The Apple

Chapter 3

I awoke to dirt being pushed onto me. At first, I thought I was being buried. I was relieved when I saw the survival supplies sitting, carefully packed, next to me.

"We'll come back tomorrow, but if she's still not up, we'll need to leave her."

I heard more voices, and they grew fainter as more dirt was pushed on the hole. I groaned. "What was that?" somebody said. I reached my hand up to the dirt wall, and pushed it through.

"Oh Zues's butthole- a zombie!"Somebody shouted. I heard them booking away from here.

"Bwainz!" I croaked.

"We gotta get her outta there." Several voices said.

"She must be sorta OK. She's still got her sense of humor." Someone laughed.

"You can come back, Will. It's not a zombie." Someone shouted and tried to hide their laughter from their voice, unsuccessfully.

"I totally knew that. I just felt like putting on a show." He said, embarrassed as he walked back.

Someone grabbed my hand and pulled. I forced my other hand through, and that was grabbed on to as well. I was pulled 'till my nose was touching the wall, then pulled through that. Once I was out, they helped me up.

"You've been out for a whole day."

Ignoring them, I asked "Where are my glasses?"

"That is a very good question."

"You can't see at all-right?" someone else asked cautiously.

"No." then someone came up, scooped me up in their arms, and kissed me. The boys wolf whistled and cheered, and a few 'ewed'. Another person came up and squeezed me till I was dying and soon I was engulfed in a giant huddle.

"C'mon you guys. Let her breathe."

Once I had recovered I asked "Did everyone make it?"

They sighed. "Two are still missing. We know Nick got out OK, but-" that had been the answer I had feared.

"You call being dragged behind a car going 60 OK?" I asked shrilly.

"As I was saying, we are also missing Nathaniel."

"He was hurt, right? How do we know if he got out?" my voice rose in pitch, "We gotta, we gotta to the cabin and check and see if we can find him. We gotta figure out who the driver was working for, we gotta-"

"Enough!" someone shouted. "We have got a substantial amount of work to do before we go galumphing across the countryside, looking for two boys who might not even still be alive!

I hadn't thought about that, and I was shocked into silence. I burst into tears, and fell to the ground, sobs shaking my body. "Now look what you did." I heard all the boys shift to face the woods. "Is that any way to treat a lady?" I laughed weakly. I was just about as far from being a lady as you could get. Leaves crunched as the owner of the false thinking approacked me.

I prepared to enter their mind, so that I could determine whether to run or stay. The boys around me tensed, and I entered their mind. I felt the pain of being dragged along the road, and I felt as if my shoe was being taken off. I exited their head.

"Nick?" I shouted. "Nick, is that you?"

Waleon rubbed my back. "It's not Ni-"

"Amazing how you found out without your glasses." He said as he emerged from the woods.

"And you would know all about that, wouldn't you." He handed them to me and I pushed them onto my face. My eyes studied the surrounding area, and came to rest on his. "You look awful." I said as I saw his face.

"Well, how do you think you would look if you'd been dragged behind a speeding van?" he shrugged and smiled. "I've been worse." I rolled my eyes and hugged him. I wished I could just make the world stand still and live in this moment forever, as I experienced his arms around mine. A blast of energy went through me, and Nick looked up. "Ok, what'd you do?"

"What do you mean?"

"They all stopped moving."

I looked up. "Cool." I had stopped time all around us. "Wow."

"Cool is an understatement. Do you have any idea how useful that will be in a battle?" he frowned. "You'd better unfreeze them." I sighed, and the energy rush that I had felt left me completely, leaving me feeling deflated and fatigued. The boys came rushing towards Nick and I wisely stepped out of the way.

Nick made faces as they squeezed the living daylights out of him. I smiled at him. 'How should I tell them?' I mouthed.

'Show them.' He mouthed back. I breathed in, closed my eyes, and that buzzing sensation was there again. I froze all but Nick. "How come" he said as he walked over to me, "You can't seem to freeze me?" I raised my eyebrows at him. He dodged between the boys, and made his way over to my side.

"Maybe I just don't want to." I said, looking into his stormy blue eyes. A ghost of a smile touched my lips, and it felt weird. I hadn't smiled in a long time.

I stared at him for a while, loosing myself in his eyes, but soon I restarted time. The boys crashed into one another, and looked up to see Nick standing next to me. Nick grinned and waved at them mockingly. "How did you do that?"

"Ally can pause you guys."

"Cool."

"Sweet."

"Awesome."

After the boys had finished suffocating Nick, I tended to his face as best I could. I took some alcohol and poured some on his face. He winced as it stung, but I kept going 'till his face was a lot better. It still wasn't back to its former glory, but it was as close as I could get it with the supplies I had.

The boys had started making camp in the trees, so I decided to help them. They were doing surprisingly well. They had dug holes for everyone and had laid their stuff by their hole. I quickly found mine, and crawled in. It was surprisingly roomy in these. Night soon fell, and I fell with it, asleep that is.

Gunshots, shouting. Someone grabbed me out of my hole. I looked at them to see if they were friend or foe, nad it was a bad guy. "NO! DON'T TAKE ME!" I shouted. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I sat up, banging my head on the earth ceiling as I did so. People were shouting aboveground, and I curled myself into a ball at the end of my hole, not wanting to experience déjà vu. Someone shined a light down my hole. "It's ok. She's safe." Then they saw me shaking. "Ally, are you all right? What happened?"

"I had a nightmare." I said looking and feeling embarrassed.

"Must've been really scary." He let himself into my hovel and sat down next to me.

"They took me." I sobbed into his shoulder. "They took me and were gonna kill me."

"Yeah. I heard, mind giving us some sleep?" someone said angrily. They stomped away.

"Don't mind them" Said Waleon. "He's been in a foul mood for a while." He looked at me. "You think you can go back to sleep?" I nodded, but I knew that I wasn't gonna get back to sleep any time soon. I was awake till just before dawn.

Rousing myself, I crawled out of my hole once the moon had started to set. Not many people were up yet, and I could still hear snoring. Only one person was up besides me that I could see.

I rose stealthily, and tiptoed to the cover of trees. I had to know if Nathaniel was OK. I snuck through the trees towards what I thought was the direction of the cabin. Soon I saw it, and the lights were on, illuminating the yard since the sun wasn't up yet. Creeping over to a ground floor window, I peeked inside. There was a chair, with someone on it. They had dark brown hair so dark, in fact, it was almost black. They were blindfolded, and they were very tall from what I could see.

It was Nathaniel. Cautiously putting my hand up the window, no repercussions met me. Picking up a rock, I broke the window. There were still no alarms. This was too easy. I picked up the rock and threw it inside. It clattered right past, no through him. Through him? It must be a projection. Nathaniel's hologram shouted "Get outta here! Go! Run!" it reminded me of Peeta yelling at Katniss in 'The Hunger Games'.