Aer

26

   They walk along the road, this morning they left as early as possible to avoid the horde. The sun's shining, it's heat beats down on them, making the walk a lot harder than it needs to be.

A large camp comes into sight, they've high iron walls with barbed wire on top.
'How'd you not notice this place?' Cian frowns.
Charlie points over at the woods 'ran out from there, didn't take any notice, next thing you know bullets are spraying everywhere'.
  'Fuck'.

'Okay we'll wait back here, maybe retreat a little when the plan works, we passed a hut not too long ago we'll wait there, Daisy tell them that's where we are,' Lily says, she takes a knife from her belt 'say you got attacked by those cult kids, give you some information to tell them, keep them interested and so they know we're not one of them'.
'Okay,' Daisy takes the knife from Lily.

'Best of luck,' Lily smiles and the rest of them wish her luck too as they walk away.
Charlie stays back 'You'll be okay, keep the knife in'.
'I'll be fine,' Daisy says 'I love you'.
'I love you too,' he kisses her and walks away.

  Daisy waits for them to disappear before turning back to face the camp. She holds the knife by her ribs and jams it into her skin, not deep enough to cause any lethal injury but deep enough to stay in her skin.

She winces in pain and falls to the ground as she can feel the blood staining her clothes. She gets up but is in too much pain to walk straight, she staggers along the ground, her vision becoming blurry. She can hear movement behind the fences and raises her hands.
 
Kids appear along the walls with guns raised. They shout at her to stop and keep her hands up, Daisy loses the feeling in her legs and falls to the ground, the gates begin to open as her vision turns black.

   Daisy wakes up on a bed, her stomachs too sore to move, she looks to her side at a boy rummaging through bags.

'Hey,' she says in a whisper.
He stops what he's doing and looks at her, he runs out of the tent and comes back seconds later with a taller boy. They're both wearing raggedy clothes with makeshift armour.

'You're awake,' the taller boy says 'How are you feeling?'.
'Sore,' she says, she eyes a gun holstered on his belt 'Thank you'.
He nods 'It's Jimmy here you should be thanking'.

Jimmy smiles at her, he's about fourteen, he's got ginger, curly hair with round glasses 'The wound wasn't too deep, lucky for you but I'm sure it hurt like a bitch'.

'So what's your story?' The boy asks.
'My name's Daisy, my group and I were attacked,' she says.
The two of them look at each other 'attacked?'.

'There's five of us, we're held up in a small hut just down the way, been hiding since we were attacked on the road, I tried to follow them because I thought I was going to die anyway but I lost sight,' Daisy lies 'These kids were all dressed the same, all looked the same, they've been leading the horde somewhere, we saw them luring the horde from a cave and leading them down the road but we don't know where they bring them'.

'We've seen that horde, Evan,' Jimmy says.
Evan nods 'It seemed to disperse a few days back but it's back to normal now'.

Daisy nods 'We outran the horde, but then those kids found us, we managed to get away but only barely'.
Evan brushes a hand through his dark blonde hair 'fuck, we didn't know what the story with the horde was'.

'I need to get back to my group,' Daisy pretends to try and sit up.
Jimmy stops her 'no, you'll burst the stitches'.
'Where'd you say your friends were?' Evan asks.
  'In a small hut, not even a mile down the road'.
'I'll send a group down to them, bring them here'.
'Thank you,' Daisy smiles.
He smiles back at her and leaves the tent.