Chapter Chapter Twenty-Seven
Luke sat on his own, knees drawn up to his chest thinking. He now had power’s he’d never dreamed he would ever have, but instead of making him feel good he felt more frustrated than ever. How could Bretnel stay here and do nothing! How could “he” stay here and do nothing? He knew he couldn’t, he knew he wouldn’t! But do what!? That was the problem he had no idea what he could or should do.
If he was really honest with himself he had begun to realise how little he knew about their current situation. In the old days of the camp he’d known everything. His world had consisted of only a few locations; the camp, where they went to scavenge, the edges of the city, the approved areas and bits of the local wastelands. None of the areas had been very big but he had known them like the back of his hand, all the alleys, paths, hiding places and bolt holes. Now he knew nothing, he knew hardly anything about the world outside. He couldn’t tell you what lay more than half a mile from the base in any detail at all. Not knowing made it hard to plan what to do next.
“Right then Luke” he said to himself “You need to find out then don’t you”.
He got up and started hunting round the base to find anything that could give him any information about the local area. After a few hours of fruitless hunting he came across a draw that was stuffed with maps. He studied them and realised pretty soon that many were completely useless. They were of places that were obviously far away as they showed lots of open sea or complicated river deltas that didn’t correspond with any of the geography Luke was familiar with. One or two of the others he found seemed a lot more promising, they showed mountains, little streams and large tracts of forest. The big problem Luke had was he couldn’t work out exactly where he was. If he’d thought about it he shouldn’t have been particularly surprised as secret bases tend not to be marked on maps, otherwise they wouldn’t be very secret.
After an hour or so of studying he threw up his hands in disgust. He couldn’t work it out, he needed some sort of reference point, something that stood out in the local area that he could find on one of the maps and then he would at least have a starting point.
Luke suddenly stopped and slapped himself hard on the forehead “You bloody idiot” he shouted. “I can get as many bloody reference points as I want. All I’ve got to do is step outside, fly up into the air and have a damn good look around”.
He jumped up and began running out of the room only to screech to a halt and slap himself again. “Derrr, it would be a damn good idea to take the map as well wouldn’t it you dolt” he shouted at himself.
Running back he grabbed the map and within minutes he was up in the air scanning the ground.