Stars Of Our Lives

Water-up

It was just after four in the morning when I reached Lakewood. Pulling over to the side of the road, I parked the car under a canopy of trees and reached over to shake Steve awake.

"Keep watch?" I asked. "I just need an hour or two."

He grunted, nodding as we stumbled over each other to switch places. I dropped into the seats beside Eli, letting my head drop back against the cushioning. It was sunrise when I picked my head back up again, a horrible crick going through my neck.

I groaned as I sat up, massaging the stiff muscles. "What time is it?"

"Seven-thirty," Steve replied from the driver's seat. Krel and Eli were both awake, but they had switched places again.

"So," I continued rubbing my neck. "What are we doing now?"

"Well now that we're done waiting for you to get up," Eli said. "We're going to start poking around Lakewood on foot. The radio message told us to look for 'the signs', so we're gonna go find out what the hell that means."

"Do we have to go on foot?" Krel asked. "I mean, what's so wrong with just driving around? We'll cover double the ground in half the time."

"We'll also be spotted by double the creeps in half the time," Eli retorted. "Besides, 'signs' could mean anything. We want to be able to reach places that are off the road."

Krel sighed. "Fine. On foot it is."

We started off as soon as the sun was off the horizon. The weather was at a weird in between state. Too cloudy to be called sunny. But not cloudy enough to rain. The four of us walked along the skeleton of the town, just grateful for the shade.

Lakewood itself was, like I said, a skeleton. You didn't see buildings, you saw through them. Whatever homes hadn't been leveled by the elements were completely hollowed out. The streets were cracked. Entire sidewalk squares had been ripped up. At one point, we rounded a rotted corner of a building to catch a circle of homeless people sitting around a trash can fire. But Eli ripped us back before any of them could see us.

"Trollmarket wouldn't be near a place where just anybody could go," He said. "It would be goblin and gnome proof. So it can't be near here."

We headed towards the outskirts of town, following the tree line along what Eli claimed was Tom River. That's when we caught our first clue.

Krel was the first one to notice.

"Hey," He smacked my arm. "Look."

I followed his pointing finger to the sign up ahead on the trail. It read: ROAD ENDS, but most of the letters had been scratched out. I squinted, tilting my head before I realized what the letters left spelled out.

ODE. Or, as we know it, EDO.

I ruffled his hair. "Good eye, little brother."

We followed the dead end road, going off the trail and crashing through the wild underbrush.

"You sure this is the right way?" Steve asked, after the third time he'd tripped and face planted. "I mean, the trail ended forever ago."

"I think that's the point," Eli replied. "It's somewhere creeps, trolls, and PSFs wouldn't bother with. And the sign pointed this way, so get up, we're gonna keep moving."

It was mid afternoon by the time we came across the retirement home. It was built a ways away from the town, but after the death of Lakewood, it was practically in the middle of nowhere. The building was wide and tall, like a quaint hotel. The sign sitting before the entrance could've been as big as a billboard.