Survivors

They ran ducking and diving through the familiar paths towards the clearing. They were moving way too fast and certainly not as carefully as they normally did. Each snapping twig and leaf rustled sounded outrageously loud in the still quite of the night. That was the bad news; the good news was they were moving a lot faster than the Dane had seemed to be moving, so the chances were they were gaining on him. Even though the paths were familiar they still felt the cold scraping fingers of fear clutching at them. It all looked so different in the dark. Given the circumstances and the noise they were making they were right to be afraid. When Holly and Joe reached the clearing Luke was already squatting on his haunches staring intently up and down the line of bushes.

Even in the darkness Luke knew they hadn’t reached the clearing where the Dane had crossed it. They were at least thirty meters too far to the right. That made it impossible to work out where the Dane had gone once he’d got across. Luke knew they had no other choice than to work their way back along the edge of the clearing to see if they could work out exactly where he had crossed and then where he had gone. That would all take time, and the more time they took the further they let him get away.

“Damn, damn, damn” said Luke. He got up and started off to the left keeping an eye out for the Dane on the far side of the clearing. Holly and Joe crept beside him. They knew Luke was good at this tracking stuff and it was best not to interrupt him when he was concentrating. After a couple of minutes he suddenly stopped and said

“Here it is, this is where he went. Come one” and without even pausing to think he was off across the clearing.

For the second time that night Holly and Joe stared at each other open mouthed. What the hell had got into Luke? Normally he was extra cautious, almost timid, and now here he was charging about in the middle of the night like a maniac.

Holly glanced up at the full moon, maybe Luke was a real lunatic. As long as he doesn’t turn into to a wolf she thought with a shudder.

In all honesty Luke himself couldn’t have told you why he was acting the way he was. He was angry, scared, determined, sulking, rebelling and seeking approval all at the same time. For anybody that would be a complicated set of emotions to deal with but for a teenage boy who’d lived almost all his life on the run from an alien invasion force it was way to much.So perhaps we should cut Luke a little slack for abandoning the watch, putting the camp at risk, endangering Joe and Holly and .. No forget it he was acting like a prat!

Luke suddenly realised he couldn’t hear Holly or Joe behind him any more. That thought jolted him into a slightly more sensible frame of mind. He stopped and looked back. They were some way behind him and he appreciated just how quickly he must have been moving. Only then did his chest begin to burn, his heart feel like it had been pounding way too hard for way too long and his legs begin to ache. After a few seconds Holly and Joe caught up.

“Are you… are you… mad?” Wheezed Joe head down, holding onto his knees gasping for breath.

“No one asked you to come!” Snapped Luke

“Like you gave us any choice!”

But before this new argument could build into anything bigger than a minor skirmishing bicker there came a loud cry of pain from ahead of them. They dropped instantly to the floor now really terrified. Even though the blood was pounding in their ears and they were down at ground level, and the voices were some way off they could hear what sounded like a really heated argument. They could hear quite clearly the Danes voice; his bass tones were pretty unmistakable. The other voice was harder to hear; it was squeaky, high pitched and sounded pretty frightened, which was probably making it even squeakier. Although this second voice was familiar none of them could quite put their finger on who it was. Even though the voices were loud it was impossible to work out what they were saying, the feelings, anger, fear threat and terror were pretty clear, but not the words.

“Who is that?” Whispered Holly.

“No idea” replied Luke.

“Let’s go and see” said Joe.

“I don’t think we should” said Luke, all his old cautiousness had suddenly returned. That cry of pain had drowned all his other feelings (you remember “angry, scared, determined, sulking, rebelling and seeking approval”) with one simple tidal wave of fear. To be fair this was the rational, sensible sort of feeling that anyone should have been having given their current situation. This type of fear was a good thing because it was making Luke slow down and think a bit rather than just acting on his rash impulses. Not that Joe saw it that way!

“Hang on a minute” he said “You’re the one that left the lookout; you’re the one who sprinted off into the night like a madman. You’re the one who dashed across the clearing without even looking and NOW you get scared!! I don’t care what you say I’m going to see what’s happening”.

Joe started to crawl on his belly towards the sound of the argument. After a few seconds Holly then Luke crawled after him. They looked like three fat, dirty, arthritic snakes as they slithered and slid through the bracken and ferns under the trees. They hadn’t gone more than ten meters when there was an ear splitting crash ahead of them.

They instantly ducked their heads pressing their faces into the dirt and froze. They did their absolute best to look as much like the soil and leaves around them as possible. They did indeed look like three lumps in the ground, which probably gives you and idea of just how dirty the three of them were.

They had lived around guns for the last seven years. Just about everyone at the camp over fifteen carried a gun, but hearing one go off when you weren’t expecting it and in a reasonably close proximity in the silence of the night (apart from the argument) was enough to make you pee your pants (though luckily none of them did).

After the initial shock of the noise the silence was even more intense. Then this too was broken by the sound of someone running. They were crashing through the undergrowth away from where the children were hiding. Still they didn’t move. Years of hiding from the Aliens had taught them the benefits of stillness. Not till the sounds of the person running through the woods had long gone did any of them move at all.

“Let’s go” said Joe.

“What do you mean?” Said Holly.

“We need to know what happened don’t we, or what the hell are we going to tell Darius?”

“What! No. Look we need to go back right now and tell Darius what we saw! We can’t go on chasing around the countryside like this” insisted Holly.

“Someone has been shot but we don’t know who.” replied Joe with a real edge to his voice, “Someone has just run off, but we don’t know who. We need to find out exactly what’s happened so we can tell Darius. Then he can decide what we need to do”.

Holly and Luke looked at Joe in disbelief. They had never heard Joe talk like that before. Not only was it clear direct and rational, it made sense as well.

“Are you coming then” said Joe, and he crawled off through the ferns.