Ophelia

by Briana Rain

  In my panicked rant/apology, I didn't hear what was happening behind me. I didn't hear him get up, much less approach me, even though he probably wasn't doing that walk that he did.

  My heart was pounding, and for once this week, it wasn't out of fear.

  It was hammering against my rib cage as I turned around, and saw him there. He was standing close, his shirt still off of one shoulder, towering over with almost a foot of height more than me. He grabbed the back of my head with one hand, my waist with the other, and pulled me even closer. He kissed me, not like I kissed him, because I was just an awkward high schooler with little “experience”. No, he kissed me like he had practiced all day and night to kiss me. He kissed me like he meant it.

  His hands smartly didn't move, as my entire face was injured, but that didn't stop my hands from doing just the opposite. For once in my life, instead of being awkward and keeping my hands stiffly at my side, I brought them up to either side of Clyde's face and pulled him closer to me. My fingertips brushed through the mess on top of his head that he called hair. It was worse than mine.

  “Guys! Where are y—“ Harrison stopped dead in his tracks when he saw us.

  We both pushed away from each other. I stumbled over the rifle and the trunk, and Clyde hurried to his pack.

  “James and I found something. You guys should see it.” His excitement turned cold, freezing cold, and he walked away.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Clyde came over, pack slung over one, clothed shoulder, and picked up his gun, looking at me the whole time.

  He didn't say anything to me, but then again, I didn't say anything to him. Picking up his rifle brought him closer to me from when we jumped away, but even with what just happened, neither of us did anything. No word was spoken. No action was executed. We just looked each other in the eyes and stood, breathing and blinking.

  I felt… wait. What did I feel? Everything? Nothing? No, it wasn't nothing. Everything was a better description. Sure, boys had kissed me, and I had kissed them back, but never anything like that. I mean, I could chalk it up to emotions running high in a life threatening situation… but the emotions were still there.

  It was such a mundane situation, kissing a boy.

  But he kissed me back.

  I mean I had walked away, and he came after me.

  That… had to mean something, right?

  “Ophelia,” he whispered. His voice was so quiet. He probably didn't want Harrison to hear. “May I—“

  “C’mon guys!” Harrison angrily called from the trees.

  My face was beet red from getting caught as I hurried past Clyde, and into the trees.

  Chapter 39: More Bullets

  Harrison didn't say a word after that, although I suspected that he thought about it. Clyde and I quickly caught up with him at different times, and stood far apart as we walked. We didn't touch each other. Our lips remained separated and we kept our hands to ourselves.

  Although, now, whenever we made eye contact, I was hyperaware of how long it lasted.

  I tried mimicking the walk that Clyde and Harrison were doing in front of me. The southerner noticed this, much to my dismay, but slowed to actually show me it, instead of my awkward waddling that made enough noise to drown out a freight train. To my surprise, after that sixty seconds, I could actually do it.

  We were all weaponed up, but our packs were ditched once we crossed paths with the rest of the group. Addeline and the twins didn't protest one bit to extra time sitting down.

  On a good note, fresh air and sunlight seemed to make Addeline look less sickly than I originally thought.

  The criss cross walk was a hard thing to do. I spent, like, seventy-five percent of the walk concentrating on my feet, and the other twenty five percent remembering to be aware of my surroundings. I was learning, though. You couldn’t say I wasn't learning.

  Harrison held up his fist for the second time that day. Clyde and I halted. Ahead of me, I saw nothing, but Harrison did, and dropped on the ground to his stomach, stirring up the leaves.

  Clyde and I followed.

  The three of us had slammed ourselves into the dirt, and were now hidden by the trees and bushes all around and over us. I, myself, had a branch of something poking my leg, and Clyde’s boots in front of my face, while he had a branch resting on his head. The wind rustled more leaves… Except— wait. It wasn't the wind that made these noises, but the shoes of someone. Not a gentle rustle, but a crunch, crunch, crunch…

  Clyde looked back at me, not knowing, or not registering, that a branch pushed against his hat. The dry leaves of the dead branch rattled with the disturbance. He froze. I, who was already frozen, froze again.

  The crunching stopped.

  And then I saw them— a pair of boots had stopped less than two feet away from Harrison's face, just to his right.

  I dared to look up. There was a person, presumably a man by his size, decked out in military gear. Like, the uniform, the vest, the helmet, and the huge gun that I would have trouble lifting to complete the look.

  His weight shifted from foot to foot as he craned his neck to see what had made a noise so close to him. The wind had stopped, and every little noise was magnified by ten.

  It was at times like these, that I questioned whether or not others could hear my heart. Because I could. Oh boy, could I.

  I looked back at Clyde, and prayed that the soldier wouldn't think to look right under him. Clyde was frantically mouthing What? What? What! His head was still turned towards me.

  I couldn't tell him anything. I mean, how in the world could I correctly mouth there’s a soldier with a locked and loaded gun like two yards from you, so you should probably knock that off and stay as still and quiet as you possibly can?

  Instead, I tried my best to mouth the word stop, because he was giving me anxiety. He could end up moving his head even more, getting the three of us in real trouble. Thank god he listened.

  The patrol moved on. He had decided that the wind would be the wind, and nothing else. The crunching commenced. I waited until I couldn't hear it anymore, and then some.

  We could've just, like, died. Like, again.

  “Can we move now?” My whisper was as quiet as I could get it, but even then, it was too loud.

  I was gonna die of a heart attack before I turn twenty. If… if I even lived that long…

  That… that was a morbid thought. Way too morbid.

  “Yeah. Yeah, we should move.” Harrison deemed it safe enough to not only stand up and give up our fool proof hiding spot, but also to talk at a normal volume.

  Clyde and I followed. I brushed the leaves and dirt off me. Harrison pulled a small rag from out of his back pocket, and quickly wiped off the top of his head and his forehead.

  “Are you okay?” Clyde stood close to me, and reached up to pull something out of my hair.

  “Hey! We have to keep moving! Let's go!” I nodded to answer his question. He dropped the twig that he’d pulled from my braid, and the three of us set off again.

  In another couple minutes of walking, we found James. He was at the top of a hill that was over twice my height, much like the one Clyde and I first met them at.

  I was about to call out to him, to say hi, but Harrison put his finger to his lips and shh’d us with a grim look.

  What was on top of that hill?

  Harrison helped Clyde up first, then me, and finally, Clyde reached his hand down to pull Harrison up. The hill was steep at the bottom. Very steep. Towards the top, though, it gently started to level out. The three of us had to climb a bit more to reach James, who was laying with his stomach to the ground, with a pair of binoculars glued to his face. He didn't even turn when he heard us coming.

  I laid on my stomach and crawled the rest of the way there. As I came up to the small bump on the hill that James was using for cover, and placed myself on the other end, I had a nasty feeling that this had to do with that man that we’d hid from earl
ier.

  James passed the binoculars to his brother, who had crawled up next to him. After he’d craned his neck up, and looked, it was Clyde's turn. Clyde took longer than Harrison, because this was the first time that he was seeing what was behind this little bump of dirt and grass.

  I didn't want to look out without the binoculars, because I didn't know if I would be able to see anything.

  Clyde took his time, scanning the horizon for whatever was out there. I looked at his face, and at his lips, which were mouthing a lot of words in confusion. Most of them seemed to be, what?

  Finally, he was done, and handed the binoculars over to me.

  I peeked my head out from around our cover, slowly and carefully.

  There was… something in the distance. There was a field of tall-ish grass, and many tree stumps, and beyond that, almost blending into the trees, was something. Something moving.

  I used the binoculars now. Now that I knew where to look. And… I saw people. Soldiers and civilians. People who were armed— people who were armed to the teeth— and people who had nothing on them. There were women in skirts and sun dresses, and men in polos and button-ups. And then there were the soldiers, in various camouflage patterned clothing from different branches, complete with bulletproof vests and various hostlers attached at their hips and thighs for different weapons and whatnot.

  It was crazy. All of those people were behind a giant fence, walking around and chatting with one another, without a care in the world. It… it was almost like this whole apocalypse thing didn't apply to them. It didn't affect them whatsoever.

  I wasn’t gonna lie, it made me mad. Why should these people live comfortably, safely, and without fear of imminent death while we were trapped out here, fighting for our lives and the lives of the ones we loved every hour on the hour.

  I put the binoculars down. I didn't need to see any more. I didn't want to see any more.

  I handed them back to Clyde, who handed them to Harrison, who put them back on and continued watching, peeking out from over the hill.

  “Ophelia, you think that that's the compound your ma’s taking us to?” Clyde whispered, loud enough so that the other two could hear it. The thought honestly hadn't occurred to me until now.

  But…

  “I— I don't think so. I have no idea if we're in Montana or Washington right now… and if we did make it to Washington, then the place is, like, in the middle of the state? I think? Not on the edge. So… no?” Even if my words didn't quite make sense to me, the others understood them.

  “Then we keep mov—“

  There was a whizzing, or a zipping sound, and then the dirt in front of my face blew up, interrupting Harrison. As the dirt and grass flew into my face, and my eyes, I realized that instead of hiding myself behind what little cover we had, I had still been leaning out. More whizzes sounded, as more bullets from the compound peppered the area around me. One grazed my right bicep.

  I heard the others already halfway down the hill, injured James included. I could only scoot back behind cover, mostly due to the fact that I couldn't see, a bullet just grazed me, and the shock of being shot at so much, so quickly.

  I let go of my bat and it rolled down the hill, as I frantically tried to rub the dirt out of my already black and swollen eyes.

  “Ophelia! Get down here!” Clyde yelled at me from the bottom of the hill.

  “I can't open my eyes! I can't see any— AH!”

  In mid sentence, someone grabbed my legs and yanked me down the hill. I just felt two hands on me and falling, even though he probably had everything under control and was just sprinting down the almost 90 degree hill. Both of our feet landed hard, as he jumped off of the cliff.

  Cloth was being rubbed against my eyes, and when it moved away, I saw a blurry Harrison with the rag from his back pocket. He pushed my bat into my hand, took the other one, and started running.

  “Let's go!” he yelled.

  My eyes were starting to open, but it was like whenever I accidentally jabbed my finger into my eyeball. It closed on me and refused to open. Even when I forced it open, everything was still really blurry and not right.

  Clyde was ahead of Harrison and I, supporting James as he moved as fast as he could through the trees. I could still hear the whistles and zipping sounds of high speed bullets, even though we were far away now. Which meant that they were probably getting closer, hunting us down.

  Or the bullets were just really loud, and I was paranoid. Both cases were valid here.

  We ran more and more, the bullets getting farther and farther away, until I couldn't hear them anymore. Harrison pushed and pulled me every which way, weaving between the trees and narrowly avoiding roots, branches, and everything else on ground. At one point, my foot got caught on a tree root or something that Harrison didn't see, but instead of falling and being ripped from his grasp, he held on tight, and nearly ripped my arm out of its socket.

  Beyond that, it was, thankfully, a very uneventful flee from certain death.

  We arrived at “camp” out of breath, and on the verge of collapsing. No, wait, that was just me. Yeah, I was wheezing, and everything, inside and out, was burning and protesting.

  No more! No more!

  I sounded like an asthmatic, but Harrison was ready to go.

  “Juliet, help my brother. Addeline, get some water and a rag, and help Ophelia. Kids, pack up what you got out- quickly. And help the others, if they need it. Let's go!”

  Now, normally, shouting out orders like that would've been kinda awkward, and rude, but there was something in Harrison's voice in this instance that made everyone do exactly as he said, as fast as they could.

  Fear.

  “Harrison! You're bleeding! You've—“ Addeline yelled at Harrison, worried.

  “I'm fine! Head wounds bleed a lot. Help Ophelia, then both of you can help me.”

  “Hold still.” Addeline said.

  I saw the blurry outline of Clyde's sister. I felt one hand tilt my face towards the sky and hold my head steady as the other wiped a damp cloth over my eyes. I flinched and cringed at the smell. She had used an alcohol wipe to get the dirt out of my eyes, and it burned. It made sense, considering that we had no water and that it was probably the only liquid we had besides spit.

  But, my god, burned.

  She wiped a dry piece of cloth over my eyes, and I could see again, almost completely clearly. I kept my eyes open despite how much they stung.

  After seeing that I was okay, Addeline tossed me the rag she’d used to wipe my eyes, and went to help Harrison. I took notice of the impossible amount of muck on the cloth before finding a patch that was “clean” and patted my eyes dry. The burning lessened.

  “Good news: it barely grazed you.9 Bad news: head wounds do bleed a lot.” Addeline pressed another cloth against the source of a thin trickle of blood down his face. The graze was somewhere between two and three inches along the top right side of his head, and wasn’t that deep, so it was good? I think? He didn't have any hair, so Addeline had no problem seeing what needed to be done, and where, which was definitely good.

  I heard the sound of duct tape being used by the other group, where Clyde was sitting on the ground, behind James, with his arms wrapped around him. Clyde held James up and in place while Mom took the duct tape and wound it around James’s torso a couple of times to secure some sort of bandage or something. James cried out.

  A gunshot answered his call, much closer than that compound. And a Crazy answered that call, and so began the unwanted chorus of shrieks that rang out around us. One was closer than others, and by closer, I mean bolting through the trees to get to us. I reacted before thinking about how to react, and smashed my bat into the side of its skull. It hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, but I think it may have twitched, so for good measure, I brought my bat down vertically, finishing it off without any doubts.

  James cried out again, and I almost hoped that he would pass out. He had sweat all over his face, dripping
down in beads and rolling onto his shirt.

  “We gotta go.” Clyde snatched the duct tape from my mom as soon as she tore the end off. He ran over to his sister, and slapped a piece of tape onto the cloth she was holding down on Harrison's head. Harrison winced, and grunted, but said nothing.

  I threw my rag to Addeline, and she hastily wiped the stream of blood out of Harrison's eye.

  Clyde grabbed James’s arm and wrapped it around his shoulders. Mom did the same thing with his other arm. Addeline stayed close to Harrison, just in case he needed her, but I doubt that he would ever admit it outloud. I slung my backpack over my shoulders and readjusted my grip on my bat.

  The twins did a good job of cleaning up. The only footprint we left on this place was, well, our footprints.

  A gunshot sounded close. Followed by more. Also close. Too close for comfort, as if any of us could find comfort out here. The only good news was that they weren't aimed at us, and the more they fired, the more the Crazy's zeroed in on them, and not us.

  We started moving.

  Chapter 40: Harrison

  We didn't stop moving until we found shelter— an old, most likely abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods. I say abandoned because a tree had fallen through it some time ago, and the rain that it let in through the roof had made most of the wood that composed the cabin soggy, and gross.

  The gunshots could still be heard, but they were more in the distance. We figured that with all the noise that they continued to make, those idiots would have more than enough Crazies to deal with. We would be able to rest for a while, or even until first light tomorrow, if we were lucky.

  Which, we weren't. The only one here who proved to be lucky was, well, Lucky.

  We all collapsed inside, even Clyde and Harrison. I didn’t know about them, but my body was not made for this whole running thing. My lungs hurt, I felt like there was a knife in my side, my throat was on fire, a bullet had skimmed my arm, and my knees were not making anything any easier. They were stiff, and, honestly, if I had to get off of the floor right now, I probably wouldn't be able to do it.