A Time To Rise

Chapter 8

"Catherine!" I yell, scrambling to the edge of the branch. I look down, no longer worrying about the bullets.

"Over here" Catherine peers up at me from the next tree. Genius. I pitch myself of the edge off the branch. The wind hits my face as I free fall down the tree. There. I stretch my arm out and catch the tree branch mid-fall use the momentum to swing myself up. The bullets still pelt our former tree. The hunt is on. We start to run, jumping from tree to tree, climbing higher, jumping off and watching for the soldiers. After a while, a persistent ache in my arms appear. Great. Catherine seems to have the same problem because she has slowed down a lot and is now only 3 trees in front of me. I launch myself of the tree I am now standing on and grab the next tree branch. Ouch. The forest starts to become thicker and the soldiers appear to be far away for us.

"Catherine, go to the forest floor now."

She drops down from her tree and waits at the bottom for me. I climb down a little lower and drop out of the tree. We turn and keep running.

The dagger tree looms up ahead of us. This might not be the best time to get Catherine a knife, but I have a feeling she might need it. I reach into my back pocket for my knife and find nothing but air. Shoot! I must have lost it in the attack. Now I have make two. I start to scale the dagger tree, choosing where to place my feet and heaving myself up. I get about 2 metres up the tree and balancing on one hand, I rip another branch out of the tree. Oops, that was loud. I peg the branch down the tree follow it down. I quickly snap the branch half-way down and then snap the half into quarters. Finding the stone I used to scrape the bark of my last knife is a little harder than I thought. Wait, found it. I peel away the bark to expose the smooth, black bark on each quarter and set to work. I have to make one end blunt though so it will take longer than last time. The sound of bark on stone echoes through the forest and the feeling of being watched creeps up on me. I shudder, and centre my attention of the task at hand. There, done.

"Catherine, get over here."

Catherine drops lightly out of a tree a few metres off and runs over to me. I hand her the knife. She just looks at it, as if she was disgusted by the sight of it. Her pale palm open, with her fingers splayed open to prevent the knife touching too much of her. I pick up my own knife and walk over to her.

"Are you alright? You look very white."

Catherine just keeps staring at the knife. I take the knife off her and she slowly lowers her hand, wiping it on her pants. I grab the remains of the branch and head over to my rock with the other branch under it and I chuck it there. The knife slides perfectly into my back pocket. A branch snaps. Was that............a loud snap echoes through the forest signalling another branch being snapped. The soldiers are coming. I sprint over to Catherine, grab her by the arm and run towards the right.

The sound of boots crushing the forest floor fills the air as we run dodging the trees. Bullets whistle through the air but they never even come close to hitting us. I just hope thickened forest keeps up. Just my luck. A clearing presents itself before our eyes. Silently cursing, I lead the chase out into the clearing. If we are quick, we can run straight through this clearing and back into the safe haven of the forest. There is a massive smack and I fall to the ground. I look up and find nothing, no explanation of how I fell down. I start to get up when my eyes fall upon another boy, just as scared as I am, sprawled on the ground in front of me with his helmet askew. I get to my feet and help Catherine up from where she fell down as she bumped into me.

"Sorry," I mutter to the guy we ran into.

"It's, it's fine," he stutters, picking himself of the ground. I stare at his uniform. It's a uniform of the government.

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This chapter is dedicated to lolly_dance for giving me the inspiration.