Walking Wounded

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by Jodie Halliday




  Walking Wounded

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Walking Wounded

  by

  Jodie Halliday

  From the Yesteryear’s Erotica Collection

  Published by Jodie Halliday at Smashwords

  Copyright 2017 Jodie Halliday

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Contains adult material that might not be suitable for all audiences. This work is a fantasy; in your own life be sure to follow safer sex practices.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Also from Jodie Halliday

  Holly Craig Erotica

  Shake That Tree

  Holly gets a ride

  Events Out of Control

  Yesteryear Erotica

  Lauren’s Love Lessons

  Please remember to leave a review for my book at your favorite retailer

  Chapter 1

  The rustling of leaves caused by the early afternoon breeze was punctuated only by the youth’s footfall as they made their way up through the forest. As they ascended the hill, the mix of brambles and dominating oaks was slowly giving way to evergreens and a floor of old, soft pine needles. Leslie’s cousin was in front of her, slashing at the ground with his stick, knocking small rocks out of the way as he followed the little track towards the campsite which she estimated to be still several hours away. She watched him lovingly as he negotiated the tree roots and loose gravel along the rough track. She had plans for him over the next few days, cousin or not.

  Her father’s old green backpack felt increasingly heavy and the straps rubbed against her shoulders as it swung with each step. Cans and bottles made musical sounds as she struggled ten feet behind him, sweating with the day’s long, slow climb. She would be thankful when they gained the pass at the top of the trail after which she was fairly sure there was a very gradual descent over a few miles then a relatively steep forty-five minutes downhill to the campsite where she had planned they would spend the next few days. That’s what it had looked like on Google maps when she had thought up their route anyway. If her printer hadn’t run out of ink she would have brought the map along just to be sure.

  The whole forest was secluded, devoid of any other human but most probably full of wildlife which had decided at that time to just watch as they passed through. Brian swished his stick against a Douglas Fir and smiled as the branches swayed back and forth. He turned to her, grinning a little before looking around and continuing on his way. Several minutes later they turned a corner and she heard the sound of water below to her left, pleasing and reassuring but nonetheless out of sight. Brian removed his floppy hat and wiped his brow, turning again to look at Leslie. His smile was still there but he seemed concerned and she wondered if he was tiring of the climb. Neither of them could be considered athletic or the outdoors type and in fact the last time that she had done any particular exercise was when they had walked to the campsite the previous year, even though that was only a couple of miles after getting a lift from her father.

  Brian looked up, stretching a little as he held his stomach. He looked briefly to his right, then left, and finally darted into the trees beside the trail.

  “Wait there, I’ll only be a minute,” he shouted. His actions were uncoordinated, frantic even, as he shed his backpack carelessly and sprinted out of sight. Leslie watched and shook her head as he disappeared into the trees. She dropped her backpack by the side of the track and found a spot to sit in the sun and where the pine needles were less likely to stick to her skin. Her best sneakers were now shades of brown with blotches of green from the long grass. Mum would be unimpressed since they had only bought them a month ago and they were intended for school in September. She brushed a hand over her legs, pleased with the silky smoothness of her skin. The breeze found its way inside her shorts and felt wonderful as she leaned back on her hands and looked up at the sky.

  A scream shattered her reverie followed by a rustling and the sound of tumbling rocks. Almost immediately, and apart from some fainter tumbling noises and a bird squawking, there was total silence.

  “Brian?” shouted Leslie, sitting up. “Bri!” She stood, grabbed her pack and dragged it towards the spot where he had disappeared, tearing his pack from the clutches of the brambles. The sound of the stream filled the silence as she stumbled with the added weight, cautiously following his route. She swung his backpack over her shoulder just as the water came into view, undulating between the rocks and maybe eight feet across. “Bri!”

  She saw a flash of red through the trees and brambles below and edged her way forward. “Bri, are you OK?” After another few cautious steps she saw him, lying on the rocks beside the river, motionless and in an unnatural position, ten feet below.

  “Fuck, Bri!” she shouted, edging forward. She looked for a way down and swung the pack around to ease the pain in her shoulder. Her foot slipped and squealed, reaching out to steady herself on a small branch. Sticky sap coated her palm and she wiped the goo onto her shorts, swearing. She scanned the narrow ledge she was on, trying to work out a way down to him as she shuffled along carefully. Leslie shouted to him again and as she swatted away a fly from her face Brian’s pack dropped from her shoulder, swinging her towards the edge of the path. There was nothing to grab onto this time and her left foot slipped off the track into thin air. She screamed as she went over, her backpack cushioning some of the fall but offering no protection against the brambles that tore into her thighs. Gravity caused Brian’s pack to tumble down onto her, pushing her with greater force through the thorny undergrowth. She saw small rocks and dirt flash by, sunlight through the trees, water, and an approaching smooth, grey boulder.

  “Fuck!” she said as she landed on her back, a few feet from her cousin. Seconds later, and with cans clanking, Brian’s backpack added to her misery as it hit her square on the head before coming to rest at her feet. “Oh fuck that hurts,” she gasped, most of the breath knocked out of her and tears welling up in her eyes. The sun shone through the swaying trees above, making her quint. She lay there for a short time, gathering herself, knowing that her breath would return from being winded. She knew she was bleeding even before looking down at her injuries. Two thick strands of blackberry brambles were twisted around her limbs and while they might have slowed her fall she could see blood dripping from several cuts in her arms and legs. Her first thought was that she would need to wear jeans for the start of her first day at university in a few days’ time. “Oh shit!” she shouted as the pain in her back registered. Her head hurt but she was pleased to
note that no blood came away as she ran her hand through her hair although her legs had started to sting where the brambles still cut into her flesh. In several places small trails of blood ran over her thighs and down towards her thick socks. Her arms seemed to sting the most and she carefully pulled off a short bramble that had embedded itself in the flesh above her elbow. She kicked his backpack for good measure.

  Brian lay silently, wedged between two large boulders. His feet and shins were in the water, flopping around with the current. Blood trickled from two gashes to his head, one to his temple and other at the back. His hands were ripped with small cuts and a small cut to his lip also bled profusely. His shorts were part way down his thighs along with his underwear and his groin and upper thighs were covered in excrement. It took several minutes to pull the brambles carefully from her legs after which she clambered painfully over the rocks towards him to take in the situation. Even in her estimation he looked bad and she felt totally inadequate to provide much in the way of assistance. She felt tears forming from the pain and her growing despair, her heart thumping in her young chest as she realised their fortunes had changed totally in less than twenty seconds.

  “Oh god Bri, are you OK?” she asked as she knelt beside him, her back hurting from the position. He was silent and she looked around for inspiration, noting the brambles poking through the shit in his shorts. She tried to cup her hands in the river to collect some water but her back seared with pain. With one hand on a rock she supported herself like an old woman and threw water over his face. Nothing happened so she scooped several more handfuls and threw it in his general direction. After almost a minute she noticed his head move and she breathed a huge sigh of relief and slid onto a nearby rock to rest.

  “Bri, speak to me!” she said, the smell from his clothing becoming disgusting. He groaned weakly but didn’t open his eyes or move at all. “Fuck Bri, this is bad!” With a flash of inspiration she returned to her backpack, removed a T-shirt and let it soak in the river. Bathing his forehead seemed to work wonders and her cousin slowly opened his eyes, drawing labored breaths as blood continued to drip from both sides of his head and his cut lip.

  “Bri, you’re hurt bad, don’t move!”

  “Oh god, Les, my head!” he growled, eyes tight shut against the pain. He tried to move in an effort to sit up and screamed with pain, heaving as though about to vomit.

  “Just stay there, don’t move,” she said, applying the T-shirt once again and mopping up some of the blood from his forehead. A whooshing sound came from his shorts and another stream of very liquid shit hit his thighs and the rocks below. His cock and balls were covered in the brown slime and it oozed from every opening of his underwear and shorts. Two more spurts hit his limbs and Leslie moved away a little to avoid getting splashed. She reached around him and pulled at his legs, trying to get them out of the stream. He screamed in pain and as he reached out to stop her he screamed again.

  “Leave me! God it hurts so much!” he said, tears flowing down his cheeks.

  “Where is it worst?”

  “My head, and my shoulder, my left shoulder.”

  Leslie removed the T-Shirt from his head and dabbed at her own cuts along her thighs. There were some nasty grazes that threatened to bleed along with some gashes that seemed to have dirt in them already. They stung but the cold water helped to reduce the bleeding so she dabbed at her thighs, trying to remove the sandy-colored grains from the longest gashes. She thought carefully, realizing that they had no phone contact, no other humans around, no way of getting him out of the river bed and back to somewhere safe. She looked back at him, filthy in his own shit which covered his cock and balls and made her wonder whether he had lost his cock in the fall, somehow maybe ripping it off in the brambles. Feeling that this was unlikely she realized though that any plans she had for him and their romantic getaway had been dashed in just a couple of seconds. Her heart raced with the anxiety and the enormous responsibility that was suddenly on her shoulders. She needed to leap into action, to be decisive, create a plan and get stuff done but the order in which that should happen refused to reveal itself.

  “Bri, your head is bleeding quite a bit, we’ve got to help you to sit up so I can get something on it. Even if it hurts like fuck, OK?”

  He didn’t answer so she tried to think of each movement that would be required to get him sitting up. She thought that maybe his feet in the water wasn’t the most pressing thing to resolve, it was to get him upright even if he was sitting in a foot of water so less blood flowed out of the cuts. She trod carefully around to his right and took hold of his arm.

  “Bri, you have to try and sit up. If you can sit on this rock then I can swing your legs around and you can get dry. OK?”

  “Hurts so much Les!” he cried through tears.

  “I know, be brave and help me, right?”

  She squatted down beside him and draped his right arm over her shoulders. Pleased that he didn’t cry out in pain she slowly stood and he slid along the rock to where she had intended. The pain in her back took her breath away but she was sure it was nothing compared to her cousin’s suffering. She was delighted however with what she had achieved and made sure he was stable before applying the wet T-shirt to the back of his head.

  “Dizzy!” said Brian, swaying slightly. Leslie pulled the T-shirt away and saw that it was bright red, coloured by far more blood than there had been from his forehead.

  “Bri, this is really bad, OK?”

  Her cousin nodded, heaved slightly and a slow stream of bright red vomit coursed down his T-shirt and into his lap.

  “Bri! Oh my god Bri!”

  Chapter 2

  The City had been kind and generous to Frank, but the contrast between his office desk with its hubbub and the tiny cabin, hidden in the forest and many miles from any form of civilization provided the level of relaxation that he needed. At thirty eight he was successful, his first IPO more than three years in the past and two new developments under way which were likely to be even more lucrative and possible targets for a buyout. One of those was proceeding normally, backed by a good team and a marketable product which made angel money readily available. The second, a more daring yet far more lucrative venture, had issues. It was this weekend that would determine the strategy for the next two years. Code had been dropped off two weeks late, QA testing was throwing up issues never before encountered, vacation had been taken by two key people at a time when it should have been cancelled and investors were beginning to ask more detailed questions. The code push to production was scheduled for tomorrow evening.

  Then there was Cynthia and Andrew. The lady with the large breasts and pretty face, and the man with advanced obesity but outstanding coding skills. She in charge of project management, and he a senior developer. Over the past three months since she had joined, the office had ‘met itself to death’ with meetings called by Cynthia to discuss future meetings, stage gates, SDLC, objectives, post-mortems, lessons learned and esoteric possibilities. Andrew had happily joined in, no doubt relishing the way Cynthia’s blouse moved as she waved her arms to punctuate her consultant-speak statements. The team had counted the number of times she said “in terms of” in the last weekly QA meeting and Andrew’s inappropriate tweet last week about her had caught the press, attracting unwanted publicity and wasting hours of management time. Andrew would need to deliver or go. If the code release was uncoordinated then she would have to go as well. It was a huge business risk to have two key staff like them in such a small startup, especially if delivery was in question. Rounding the corner of a very old stone wall he saw his second home in the distance and office thoughts were banished.

  Purchased unseen except for an emailed image and specification, it had turned out to be one of his most successful investments. ‘Off the grid’ was a phrase used by too many real estate brokers in place of ‘where nobody wants to live’, but this property truly was disconnected from the pace of life, totally in harmony with nature and the seas
ons, emulating life how it must have been a century ago.

  He walked the few hundred yards with increased enthusiasm, relishing every tree, every turn of the track as the wooden trunks of the log home came into view. He regarded the roof carefully and was pleased to note that it appeared intact, no tree limbs piercing the fabric which was certainly a risk in the area and something that he would not have been able to immediately fix. He retrieved the key from behind the water butt and opened the door. It all looked just as he had left it three months previously: sparse, functional, clean and tidy. Leaving his backpack on the kitchen table he walked into the bedroom and opened the window. A breeze picked up and blew through the cabin, ruffling the curtains by the door. He checked the small bathroom and flushed the toilet, conscious of the use of water each time he pushed the lever.

 

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