The Forgotten Light

40. Kaelen

Throughout the night, he had shot his eyes for about a poor two hours. Above all, he had a huge problem trusting those five lunatics, and he still wondered what had tempted him to let them lead him. He couldn't grasp in no way which way their shortcut ran.

Secondly, they didn't seem to know fatigue. They had arranged a loud bender: they almost lighted a campfire, but fortunately he managed to knock that out of their heads. If nothing else.

Not for anything, however, he managed to silence them. Admonishing them every five minutes to shut up was of no use. The men continued to sit in their circle and gorged themselves on stinky canned goods and whatever else they snatched from Vegas.

Kaelen had found a spot quite a distance from them. To his misfortune, they were now on flat ground, so he didn't even have anywhere to hide from their sight. He dug himself a small trench in the sand and lay there, listening to the hoodlums' conversations late into the night.

Just when he thought he was asleep, one of them burped loudly, to which the rest of them bellowed appreciatively.

"I'm still hungry, do we have anything else?" asked Mason, the beefy guy.

"You'd be gobbling persistently," grunted Carl.

Kaelen heard Mason's big paw bounce off the skinny guy's head.

"Ow! Dafuq?!"

"Leave him alone, the stick man is right. Next time go hunting like a real man," Bart rebuked him.

There was a second of silence and suddenly everyone burst out laughing, thinking the boss's advice was the best joke they had heard that day. Bart himself laughed, too, so it probably was.

Kaelen closed his eyes once again, trying to relax at least a little, but gave up the idea when he heard Elias' words, "I wonder what the pretty boy has in that bag of his."

Just let him come over and Kaelen would yank that nasty earring out of his nose.

"Why don't we take a look?" suggested Rob.

"How do you know he's already asleep?" asked Carl, squirming nervously, or rather out of excitement.

"It's late, he's definitely already dozed off," Mason stated.

They got up quietly, keeping up their derisory appearances of creeping.

"Bring your lousy asses closer to me, and you'll be sitting ducks," warned Kaelen loudly, before either of them managed to take the first step toward him.

With a murmur of resignation and disappointment, they sank back into their seats.

"See? I told you he was awake."

"Shut the fuck up, Carl," growled all four of them.

Later they decided to pile the empty cans on even ground and throw stones at them. It was completely dark, so they threw blindly. Somehow they managed to hit a few cans, which of course they took with exaggerated, far too loud joy. They finished the bourbon from Las Vegas and the empty bottle flew somewhere far away, shattering to smithereens.

Kaelen didn't even think people could behave like that. What they were doing didn't fall within bravery at all. It was pure imbecility. They acted as if they had no idea what was going on around them, as if they didn't care that their world had been taken over by deadly creatures who would gladly gut them at the first better encounter.

The next day he was awakened by the merciless sun. He rose, realizing it must have been noon already.

Damn men. Because of their nocturnal binge, he fell asleep late and woke up later than he should have, sleeping less than he needed. Whenever he thought of the road back to Sedona that was still ahead of him (with them) he felt that he would soon be able to hurl lightning bolts.