Aer

8

'A horde?' Dars frowns.
   'There was hundreds, it was bright when they first began to pass'.
'But we haven't had any near the mountain, we cleared them a long time ago'.

'But new ones always wander into the wrong places,' Charlie says, they're sitting around his bed in the sickbay.
'Unless they're just passing through,' Daisy says 'but like I said there was hundreds, nothing like I've ever seen before'.

'You know about a new group right?' Charlie asks Dars, who shakes his head so Charlie continues 'I was out on a supply run, ran into these guys and they just opened fire and then of course the Freaks showed up. So everything was very chaotic, you know yourself'.

'Yeah?' Dars frowns 'I know there were a few kids scattered around here but none would have guns, or be aggressive, haven't seen other groups in months though, like I said we don't leave the mountain'.
'These ones have guns and look like a fairly big group,' Charlie says.

Dars looks at Daisy 'Is there any way you could've attracted the Freaks?'.
'Nope,' she answers 'they were literally just passing through, something did attract their attention further down the road but that could've just been an animal'.

'Like a deer,' Charlie says to Dars, as if Dars is stupid and doesn't understand what is happening 'or maybe a rabbit, a fox, a badger, maybe a rat or like a bunch of rats'.
'Okay I get it,' Dars says abruptly.

'I've just never seen so many' she says 'Something is attracting them here but they just passed the garage, as if they were going somewhere'.
'Alright,' Dars gets up 'leave it with me and I'll think of something, as of now they're out of our way but I can't imagine what they could be doing to the other kids around here'.

Daisy and Charlie watch as he leaves the room. Daisy leans closer to him and says in a whisper 'I was at the garage today, and....there was these wooden slabs with our names on them with the year we were born and the year we died, Alex had placed them there'.
'How'd you know Alex did it?'.

'He was there,' Daisy watches as something comes over Charlie, she's not sure if it's anger or sadness or what 'Aaron told them we'd been attacked by Freaks and we were dead. He was at the garage for us, Lily was waiting by the car he's fixing, he's allowed to go to the garage to grieve'.

'Attacked by Freaks,' Charlie hisses 'I've done supply runs every day since I got to that bunker, and never once were the Freaks a threat to me, never'.
  'Look Alex said he'll keep his ear to the ground for us and I'm meeting him at the garage when he's fixing the car'.
'Is that a good idea?'.
'We need to know what happened'.
'No,' Charlie looks at her 'can you trust Alex?'.
Daisy frowns.
Charlie shrugs 'did you think you could trust Aaron? Lily? All of them?'.
  'I didn't think of it like that'.

'You know what?' Charlie pulls a strange smirk 'I don't think I care, I really don't. We're dead to those kids, what do we owe them?'.
'I don't want to be dead to them,' she says 'I love all of them'.
   'They don't love you'.
    'You don't mean that'.
    'Ah yeah, I do'.

Daisy frowns, she thought she was beginning to break his walls but she was wrong, he looks at her with an expression so blank she can't even describe it.

He doesn't care about any of those kids 'I'm quite tired, I'm going to head to bed'.

Daisy gets up and goes straight into the bed opposite him, turning her back to him.
'We only have each other now, that's all that matters,' he says, she doesn't answer him.