Gone (A Larry Stylinson Story)

Chapter 20

If you haven't already, GO CHECK OUT 'DON'T FORGET ME'. I uploaded the first chapter because I said I would if 'Gone' got 1,000 reads :)

♥Harry's POV♥

"Where are we?" I woke up all at once and was embarrassed to find that I was being half-dragged down the road by Niall and a kid I didn't know.

"Can you stand?" Perrie asked.

I tested my legs. Cara's healing of my leg had been complete. "Yeah. I'm fine. Feel okay, actually."

I looked back and realized we had been leading a sort of ragtag parafe. Lottie and Louis, Cara holding a boy's hand while her dog bounded into the woods to chase a squirrel. There were almost two dozen kids, the liberated freaks from Coates.

Perrie saw the look on my face. "You got yourself a crowd of followers, Harry."

"Liam didn't come after us?"

"Not yet."

I winced when I saw the hands of the Coates kids. The concrete blocks had leeched all the moisture from their skin. Their skin was white and loose, hanging in tatters in some cases, like the tattered bandages of some horrow movie mummy. Their wrists revealed red circles where the concrete had rubbed the flesh bloody. They were filthy.

"Yeah," Niall said, knowing what I was seeing. "Cara's going through them one at a time. Healing the,. She's amazing."

I thought I heard something extra in Niall's voice. "She's cute too, huh, Niall?"

Niall's eyes went wide and he started blushing. "She's just...you know..."

I slapped his shoulder. "Good luck with that."

"You think she...I mean, you know me, I'm just..." Niall stammered his way to a stop.

"Dude, let's see if we can stay alive. Then you can ask her out of whatever."

I surveyed the scene. We were on the Coates road, passing the iron gate, still many miles from town.

Louis noticed that I was awake and hurried his pace. "About time you woke up," he said.

"Well," I played along with his bantering tone, "usually after I get shot and then fire lasers out of my hands, I like to enjoy a brief nap." I caught Cara's eye and mouthed 'thanks'.

Cara shrugged as if to say 'no biggie'.

"Liam won't let this stand," Louis said, turning serious.

"No. He'll come after us." I said. "But not just yet. Not until he's come up with a plan. He's lost Zayn and he's gotta be worried that we have all these kids with powers who hate his guts."

"What makes you think he won't just come after us?"

"Think about when he first came rolling into town. He had a plan. He trained his people and rehearsed."

"So we go back to town?" Louis asked, furrowing his eye brows.

"Orc is still there, and a few others. There may be trouble with them."

"We need to get some food for these kids." Perrie said. "That's first."

"Three of four miles to the market," I mused. "Can they make it?"

"I guess they have to," Perrie said, "But they're scared, too. I mean, you got some messed-up kids here. What they been through and all?"

"We're all scared, there's not much we can do about it." I said. But I didn't like the sound of that, it was glib. It was meaningless: sure, we were all scared, but there was something we could do about it. In fact, we had to do something about it.