When time froze

Chapter One

The town was nice and tidy, but had far too many buildings to search through. 

"How are we going to search all these buildings in less than an hour?" one of the searchers said.

"We'll figure it out, but right now we to go through as many buildings as we can before the Frozen arrive." I replied as we stood on the main road in the deserted town.

"We need to separate to cover more area. Group one into that building. Group two get the buildings at the end of the main street. Group three, go through any grocery stores you can find and grab ALL food you find." I stated to our scavenger groups.

They found their groups and headed out . Havana and I went into the closest building and searched for anything left behind. Several minutes went by and a loud siren was heard coming from further away, it was one of ours.

"No... They weren't suppose to come till the sun reached the top of the mountains...," Havana reminded me in a worried voice. 

"I know, but I don't know why they're here now," I told her, trying to remain calm.

"Do you think they know we're here? I mean, this is their territory."

"Maybe...," I responded before we both ran outside.

"Aria, what's going on?!" a scavenger down the street yelled to me while running. 

"I don't know!" I shouted back while going down the front stairs.

"What do we do?! We can't get back to camp that fast!" one scavenger panicked while coming out of the building next to mine. 

"Okay, we need to get to the trucks, NOW!" I commanded as we then got in our vehicles. I jumped into mine with Havana, Carl and Erin.

"Are we ready to go?" I asked everyone. 

"Does it matter?! Drive, they're coming!" Carl screamed at me from the back seat. I stomped on the gas pedal and we took off at full speed. 

"Look, we're half way there, keep going." Erin said to me, his voice full of relief. Two of our vehicles had already made it back safely. We sped through the half opened gates, almost ripping them off the metal wall in the process.

I slammed the breaks in the middle of the camp, and we all lunged forward. I cut my arm on the seat slightly, but it wasn't a deep wound.

 "Are you guys okay?" I ask the group. Everyone groaned and said that they were.

The truck door opened and our leader, Luke, was there in his leather jacket. His dark brown hair casting shadows over his worried eyes. 

"Are you guys alright...? Little brother, are you okay?"

"Yes Luke, I'm fine!" Carl snapped, "You can stop fucking worrying about me! I'm 16, not 5, okay!"

He pushed the door open and trudged out. Luke looked at me, putting his hand on my back and the other on my non-bleeding hand.

"Aria, are you okay?"

"Yup, I'm good," I said with a fake smile, trying to hold back the pain. 

"There's that smile," he said with a smile before walking over to the rest of the group. Luckily, he didn't see my arm. Havana and I got out of the car, with Erin trailing behind us. 

"Hey Aria, did get anything this time?" Jake asked with a sassy tone as he walked toward me. 

"No Jake. I didn't." I said, irritated at his asking.

"Why not?" he said madly.

"Because we had no time."

"Why do we even send you out there then? I mean, you can't even get one bag of food, let alone feed this whole camp!"

"Well you know what jackass, why don't you go out there yourself if I suck so bad?"

"Maybe I will and I know I would get much more food than your fat ass ever will."

"Ha! Yeah sure, you can't even carry five twigs without bitching about it."

"You fucking bitch, I have had it with you today," he shouted as he grabbed me by my shoulders and shoved me into the wet mud. He then proceeded to grab my head and put it right up against the fire pit. Jake almost pushed me into it until Luke stepped in, preventing him from burning my face off, yelling at Jake to stop. Jake shoved him off before throwing me away from the fire back into the mud.