Run

Hose Me Down!

"Im saving our lives, now get into the fucking car!" Reece shouts with a giggle behind his voice.

Me and Percy look back at each other before hopping in. The car is a nice black SUV and the inside is tan leather.

Percy sits shotgun and I hop into the back seat and the nice car is ruined as the inside smells like cigarettes. "So, how and why did you get this car?" I ask him.

"Well, I mean They are probably watching us anyways so we might as well move faster... And this idiot probably died in this car because the keys were right here." Reece jokes while pointing to the center console.

"Okay... But this defeats the purpose of planting the trackers! The point was to set Them off track, but the noise of the car will bring Them right to us!" I argue.

"Re-lax!" Reece blurts, "They don't know nothing! And with this car we are just as fast as Their drones!"

"Yeah right!" Percy chuckles.

"Yeah, right..." Reece replies sarcastically.

I groan because Reece is being unreasonably annoying, "where are we headed to?"

"Well, for now home. This car is at half a tank but your car is full, I remember..." Reece says with a smirk. I always drove him to school because he doesn't have his licence yet, he has failed his test seven times...

It's not that he can't drive it's just because he doesn't follow any of the little rules, but with no life around here, he is a pretty good driver.

Percy starts searching through the compartments in the car. Paper work, registration, insurance, a map... In the center console is a box of cigarettes and a bag of gram crackers.

"Score!" Percy bleats, grabbing the bag of crackers and offering me one. I take it and eat it, it's stale, but its better than no food!

Reece picks up the cigarettes and places them in his pocket. 'eww, what do you think your doing?" I ask.

"What, no one can stop me. What's the point of being good if nobody can reward it!' he convinces himself.

I roll my eyes, I still think it's disgusting. When I was little I would even make a point to step around every cigarette butt that I came across on the ground because I though that if I stepped on it or touched it that the devil would come up and kill me.

... Yeah, mabey this is why I had no friends...

~

We pull up to our drive way just about three minutes later as Reece drove as fast as the car would let us.

Our streets are empty, the sky filled with whisps of grey clouds and the grass in our front yard is now a crisp yellow-green color.

I try to open the front door, because my keys are inside the house, but the front door is locked!

"Guess we gotta go in the way we came out." Reece suggests.

I knod my head while walking towards the back door. The pool is a murky and muddy green, looking at it I almost can't believe that we used to swim in the crystal blue water. It seems like ages ago.

I slide open the back door and we all head inside. I grab my car keys off of the kitchen counter right where I left them and the boys head to their favorite spot, the fridge.

Packing up more food and water, I stand in the door way waiting for them to finishing stuffing my backpack full.

"You think we have time to..." Percy starts to ask me.

"Time to... What?" I question back.

"Could we all shower? I'm sorry I know it's a bad time but I havn't showered in two weeks, and my skin is sticky from the beach air."

"I don't know, the longer we wait, the more people They kill..." I reply.

Reece focuses his eyes on something and smirks... Oh no, what is he going to do...!

He walks out back and motions us to follow him. He then places the bag on our outdoor table and tells us to stay as he runs back inside.

"So..." Percy starts, making the silence even more awkward. We havn't talked since our conversation on the walk.

I grin at him, letting him know it's ok to not talk right now.

Reece runs back outside with clothes stuffed into a ball under his arm. "Well, I don't think we have enough time for us all to shower, but atleast we can change clothes!"

Grinning, Percy takes off his navy muscle shirt and blue-grey jeans. He stands for a moment in his red plaid boxers until he turns quickly and jumps into the pool. It is so gross in there that he disappears under the layer of alge grown over the pool.

As he surfaces he quickly paddles over to the side and climbs out, "I don't know why I did that, I feel even grosser than before!" He laughs.

"Don't worry, I'll help!" I tease. I run over to the hose and turn on the faucet to full blast.

"Do it!" Percy taunts, "clean this dirty boy Quinny!"

"Oh thats it!" I laugh and shoot the hose at him while placing my finger over half of the opening to make it a harder hit.

I spray him down laughing, before Reece comes up behind me and shoves me forward, launching my body into the swampy pool.

It's freezing like a glacier and the alge is slimy. It feels like tiny fish are rubbing against my whole body. As I enter the air, I feel some scaly green flakes cling to my skin. I quickly scurry to the hose to rinse myself off and then grab the clothing selection that Reece picked out for me.

Looking over my shoulder to make sure Percy is not looking (I know Reece won't as he is my brother) I remove the sticky and stinky old clothes from my body. Then I slip on the new underwear, bra, my oversized pale yellow sweatshirt with a cartoon turtle on it, and black full length leggings.

I have to admit that Reece actually picked out some pretty comfy and moveable stuff, but I also must say that I felt some wandering eyes. Cough cough-- Percy!

With Reece hosed down as well, we are all moderately clean and have new clothes and our adventure continues as we all hop into my old style black 01 honda civic. Reece is still driving because he is not afraid to go all out.

East bound we are now on our way through the valley and eventually to the desert, but hopefully we find them before that because sweatshirts don't go good with the heat.