A World Without Heroes - Brandon Mull [110]
The thought impelled her forward. No use hopping when she could be making progress, especially once it proved to be less restful than she had hoped. Salty sweat stung her eyes. She wiped them clear. The nausea had diminished while she was hopping, but it returned as she jogged.
She took a bad step, almost stumbled, and for a moment the surface felt alarmingly wet. After recovering, she dashed forward faster than ever, eyes on the island. She was getting close.
The coppery taste of blood became more evident in her throat as her breathing became increasingly arduous. She was running inside an oven. Was the air shimmering more here, or was her vision blurring? She felt dizzy. The island was less than a hundred yards away. It looked bigger than it had from the shore. Not a rock pile. A boulder pile.
Anyone can run a hundred yards, she thought blearily. Each breath scorched her tortured lungs. The burning muscles in her legs verged on total exhaustion. She shed sweat with every stride. Her vision became edged in blackness.
The island was so close, but she didn’t know if she could reach it. The human body had limits, even in emergencies. There were certain mechanical impossibilities. Any second now she would pass out, and that would be the end. In a way it would be a relief. Her legs felt clumsy and distant. She shuffled and stumbled instead of running. Against the soles of her boots the lake felt like freshly paved asphalt.
The island was only thirty yards away. Anyone can go thirty yards.
With a growling burst of exertion Rachel increased her pace to a full sprint. She had to reach the island before she fainted! Her legs refused to cooperate, and she fell.
Her left hand slapped the scalding surface. Then her right. She was going down, so she let herself roll forward, and with desperate effort used her momentum to regain her feet and continue running.
Vomit spewed from her lips as she reached the rocky shore of the island and pitched forward onto her hands and knees. As she held her head down, her stomach clenched again, and acidic foulness fauceted from her mouth.
She wiped the sickening taste from her parched lips. Her breathing felt ineffectual. Raising her head suddenly, trying to find fresh air above if it did not exist below, she experienced a peculiar rush as the blackness along her peripheral vision swelled inward, swallowing everything.
When Rachel regained consciousness, her cheek lay against a warm stone. She sat up gingerly. The sun did not seem to have moved, and her body was still slimed with sweat, so she did not believe she had been out long.
Looking back toward the shore through the trembling heat, Rachel could barely distinguish shapes that might have been Ferrin and Jason. The heat and atmosphere of the rocky island was almost as uncomfortable as the air directly over the lake.
She got up, massaging her elbow where an ugly bruise was forming. Why had she volunteered for this? Maybe she would stay on the island forever. She could not imagine crossing the lake again.
Rachel had never been closer to dying than when she had stumbled at the end of her run. How many near misses could she expect to survive? Her thoughts turned to her parents. They had built their lives around her. Her disappearance in the arroyo had to be driving them crazy. What would they do if she never made it home? No, she couldn’t acknowledge the possibility. She had to make it home, for herself, and especially for her mom and dad.
The island truly seemed to be nothing more than a big heap of rocks, some big, some small. The highest point reached perhaps forty feet above the lake. The only evidence of life was tufts of purple-gray moss growing on some of the stones.
On wobbly legs Rachel began circling the island, looking for anything besides rocks upon rocks. The clue she needed might