Torn

Chapter 4

It was day seven. Sun filtered through the tree greying tree limbs as I intently woke up Wyatt from his slumber, eager to pack up camp and hopefully find a food source. Once he was fully awake, I made him put his obviously worn clothes on and ushered him out of the enclosure so that we could get on our way. Zipping up my backpack, I lugged it over both of my shoulders, checked that the tent was securely fasted to my back, double checked to make sure I had everything and said to Wyatt "Let's get going." Walking at a bearing of 13 degrees north, I was hoping this was the day we were going to come across another town.

"Maverick, when are we gonna eat some food?" my brother pestered for what seemed like for the hundredth time.

"Wyatt, we will eat once we find some food." I replied "You need to look for some edible berries or a deer I can kill."

"But, my stomach hurts."

"Wyatt, for the last time, we will eat as soon as we find food."

Discovering edible food in the wilderness was not an easy task and me being extremely picking on what we ate didn't help as well. I cautious about what we ate as if we consumed the wrong substances we could become very sick or one of us could even die. This caution caused us to loose a lot of weight through the last few weeks though, I had decided that being malnourished was a better fate than being deceased. Passing by a clearly poisonous mushroom which I quickly told my sibling not to touch, I just hoped that one of us would find food soon. Fortunately, after about another hour or so we came along a small shoot of blackberries which held enough of the shaped raspberry to take the edge off of hunger for a few more hours. Once Wyatt and I had eaten every berry in sight, we resumed our quest to discover human life. Step by step, we slowly made our way through the shaded damp forests as the sun lit our path.

After a couple hours of hiking in the books and dust beginning to rapidly setting in, I started on the task of finding a place for us to reside for the night. We trekked on for about 30 more minutes until I found a heavily brushed area which would provide us decent shelter for the night. Assembling the tent within 5 minutes and setting up camp within 15 minutes, if there was one thing I was becoming good at it was setting up and tearing down camp. Thrusting the last peg into the dark damp dirt ground, I stepped away from the enclosure pondering how I could keep us from going hungry tonight. Glancing around at my surroundings, I saw nothing editable unless you wanted to consume the bushes which provide us shelter, dried up pines nettles, or damp dirt. Kicking up nettles and dirt, well knowing that there was a good prospect of us going hungry again tonight, I began searching for Wyatt wondering where he went. Quickly surveying the area, my heart started to race. He was nowhere to be found! Frantically searching, I yelled out Wyatt's name while raced around the surrounding area like I was competing in the 100 m sprint at my school.

"Wyatt! Where are you?" I blared out as I pulled the Glock 17 out of my backpack, inserting a new full clip. Slipping it into my ragged camouflage pants, I closed up my well worn backpack and threw it over my shoulder, preparing to seek him out the darken woods. What was that? Out of the corner of my left eye, I registered a human like movement. Bear!? Then I heard a voice.

"Maverick! Guess what I found?"

Relief flooded over me, he was safe! Drawing my weapon, I observed the brush behind him making sure that he had not brought back any unwanted visitors.

"Thank the creator you are safe! Where have you been? What have I said about wandering beyond my vision without first notifying me."

"I found a deer!"

"What?"

"I found a deer. I was going to tell you but it was travelling to someplace else so I thought I would follow it and then come back to get you once it stopped to rest."