Luna of Rogues

Part 51 - Carnage

It only took ten minutes for me to get bored. Another hour and I was carving my initials into the tree just for something to do. If you've ever spent three hours sitting in a tree, you'll understand. It was boring. Maggie was fond of telling me that I was a poster-child for ADHD whenever I voiced those kinds of feelings around camp. But if I was, then so were half of the raiders, and it was probably an advantage amongst rogues. Occasions when I had to sit still in a tree for several hours straight were thankfully few and far between.

I even tried taking a nap, lying across the tree branch with my head in Leo's lap. That lasted about a minute and a half — the time it took for the ferals to realise I was trying to sleep. They started howling just to wind me up, and I'll be damned if it didn't work.

Following that, my next source of entertainment was taking pot-shots at any hint of clothing I could see. It had to end when I'd gone through half of my ammo without actually hitting anyone. Leo brought out his phone to distract me, and I spent a happy twenty minutes playing Flappy Bird and blasting 'We Are The Champions' until it ran out of battery.

Two hours in, the ferals filled tin cans with shredded clothing. They were set alight and thrown around the base of our tree, which made us cough, and that was about it. There was too much air in the ... um ... air, and the wind was blowing hard from the north.

"It was a good idea, honest," I told them sweetly. "Would've worked if the tree was, like, indoors."

The most excitement we got was when Luke decided to pay another visit with only ten minutes left before the three-hour marker. And he was looking worryingly smug, like he had an idea.

"Too scared to come down, are we?" he sneered ... from a safe distance.

"Too scared to come up?" I countered.

"Guns are cheating."

"And three hundred against three ain't fair," Rhys laughed.

Luke shrugged. "Suit ourselves. We can wait, you know."

No, he couldn't. He was planning to attack our camp in another hour or so. If we could hold out until then, he'd either have to post a few guards or leave us alone altogether, and then we would stand a chance, at least.

"As long as it takes," Luke went on. "And the longer you make us wait, the longer we'll take to kill you."

"Well, I'm scared," I drawled. "Leo?"

"Pissing myself," he confirmed.

Luke put his hand into his jacket pocket, where it closed around something we couldn't see. A knife, obviously. He was probably imagining stabbing us over and over to keep his temper in check. "You can laugh all you like, pups, because you'll be screaming soon enough."

"I've had enough of this," Rhys said. He looked at me. "Permission to screw with them?"

"Permission granted, little brother."

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting him to jump down from the tree and spread his arms wide.

What. A. Dumbass.

"Come and bloody get me, cowards," he jeered.

I swore at him and lifted the rifle to my shoulder. Luke smelled the trap straight away and stayed put, but in the seconds it took him to warn his friends, half a dozen of them had taken a run at Rhys. I picked off two before they even got there, and Leo managed another two, and that left two for Rhys to gut with his knife.

It only took him a few seconds. The ferals had been snapping at his legs, because they weren't allowed to kill him. Once they were bleeding out, he climbed back onto the branch between Leo and me, bloodied and grinning, to spit down at the corpses.