I dig my hands into the dirt and lie on my stomach against the ground. The angle’s not too bad. I climb up on my hands and knees, hearing a soft pat as Chris swings onto the ground below me.
“Race you to the top,” I say.
“Get ready to lose, kid.”
I pick up the speed, trying to go fast enough to beat him, but slow enough to avoid skidding downhill. I start laughing, actually enjoying myself for the first time since…well, since the apocalypse.
“Eat my dust,” I tease, turning my head up towards the top of the basin. I inhale sharply, a tall man short hair staring straight at me.
I lose my footing on the dirt and begin sliding backwards. The guy is standing motionless, just watching us, making no move to do anything violent. Chris grabs my legs as I slide down, pushing me back up. “Careful…” he whispers, his eyes trained on the guy. “What do you want?”
The guy cocks his head to the side and brushes his coat behind his hips. Even against the night sky I can see the flash of his teeth from his creepy smile.
“Chris…” I mutter.
“You popped up on the wrong side of town,” he says.
“What’s it to you?” Chris asks, and in my opinion he looks and sounds way more intimidating than this random dude.
“Nothing. Just making a comment, man.”
Chris urges me to keep climbing. I hesitate. Every inch puts me closer to the stranger. “What you got in those packs?” the guy asks. “Any food? Water?”
“Nothing that belongs to you,” I say before I can stop myself.
The guy laughs.
“Maybe it does.”
I climb to the right, coming up on the other side of the guy. He still doesn’t move, even as I climb to my feet and stand at the top of the basin. Chris draws himself up to his full height and steps in front of me. “Move on,” he warns. “Now.”
The guy has wide, bloodshot eyes. Now that I’m standing a few feet away from him, I can see the obvious tears and smatterings of blood throughout his shirt. He’s hurt, and by the looks of it, starving.
“Maybe we should…” I start to say.
Chris cuts me off, indicating that I should start walking away. I look around the basin. There is a chain link fence surrounding the property, but thanks to a stroke of luck, there’s no barbed wire.
“Just give me the packs, man,” the guy says, and this time his voice has a note of warning. “Come on. Help a guy out.”
Chris holds his hands up and takes a few steps backwards, pushing me with him. “Not today. Sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be.”
The man moves lightening quick. For somebody who looks like he’s halfway bleeding to death, he sure doesn’t act like it. He strikes out at Chris’s face with nothing but his fist. Chris blocks the blow with hardly any effort, snapping the guy’s arm back and kicking him into the ground.
I just blink a few times, all of it happening it less than three seconds.
The guy isn’t done yet, though. He springs back to his feet and flings off his jacket, revealing toned, muscular arms. “You wanna fight? I can do that,” he growls, wiping his nose. “Come on.”
“Your funeral,” Chris says under his breath.
I roll my eyes, watching the testosterone-fueled gladiator match play out before my eyes. “We could just give him some food,” I suggest.
They both ignore me. Chris ducks his head to the left, avoiding a right hook from the guy. They both circle each other for a few seconds. Chris prowls around him like some kind of cat, twice as tall and definitely more knowledgeable in self- defense than this street fighter.
Maybe the guy realizes that Chris is going to pound him into a pulp, or maybe he really is just as wounded as he looks — because he turns around, looks right at me, and rips the pack right off my back. He grabs my arms and whips around the other side of me, literally flinging me to the ground. I hit the ground on my side, tumbling tail over teakettle down the edge of the basin. I just roll all the way to the bottom, scraping my face up in the process.
I hear some yelling and scuffling in the background, but all that disappears when I plunge sideways into the cold water of the basin. The shock of the freezing water is like sticking your finger in a light socket and getting electrocuted. For a second I can’t even move, completely submerged in black water. I can’t see anything. I can’t even feel the walls of the basin. Then my common sense kicks in and I start kicking upward, breaking the surface, sputtering for air. I’m only about eight feet away from the bank, so I start swimming towards it, hating how I have no idea how deep the water is — or what’s in it.
Above me, the guy is laid out on the ground and starts tumbling down the bank, too.
What is this? Public swimming appreciation day?
Chris slides down after him, upright, keeping his balance perfectly. The guy skids to a halt right before the water, about two feet away from me. He reaches out and dunks my head under the water — just to spite me, I guess. The next thing I know, his hand is gone, I’m breaking the surface again, and the guy is about ten feet away in the water, having been put there by Chris.
Chris grabs me by the belt of my pants and pulls me onto the dirt. He’s got a bloody lip, but other than that, he looks great. As always.
I shiver, hating how gross my wet clothing feels against the soil.
“Now what?” I ask, Chris linking his arms under my shoulders to get me on my feet. “Are you just going to leave him there?”
“Maybe it’ll teach him a lesson,” he says, combing my hair back from my face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I nod. “Just wet.”
Chris helps me climb up the side of the basin again while the guy kicks and flails around in the water, not bothering to chase us up. I guess he finally got tired of getting his butt handed to him by a Navy Seal.
Chris picks up my backpack from the ground and swings it around his shoulder. “I can carry that,” I say, my teeth chattering.
“I got it,” he replies. “Take your coat off and try to get it dry.”
I nod and peel off the fabric, feeling my skin tighten as the cold wind hits me. Chris casts a final glance at the guy, who’s pulling himself out of the water and crawling to the other side of the basin.
“Punk,” he mutters.
“All he wanted was a little help.”
Chris places his hand on the small of my back, motioning for us to move.
“He didn’t ask politely.”
“You’re such a boy,” I mutter.
We come to the chain link fence. Chris climbs it without any trouble. I manage to scramble over without landing on my butt, which means I have something going for me, at least. The two of us continue walking back towards the highway, which is clearly visible from here. It’s littered with abandoned cars, making it kind of hard to miss.
“Do you think Walter will be okay?” I ask quietly.
“Yes.” Chris steps over a broken scooter. How the heck did a scooter get out in the middle of a grassy field? “Don’t worry about him, Cassidy. We have our own problems.”
“There’s really no place left that’s safe, is there? They’ve probably taken over every city.” I pause. “And who is they anyway? What do these Omega freaks really want? How is possible that somebody we’ve never heard of has started setting up death camps all over the freaking state?”
“Good question.” Chris thinks it over for a second. “It would make sense that they’re a U.N. based group. Where else would they come from? How else would they be ready for this? But it’s amazing to me why nobody’s doing anything to stop it.”