Aer

32

  'What's taking them so long?' Charlie sits on the dry grass, they've been waiting over an hour, he and Lily sit beside each other. The others sit away from them, in their own conversations.

'You know Aaron, talking bullshit,' she says.
'I feel like we should go up there,' he says.
  'And do what?'.
'I....I didn't think that far ahead'.

  The bunker hatch opens, Lily and Charlie quickly get up to see who's coming. Daisy walks ahead of Aaron, Seán and two other boys, one of them being Jason.

'Ye head back,' Charlie turns to Paul, Jack and the others 'Don't want them thinking we brought back up, try and avoid us'.
The boys leave Charlie and Lily, they wait in silence, rage filling the both of them.

  'Aaron,' Lily says as they get close.
'I heard of your plans,' he says 'We're going to come back and discuss them better with you'.

Charlie avoids making eye contact with Aaron, he looks over at Daisy who's watching Aaron carefully, as if she's waiting for him to pull out a gun and shoot all of them. There's a horrible, awkward tension between them all. None of them speak for several seconds, they all just stand around looking at each other, unsure of what to do or what to expect.

'The camp's not too far,' Lily eventually says.

  Daisy and Charlie walk ahead of everyone else, Lily walks behind Aaron and the others, making sure they don't do anything.

'What did he say to you?' Charlie asks.
'That he felt bad for what he did, he was just stressed and scared at the time,' she says 'I don't know Charlie, I actually can't tell if he's serious or not'.
'Maybe he got a reality check,' Charlie says 'he's a cunt regardless but still, maybe he's matured and realised the horde is our biggest problem'.
  'I don't know'.

  'What do you mean?'.
She looks at him and shrugs 'I just can't trust him after what he did'.
  'I know, I know'.

  They eventually reach the camp, not a word has been spoken, the tension hasn't lifted, if anything it's gotten worse.

Lily watches Aaron as he scans the camp, taking in their weapons, the number of kids that are around, everything. The kids turn and stare at Aaron and the others as they walk through the camp, as if they're suspicious of him too.

Lily brings them to her tent where Conor, Cian and Aoife are waiting, she felt it'd be best for them to speak with him and not the other kids from camp, ones he has no relationship with. If they want this to work they've to put aside their differences.

  They all take seats around the table, Aaron and his boys sit together, the rest sit as far away from them as possible. Daisy sits next to Conor and takes his hand, he squeezes it tightly as he looks over at Seán and Jason, the two he considered his closest friends.

'I'm sure Daisy already explained the plan,' Lily begins 'This horde is stopping us from getting supplies but we've also noticed its numbers have increased and some Freaks are beginning to break away from the horde, forming their own group. We had an incident where a building we cleared out had been overrun again with Freaks'.

'We've been having a lot of problems with supply runs too,' Aaron says 'As you know the horde comes from the caves in Clonhill so that town is completely off our radar at the moment, we haven't had a successful supply run in two weeks, we don't have enough food to last us a month'.

Everyone grows quiet, perhaps Aaron is being genuine and they're struggling enough for him to not betray them.

'We have a plan to attack the horde, getting rid of the horde is ruining the power the cult kids have over us,' Lily says 'There's an old mass grave not far from here, we were thinking we could lead them to it, then blow them up'.