*The Next Day*
I woke up to the sun blinding me and tara next to me her arm wrapped around me and my head on her shoulder. I jump up and her arm moves away from me and she says "sorry sometimes I cuddle in my sleep" I shake my head at her "no it's okay". She turns her head and see's two water bottles and something wrapped in a napkin and a spear. Tara helps me move back and she grabs the water bottles and hands one to me and she takes a drink of it I do too.
She grabs the napkin and she sees it's a fish we both look over and I see a tan girl about to enter the woods tara turns to me. I shrug and I whisper "I saw her with a little girl yesterday the little girl was gonna kill you but she stopped her before I could do anything" she furrows her eyebrows at me and she whispers "why did she stop her?". I shrug my shoulders I grab some of the deer meat and put it in the plastic bag and put it in my backpack and grab my gun and she whispers "let's follow her". I get up and we follow behind the girl being careful not to make much noise.
We follow her back to a mossy wall and tara ducks under it and then I do to and she grabs my hand and I whisper "toe to heel don't push yer foot down they may know how to track". I dust up her footprints and she nodded at me and we keep looking through the tree's and we hear kids laughing and people talking they don't seem like bad people to me and I am a good judge of character. We even see kids making speers and some folding clothes and I whisper "that's the little girl I saw yesterday". Then they start moving around and going and grabbing their guns and before I could whisper all hell breaks loose.
One girl fires at us and we run back tara right behind me and we make it through the tree's and one girl with short brown hair is right behind us. Right as she goes around the same corner as us I hit her with the butt of my gun and she falls to the ground and she says to me "go ahead". I scoff and I hit her again with the butt of my gun only this time it was lights out for her. We run around the other side of the cabin and then I see the same little girl from yesterday holding us at gunpoint and she says "it doesn't matter we're supposed to".
Before she could fire the gun at us the tan girl runs over to us and she says "Rachel, no" she stands in front of us and then everyone starts to head over to us and I send the little girl a glare hoping to scare her but she doesn't budge she just glares back at me except hers was half as good she tries to talk for us. Then it was lights out for me and I fell to the forest floor all I heard was tara's screams "dahlia" when I finally wake up I see tara and I handcuffed to an old air conditioner I think. I hear the door open and I place my hand to my head where I have a giant goose egg I groan in pain.
I look up when I hear the old woman say "do either of you need to use the bathroom before we get started?" tara shakes her head "uh no thank you". She looks at me and I say "no" tara bumps my arm and I ask "which one of ye's is the one who knocked me out?". The old woman chuckles and she says "that would be Rachel she says you were glaring at her". I scoff and shake my head "well that little piss ant" tara snickers and the old woman say "hey now she's a little girl".
I snort and shake my head at them and she says "I am Natania and this is Kathy and Beatrice, whom you've already met". Tara waves at them shyly and I fixed my face into a glare and tara asks "am I the only one hearing bells?". I run my hand over the goose egg and I flinch and Natania says "they're ours we have six of them some nearby, some a couple of miles away". I bite my lower lip and I speak up for the first time "what about the air horn?" natania sends me a smile and she answers me "we could only find so many bells they are to redirect any of the dead that might have been drawn by it".
I bite the inside of my cheek and tara sighs and compliments "not bad" I nodd in agreement to her "yeah like she said that's not bad". She shrugs and says nonchalantly "it helps sometimes but a branch in the wind leaves rustling we're lucky this is a relatively clear area. The evacuations, the barges, if they were even real". I lean against tara and her finger glides across my back and I find comfort in it and she asks us "where are you two from?".
