The Dragonflies

Chapter 3

Camila's POV

"We're almost to The Dragonflies' base," Ally leans over and whispers to me. We've been driving all day since this morning, when we had left the cabin. The sun is slipping closer and closer to the horizon, and I expect it to be gone within the next 20 minutes.

I'm a bit disheartened at Ally's statement. I've been enjoying spending this whole journey to the base, taking in our surroundings through the car windows. At first, it was thickly packed-together trees, a seemingly never-ending continuation from those that had surrounded the cabin. After a while, they had dwindled down to give way to beautiful green fields. The natural beauty soon ended though.

Halfway into the trip, we started approaching a much more rural portion of land. First were houses. Run down, broken windows, falling apart houses. The paint and shingles peeling off on every visible surface houses. The site certainly had shocked me. I've never seen such conditions before in my life. I haven't been out of the main kingdom since King Andrews took over, which maintains a pristine, modern condition 24/7. Of the memories that I still hold of the rest of the kingdom though, this certainly isn't the way it used to be.

When we arrived to a more downtown-like area of the run down town, we pulled over to rummage through a group of abandoned cars to determine if one was fit enough to use for the rest of our trip. Lauren and Normani decided that it would be easier to just take a car that was in shape for travel, instead of going through the work of siphoning gas if it wasn't necessarily needed. Normani and Lauren determined one of them fit for the job, after checking to see if there was gas and looking at the engine, and Normani had immediately set to work on hotwiring it.

As Normani worked on her task, Ally and Lauren discussed the matter of a possible supply run. Ally had suggested that we look around for supplies while Normani worked. However, Lauren quickly turned down the idea, saying this area was too inhabited to have any extra supplies sitting around.

Inhabited? This place is a complete ghost town! And besides that, how could these conditions sustain life? I brushed it off, thinking that I may have misinterpreted what Lauren had said. Maybe she just means it used to be inhabited, and the supplies had all been used during that time, before everyone abandoned the area to leave it to fall apart into ruins.

I'm still confused about how a whole area can just be abandoned like this though. It just doesn't make sense to me. King Andrews had never talked about areas of Lavatine being abandoned and left to fall apart like this. Although, to be honest, he didn't really disclose a whole lot about Lavatine to me in the first place.

If the eerie quietness and conditions of the town hadn't rattled me enough, what I saw as we drove away in our new vehicle sure did. I was in the middle of studying one of the many poorly kept houses that I have been observing. As my eyes slid over its features, I was startled and disturbed to have caught the sight of a face peaking out of it's window, watching us, before it quick pulled back away from the window to hide. Oh my god! There really are people living here?!

I'm pulled out of my memory of that face in the window that has been constantly popping up into my mind and haunting me since, by Lauren's voice, "alright, here we are."

I look out the windshield of the car, which reveals that we are approaching a mall. Well, what used to be a mall. A secure fence surrounds the building, and we pull up to what looks like a gate entrance. Two people greet us at the gate, covered head to toe in military-like outfits, helmets, bandanas across their faces, and goggles over their eyes.

Lauren rolls down the drivers' side window to greet one of the guards. "Welcome home, Jauregui," says the male guard on the drivers' side. He is about to wave us through when the guard that stands on the Normani and I's side cuts off the gesture.