This Is War

four

"Well, I've heard Hal here showed you around already. Any more questions?" Scott grumbled.

"No. But I do have a comment and a suggestion. My comment? I don't trust."

"What's your suggestion?" Tom inquired.

"Just this: if I had just run over a thirteen-year-old, I wouldn't trust her. Especially after the aliens-"

"Skitters."

"-whatever. Just, be careful what you tell me. I can use it against you."

And with that, I adjusted Ky on my hip, flipped my super long dirty-blonde hair over my backpack and made a dramatic exit out of the tent.

Bumping right into a boy.

"Oomph. My bad, so sorry. Are you ok?" He stepped back and looked me up and down, noticing everything from Ky and my backpack to my beat up, used-to-be-white Vans.

"Yeah, yeah. My fault, wasn't watching where I was going." I looked down at the ground. I could feel his green eyes boring into me. Finally, I straightened up and started to walk away.

He quickly grabbed my arm, "Wait. I've never seen you before. What's your name?"

I immediately turned on my caution switch, "And I should tell you because. . ."

He grinned and glanced into the distance. "Well, I'll find out soon anyways."

"Well, then go find out." I kept walking, head down. He stopped me again.

"Why are you here? Are you a deharnessed kid?"

My caution turned to irritation.

"Look, dude." I got up in his face, "What do you want from me? Your little 'Commander' freaking ran me over, nearly killing Ky. I don't know what 'deharnessed' means, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to. I lost my family to a group of aliens nine months ago. I want nothing more than to kill off every last one, but I'm certainly not trusting any of you people."

Then I walked away, and this time, the boy didn't stop me.

A few hours later, Hal came to get me from the tree I had wedged myself into. I figured they would be keeping tabs on me and Ky, since it didn't seem like Hal had much trouble finding us.

"Catch," I said to him, and when he realized what I wanted, I tossed Ky down to him. Thankfully, Hal caught him and a second later, caught my backpack. Then I jumped down from the branch, landing squarely on the leaves below. Pain shot through my left foot, but I hid it and soon it faded.

We walked back to camp silently. He showed me how to get dinner, and I sat down on a wooden, peeling bench. I didn't eat anything, wasn't hungry, so Ky ate all my food. The hog.

A paper plate plopped down across the table from me, a body soon following it onto the bench. I didn't look up. I knew who it was, I just didn't want him to know that I knew he was there. A minute or two passed, then finally he talked.

"Weaver told me about you. I only got back a few hours ago. I was hunting skitters."

I kept on ignoring him.

"My name's Ben. Ben Mason. Do you have a last name?"

Still ignoring.

"Okay. I just wanted to welcome you to the 2nd Mass and I hope you stay a while longer than the other survivors we find usually do."

Wait, what?

"And how long is that," I snapped, eventually looking up. He stopped chewing, "Hm, 'round one or two weeks. Sometimes just a few days. The last survivor we found was a deharnessed kid."

I looked back at my empty plate, carving scars into it with a fork.

There was a long, awkward silence. Then Ben spoke again.

"So what's in the pack?"

I didn't feel like talking anymore, and I didn't have anything super personal in it, so I swung my green backpack off my shoulder and onto the table next to the kid. I'd finished the Harry Potter series for the ninth time (and started for the tenth) while staking out in the fire station. But I still had the boxed set in there.

"Whoooaaa..." Ben's admiration filled his voice. "You've got the whole Harry Potter set?! That's so awesome! I was halfway through the last book when the skitters attacked. I was such a dork."

"'Dork' is just another way of saying, 'you like things'. Which doesn't make for a very good insult. Try 'nimrod' or maybe even 'pea-brain'. And if you want to finish the book, help yourself. I've read the whole set nine-and-about-a-half-times." I watched Ben unlatch the box and stare at the seven books. I'd somehow managed to fit 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' into a space behind 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', so there were eight books in all.

I grinned at the table, remembering all the magic and wonder J. K. Rowling had brought to me, Ben, and millions of others.

Ben looked flabbergasted, "Nine times?! Oh my god! You NUT."

Then he snorted, mumbling pea-brain under his breath. The latch clicked closed, with all eight books still inside. Ben pulled my journal out of my pack next and flipped through it.

I never really wrote entries in it at all. I just drew, sketched, brainstormed. It's kind of my Everything pad. I did have a couple short stories I wrote a while ago. Drawings of Lightning McQueen, Jack Frost, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson. Even a rough draft of an auto-biography I wrote for a seventh grade Language Arts project.

Ben's mouth fell open as he flipped through page after page of pencil, pen and thin Sharpie. Finally he reached the biography pages. He carefully read them, and I made no effort to stop him. The person those pages were about no longer really existed.

What did it matter now? We were probably all gonna die anyways, Earth was attacked by freaking aliens! Humans have trouble believing in global warming for Pete's sake. It was hard for me to believe that aliens have registered into their brains. And if I died and Ben didn't, he'd be able to pass on the epic tales of Dion Destiny Kutcher, and her fantastic habits.

Yeah, right. Like I'm interesting. Ha.

"These- these drawings are amazing! And I never would've guessed that you like to snowboard. That's so cool!"

"Thanks," I half mumbled.

"How old did you say you are?"

"Never said I was any age. What month is it? And what day of the month?"

"Uh, January, we think. I don't know the day. Probably somewhere between the tenth and the twentieth."

January, huh? That means last month was December. And the month before that was November, Leven's birth month. He's seven now. Once again, I battled the tears.

"I'm thirteen." I finally replied.

"Fifteen." Ben grinned at me, then looked back at the pad of paper.

Once again, a silence consumed the air. Finally, I asked a new question.

"Where are you all going?"

"Oceanshore? Seaside? Somewhere in California." He kept skimming through the journal.

I froze. Oceanshore?

"Do you... Do you mean Oceanside?" I asked extremely cautiously.