Stranded

Chapter 15 ~ Cassie

I am awaken from sleep by the call of the couch. It is barely dawn.

I get up and go out as does almost everyone. They all gather around me for what to do. The boys have never called in the morning before. Well, I'm not going, but, we still need to know what's going on.

"Selene, Alice, go and figure out what the boys are doing, everyone else, go about your daily duties," I say.

Everyone disperses to either wake up the few older girls that slept in or prepare the little bit dried meat from last night for breakfast.

***

Oh, my gosh. Boys are.... I am lost for words.

Completely lost.

"I can't believe it," Alice says. I can't disagree. They do not only believe they saw proof of a beast, Jack has broken of from the main group along with a good amount of boys. Or that's the impression we got, we arrived after the meeting and didn't want to be seen.

We broke off just in time.

We arrive at our camp.

"Meeting!" I yell. No one is too far away, so everyone is in the main hut pretty quick.

Alice and I tell them all what happened. There are many laughs during the beast part, but everyone becomes solum with the news of Jack.

"We knew that Jack was jealous," Cassie says after a moment of murmurs. "We also know that a good amount of the boys are either going mad or something similar from what they almost did to that other boy yesterday. Jack is also the one that has been against us from the start, and I'd be willing to predict that he's going to be able to bring a good amount of what's left of Ralph's group to his side.... If that happens with Jack as their leader, then.... There is a possibility of war."

Murmurs race through the crowd. Many have suggested war, but just in anger. No one ever actually really agreed with it, save that one time with the fire, but Cassie has never even mentioned the idea in a meeting, let alone supported the possibility.

"Are.... Are we sure?" Hannah asks.

"We won't be sure until they either raid us, or attack. Groups of at least three will now watch the signal fire, at least five at night. We'll have two watching at each of the the four entrances of our camp at night, everyone carries weapons from now on," she says looking around. "Selene, you and a couple others go check out castle rock. You need to figure out how many can climb up the front and how easy it might be to do at night. Jack liked that place so much, it will probably be there hide out soon if not already. If it comes to war, we need to be able to return attacks. I really hope I'm wrong, but we can't be caught off guard. A few others get a pig. We'll need to be able to fill our quivers and make sure there is wepons enough for all of us, and we might as well do it while we can. I don't know how often Jack's group will be hunting, but it will probably be either every other day or close to that, and it'll be harder for us to hunt and resupply our weapons then. Allie, Sophie, and Alice, you can watch Ralph's group, see what's going on, midday, we'll send another group down. Me and a few others will go up the mountain, get the fire relit, and take care of the dead man. Everyone else, start to reinforce our fence."