen out in a moment. He should be fine to breathe without it, and I’d rather pack and wrap the wound than leave it in until I have what I need for stitches.”
“You really going to be able to stitch closed a gaping hole in the kid’s throat?”
“It is not a gaping hole, it’s a small incision. I’ll bandage it for now to prevent anything from being able to enter the wound. Mostly it’ll heal by itself, but I can stitch the skin closed to help it heal faster.”
“Whatever you say, Doc. Just tell me when to pull the pen out.”
Clarke laid out the wrap and bandages on Monty’s chest. She carefully wet some gauze and did her best to clean around the incision site. Once she was ready, the blonde looked up at Murphy, nodding once. He carefully pulled the pen out, and Clarke immediately covered the wound, beginning to dress it the best she could with the supplies she had left. Monty thankfully didn’t stir throughout the whole process.
Clarke let out a sigh as she finished and wiped her hands on the grass. Murphy did the same with his own, but the red tint still remained. The pair sat in silence. Clarke watched the steady rise and fall of Monty’s chest, grateful that he was indeed able to breathe on his own. Murphy leaned back on his arms and stared up at the sky.
The sun had breached its high point and was beginning its downward descent, signaling that the early afternoon hours had found them. Normally, Clarke would find it strange to sit beside someone and not speak, but for some reason, it felt comfortable with Murphy. She didn’t know the boy’s story, and before today they’d barely exchanged a few words, but after all the chaos they’d just endured, she was grateful to just have him sitting quietly next to her.