The Garden of Heathen

Fire Fight

Gally faced the maze doors with new emotions surging inside him. There was the strength of finally telling Aussie how he felt about her, finally kissing her, and having those feelings reciprocated. However, that made the thought of losing her all the more terrifying.
'Then don't let anything happen to her. Or you,' he tried to tell himself, spinning fear into determination.

He stood with Rachel, Joan, Gertie, and Georgia, Aussie right beside him with her hand clasped in his. Joan was taking a head count before they did anything else, no one was missing and no one was staying behind.

The next thing they did was dole out the responsibilities. Every girl who could shoot an arrow was armed with a bow and a quiver full of arrows with alcohol soaked rags tied to them. Any girl who couldn't shoot an arrow was either carrying her weight in flammable liquid or carrying a torch. Not both though. They were grouped together so there were evenly spaced groupings of people with bows, booze, and fire. Speed was not their goal, survival was. They'd rather take 10 hours with no lives lost than 2 and lose someone.
They were all ready to kill some grievers and show the makers exactly who they were dealing with.

Since Aussie was still understandably weak, she and Gertie were going to pull the cart with the extra bottles the girls couldn't carry, extra arrows and rags, and one big bottle of water just in case they wound up needing it. Gally carried a bow, quiver, and torch and stuck close to them in the center of the group.
Aussie also had fashioned a leash to bring Moo with them. She felt bad leaving all the goats, but figured they'd die of old age before they ran out of things to eat. However, there was no way she was leaving Moo and no one tried to make her.

Once they were fully equipped and in formation Joan and Rachel addressed the group. Gally wondered when exactly they had become the faces of leadership around here, but it's not like he wanted the job for himself and it seemed like Aussie was of the same mind. Still, Gally felt much like Gertie did, that Aussie was the Queen, so Joan and Rachel were simply her generals. And in all honesty there was no one better than them to lead the Gardeners into the maze.

"Everyone listen up!" Joan shouted over the hushed conversations, bring an almost eerie silence over the place. "We move together, we keep formation. Keep your eyes and ears open, you see something you say something. They can be on the tops of the walls as well as down the corridors. Now, while you're keeping an eye out for grievers you also have to keep an eye on what you're doing. What'll we look like to those shuck makers if we set ourselves on fire before the first griever shows up, right?"

"Right!" The girls chorused.

"And remember, because I'm sure as soon as we see one we're gonna lose our minds a little, bottles go first, while they're chucking bottles you're lighting their arrows, and then you're firing them," Joan instructed as she pointed to the nearest examples of each type of soldier. "I don't want to see unlit arrows hitting inflammable grievers, don't waste the ammo."

"If anything happens to me, Joan, or Gally," Rachel finally began her own speech. "You each have a copy of the map with the code words, right?"

Murmurs to the affirmative rippled through the crowd.

"Like Joan said already, we're going to stick together. We stand a better chance that way. I've heard that you've never left anyone behind, let's not break that streak today."

That seemed like the end of it, like one of them would clap their hands together and say 'let's go', but every gaze turned to Aussie. It took her a second to notice and when she did she almost startled. But now, after all the logical, serious instructions had been hammered out, they all wanted to hear something from the heart. Aussie was the heart of the Garden. She knew every single girl there like sisters she brought home from the hospital and raised herself.