ISLAND

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE HUNT

Time rapidly rolled by as the group squirmed around the forest looking for sticks and vines to make shelter in the events that the heavy downpour outside would somehow escape through the tall cover trees and rain down on them.

Max, being the only natural survivalist due to the camping experience he had with his father growing up, was tasked with making the shelter, though it took a really long time due to the limited resources they had.

“This is going to take hours to complete” Max said looking around the forest

“Scratch that, this is not even possible” Elijah huffed as he dropped a pile of sticks and small logs on the ground next to Lucas

“It is. We just don't have enough resources around us to get these shelters done. We'd need to go deep into the forest to forage for supplies and given our current circumstance-”Max said

“That isn't advisable,” Lucas sighed as he finished Max's statement. He rubbed his temple just before he looked around the group that was loitered about “We can't live out in the open with the rain pouring down heavily outside”

“How about we move in larger groups?”  Emma suggested “I mean we're a total of fifteen. So groups of five should be able to achieve a lot more than groups of three and that's an assurance that we can't be attacked so easily by the morphas”

“Morphas? Is that what we're calling them?” Milo said coming from behind Emma

“Yeah. Catchy isn't it?” Elijah tapped himself on the shoulder

“Their name isn't what's important right now. We'll go with your suggestion Emma” Lucas interjected

“Alright so how are we gonna sort out the pairings?” Owen asked coming into the mix

“There's no such thing as a private conversation on this island” Avery chuckled as she joined the group with Evan beside her

“You and Evan seem to be getting closer these days” Emma smirked looking between Evan and Avery

“Shut it” Evan said smacking her shoulder

“I see everyone is coming in one by one” Lucas noted as the rest of the group surrounded their campsite “So now that we have everyone's attention, we're gonna split ourselves into groups of five and well… go deeper into the forest”

There was a slight uproar amongst the group as people seemed to disagree with the plan to potentially run into a morpha while trying to gather resources and materials to build shelters.

“Is that really the best plan right now?” Sophia asked looking over at Ava who still had cloth wraps all over her body

“We don't really have another option at this point” Lucas responded

“So how are we splitting ourselves?” Isabel asked, trying to mask the fear in her voice

“So groups of five: Wonder twins, Evan, Avery and Isabel you're one group” Lucas started “Natalie, Elijah, Zara, Mia and Caleb, you guys are group two so that leaves Myself, Owen, Sophia, Ava and Milo as group three”

Everybody moved as distributed but Zara’s eyes followed Caleb as he joined the new group he was assigned, standing close to Mia. She took a deep breath, her eyes closed as if trying to remind herself of why he was in the group with them before opening them up again. She moved, taking her place on Ava's right side before her fixing her gaze on Lucas as he continued to speak

“So these new groups, your duty is simple; go into the forest, grab wood, leaves, branches and whatever you can carry and then bring them back here so we can start building some shelters to protect from the rain, in the events the trees no longer hold out” Lucas said looking over the new groups “Any questions?”