Haunted

Chapter 18

Ellie and I ride Raleigh through the woods until we come across an abandoned shack.

"Think it's safe?" Ellie asks.

"Only one way to find out. You stay here with Raleigh, I'll check it out," I say.

"Okay," Ellie agrees.

I hop off Raleigh and load my bow. I tie him to a nearby tree, just in case. I head towards the shack.

"Be careful!" I hear Ellie call.

"I will!" I shout back. I knock loudly on the door of the shack to get any infected inside where I can kill them easily without surprises. I hear nothing from inside and decide it's safe enough to go inside. I lean my bow against my leg and get my flashlight out of my backpack, then turn it on and put it in my mouth. I pick my bow up and reload my arrow. I swivel my head around the room to look for infected or other dangers. There's nothing in this room, so I decide to head up the stairs. The wood is rotted, and it's making me nervous.

Crack!

On the fifth step, my leg falls through the ground. I drop my bow and the flashlight. I yelp in pain, feeling the wood digging into my skin. To make things worse, I hear the growl of an infected from upstairs. I frantically search for the flashlight with one arm while holding myself up so I don't fall any farther into the wood with the other. My vision starts to cloud with black spots when my fingers clamp around the flashlight. I quickly shine it up the stairs to see the torso and head of an infected crawling towards me. It gets down the top step with a sickening thud.

"ELLIE!!!" I scream, panicking. "HELP!!!"

I fight to stay awake. Losing consciousness is the worst possible thing that could happen right now.

"Kira?!" I hear Ellie shout worriedly from the doorway. I look over and see that she has her knife in her hand.

I hear another thud from the stairs, and look up. The infected is getting way too close for comfort. The last thing I see before losing consciousness is Ellie with her arm raised to throw her knife.

I wake up to Ellie pouring something on my leg. I curl my hands into fists, fingernails digging into my palm. Whatever she's doing, it stings and hurts like hell. I sit up carefully.

"Morning, klutz," Ellie says, still concentrated on my leg. I see that she's cleaning up a nasty cut that goes all the way around my leg with peroxide.

"Hi," I say through clenched teeth. I remember falling through the stairs now. Apparently the rest of the steps were fine, because I'm on a dusty old bed and it looks like we're in the upstairs room of the shack-like house. Ellie finishes tending my wound and wraps it up with gauze.

"Thanks," I say, followed by a sigh of relief. My leg feels better, but it's still painful. I stand up and grit my teeth together to keep from screaming in pain. "We need food. I'm gonna go hunt for a bit. Stay here and be careful," I instruct Ellie.

"You're not going anywhere," she says firmly. "You need to stay off that leg."

"I can walk, I'm fine," I lie. Just standing makes me feel like I'm being stabbed repeatedly.

"You're gonna get yourself killed," Ellie says.

"I'll be fine," I reply as I make my way downstairs and outside. Each step I take sends a new wave of pain through my leg. You can do this, I tell myself repeatedly. I make it about ten feet from the house when I realize I forgot my bow. Oh well, I only really planned to go for a walk anyway. I begin to limp, dragging my foot through the underbrush. The pain is not as bad as trying to walk normally, but it still hurts. I suddenly hear rustling behind and to the left of me. I brush it off as just a squirrel or something, because it stops as soon as it started. My foot hits an aboveground root that I didn't notice, and I clench my jaw so I don't cry out, but a low growl escapes my lips.

The events after this seem to go by in slow motion. I feel a sharp, excruciating pain in my abdomen. I scream in pain, and look down to see an arrow lodged in my side. I see the tip of the arrow, so that means whoever shot me is behind me. I spin around and my eyes meet a pair of blue-gray ones that could only belong to one person.

The girl who I'd been convinced had been dead for two years.

As the ground rushes up to meet me, only one thought goes through my mind.

Katniss.