by Lake, D. K.
"Haha." Nick sat down next to me and Tobias joined Rosie and passed her a bowl of baked beans he had warmed up on the fire for her. Josh stayed by the fire chatting to Drew. I took a bite of my food and just swallowed it down. I was hungry and not going to complain anymore. It was a little overdone, though. Some sauce would have been nice.
"It's a bit hard." Nick said, rolling it around in his mouth.
"It's a bit overdone." Lane laughed.
"I think I preferred the fish." Nick grumbled.
"You cooked it, you eat it." I told him.
He huffed and took another bite.
"Hey babe, how are you feeling?" Rosie asked Tobias.
"Better. A little sore, but I'm ok."
"Do you think you'll be all right to keep on walking for the next week and a half?"
"I'll manage. I don't want to slow you guys down." Tobias said, looking at Lane and me.
"You're not slowing us down. We have to pace ourselves and watch our water, and we're walking the speed we would be normally." I said to reassure him.
Drew disappeared soon after he had eaten and was gone for a really long time. No one said anything, everyone was just used to him wandering off. We finished our food and played a few more games together, the glow from the fire giving off enough light to see the cards and keeping us warm as night took over and the stars came out.
"Who's on first watch tonight?" I asked, yawning.
It was getting late but I was enjoying chatting and playing cards, it felt so normal, sort of like we were camping.
"It was supposed to be him." Lane said, turning to look at Drew who had returned and moved over to the knobbly tree and had nodded off with his back against the tree. He had probably walked twice as far as all of us because he was always in front of us, hunting for food, or backtracking to talk to us. He had his arms folded with his head down and his chin resting on his chest.
"You mean Drew." I corrected him.
"That's what I said." Lane responded. "But I guess I'll stay up to take the first watch and then I'll wake him up and then he can wake Josh up after." Josh was fast asleep, snoring and talking in his sleep.
"I can stay up and keep watch." Nick said with a wide smile.
I think making a fire and cooking his own food had gone to his head and now he thought he could do everything.
"No, you need to sleep. If you don't get your nine hours you'll be a walking zombie tomorrow." I reminded him that he needed his nine hours otherwise he would be all grumpy and snappy with us all day tomorrow.
"We can help?" Rosie suggested but Lane waved his hand at her and shook his head.
"No, it's no problem, between us three we've got it covered. You four should get some sleep." Lane said and we all said goodnight and spread out into our sleeping areas.
"Do you think it will be all right if I keep the fire going?" Lane asked.
I looked around and thought about it, the grass was tall and it was a small fire so we should be ok.
"Should be all right, just keep it low, not too many flames, and deadbies won't notice it. And don't fall asleep." I smiled, grabbing his t-shirt and pulling him down to my level for a goodnight kiss. I was in a surprisingly good mood and had enjoyed my time with Lane and the others. He smiled and pressed his lips to mine, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me closer.
Nick walked past us and cleared his throat and we broke apart, smiling. I walked over to my bag and pulled out my sleeping bag. Lane rolled out his sleeping bag next to mine all ready for later, and as I was rolling mine out, Nick rolled his out on my other side so I was sandwiched between them.
"Night." I said, waving goodbye to Lane.
"Night, Alleycat." Lane smiled and walked back to the fire.
"I'm just off to use the little boys' room." Nick said and dashed around me.
"Ok. And could you not call it the little boys' room." I laughed, sorting my sleeping bag out.
I stood up and when I turned around I didn't expect to find Drew standing behind me.
"Drew!" I gasped, putting my hand on my heart. "What have I told you about sneaking up on me like that? I thought you were asleep a minute ago."
"I woke up." He scratched the back of his neck and looked around.
"Ok, is something wrong?" I asked, wondering why he was hovering.
"Uh, no I um, I found this." He held up a can of Pepsi.
"Where'd you get it?" I smiled, not having drunk anything other than water for the past few days because I was nice and let the others have the Fanta cans we found before.
"Uh, there was like a cooler randomly in the road earlier. I already tried some, it's good to drink...just don't tell the others." he whispered and winked at me.
"It feels wrong not to share." I said.
"You're sharing it with me. Anyway, you never asked to share the Fanta and greedy guts over there drank a whole one to himself." he said, referring to Lane.
He smiled and pushed the can into my hands and I greedily gulped it down but stopped for a second.
"Is it ok?" he asked, looking at me strangely.
"It tastes a little warm." I smiled and he chuckled.
I drank some more and remembered to offer him some before I finished it off.
"You want?" I asked and he shook his head.
"Nah, shh...I just had another one a minute ago."
"Naughty. Well, thanks. I love a little sugar before bed." I blurted out and realized how it sounded. I handed him the empty can and tried not to pay attention to the smirk on his face.
"I'll see ya in the morning, ok? Night." I said.
"G'night." he said and wandered off.
He was so strange sometimes. I fidgeted around and made sure there were no gaps for snakes to slither down into my sleeping bag.
"What are you doing?" Nick asked, walking back.
"Keeping the snakes out."
"Snakes! There are snakes out here?"
"It is the outdoors, Nick. You know...where the wildlife lives. Snakes, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, possums, rats-"
"Ok, ok, I get it, you don't need to list anymore!"
"They shouldn't come near the fire, at least I hope they won't."
Nick faffed around and secured his sleeping bag and turned to face me, our noses nearly touching.
"You look like a caterpillar." I said, looking at the way he had cocooned himself inside his sleeping bag and left only a small part of his face sticking out.
"This way nothing will crawl into my ears."
"Ok, I'm turning over...Night, Nick!"
I rolled over and tried to get to sleep but every few minutes Nick kept waking me up again, knocking into me.
"What's wrong?" I asked, getting annoyed.
"The grounds too hard over here."
"Seriously?" I groaned, my eyelids suddenly felt heavy.
"Don't you think it's hard?" he asked.
"No, it feels like the regular ground to me." I murmured.
He huffed and tried to stand up inside his sleeping bag and jumped away from me.
"I'm going closer to the fire."
"Wh-whatever." I slurred.
I couldn't be bothered to deal with him so I just ignored him and felt oddly sleepy all of a sudden. I fell asleep listening to the crickets and grasshoppers, and the crackling fire in the background.
Chapter 25
I stirred in my sleeping bag, it was too hot all of a sudden and I was boiling inside the stupid bag. I literally felt like I was on fire or something.
Wait...what's that smell?
I opened my eyes to see a dark cloud of smoke waft over me and I inhaled it and started coughing almost straight away. I sat up but my whole body felt weird and my head felt foggy. I blinked my sleepy eyes and all I could see was orange flames jumping around at my feet, and my sleeping bag was on fire!
I screamed and scrambled out of it and watched as it went up in flames in a matter of seconds. I felt a little out of it but I knew I needed to cover my face so I quickl
y scooped up my sweater that I was using as a pillow and used it cover my mouth and nose. I couldn't see anything, everywhere I looked all I could see was smoke. I remembered telling Lane to keep an eye on the fire, so what happened? I searched the ground for Nick and then remembered he had told me he was going to go and sleep closer to the fire. I looked into the flames as I felt my stomach drop out.
"Nick! Lane!" I screamed and ended up coughing.
I tried to get closer but it was too intense, too hot, too dangerous. I stumbled backward and knew I had no choice but to get out of there or I would soon be surrounded with no escape. I couldn't see anything because of the tall flames, and I couldn't hear anyone over the noise from the crackling fire.
I coughed and took a few more steps back as I heard the wood crackling in the distance but I could no longer see the knobbly tree as it was too far away. I was so confused and everything inside my head was hazy. One minute I had been getting annoyed with Nick for bumping into me and the next I was out cold. And I couldn't remember setting up camp this far away. I looked around but couldn't see any of Nick or Lane's stuff anywhere, or maybe the fire had eaten it already. I didn't know what to do and I think I had already breathed in too much smoke and it was messing with my head. Something just didn't feel right.
"Drew!" I cried, falling back and looking for a gap in the fire to make a run for it. This couldn't be real. It felt like a dream, I was so out of it. Where was everybody? Were they all dead? My head hurt. And I just wanted to go back to sleep. What was wrong with me?
I was still staring at the fire, waiting for someone to emerge when something knocked into me, sending me forward and onto my knees. I looked up through a cloud of smoke and saw a lanky deadbie walking towards the fire. It must have been so distracted by the flames that it somehow missed me. But that meant there would be more heading this way, a lot more. The fire wasn't going to stop anytime soon and it could spread to the next field if it wasn't contained, and deadbies would see it for miles and start moving this way. I got back on my feet, holding my sweater close to my face and when I turned around I screamed when I saw someone lunge at me. They grabbed my arm and I tried to fend them off by kicking them hard in the leg.
"Alex!" Drew shouted.
He was wearing a ripped off piece of flannel shirt across his face so he looked like a gangster and that's why I didn't recognize him. Oh, it's just Drew.
"C'mon, we need to get out of here!" He grabbed my bag that I had completely forgotten about and slipped it onto my shoulders. He had his own bag full of stuff he had taken from the stuffed animal place and his crossbow but he never went anywhere without it, even when he was asleep he was holding onto it. I spotted something shiny on the ground and recognized it was Lane's machete and just managed to grab it before Drew took my hand and pulled me through the tall grass and we headed into the overgrown fields, running away from the fire.
We hurried through the grass, jumping over tangled weeds and dodging deadbies that seemed to be popping up everywhere like an infestation of cockroaches. When we were far enough away we slowed down to catch our breath and looked back at the burning field that was now lighting up the sky. I uncovered my face and sucked in as much fresh air as I could.
"W-what happened? Where is everyone?!" I panted between breaths.
"I dunno." Drew replied, dragging the ripped shirt down his chin so I could see his face.
"You don't know? Well, did you see anyone?"
"No, I didn't see anyone."
"What made you wake up?"
"Um, the big fire."
"Don't be a dick, you know what I mean."
"I never can sleep at night. I just happened to wake up and good thing I did."
"And you saw no one? No one? Who was on watch?"
"I'm guessing it was still Lane's turn to watch. And no, I didn't see anyone."
"But you came looking for me?"
"I heard you screaming."
"My sleeping bag caught fire while I was inside it."
"Are you ok?" Drew touched my leg, looking at my feet, and I smacked his hand away.
"Ok? I woke up in the middle of a burning field and all my friends are missing so what do you think?"
"I'm sorry, ok? But they must have panicked and ran."
"And they just left me behind?" I rubbed my eyes and held my head in my hands, trying to make sense of it all.
"Don't worry, they left me behind as well." he said, gently pulling my hand away from my head and looking at me.
"Yes, but nobody likes you." I blurted out and he blinked at me a few times but didn't disagree with me. "Lane and Josh wouldn't just abandon me. That makes no sense."
"Let's keep walking for a bit, this place is going to be crawling with deadbies in a few hours and the fire will spread quickly." I knew he was right, we couldn't wait around hoping for the others to turn up. We were like a walking buffet in the middle of nowhere and we needed to get away.
He started to move through the field while I stayed where I was, watching the fire in the distance. I wanted to keep calling for the others but the deadbies would hear me and find us.
"C'mon, Pretty!" Drew called.
"Coming." I huffed. "Do you think they're ok?" I asked as we made our way through the field.
"Sure."
"That didn't sound very convincing. Are you sure you didn't start the fire?" I joked nervously, it was dark and I didn't like walking in the dark, especially through overgrown fields.
"Stop getting so upset, it will be ok. If they're around here, we'll probably bump into them."
Why was he being so calm? Did he really hate my friends that much, so much that he didn't care if he never saw them again? Probably. I stumbled over a rock and fell into Drew.
"I forget how bad you are at walking in the dark." he said.
He started to walk off again and I suddenly remembered something. I pulled my bag off and crouched down and dug through it.
"What are you looking for?" Drew asked, coming back to see what I was doing.
"I just remembered something we can use."
"Flashlight?"
I had crammed my bag so full of stuff and I knew it was right at the bottom so it took me a while to find it.
"No, not a flashlight. Nick has them in his bag. But I have....wait for it," I nearly had my fingers on it. "Ta-da!" I pulled out the flare gun.
"You had the flare gun?" Drew said it like he had forgotten I had packed it, not that it mattered who had it.
"Yeah. Josh refused to give me back my gun but he let me keep this, remember? We can use it to send a flare into the sky, that way everyone will know where we are."
"No." I thought I heard Drew say as I was doing my bag back up and slipping my arms through the straps.
"You can't fire that thing." Drew said, trying to reach for it.
"And why not?"
"It will lead more deadbies right to us and we need to keep moving."
"It's a flare, and it's going into the sky. Anyway, I think most of the deadbies will be distracted by the massive fire!"
I lifted the thing to fire it and Drew lunged at me.
"Drew!" I squealed as he tried to pry it from my hands and I dropped my machete as I struggled to hold onto the flare gun.
"What are you doing?!" I asked as we both fought over the damn thing.
"Alex, drop it!" he growled.
"What? No! Get off! What is wrong with you? Drew, fuck off!"
My finger slipped and the flare shot out, in the wrong direction, and straight into a deadbie. Its stomach lit up like a microwave when you put something shiny in it. Drew stopped fighting with me and pushed me away and I fell on my ass. He picked up my machete and sliced the deadbie's head off in seconds, and then he turned to look at me.
"Why did you do that?" I asked, climbing to my feet, holding the empty flare gun because that was the only flare.
"If you had waited I was going to say wait until we are far enough away from the fire, it's spreading quickly a
nd everyone will be wanting to get as far away from here as possible."
Oh. Now I felt dumb.
I chucked the flare gun on the ground and Drew handed me back the machete.
"We'll find them." he told me and offered me his hand.
I looked at his face, feeling bad for fighting with him and telling him to fuck off.
"It's ok, I forgive you." he said with a slight smile.
I slipped my hand into his and he started leading me away. The fire was out of control, spreading rapidly, the black smoke cloaking the skies as we hurried through the dark fields.
We hadn't spoken for some time when Drew suddenly said, "This way!"
It seemed like he knew where he was going, and I remembered he had disappeared earlier so he'd probably been here before. It all looked the same to me though, tall grass, overgrown weeds, and I had no idea where the road was located from here. He pulled me through a patch of grass and turned around to face me.
"The road's just over there. Wait for me." He pointed to the right but I couldn't see any road, and then he darted off and left me alone in the dark.
"What the..?" I slowly walked out of the grass and picked my way through the bushes and found the road and stood in the middle of it, wondering what the hell he was doing that was so important. I heard the bushes move behind me. I spun around and saw a fox running out of the grass. I felt so exposed, just standing around waiting for Drew. What was he doing? A second later I heard a deep rumble and saw a light bobbing around as something drove out of the trees and skidded to a stop in front of me.
Drew sat on a quad bike, holding his hand out to me.
"Where did you get that?" I asked, completely confused.
"I found a load of them stashed in a shed earlier, probably used for messing 'round in the fields." I stepped closer. "I was gonna show y'all tomorrow but now it's too late. C'mon, hop on. We need to go!"
I looked towards the fire one last time before I climbed onto the back of the quad. I mean, what choice did I have, stay here on my own? Drew turned the quad around and we shot off down the road and into the darkness, bouncing over the bumps in the road, swerving around potholes, and avoiding the countless deadbies that were wandering along the road looking even more zombie-like than usual, heading in the direction of the fire. I was surprised at how quick the quad bike could go, we soon put a lot of distance between us and the fire in a matter of minutes.