“How did you know that?” she demands.
“I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes books when I was a kid,” I reply.
“What does that mean?”
“Forget it,” I sigh. “Look. Give me my chain and my stuff and I’ll get out of here.”
“No.” Blondie sets to work making some kind of stew. “I don’t trust you.”
“If this is how you treat all the people you meet, you’re never going to be very popular,” I comment.
She makes a charming remark about my intelligence before returning to their lunch. I scoot down on the ground and lean against the log, tired. Blondie and her cohorts treat themselves to a meal when she’s done preparing it, but they never invite me to join in. After an hour or so, my lips are chapped and I’m dying for water, but when I bring it up, Blondie just tells me to, “suck it up and deal with it.”
I am so going to stick her head in a hole.
It doesn’t take me long to realize after hanging around these guys that they’re not big on being stealthy. They camp out in the middle of the day, light a fire, and make all kinds of noise. Choker decides to get in some target practice with his rifle, making two idiotic mistakes. One, he’s wasting precious ammunition. Two, he’s making an enormous amount of noise and practically setting up a giant neon arrow over our heads that says, “OMEGA: COME FIND US.”
The afternoon passes without any incident. Nighttime comes and Blondie keeps the fire going at a pretty good size blaze. The size of the fire and the amount of smoke makes me uneasy. We’re too close to the road to be lighting up the night sky with flames.
“Where are you guys headed?” I ask. The three of them are bent over their dinner — a dinner nobody shared with me yet again. My stomach can’t take much more of this.
“We’re not headed anywhere,” Choker replies. “We’re just wandering.”
“Shut up,” Blondie snaps, slapping his knee. “Don’t tell her anything.”
“That’s too bad,” I shrug. “Because I’m familiar with these mountains, and you’re not…and we could probably help each other if you’d just get off your ego trip and admit that I’m not here to assassinate you.”
Blondie doesn’t respond, but I can see the wheels turning in her head from here. Choker almost smiles. Spot…well, he just gazes into the fire, like he’s been doing all day.
I wonder what these messed up kids have been through.
“Look, you’re making some big mistakes here,” I say. “First of all, you shouldn’t have a fire this big, this close to the road, or in the same place for so long. Omega troopscould see it and find you. Who knows how widespread their forces are? You need to quit wasting ammo and firing shots when you don’t need to. Save the bullets for the bad guys.”
Choker looks at me like I’m the most amazing thing since spilt milk.
“You know a lot about survival?” he asks.
“Enough.”
“How much?’ Spot says suddenly, his brown eyes searching my face.
“Come on, guys,” Blondie whines. “Are you seriously going to believe this chick?”
“Don’t get jealous, city girl,” I reply, my tone sharp. “I don’t think growing up in New York taught you very much about survival.”
She frowns, looking away.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“Bree, maybe we should listen to her,” Spot says, using Blondie’s real name for the first time. “Look at her. She looks like she knows what she’s doing.”
“No freaking way,” Blondie snarls, and when she turns back to us, I can see tears shining in her eyes. “I know what I’m doing. We don’t need anybody’s help. Especially some random girl’s.”
“You lost your parents, didn’t you?” I say, realization dawning. “I’m sorry.”
Choker looks down. Blondie glares at me, her lower lip trembling.
“None of your business,” she replies, standing up. “I’m getting some more firewood.”
As she crashes through the undergrowth, Spot looks at me from his spot beside me. “Yes,” he whispers. “We lost them.”
“When did this happen?” I ask, the sadness in his expression so deep I can’t even imagine it.
“The day everything died,” he said. “They were driving the car in front of us. Went off a cliff.”
A lead weight settles in the bottom of my stomach. Horrified, I say the only thing I can say. “I’m sorry.”
And I am. I really am.
The next day is exactly the same. Blondie — aka Bree — is an absolute witch to me while Choker guards me like a faithful St. Bernard. Spot hangs out around the fire, doing nothing. Apparently his depression runs a lot deeper than his siblings.
The three of them make me sit near the eternal campfire all day, never offering to cut the tight plastic cord around my wrists. Choker gives me a little food and water when Blondie’s not around, but that’s about it. I can’t really run off without my stuff, so I have to wait for an opportunity to get my gear and Chris’s graduation chain.
“Aren’t you guys ever going to move?” I say.
While my sympathy for their loss is real, I can’t believe that anybody would be so stupid as to camp out next to the road with a campfire for days at a time. Sheer dumb luck is the only reason they haven’t been found by unsavory characters.
“We’re fine right here,” Blondie replies.
“It’s winter. You can’t go very long without running into a huge storm.”
“Mind your own business.”
“I will when you tell me what you plan on doing with me,” I say. “Because I can’t just sit here forever, and since you won’t take my advice, I’m thinking that I want to get out of here beforeOmega swoops in and kills us all.”
Blondie rolls her eyes.
“Seriously?” she laughs. “Omega? What the hell isOmega? You’re insane.”
I blink a few times before the truth hits me: Of course. Who would know about the whole OMEGA thing except for Chris and me? I mean, we had a teacher sit down and explain it to us…and even he could have been wrong. So I try to explain the basics of it to her. Blondie, however, just thinks I’m making it all up as an excuse to escape and disregards everything I say.
Genius.
I really do need to get out of here. But I have to patient. My best bet is during the night. At least two of them are asleep at once, while one of the boys stays up to keep guard. I’ll just have to come up with something.
Until then, it’s boredom central. I take advantage of the opportunity to nap and rest. I anxiously scan the skies when I’m awake, noting the approach of heavy, dark clouds over the higher mountains. A storm is coming. And these dingbats are probably foolish enough to stay in the open and ignore a search for shelter.
When I make mention of the storm, Blondie just shrugs and pretends I never said anything. I eventually figure out that all three of them are in a state of denial over their situation, and they don’t intend to break a sweat over staying alive.
Screw that approach. I want to live.
When it gets dark at last, Blondie and Spot go to sleep around the fire while Choker stays up to watch me. I lean against the backpack, puzzling out how I’m going to escape. I could ask to go to the bathroom and sneak off into the night…but I don’t want to leave without Chris’s chain and my backpack.
So what’s my game plan?
The distant roll of thunder over Kings Canyon startles me. Great. There’s probably a flood washing down the hill at this moment. But will they care? No. I sit upright, listening to the thunder roll again. And again.
And…
I stop moving, a chill crawling up my spine. The thunder is steady, getting louder. Getting…closer. Oh, my god. I stand up, more noise joining the first chorus of what I thought was thunder.