Gone

CREEPY EVAN TIME

"Scrawny. Won't last a meal for them." A voice penetrated Ross's foggy haze. He tried to rub his eyes, but found his hands bound tightly with a frayed rope.

"Where am.... Where am I?" He groggily stuttered. His head felt like tiny men with hammers were pounding into his skull. The little midgets, that looked elves with pick axes, what where they called? Dwarves. Apparently he was still asleep.

A lean girl with pale skin, freckles dotted across her nose, and shoulder length blonde hair came into focus. With a grim smile, she scrutinized Ross with penetrating blue eyes.

"Welcome to the Stronghold."

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"How are we supposed to find the idiot?! He just disappeared!" Mina crouched in the autumn leaves, frustratingly beating up a clump of dirt.

"We still have the map, right? We don't need him!" Madi suggested, sounding way too happy that Ross was gone.

Emmett ran over to Ross's bag and began tearing through, only a tuft of hair visible as he dug through the knapsack. He came up with a large, flamingo-pink sunhat perched on his chin. His voice, muffled through the material, still rang clearly "No map, but I found a new hat!"

Mina barely stifled a giggle. Even in times like this, Emmett found a way to make her laugh.

Madi cursed Ross under her breath.

"I... I might have a way to find him." Evan spoke up nervously from where he lay fiddling with what looked like an old G.P.S and a magnet.

Both Madi and Mina turned sharply.

"Evan, why didn't you speak up?" Madi questioned, her exasperation evident.

"Well, I wasn't sure it would work! I had to get it set up!" He defensively clutched the antediluvian mechanism.

"What did you have to set up?"

"It's... It's a tracking transmitter that I designed myself. I implanted it in everyone's food. It's kind of like a magnet, and it sends off a signal that I can track using this old thing I rewired with part of an old car engine and a chip I found in a discarded computer disk." He explained.

"I don't know whether to be amazed or scared." Madi said in awe.

Mina, still curious, asked "How do you get it to work? I mean, there is no way to charge this device. And, slightly creepy."

"Solar power." He merely replied.

Mina scooted closer and watched in disbelief as the machine, which looked like something out of a SciFi movie with all the wires sticking in crazy directions out of it, hummed and whirred to life. Four red dots, clustered in a circle, blinked up at her.

"That's us." Evan pointed.

"Where is Ross, then?"

Her eyes were suddenly drawn to the left hand corner of the screen. One lone dot winked right back.