Wanderer (Book 1): Wanderer

“oomph” noise. The pain in my leg was intense, if it wasn’t broken before I had made contact with his chest it was now. There was a loud crash when he went tumbling down into the boxes again.
I was beginning to wonder why the second scavenger hadn’t shown up yet. He might have gone down stairs and hadn’t heard this assault commencing in the blackness.
My vision slowly returned and I could see the scavenger lying on top of some boxes trying to regain his footing. I moved on him hoping to silence him, but he was fast and countered my attack. We locked arms like the professional wrestlers used to do when beginning a match. His left hand gripping at my wounded right, I could hear the flesh tearing away from the wound. Despite the pain we continued spinning around the darkness trying to get the upper hand on one another.
I thought I might actually get him into some head lock, or throw him off of me, when I suddenly found nothing under my feet, like a trap door had opened under me. I panicked and grabbed for something to stop the fall. The only thing I found purchase on was the sleeve of his uniform, but uniforms are not load bearing structures. There was a rip coming from his sleeve from where I was holding on, a loud crash from what I can only presume was him falling into the boxes yet again, and then, nothing.

Entry 30
I remember taking a family trip to Disney World once in Florida and riding the Tower of Terror. It would shoot you up, strapped in a haunted elevator, ten or fifteen stories up in the air in complete darkness before opening the windows and repeating the process. Falling felt a lot like that, only I didn’t shoot back up.
I flipped at least once before I landed on something metal. Its parts rubbed and screeched together trying to absorb the impact of my fall.
My body was instantly filled with pain and I was having trouble breathing. I’ve only had the wind knocked out of me a few times and it always came as a shock.
There was a warm liquid beginning to pool in the seat of my jeans, blood. I carefully felt around my leg for the source of the wound. I violently pulled my hand away in shock when I found it. A thin rusty piece of pipe was jutting out of my upper left thigh. As thin as it was, it had done some serious damage. My leg was already going numb and I was growing colder and colder.
I tried sitting up, but was stopped in my tracks by an even more intense pain, this time coming from my back. This one seemed the worst to me. My arm and leg could heal, and I could manage the broken bones, but not a broken back.
My eyes started to adjust to the darkness and I could see that I was in some sort of auditorium. This was probably where the drama kids put on their plays.
I lifted my head a little to see if I could make out what I landed on. The arms and legs jutted out of the darkness like a sea urchin. I had landed on a pile of folding chairs and tables. They had been piled on the stage like a barricade.
Above, the flashlight aura from the scavenger’s gun extended out like a halo, revealing the cat walk I had just fallen from. The light wasn’t moving, the scavenger must have either ditched it, or he was still recovering from being thrown into the boxes. I still didn’t know where the other scavenger was.
The auditorium was dimly lit which meant there must be a light source somewhere. I twisted my head back and saw light coming in underneath another set of double doors.
With great pain I rolled over onto my stomach. With my left arm, my right was useless to me at the moment, I slowly drug myself off of the mangled pile of tables and chairs. I winced in pain every time the pole in my leg caught on something.
I stopped at the edge of the stage. It was easily a four foot drop to the ground below. I looked around for a stairway that I could more easily navigate, but my eyes caught the flashlight beam. It was moving, and now the other one was there. They were scanning the wreckage below looking to see which way I had gone. I was a sitting duck down there.
I didn’t have time to search for a staircase and with my one good arm I yanked myself off of the stage. The pain wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, but it was still terrible. I let out a piercing shriek when I landed. No doubt they would have heard it, if they weren’t already on their way down here.
I crawled slowly toward the light leaving a trail of blood behind me.
What I heard next made me turn my head back, despite the pain, toward where I fell from. Screams, some loud crashes, and what I thought sounded like gun fire. The search and rescue teams! They had come to my rescue.
I crawled as fast as I could toward the light. Each pull sending a lightning bolt of pain surging through my body.
The double doors opened fairly easily, but I had to lift myself off the ground to hit the door latch and now my back is hurting with non-stop intensity.
The light from the outside blinded me temporarily and as my eyes adjusted I could see I was in another hallway. There was a stairway to my left that was most likely the same stairway I saw upstairs. The light was coming from floor to ceiling windows that separated the hallway from the outside world.
The door shut behind me as I crawled out of the auditorium. I propped myself up against the wall just outside of the auditorium