if we survive

n i n e

a s h

Mika pulled me inside, pushing Zac behind her as she directed the woman to a hospital bed. "I won't help you if your gun is unholstered, cabin rules." She stated as the woman started to lie down. She rolled her eyes and holstered her gun, I felt like a huge weight was lifted off my chest. Benji grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the woman patiently lying on the medical bed.

"I don't have the cure yet, I'm still working on it." He whispered harshly. I finally knew who the scientist was and I wasn't necessarily surprised. From what Benji had told me during the ten hours we were trapped in this cabin earlier, his mother was always away when he was young working on something he'd never been told about. If you put two and two together it's kind of obvious what she'd been working on.

"Well you better get to it or else a lot of our people are going to die. She could have more friends that'll come looking for her, our people obviously aren't trained to fight." I whispered back. The woman didn't seem to be in too much of hurry so assumed he'd have enough time to at least get a small amount of the cure finished.

"You got here this morning, we aren't your people until you actually become a part of this community." He said but didn't let me reply before he continued "The cure is not that simple. I need a lot of ingredients that I haven't found yet, I've been trying to work with the community that's a few miles down the road to get the supplies but they won't contribute. I can not get these ingredients right now." He explained, looking over my shoulder at the woman. Mika was examining her leg and Zac hung onto Mika like a monkey on a branch.

"There are more communities?" I asked.

"Yes but that's besides the point, I can't go anywhere but if you want to try and convince Adam and Adrian to give us supplies by all means be my guest." Benji told me.

"I don't know where this place is or who Adam and Adrian are, this isn't the job for me." I argued.

"Look, Adam is the hard one to get across to but Adrian will help you if you tell him that our lives are at stake." Benji said and clapped a hand onto my shoulder. "Adam and Adrian are twins but it's not hard to tell them apart, they both have black-ish hair and blue-ish green-ish eyes. Adrian is slightly taller. Just don't upset them in any way and you should be fine."

"Okay but that woman isn't going to be happy with me leaving because I am the only leverage she has against us." I told him and he just shrugged.

"I'll take your place as captive while you're gone, she can kill me but if she does the cure is gone forever so I suggest you run this errand fast." He said and started pushing me towards the door. Benji wasn't really giving me a choice here and if I got lost in the woods we'd all be screwed. So many things could go wrong in a short amount of time.

"And where are you going Uncle Ashton?" The woman asked and Mika caught my eye. I felt like Mika was more afraid of me being killed then I was.

I glanced at Benji and nudged him forward. He wanted me to do this so I was going to let him explain it to the woman wanting to kill us.

"He needs to go get some supplies for the cure, it won't take long. It's about ten minutes through the woods." Benji said in the nicest voice he could conjure up. He tugged on my shirt and pulled me closer to the woman. "He'll be there and come back immediately, no pit stops necessary."

The woman nodded and grabbed my wrist. "Bleeding out takes five minutes," She began and before I could even fathom what was happening she slid my knife from it's holster and slid it across my left wrist, cutting deep. I cried out and immediately clamped my other hand over the cut. "Better run fast." She smiled and shoved me backwards. Benji and Mika were too stunned to speak. Mika ran to me and shoved me out of the door shoving gauze and fabric wrap into my hands without the woman seeing and closing the door behind me. As soon as I was down the steps I let out a string of curse words I'd bitten my tongue to keep from saying around Zac. I took off through the woods in a sprint wrapping my arm as quickly and tight as I could to slow the bleeding. It'd really suck if I got lost.

Benji told me nothing of where I needed to go or what I needed to bring back. I didn't even know what direction the other camp was in. My arm was soaked with blood and I knew lurkers would smell me from a mile away and I didn't have my knife. Remember when I said everything could go wrong in a matter of minutes? Yeah, I was right wasn't I?

I lifted my left arm into the air to try to slow the blood flow while I ran as quickly as I could without losing my balance. Sweat dropped down the side of my face though I wasn't hot, the air around me was cold and I was shivering yet sweat poured from my face. I felt like I'd been running for hours before I finally saw a tall, wooden fence that rose about ten feet high. I could hear moans of lurkers coming closer as I made my way to the fence. My left arm was raised above my head and my right arm was swinging at my side helping me gain speed. As soon as I made it to the fence I started to loose sense of direction. I didn't know what was left and what was right, which was ahead and which way was behind.

My legs were slowly giving out, I was sliding down the fence heaving for breath. I knew I was going to die, two days ago I would've been grateful but today I was so scared to leave my brother again.

Then, I heard a voice. "Hold your fire! He's not bit!" It sounded miles away. I couldn't place which direction came from or how far away it really was but it wasn't long before I felt someone's hand on my cheek and one on my arm.

Everything went dark.