Walking Amongst Them (Among Us, Book 2)

The Fire

I hadn't dreamed since I was living at the compound. Most of those dreams were nightmares about Mabel and the various things I was worried she might do. But when I fell asleep that night, I was instantly thrown into a dream. It was different from most of my dreams because it wasn't exactly a nightmare.

In the dream we were camping. I'd never really been camping, but I knew enough from what I'd read in novels to know that a tent and a fire usually meant camping. At first it was just me, sitting by an unbelievably warm fire by myself. Suddenly, on the other side of the fire, Beck sat there. He was trying to talk, but I couldn't hear any of the words that came out of his mouth.

Suddenly he pointed, not at me, but next to me. When I looked, Cody sat there. He smiled at me and pushed a strand of my hair out of my face. Beck got up then, and paced back and forth on the other side of the fire. He kept looking at me with a pained expression and trying to talk, but nothing was heard over the crackling of the fire.

Cody touched my arm, "wake up," he said.

The wind shifted and the smoke from the fire filled my nose, making it impossible to breathe. I started coughing.

"Wake up!" Cody shouted, right in my ear.

My eyes flew open and the first thing I saw was Ben. He looked terrified.

"Kodi you need to get up now!" his voice was full of fear and urgency.

I coughed again, only this time I realized why. The church was filling quickly with smoke, and the wall that the fireplace was on was covered in flames. The curtains were being eaten by fire, and even one of the beds had caught flames.

"W-what's, what's going on?" I asked, pushing myself up off of the bed and quickly grabbing for where I'd left my shoes.

It looked like I was the last to wake up. Michael and Abby were nowhere to be found, and Trish was on the other bed, pulling on her shoes as well. Sam was near the flames, shoving as many of the canned foods into the wagon as he could.

"I don't know," Ben started to say, but I ignored him and threw myself to Sam as soon as my shoes were on.

Together we filled the red wagon and Sam pulled it out of the church, towards the suv that Clark had been working on the day before. He was coughing as he did so, and I wondered how many times he'd already done this as I looked at all of the cans that were already being loaded into the car.

Sam emptied the wagon and turned like he was going to go back inside when Beck stepped up and stopped him.

"You're supposed to be the medic guy, don't be dumb. Don't go back in."

By this time everyone was outside, and I realized that I hadn't grabbed my bag or anything beyond food and my shoes. It was still dark out, the only light was that of the church burning. The wind pulled through the area and I shivered, suddenly aware of the fact that I was wearing clothes light enough to sleep in the church under blankets. That I didn't have a coat. That it was freezing tonight.

Ben walked over to me and handed me a blanket, "here, I was too panicked to look for the coats but I knew it was cold so I grabbed some blankets," he said.

I accepted it, pulling the thick material around my shoulders and shivering as my body worked to stay warm.

"What happened?" Clarke asked, after hot wiring the vehicle and coming around to the back where most of us stood.

"Great question," Trish said and turned towards Ben and Adam, who stood together looking a mixture of guilty and sheepish.

"We don't know," Adam said quickly.