Aer

22

'Where's the watchtower!?' Conor catches his breath, they can still hear the screams of the Freaks.
'I don't know, I don't know,' Cian rubs his hands down his face 'We can't go back with those guys on our backs'.
'Why?'.
'They'd break down the fences,' he says.

'The bunker'.
'And go back to Aaron?' Cian frowns.
'I can't think of anything else,' Conor says 'The sun's nowhere near coming up'.
'And what do we say?'.
'I don't know....we made a mistake, I don't know,' Conor says 'those screams are getting closer, I'm going back, you can come back with me or stay here, but I'm going back whether you like it or not'.
'Fine'.

Aoife and Lily follow the group closely, they move in and out of the trees, taking down whatever Freaks get in their way. They lead them further up the mountain to an enclosed camp.

'Ye from around here?' The girl asks.
'Yeah,' Lily says.
'Where?'.
'Doesn't matter'.
'That's fair'.

The group disperse as they enter the gates, the girl stays with them and leads them through the camp of cabins. The place is quiet, bar the few people coming and going.

'My name's Brooke,' she's a small girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, Lily couldn't make out what she looked like with her gas mask on but when she takes it off she looks friendly, there's a kind look in her eyes 'I'm going to bring ye to the doctor, Tamara, just for a quick check up'.
'We're fine,' Lily says.
'Just to be safe'.
Aoife looks at Lily 'We'll be fine'.

She doesn't say anything else as she brings them up the steps of a bigger cabin. A young girl turns to them and smiles 'How's things?'.
'Hey Tamara,' Brooke smiles 'found these two caught out in the horde'.

'Hi, I'm Tamara,' she says 'I'll just do a quick check-up is all, it's hard on the body being out there'.
'You can say that again,' Aoife says, she seems to have warmed to them but Lily isn't too sure.

Tamara simply just checks their temperature and their pupils to see if they're dilated. She doesn't say anything, doesn't question them, she just does a few tests and leaves them alone with Brooke when she's done.

'Ye can stay here for as long as ye like,' she says 'that horde isn't going anywhere anytime soon'.
'I thought hordes don't like to be separated' Lily says, she watches as Aoife sits at the table across from Brooke, but Lily's not budging.

'Yeah,' she sighs 'that would be our fault'.
Lily frowns 'What do you mean?'.
'We've been monitoring and interfering I suppose you could say. Look we're all in this together, ye don't have to tell me your names, you don't have to sit down but at the end of the day we only have each other,' she says.

'I'm Aoife,' she looks over at Lily 'This is Lily'.
Lily sighs and gives Aoife a disappointed look, however she does sit down beside Aoife, if she wants Brooke to tell her what happened with the horde she's going to have to pretend to be a lot more friendly.

'It's nice to meet ye,' she says 'genuinely, the more the merrier'.
'What happened with the horde?' Lily asks impatiently.

'Our leader died a few days back, we didn't know what had happened to him, the girl that was with him up and left with her friend, we thought she might've done something so we went out looking for him when he didn't return,' she takes a moment 'we found him turned in a building in a nearby town, found a note written by the girl saying she couldn't kill him so we knew she had nothing to do with this. We searched around the town and found a group of kids leading the horde out of a cave with dead bodies, we've been watching them every day since. Dars, our leader, had wanted us to watch the horde anyway to find out what was happening. We still don't really know but we believe these kids are leading the horde somewhere, they led them to the town, fed them a shit tonne of kids, had bodies burning around them, then they brought out alive kids and made the Freaks bite them...it was like a sacrifice or something. They also dress all the same, look the same, that's how I knew ye weren't part of the group. We think they may be some kind of cult that worship the Freaks. So we decided to break their ritual'.

'By breaking up the horde?' Lily frowns.
'We have some pretty talented people here, they made make-shift grenades and we threw them into the horde tonight, caused them to go ballistic and they just started running everywhere,' she says 'We're too high up the mountain for them to reach, and we knew they'd find their way back to the cave. We were just so angry about what they did with Dars that we were too selfish to even think of the effect it'd have on the other kids that weren't here'.

'Did you see the cult kids when you set off the grenades?' Aoife asks.
Brooke shakes her head 'No sign of them whatsoever, I don't think they follow the horde, but I'm not sure. I've only been in charge since our leader died'.

'Who was the girl and her friend?' Lily asks, knowing it may be Daisy and Charlie.
'I don't know to be honest, I never met them,' she says 'Dars mentioned something but I don't remember names, so many people come and go. So are ye going to stay? Ye are welcome to go back out there, but I wouldn't advise it'.

'We'll stay,' Aoife says, she doesn't even look at Lily, she's tired and wants somewhere safe to stay.
'Okay,' Brooke smiles 'there's a cabin at the very end to the right, there's an empty room there'.

Aoife and Lily make their way down the street.
'We shouldn't stay,' Lily says.
'Lily I'm not going back out there, I'm not like you and Charlie I couldn't survive'.
'We go back to the watchtower,' she says.
'And face all the Freaks in between?' Aoife frowns 'No Lily, I don't want to take that risk'.
'Okay, okay, but just for one night'.
'Plus it'll be nice to have a bed,' she smiles 'a place to ourselves'.
'That's true,' Lily smirks 'It's been awhile'.

Aoife opens the door and turns to Lily, kissing her passionately. They make their way into the bedroom and begin undressing each other. Aoife lays down on the bed as Lily gets on top of her.

They'd always spend the odd night together, Aoife wanted it to happen more frequently but it was only whenever Lily was in the mood. Nobody ever knew about it, and by the way Lily acted about them nobody was ever going to know.