Walking Amongst Them (Among Us, Book 2)

Two steps forward...

The following morning we made quick work of getting something in our bellies and packing up what little supplies had been drug out for the night. Mostly blankets and a toy or two from Abby's pack. Sam and Clarke were arguing about something on the map, and then I heard her laughing.

I decided to help Ben and Adam, the pair of them were trying to figure out how to get the blankets back into their already full backpacks.

"Hey Kodi, what up?" Ben asked as he shoved at the blanket, trying to make the zipper work around the large mass, "I swear it fit yesterday," he was saying.

"That's because Trish helped pack our bags," Adam grunted as he struggled with the same thing, "she's a survivalist or some shit. Knows how to do everything." He looked up suddenly and checked the area before looking at me. "Don't tell her I said that," he rushed.

Ben laughed loudly, finally managing to make his zipper close, "he's just worried you'll tell Trish about his little crush."

Adam sucked in a breath and punched Ben, "do you have to tell everyone?"

I smiled. Though I couldn't see Adam with Trish, or Trish with... anyone really, it still made me happy that they could have normal feelings and thoughts. Outside of our next step and surviving the night.

I glanced over at Beck. Our eyes met, and he smiled at me. A small, upturn of one side of his mouth. A distracted smile, as he was in a conversation with Michael. I swallowed and smiled back, though I knew mine had been forced.

What happened to the easyness of friendship? Hadn't we agreed to go back to normal? Or was it me who was still acting out of character? I pushed all of these thoughts away as Adam managed to finally get his blanket packed up.

"Man, these blankets sure do waste a lot of space."

Ben looked at Adam and snorted, "sure. Leave your blanket behind and watch how cold you get tonight."

Adam flipped him off.

Trish, who had left the barn at dawn and gone to do whatever, returned with nothing in her hands and a scowl on her face.

"Are we ready to get going then?"

I glanced behind her, at the snow covered ground, and knew my feet would be frozen soon enough. That all of ours would be. I considered putting on my second pair of socks, but I wanted to have a dry pair to change into tonight. Perhaps we'd be able to build a fire wherever we ended up tonight.

We hadn't wanted to build on the prior night because there was worry about the barn coming down on us.

Sam answered first, "I'm ready if everyone else is."

There were no complaints, and so we all grabbed our packs and headed out into the early morning sunshine. There were birds singing, but whenever I looked, they were all small little things. Nothing worth shooting with a group as large as ours was. Everyone would have needed their own bird, and even then it might not have been enough.

I kept looking, bow out and ready incase any sort of animal showed its face. But with our group's size, we made some noise as we trekked through the snow, weaving through cars. Only a few inches had fallen the night before, but it was enough that a little crunch resulted from each step. I wondered why there were so many cars on a non main road, but as Clarke explained it to me, this was one of the only roads to the quarantine.

I glanced around the amount of cars and looked to her, raising an eyebrow as if to ask if all of these people would truly be at the place we were traveling to. She shook her head and studied a white truck as we passed by it.