Hypersonic Missiles

Eli

I swapped with Josh so that he could take a turn watching out the window and I could eat. I needed to sleep but I was going to struggle. I never slept all that well these days but this girl Sam had brought back with him was going to make that worse.

I could already tell.

I watched her from across the table. Sam had already given her three different nicknames referencing her tiny stature and I could understand why.

When he'd said she was only little he hadn't just meant young. She was so small, starving and ragged looking but tiny and petrified too.
She reminded me of a frightened rabbit. Her eyes permanently wide. She was always shaking a little.

She was terrified of us and every time she looked at me I saw her freeze. Her eyes darting away quickly.
So she was more scared of me than she was the others. That was fine though, if she was scared enough of me that she would do as she was told then that was enough for me. She didn't need to like me, she just needed to stay safe. More than that, we needed her not to put us in any danger too.

She ate quickly, but nervously. As if she thought we might change our minds and snatch the little mug of tinned soup away from her at any moment.

Of course we weren't about to do that but I'd seen the way she'd looked when shed first followed Sam inside. I knew what she was waiting for us to do, I knew when I saw the look in her eyes after I'd told her she wasn't going home, what she thought we wanted her for. And she'd been alone for almost a year, hiding away in her family home, terrified.

The only reason she was with us now was because she'd given up on her scared little existence completely.

She hadn't spoken to a soul since her dad had died and I could guarantee that before then she'd been kept hidden away.

Because she was young and she was small, and she was right to be scared of the things she was scared of.

We just weren't those kind of men. She was wasting her energy fearing us.

That's when I noticed her tshirt.

Her clothes were filthy, what she needed more than anything was a good wash and some clean clothes. It wasn't the dirt and the dust which had disturbed me however, it was all the blood.

There was blood all over her tshirt, not from her hand as I'd presumed when I'd first seen the state of her, but old blood.

"What's with all the blood Ada?" I asked catching the death glare Rob shot me for asking another intrusive question.

This one was relevant though and I didn't see how I was supposed to ignore it.

"Oh I uh, hurt my arm," she said looking up at me quickly and then looking away. She was twirling her noodle soup around her fork, wolfing the food down, hardly stopping to breath.

"Calm down titch nar ones gan take it off yas like," grinned Sam, teasing her, slowing her successfully but not without staining her cheeks with a blush.

He sat with his arm around the back of the chair they shared and every time anyone spoke she shrank into his side in what would have been an endearing manner if she wasn't giving herself away every time she did.

"How?" I asked narrowing my eyes at her because I was convinced we weren't getting the whole truth from this girl. Maybe she'd been alone since her dad had disappeared but I refused to believe we were the first people she'd seen since then.

"I..." she bit her lip, looked away from me again. Definitely lying. "I caught it on somet when I was hiding..." she said, her answer vague enough to be believable if it wasn't for her expression which gave her away completely.