The Last Alive

Chapter 2: Nickie

Little fingers pried my right eye open.

"Is she alive?" a little voice that I recognized as Stars'.

"I can't tell," that was Lego,"I'll have to check her pulse."

"I think I know how to do that," the last one was Bear.

"I'm the oldest here, so I get to do it," said Lego.

"You always get to do the cool things," grumbled Bear.

"Just check it already!" Star was loosing her patience or she wouldn't scream like that.

My eyelid closed and a few seconds later I felt a hand grasp my wrist. I tried to relax my arm as much as I could. They would learn their lesson.

Lego began to drop my wrist but before he could let go all the way I grabbed his wrist and sat straight up in bed. All three of them screamed and Bear and Star ran out of the room. Lego tried to free his hand, but I had an iron grip.

I pulled him closer and said,"Next time you decide to see if I'm alive, look to see if I'm breathing. That would really help. And if you wake me or Kindel up like this, I'll do more than make you crap your pants."

He nodded his head quickly,"Got it Nick, it'll never happen again. Promise."

I loosened my grip and yelled to him as he fled,"And it's Nickie not Nick!"

"Whatever!"

I was awake now and there was no chance of going back to sleep. I rolled out of bed and headed to Moon and Bears' bedroom to see if Moon was awake.

As I walked down the hall Kindel came out of his room rubbing his eyes.

"Morning NIckeelda. What did they do this time?"

"I've told you Kindel, just call me Nickie. And they decided to see if I was dead."

He sighed,"They never learn."

I laughed and continued down the hall. As I eased Moons' door open I heard him shuffling around. Once the door was all the way open I saw that he was looking through his stack of books that he had in the corner of the room. He was never seen without on of his books tucked underneath his arm.

We went to a nearby city every few weeks and Moon liked to look through the recycling for books that people have discarded. And sometimes we even went into an old bookstore if I had managed to get a few dollars and we had some left over after buying new supplies.

 "I'm going to make breakfast if you want to come downstairs," I told him.

He just nodded.

That's how it was with Moon. He didn't like to talk unless it was absolutely necessary. But we still loved him. How couldn't we? He was family.

I went downstairs and found Star and Bear sitting in the living room sitting on the floor playing cards. We had a T.V. but we didn't get cable. Instead we used it just to watch movies on our old DVD player. Most of the movies we've seen thousands of times but they never get old.

I walked past them into the kitchen. KIndel was sitting at the table and Lego was looking through the pantry for food.

"I was planning on making eggs,"I said.

"Yep, sounds great," siad Lego as he grabbed an apple out of the basket on the counter.

I just sighed. There was no form of punishment that could make Lego learn.

I started to get the things out to make the eggs. A pan, eggs, milk, cheese, and spinnich. Everyone liked our eggs like this. We liked to eat a lot of fruits and veggies. Not that we don't like meat, it's just not our favorite. Well, for all of us except Bear. He loves meat. Especially bacon. That kid could eat a pound of bacon in one sitting if you let him.

As I was getting the stuff ready to cook, cracking the eggs and thawing the spinach, I heard a little squeal and Twitter fell from the ceiling.

Twitter was a blue lizard with pink marking all along his back. He was the one who brought all the news from the forest animals, if there was any. Most of the time it was just the announcement of a new baby born or a successful hunt. But this news was much different.

"Hey Twitter, what's the news this week."

"Good or bad?"

"Wait-what? What do you mean good or-"

"I'll do the bad news first cause if I tell you the good news first it wouldn't make since."

"Okay, but Twitter-"

"Okay so the bad news. There are these big wolf-man things walking around the forest. They're looking for you guys. They're pretty ugly. I don't think they're werewolves though. They haven't turned into a man or a wolf yet, but you never know. Anyway, they've been asking everyone questions about you guys. They're getting pretty close to your house."

Finally he stopped. Twitter could go on and on forever if he wasn't focused. And right now, he definitely wasn't focused.

"So now the good news. Here we go. So it turns out they're nice! They have only been talking to everyone and they haven't  hurt anyone. They even talked to me. They seemed nice enough and they said that they weren't going to hurt you, they just wanted to talk to you guys. And I told Ms. Pine and she said you guys should just stay inside and she would handle them."

My mind reeled. Ms. Pine was a porcupine that lived in a hole she dug on the side of our house. How could an old porcupine ward off wolf-men?! It didn't make any sense.

"How many wolf-men did you say there were?" I asked.

"I didn't say, but I'll tell you anyway. There are five of them that we have seen, but of course there could be more."

"And how close are they to the house?"

"They're about fifteen to twenty minutes away from what I've heard."

That wasn't good. I couldn't just sit around and pretend like nothing was wrong and I definitely wasn't going to let Ms. PIne stand up to the five wolf-men. We had to do something.

"Guys, go get dressed in whatever you can grab first! We're going to the telescope!"

We would be ready.