Sacrifice

Chapter Thirty

Present Day 

The days seemed to grow hotter and the nights colder. Eventually there were no more sand dunes to climb, so the teens trekked across a flat, dry plain. For two days they traveled like this, rationing whatever little food and water they had left. 

At night they assigned watches. Newt always volunteered to go first. This meant he and Claire would always stay up together. They would talk or just sit there in silence, enjoying each other's company. These precious moments helped both of them, helped them feel more at peace after all the trauma they've both suffered. They even started reading from the book Claire found. It was about a group of children who stepped through a wardrobe and found themselves in a magical place called Narnia. 

By the third day of travel things were getting worse. Minho and Teresa were now out of water, everyone pitched in so they could have more. There was barely any food left, they're bodies ached from all the walking and sleeping on the hard ground. 

When they stopped for the night, they had nowhere to go except sleeping on the ground out in the open. They were so exhausted they forgot to assign watches. Even Newt and Claire just curled up next to each other and fell asleep as soon as their eyes closed. 

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Thomas' uncomfortable position woke him up. He couldn't figure out why his head was pounding until he realized his head was on the ground, rather than resting on his backpack. He turned to check on his friends and saw they were all dead asleep. 

Thomas turned to look out at the horizon. All he could see was a dark sky and a light shining near the bottom of the mountain. 

Wait...light. 

"Hey," Thomas said, tapping Newt in the leg. "Newt, wake up." 

Newt jerked awake, the sudden movement woke Claire. 

"Come on, Aris, Fry, I see something," Thomas said, waking the rest of the group. 

Everyone stood up in a bit of a daze, not quite processing what Thomas was saying. 

"What is it?" Minho asked. 

"See that, it's lights," Thomas said, pointing to the lights across the plain. 

"We made it," Newt said, realizing what this could mean for them. He glanced at Claire and saw her share in his excitement. 

Suddenly there was a loud cracking noise coming from behind them. The group turned around and saw lightning bolts strike the ground only a couple hundred yards away from them, and they seemed to be getting closer. 

"Let's go, we gotta go," Thomas urged the group. 

They all picked up their backpacks and made a run for it. The storm was gaining on them, each lightning strike sounding closer as they fled. 

"Keep moving!" Thomas yelled. 

"Let's go, let's go!" Minho encouraged. 

Thomas looked back and saw a bolt strike twenty-five feet from Teresa, who was at the back of the group. 

"Come on, Teresa!" Thomas shouted. He backed up and grabbed her hand, pulling her along so she could run faster. 

"It's getting closer!" Aris yelled. 

As they got closer to the light, the teens could see that they were approaching a building that looked like an abandoned warehouse. Old cars and piles of scrap metal were littered right outside the building. 

A bolt hit a car six feet from where Newt and Claire were. The strike startled them and caused the pair to instinctively shift to their right a bit. Claire tripped over a pipe and rolled over as she fell hard on the ground. The impact caused her make shift hair tie to fall out.