Escape -Third in the Run. Series

Chapter 2

Felix's POV

I moved the stick carefully through the dirt, tracing long lines and hard curves through the dry ground. Olivia was knelt down next to it, head tilted as she squinted.

"What does it say? It's Swedish, right?" She asked.

"Yep." I finished the final letter with a broad swoop and underlined the words I had just written. "This is our to-do list. Well, it's mine. We should probably add onto it."

She turned to me and raised an eyebrow. "Can we add the rest in English, please? Now there's no such thing as google translate." She muttered. I smirked and poked the first word.

"That means find." I offered, then moved my stick away to let her see the whole thing.

"Find Marzia!" She grinned. "Sounds like a good step one. Do you know where she would be?"

"That's step two," I replied, pointing at the words below. "See there? That means travel or journey. along the lines of that. And that's east. We have friends that live farther east, so I'm thinking that's where she would have gone." I waved my stick in a vaguely eastern direction as I spoke, and Olivia nodded, tracing the words with her finger and mouthing them silently.

"Well, it looks like our plans will match together pretty well," Mitch slid out suddenly from behind me and I startled, dropping the stick. He crouched down next to Olivia, resting an arm on her shoulder. She smirked and ducked her shoulder, leaning backwards as he fell forward and landed in the dirt. I frowned as he smudged a few of my words when he pushed himself up.

"Aw, c'mon. We were just getting to step three." I complained. Mitch spit out a mouthful of dirt and glared at Olivia, who grabbed my stick and poked his arm.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," He said, shooting a funny face at Olivia, "I was thinking east is the way to go as well. There's a good chance that the tunnel people may have gone east, and I wouldn't mind hooking up with them again," He frowned. "That came out wrong." I raised an eyebrow at him, making Olivia giggle as Mitch's cheeks flushed bright red.

"Anyhow, yeah. We should probably start heading east as soon as we can. We still got some time till it gets cold, but it's gonna be hell once it does. Especially the farther east we get." He explained. I nodded in agreement.

"There's also zombies to consider. And other people. It's crazy, but we've been stuck in our own psychopathic little bubble of rainbows and death here in LA." I said. Mitch's face scrunched in confusion but he stayed quiet. "C'mon, you know it's true. The cavets and the army took out most of the zombies in the area, making it a non-problem there pretty much. Now that we're heading out, we're gonna be fighting a lot more."

"Point taken," Mitch agreed as he climbed to his feet, pulling Olivia up after him. "Hey, guys!"

Ryan's head popped out from behind a tree.

"What?"

"Game plan in place, heading east!"

"Awesome!" Ryan cheered. Ian and Jerome both appeared briefly from behind a bush to stare, then disappeared again. A moment later they reappeared from around a large section of foliage, followed by Jason.

"When did this come about?" Jerome asked, staring at us confusedly. Mitch and Olivia both pointed at my writing in unison, snorting as the others stared at in confusion. Ian blinked slowly and shook his head.

"Dude, I have no idea."

"I'm just going with it," Jason sighed. "Leave in the morning? Good nights rest, or whatever it is?"

"Yeah, sounds good to me," Ryan called. "Maybe by the time we're ready to leave I'll have actually figured out to crack these nuts without destroying them!" I smirked as Ian's face creased in worry and he hurried off to prevent Ryan from destroying some of our only food. A sudden thought occurred to me and my laugh died away, replaced by a frown.

"Is someone going to tell Adam? Have you guys seen him?" I worried. I hadn't seen Adam since much earlier this morning, when we had got to this spot after trekking what we guessed was at least a mile away from where we burned the bodies. Adam had been silent throughout the entire walk, but then again, we had all been pretty fried. After we had gotten here though, he had disappeared when we all broke apart to do our things.

"Oh," Jerome commented lightly, "I thought you knew. Yeah, Adam knows the plan. You got all that, right?" He called. I frowned and looked behind me, trying to figure out who he was talking to. Olivia stifled laughter at my confusion, and Mitch pointed upward. Slowly, I scanned up the tree we were standing under.

Adam was perched on a branch at least 30 feet up, directly on top of us, lounging casually back against the trunk. He gave me a mock salute as my mouth dropped open.

"Jesus! You've been there the whole time?" I gasped. He nodded, gripping a small branch next to him for balance and raising his other hand to point north.

"Zombies! I've been watching them for a while, trying to figure out if we're in trouble!" He called down.

"Well, are we?" I shouted back. He frowned and squinted over the tree line.

"I'd say so, yeah!"

I closed my eyes and swore loudly in Swedish. When I opened my eyes to see Olivia staring at me, I shook my head and pointed sternly at her.

"No, I am definitely not translating that."

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More interesting stuff to come, I promise! As usual, let me know what you guys think and what you'd like to see happen.

Cheers, everybody!