Aether's Legacy | dnf

Chapter 11: Campout in Idaho

"We need to go." Dream's hand gripping his shoulder shook him out of his haze. He looked up with tears brimming at the corners of his eyes and realized Dream was staring behind him. When he turned, he saw Alice talking to another one of the workers and pointing at them as she spoke on the phone.

They rushed out of the diner and huddled into the truck. Dream hit the gas and drove off at full speed. As George looked behind them, he spotted two of the workers running out of the diner. One tried to snap a picture of the truck as it drove away, but Skeppy reached out of the moving window and sent a gust of wind flying their way that caused their phone to go flying into the road and crash down at full force. When George spotted the camera's blinking where their truck had been, he used his telekinesis to crumble it, rendering the footage useless.

They drove for hours. It surprised George how long Dream could go driving in silence without a break. Nobody said anything as if even releasing the quietest peep would give away their location.

Deciding it was too risky to make any other stops or stay at any hotels now that their names and faces were all over the news, they decided to camp out at a secluded area on the outskirts of a national park in Idaho. They parked the truck about a mile out behind a small hill that wasn't visible from the main road.

Although they didn't have many camping supplies, they did have plenty of blankets stored in the back, so they decided they would sleep in the truck. Sapnap set up a little fire by the forest so they could sit around it on some fallen logs.

It was quiet. They hadn't spoken much the whole ride besides basic instructions. When they finally sat down around the fire, George could hardly take the tense silence enclosing them. Everyone was on edge. It felt like at any second, they'd hear a helicopter approaching them and they'd have a dozen officers on their tail.

It didn't help the chill of his shadow pursuer had returned at full force, settling beside his ear with hushed murmurs asking him to unleash his power and test out his full potential—that he could fix this whole mess.

George refused.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Sapnap finally asked the obvious question.

"We can't turn back," Skeppy murmured, playing around with two twigs and a beetle scrambling around on the dirt.

"We're not." Dream plopped himself next to George after he finished heating up a sausage from a bag they'd bought back in Nashville and stored in their cooler. "We're one ride away from Seattle. It's just a matter of disguising ourselves until we find where they're keeping Bad."

"How are we going to do that?" George muttered, knowing full well they hadn't planned on how they would find the place Bad was being kept at. At this point, it felt like they'd be endlessly running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

"We have a map of the old facility. Maybe we ask around?" Sapnap suggested.

"It's too risky now. They'll recognize us." Dream shook his head. His eyes landed on George, and he could tell Dream wanted to say something but he seemed to think better of it. He turned away, and George restrained himself from asking about it. "We'll do some research. Maybe look through some local libraries to see if we can find anything. Let's just... take a breather right now." He said as he poked the fire with a stick.

The flames crackled in the forest ambient, masking the insect chirps and whistles of the wind. Dull oranges and vivid yellows danced to the breeze, rising and falling, crunching and fizzing, slowly brightening their surroundings as the evening reds cloaked around them. Despite the heat emanating from the blazes, George couldn't help but hug himself, breathing out in between his dry lips and shivering when his own cold fingertips grazed his frigid skin. A lone owl hooted in the distance followed by a distant howling hundreds of miles away.