Chapter 9

Amber was the quickest to respond but since she was inexperienced in the type of situations she now found herself, her reaction only amounted to wrapping her arms around Robin in an attempt to shield her from whatever was coming their way.

Leo watched the entire thing play out in slow motion.

Due to the distance between him and the sisters, relative to the speed at which the silhouette was moving, Leo knew that he was going to be unable to reach them in time to stop whatever it was that was coming there way.

And since the sisters were standing directly between him and the oncoming silhouette, he had no clear line of sight to take a shot at the incoming threat.

Left with no choice, Leo pushed his body to the limits of his current stats but regardless of how much he had increased them to this point, he was still far away from being able to close a distance this large in a fraction of a second.

Moments before Leo managed to reach the sisters, Amber suddenly let out a blood curdling scream.

Just before, Leo noticed that the silhouette made contact with his leg before making a 90 degree turn and zipping off into the bushes.

In the brief moment that it had slowed down to turn, Leo had finally been able to make out what exactly was attacking them.

It was a roadrunner.

A relatively skittish animal before the reckoning; post reckoning they became the bane of many people's existences in this particular area.

They grew by roughly 50% in size but despite the increase, their speed didn't suffer one bit, and even increased by quite a bit.

They would use their hardened beaks to slice away chunks of flesh from their targets each time they passed by, resulting in a slow and painful death for anyone unlucky enough to face off against them.

In the early stages of the apocalypse they were an absolute nightmare to go against because unless you managed to catch them when they weren't moving, it was unlikely you were going to catch them.

Knowing full well that the roadrunner wouldn't give up after a single attack, Leo didn't slow his pace and eventually reached the sisters sides.

Amber was now on the ground clutching her leg and Leo could see a fairly potent flow of blood rushing down the side of her leg. Robin was screaming and pleading for her sister to be alright, but Leo simply ignored her cries and focused on the threat at hand.

Since moving the sisters out of the area was wholly out of the question at the moment, Leo quickly tried to formulate a plan.

As he was doing so, the roadrunner suddenly appeared from a bush to Leo's left.

Unprepared, Leo slid in front of the sisters and covered his vital spots knowing full well he was about to take some damage.

Sure enough, a split second later, Leo felt a searing pain from his calf.

Unlike Amber though, Leo neither made a sound or keeled over in pain.

He fired off a few shots at the fleeing roadrunner but none of them were able to land.

With only the briefest of moments to think, Leo rapidly ran through possible countermeasures in his mind.

'Shooting it: unlikely.

Stabbing it: even less possible.

Running from it: might as well just let it kill me now.

Think Leo! Think!'

Then it came to him!

No sooner had he thought of a solution, did the roadrunner make its third appearance.

Coming from a new direction yet again, Leo quickly shifted himself between the girls and the oversized bird.

Moments before the blur that was the roadrunner managed to make contact with him yet again, Leo grabbed something from his inventory and threw it in the direction from which the bird was approaching.

The bird recognized that whatever it was may pose a threat, so it tried to flap its wings and avoid the incoming object, but just as it was about to avoid it completely, the object blossomed into a large circle reminiscent of a flower blooming and enveloped the bird.

It was a small personal fishing net that Leo had picked up on a whim. He never thought that it would serve a purpose in the middle of a desert.

With its wings and legs now caught, the bird was unceremoniously dragged to the ground.

Not even giving the bird a chance, Leo took aim with his pistol and fired a salvo of bullets.

The bird died from the first shot, but the other 10 shots served to relieve some of the frustration Leo was feeling from being wounded.

 Ignoring the pain in his own leg, Leo turned and faced the girls.

Robin was trying her best to stem the bleeding from Amber's leg and Amber herself was doing her best to stamp down the pain of the wound but she was clearly losing that fight.

Leo rushed to her side and removed Robins hands so that he could get a better view of the wound.

When Robin moved her hands away, a 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch deep gash roughly a 1/4 of an inch wide and spanning roughly 3 inches was clear for Leo to see.

Having been through countless fights that ended with him having far more sever wounds, Leo knew how to handle the situation.

"Robin, stand by your sisters head and don't let her thrash around too much. Understand?"

Robin, panicked, nodded her head up and down rapidly before kneeling down by her sisters head and grabbing hold of her shoulders.

Leo reached into his inventory and grabbed a makeshift trauma kit that he had put together at the store and a bottle of rubbing alcohol that he had prepared as well.

He quickly spun the top off the alcohol and prepared to pour it on the open wound, "Brace yourself Amber, this is going to hurt."

And before she could even reply, Leo dumped the contents of it onto Amber's wound to sterilize it the best he could.

The searing pain that coursed throughout Amber's body was too much for her to bare and she almost immediately passed out from the pain.

'That's probably for the best.' thought Leo.

Without further delay, the quickly began sewing the wound shut with a needle and some medical thread.

The whole process lasted for only a few minutes and luckily Amber remained unconscious the whole time.

Once the wound was stitched up as best as Leo could manage, he grabbed some bandage from the medical bag and wrapped her wound as tightly as he could to stop the bleeding and prevent infection.

Robin, who had nothing to do since Amber was unconscious and lacking any knowledge on first aid, could only watch as Leo worked furiously to save her sister.

She had noticed that Leo too was bleeding as well but he was ignoring it to take care of her sister first and she couldn't help but look at him with a bit of reverence and a large amount of gratitude.

Sure enough, the moment that Leo was satisfied with the first aid on Amber, he quickly tore his pantleg and focused on resolving his own wound.

His wound was almost identical to Amber's and was bleeding just as much, if not more.

He quickly washed the area with alcohol, wiped as much blood from the area as he could, and quickly began to stitch his own leg.

Once he was satisfied with the stitching, he wrapped his own leg with a bandage.

Only after completing the first aid, did the adrenaline coursing through Leo's veins begin to wane.

Along with the disappearance of the adrenaline, came a wave of pain. Leo however, did not react or let it show.

After taking a few deep breathes to calm his racing heart, Leo turned towards Robin.

"We need to get out of this open space. I won't be able to fight here efficiently in my current state.

I'll carry your sister up to my spot at the top of that small mountain but you'll be responsible for her after that, understand?"

Robin just weakly nodded her head in agreements.

Whether she was overwhelmed by the danger they had just faced, the fact that her sister was hurt, or something else; Leo was unsure.

But now wasn't the time to baby her so he had to force her to act.

Leo struggled only slightly to get to his feet before walking over to Amber and picking her up.

Robin thought that Leo was going to carry her in a princess carry, and even felt a tinge of jealousy, but when Leo threw Amber over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, that feeling quickly disappeared.

It took the pair a good thirty minutes of walking and struggling to reach Leo's makeshift camp but they eventually managed it in the end.

Amber had woken up shortly after Leo had thrown her over his shoulder, and even protested at her treatment, but due to the pain in her leg she had been unable to progress alone and could only let Leo carry her up the side of the mountain.

Her beet red face betrayed her level of embarrassment at the situation.

Even so, she didn't forget to express her gratitude when they were safely ensconced in Leo's makeshift snipers nest.

"Thank you for saving us, Leo. We owe you."