Ephemeral

chapter 20-30

Chapter Twenty

"Fuck yes!" Veeno yelled, a little too loudly.

"What is it?" Brooke jumped at the sudden noise, ready to fight but quickly settled when he finally realised Veeno's tone.

"The sign!" Veeno pointed out Infront of them towards a green metal sign several meters ahead in the distance that the others had to strain their eyes to read. "Only sixteen K left!"

"Sixteen till we get to Logan?" Claire asked, a sliver of a smile starting to make it way to her lips.

"No. Sixteen kilometres till we get to fucking China. Of course, I'm talking about Logan." Veeno rolled his eyes, picking up a branch that had fallen from one of the trees down onto the road below and he plucked the slightly dried out leaves of the stick, letting them fall from his fingers and be carried back to the ground on the soft breeze.

"What's that? Four-five hours?" Brooke asked but answered his own question. "Shit dude. We will be there by tomorrow afternoon even if we take the rest of the day off."

The moral amongst the group suddenly doubled as if they had all been hit with copious amounts of dopamine.

Though despite the newfound hope, the ecstatic energy quickly dispersed at Claire's word.

"What if it's not there?" Claire's question wasn't particularly specific, but the entire group seemed to understand exactly what she meant. "I mean... It was Clive who told you about the safe-camp-thing right? We don't know whether or not he was with those psychos from the church... What if there's nothing out there? What if it's just another trap?"

"It could be." The thought had crossed Veeno's mind several times at this point but just as quickly as it had crept into his head, he had brushed it away. Now that someone else was worrying about the same thing, Veeno could no longer blame his own paranoia. "But you guys were the ones that trusted him... that believed him... so now you got to lie in that bed you made."

"Oh, fuck off Veeno, if we get killed so do you!" Claire spat back at him "maybe instead of being a spiteful dick you could try and use that big brain of yours to come up with a different plan."

"You seem moody, all those hormones are finally catching up I see." Veeno's eyes flicked down to Claire's stomach, then back to her face with a roll. A look of disgust crossed Claire's face as she resented the thought of Veeno's eyes touching her.

"You know I was beginning to think you were at least slightly tolerable, but I guess all that maturity you've shown must have been from a fucking concussion or dehydration or some shit cause, big surprise... you still suck." Claire glared at Veeno, resenting his apparent retreat back into his arrogant and entitled traits.

"It's not my fault you got your hopes up... Maybe in another life when being a decent person doesn't get you killed."

"Yeah right. Nathan is a fucking sweetheart, and you have the nerve to say that?" she hissed, it wasn't a compliment to her boyfriend, more to prove a point.

"I'm still not convinced he's not secretly a pervert or psyhco, I mean he already fits the part with all the crazy as fuck stuff he does."

The argument was very quickly cut short by Claire's sudden gasp and buckling over in pain. "Fuck."

Nathan wrapped his arms around her shoulders and steadied her. "Is it getting worse?"

"What do you think?" Claire spoke through gritted teeth.

"What did I do!? I really messed up Claire! I'm so sorry!" Tears were beginning to well in Nate's eyes and his face was bright red, turning purple as if he'd forgotten how to breath.