Surviving

Chapter 7

I awoke with a start when a hand was placed firmly on my mouth. I swatted at the figure, but they just caught my hand.

"Stop it!" he hissed, and my eyes adjusted enough that I could see it was Travis. He let go and grabbed something off the floor as I sat up.

"What do you want? And how did you get in? I thought I locked the door!" I was angry and felt the urge to smack him.

"I picked the lock, and keep quiet. There's someone outside!" He whispered as Roland came into the room.

"What do you mean, 'there's someone outside?'" I asked. I got up and started rolling my sleeping bag up.

"I don't know who, but it's definitely not a corpse. He's guarding the door, just sitting there in front of it."

"Is that the only door?" How could this go so wrong?

"Yeah, I checked," Roland sighed.

I shoved my sleeping bag into my backpack.

"Is there a tree that reached one of the window?" I asked.

"Yeah, right over here." Roland popped the window open and took out the screen with Travis's help. They took out some rope and tied it to the tree as I packed everything together.

"You're gonna have to go first." Travis held up the end of the rope.

"What? What if it's not sturdy enough?" I was full of doubt.

"You're the lightest of all of us, so it's least likely to break for you. C'mon, you'll be fine." Roland passed me the rope.

"Whatever." I tied it to my waist. After tightening the straps on my backpack, I carefully got into the windowsill and stepped on the tree branch. It creaked under my weight.

"You're gonna have to jump," Roland whispered, and at that moment all I could feel was pure terror. I put my foot back onto the windowsill and, after gathering all of the courage I could muster, jumped as hard as I could. I landed on the branch, and ran the few feet to the trunk.

After I was securely on the trunk, I untied the rope and threw it back to the window. Nobody came to the windowsill, so I assumed they were waiting for me to go down the rest of the way. I eased myself down the tree trunk, and when I was within a few feet of the ground I let myself fall the rest of the way. I looked back at the windowsill, but still Travis and Roland were not to be seen.

"Hey, pretty little thing. What're you doin' out here?" a hoarse voice from behind me asked. I spun around to see a man with a shaggy beard and a bit of a stomach. He smiled, revealing he was missing several of his front teeth. "You have any friends, little girl?"

"No, I'm alone," I lied. He took a step closer to me.

"It's dangerous to be alone. You should travel with friends."

"Then where are your friends?" I raised an eyebrow.

"I broke off for a little while. You should come with us, we could use some new people in our group." He walked up to me, coming close enough I could smell his cologne.

"I'm good," I said.

He frowned slightly and started slowly moving his hand to one of his pockets. Seeing he was momentarily distracted, I punched him in the gut. He bent over, and I hit him as hard as I could with my elbow in the back of the head. He collapsed, not moving again.

I heard the crackling of leaves from around the house and pulled out my dagger. I crept up against the wall and turned the corner, my knife held up.

"Whoa! Don't stab me!" Travis put his hands up. Roland stopped short right behind him. I sighed with relief and put my dagger away.

"I'm never doing that again. No more jumping onto trees when there's some creeper that could kill us," I said, leaning up against the wall.

"We could've gotten him. We were almost there," Roland said defensively.

"Yeah, after he'd either shot or stabbed me when he heard y'all coming." I rolled my eyes. "Y'all should really work on sneaking up on people."

"Yeah, whatever. Let's get going." Travis started walking and waved for us to follow. It would only be about an hours walk from town.