Feral

Chapter Seven

"Was his plan supposed to explode?"

Jasper shakily pushed himself to sitting. He looked at Adam, his face a sheet of snow, then at Paige. Without warning he snapped to his feet and ran for the holes. Spindly legs kicked as he hauled himself out and disappeared without a word. Cooper barked and jumped at the hole until Adam slapped his hands over the dogs mouth. But no howls answered, nore barks or screams or yowls. The air was dead in and outside the shipping container.

Adam let Cooper's muzzle go, and when the dog resumed jumping and yowling desperately at the roof, he hoisted him up and out the hole Jasper disappeared through. He looked to Paige next with hands readily cupped, the question in his eyes. Paige stared at the stale water, seeking his grey and speckled with dead flies reflection there instead of the reality. Was she ready for what awaited her? Could she bare what she might see? The claustraphobia of the moment tightened its grip on her heart. For the first time she realised since holding Adam up, stealing the car, finding the station, getting trapped, running from the Feral's and somehow finding them, beyond  dread or fear spining gore filled scenarios around her mind, that she may have to face one of her new friends not being there when it was all over.

"What are them two still doin' down there?" drawled a honey slicked voice.

"Engaging in a little thank-god-we're-alive nookie?"

Jasper's head blocked the sun. Beside him a soot covered face peered down, pink lines appearing in the wrinkles left around the eyes as his lips stretched, grinning down at them with teeth so white in his blackened face they sparkled like pure pearls. Blond hair, also streaked with soot, was wind shocked so badly it slicked all the way back like a 1950's greaser. Cooper pushed his way under his arm, the dog licking at his dirty face, but he barely seemed to notice the lolling tongue as it smudged the grime across cheek and chin.

"Travis," Paige whispered on a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. Adam let out something between a wheeze and a laugh, his voice hoarse from  smoke. Wasting no time, Paige  leapt for the hole in the roof, her legs kicking wildly until Adam wrapped his arms around her thighs and hoisted her up. Jasper and Travis could hardly grab hold of her arms to help as she scrabbled onto the roof. Decorum be damned, she leaped on Travis, hugging him as tightly as she'd hugged anyone in years.
You never know when you'll see someone for the last time, Ella had said, the last time Paige talked to her.

"Nice to see we were missed." His chuckle warmed her ears as he returned her hug, giant paw hands spanning her entire back.

"You more than me, apparently," Jasper said with no bitterness, only an eased smile and a hand on his buddie's shoulder.

"Why stick your necks out for us?" Adam perched on the container, looking awkward and out of place next to the huddle of people wrapped in each other. He had a hand on Cooper's back, and what measly colour he possessed had returned to his face. "We left you to die."

"I didn't," Paige pointed out with a raised finger.

Jasper snorted, sharing a look with Travis. The giant shrugged his shoulders, easing back enough from Paige to lean on his palms, though not so far her hand could no longer rest against his knee, grinning a bright starlight smile through sooty cheeks. Jasper looked back at Adam, shrugging his much ganglier shoulders. "Call it foolish, naive hope, but if we were ever up shit creek, again." He shot Adam a pointed look. "somebody might do the same for us."

"Call us optimists," Travis said, still grinning. He gave Paige's hand two short squeezes as he drew back, drawing with it an unexpected comfort in her chest, a comfort she didn't realise she'd been in need of. He'd been the one who almost died, this should have come around differently and come from her. But he only smiled when she tried to squeeze back, and ruffled Cooper's ears.