Safe Street - A Purge Fanfic

Chapter 3

Jay was nearly whistling with delight. Annabelle had waved at him first! Okay, maybe that was a really sad thing to get exited about, but he had been crushing on her since they were 14. He only wished his dad had assigned him to help with the vegetable garden with her instead of replanting the Grey's trees across the street. As soon as he hear what she was going to be doing he had hinted to his dad that he wanted to be involved with the gardening parts of the plan. His dad had complied in the worst way possible and now he was digging a hole between two houses. 

The adrenaline of the situation had consumed Jay and he was too exited to be nervous. What was there to be nervous about anyway? The two younger people on guard, Mason and Julietta, were champion shots. They could handle anything that came their way, their parents, The Fallon's, had made sure of it.

Instead Jay let his mind wander, each dig of the shovel a new detail in the romantic epic he was composing about himself and Annabelle. They would end up working together, somehow, and then some homeless dude would come by and threaten to kill them if they didn't do as he said. That would work, there were plenty of homeless hiding around there who might bear them ill will. Then Jay would beat them up and Annabelle would swoon at his manliness. She'd run to him and they would embrace, sharing a passionate kiss as he ran his fingers through her warm brown hair, her natural streaks of gold shining as he played with it. Oh ya, he had it all thought out.

It was nearly too dark to see and Dillan, the Newman's youngest son, kept on running the light back and forth between Jay and the group moving the tree. The kid was doing no one any favors.

"Need a drink?"

Jay looked up and found Silvia Grey staring down at him. She was the one with the lightest work load, mostly because she had to care for the newborn Paige.

"Sure," Jay said, realizing for the first time that he was sweating a lot. His imagination had really taken his mind off his work.

Silvia handed him a water bottle and moved on to the next group. Jay watched her go. She was a young mom, just barely in her twenty's. He watched her hips sway as she walked off and started to wonder if Annabelle would look like that when she hit her twenty's. His fancy's took him to a world where he and Annabelle were newly weds, sometime in the not to distant future.

POP

Jay looked up and took a drink. That gunshot had sounded awfully close. The people on guard duty tensed, actively looking for anything that might bring trouble. Everyone had stopped working at the sound. 

Julietta cautiously inched forward, shining a flashlight around the fence that stood next to the road. On the opposite side Mason did the same. After a minuet of glancing around they gave the all clear and everyone got back to work.

As he started to dig again, mind suddenly focused on the actual danger they were all in, Jay noticed that more than a couple of the adults not on guard had to jog back to where they were working. Jay shuddered, a subconscious understanding that they had moved closer to weapons during that time sobering his carefree mood.

More gunshots sounded, further away this time. This time no one stopped working. But, Jay couldn't help but notice, everyone had started working more quietly.

"Hey," a cracking voice said. Jay paused in his work just long enough to acknowledge Nathaniel, the youngest of the Fallon's at 14, standing there. "My mom told me to come help you dig over here, we're done organizing the medical supply's."

"There's an extra shovel over there," Jay nodded to the side of the house where a bunch of tools were leaning. He was too out of breath to say more, reality had finally caught up to him. Not only was he starting to feel uneasy, he had also remembered Annabelle's lousy boyfriend, Jeff. Reality was truly a bitter pill to swallow.