Run. (Team Crafted Fanfiction)

Chapter 30- New Life

THE SAME YEAR LATER THING FROM LAST PART

Mitch's POV

"Mitch, would you come help me with this?"

I get up off the couch. "Sure Gerald. What's up?"

He stands by the door, axe in hand. His shoes are on, so I slip mine on also.

"I want to start chopping wood for this winter. You still remember how from last summer?"

I think for a moment. After Anne had fixed up my ankle, Gerald had had me working in no time. One of the first things he had done was show me how to chop wood.

"Yeah, I think so. Do we need to get a tree?"

He shakes his head as the door opens. We step outside, and I breathe in the warm summer air.

"Got one the other night. We just need to cut it up into pieces and put it in the shed."

I nod, picking up my axe that rests next to the house. I rub my hands along the handle, trying to get a feel for it again. Gerald leads the way out into a clearing behind the house, where a large log lays. I whistle at the sight of it.

"It's huge!" I say. "Did you chop it down?"

He shakes his head. "Nah. Fell over in that storm a few weeks ago. Just haven't gotten around to bringing it back here."

We both stand and look at it before he speaks again. "Well, lets begin, shall we?"

I nod, moving towards it. At the beginning, it feels awkward. As we carry on with out work, I begin to get a hang of what I'm doing again. My hands start to move in rhythm, and my work gets smoother. Sweat beads against my forehead, but I just wipe it away. Over the year, I've gotten better at manual labor like this. In the summer, Gerald had showed me how to cut pieces of wood and planks from logs. In the fall, we had built a shed. In the winter, we hunted for food. In the spring, we had made repairs on the house and shed. Now, we were in the summer again. That meant starting preparations for winter. Gerald and Anne hated leaving things till the last minute.

The sun is setting when I finally set down my axe. We sit for a moment, examine our handiwork. Then we get up and start moving the wood from the clearing out to the shed.

"Hi, Mitch!"

I turn, setting down the wood I was carrying, and wave. Olivia and Anne walk up the path from the woods, grinning and waving.

"Hey! How'd it go?"

Smiling radiantly, Olivia shows me the baskets of berries they had collected out in the woods. Gerald walks out to Anne while I go to Olivia. Laughing, I steal one of her berries.

"Hey! I worked hard for that!"

I grin deviously. "Oh really? How many did you eat? And don't say zero, because your blue teeth suggest otherwise."

She shuffles her feet. "Ummm, a few?"

I laugh and ruffle her hair, causing her to smack me away. Accepting the challenge, I pull her into a headlock and continue to mess up her hair. Finally, when we're both laughing so hard that we can't breathe, she pushes me off and picks up her basket.

"C'Mon, Mitch. I have to go help Anne with dinner! Unless you don't want to eat tonight?"

She returns my sneaky smile.

I snort and push her towards the house. "Get going then. Gerald and I have manly work to do."

She sticks out her tongue and heads inside. Still grinning, I pick up my stack of wood and bring it into the shed. We had already started a stack in there, so this pile gets plopped right on top.

In and out, in and out. We carry the wood into the shed and then walk back to retrieve more. The sun sinks lower and lower. By the time Gerald locks up the shed, the sky is a fiery red. We head inside, exhausted.

Anne rushes to us the moment we close the door behind us.

"Oh, you two look exhausted. Sit, sit! Olivia and I were just about to bring out all the food."

She ushers us to the table, which is already laden with plates and utensils. Olivia walks out carrying a plate of venison, and sets it in the middle of the table. Seeing the venison, I turn to Anne.

"What's this? Venison is for winter normally? Is it someone's birthday?"

She laughs and pats my head. "No, dear. Today's the first anniversary of the day you and Olivia joined us! I still remember Gerald that day, all upset because he thought he heard noises from his tunnel. And then he comes back, followed by two strangers! A girl and an older boy with his ankle wrapped in a hasty splint. Oh yes, I remember that day."

Olivia smiles as she sits next to me. "Awwww. Thanks Anne! You and Gerald were too kind by allowing us to stay here!"

Gerald grunts. "What were we gonna do? You were, what, 13 at the time? And he had a messed up foot. All you two had to defend yourself was a couple o' kitchen knives! 'Course you were gonna stay with us!"

We all laugh and dig in, passing around the food. As usual, Anne and Olivia's cooking is great. When all the food was gone, I headed out to the living room. Most nights, I would sit in here and read until Olivia went to bed.

Choosing a good book, I settled down on the couch. About an hour later, Olivia came in.

"Mitch?"

I set down my book. "Hey. What's up?"

She plops down next to me. "You read that book an awful lot."

I look down at it. The Hobbit. I shrug. "I like this book."

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever. I'm going to bed at a normal time, like a normal human being in an apocalypse. Are you on tonight?"

I check the time and stretch. "Yeah. I should probably get to that. Well, sleep tight, don't let the zombies bite and all that."

She makes a shocked face, but then walks away. I hear the creaking upstairs that tells me she got into her bed. Getting up, I stretch again. In the kitchen, Gerald and Anne still sit, talking. I walk in and their conversation seizes. They look up.

"Oh good, you're still up. Well, good luck tonight."

Gerald claps me on the shoulder and leaves, followed by Anne. Last summer, we had decided that one person would stay up all night to watch for zombies or groups. Tonight was my night. Sighing, I checked that the door was locked and slid the wooden covers over the windows. Extinguishing the lights in the living room and kitchen, I head downstairs.

The light blazes to life down there, revealing my work station. When it was my night, or just whenever, I would come down here and work. I had several different projects going.

The first was my zombie journal. I had documented everything I had learned in here, including the best ways to kill and avoid them. I was even working on something to cure a zombie bite. My second project was a phone and phone book that lay in the corner of the desk. I had tried time and time again to get in contact with anyone. Somehow, Gerald and Anne had managed to get this little house in the middle of the woods connected to a landline and kept that landline through an apocalypse. My third project was a computer that took up most of the room on my desk. I had been trying to get a connection and reach the guys through this also. Tonight, I decided, I would work on contacting the outside world. Nothing new with zombies had come up in a while. Through the night, I work on the computer and make calls on the phone.

However, morning come with no success. But I am used to it by now. I have been coming down here and working for a year.