SCRATCHED

Chapter 20

2020, Off course, Thirteen miles to Lampton.

It pierced in, sharp as a knife, silent yet loud, like the strike of iron.

Four. He hadn't lost count. The air whistled by, breathing underneath his skin. The trees were lifeless, shooting up like pillars, crunched in a soundless togetherness that sprung to life shadows big enough to hide the earth itself.

He felt the itch of the thin bark on his bare hands, the remains of dirt a sign of glory and unhindered progress witnessed by a scorching sun. The penciled wood had gone deep enough. But he pushed it further down, just to be sure it would still stand even in the face of the woods' likely unfriendliness.

Six more rattled in the bag weighing on his shoulders, threatening to push him down into a pool of his own sweat. Be careful Jay. There's not time Jay. You have to be fast Jay. Their voices twirled into life like a hurricane in his head, spinning with expectation, uprooting the trees of hope planted deep in his chest. But even as their voices wrecked havoc and twisted his insides, they were nothing compared to Amy's silence, the steady closure of her eyes, their lids lifting to a plain drained white.

Watching blood travel from the gash on her shoulder to the growing stain on her shirt, his heart throbbed with ache. His lungs shrunk till there was no space for air. There were no longer parts in his mind that could accommodate such an image. So he fled. From the blood. From the tears. From the pain etched in their voices. And one kilometer later he could still hear them. The pain still dug into him like his sharp stick dug into the soil.

There is nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

The sun sat on the horizon like a throne. Often the height of the trees covered her grace, but her crown always stood above their attempted belittlement. Her paleness mirrored Camie's, a gleaming sadness dripping from her unbothered elegance. A sadness too intense to produce tears, like her kingdom's inability to produce rain when that despair took its rightful course, slipping into their reality, breaking walls and residing proudly in their bare existence.

Five. A shadow fell behind it, stretching like it yearned to reach the one far behind. The air hooted in its space, pompous and proud of its calmness, a power even the forces of nature were being stripped of. But Jay wouldn't be deceived. Silence wasn't safety. Calmness wasn't the absence of fear. He couldn't draw it out on a canvas, but he knew the air's secret-like him, it had nowhere to run.

Run, Jay! His feet felt heavier with each step, and he feared soon, with the help of his bag, they would pull him down. His fingers wrapped around imaginary brushes, his initial idea of tracing his path back home. But like everyone else, he hoped for rain. He would be one lost puppy if the paint was washed off.

There was hardly enough time to catch a breath, let alone sharpen both ends of ten wooden sticks. So he had to do that on the way, sharpening one, burying, sharpening another, burying, until he decided the sharpening was unnecessary and Brandon had given him the knife for self-defense. He prayed he wouldn't have to use it, not because he didn't crave the roaring flow of Moan blood, but because knives weren't brushes. He didn't know how to use them.

Brandon was the voice behind You have to be fast Jay.
His muscles shook as he said the words, the blood drying on his hands, a clear indication of his desire for roles to be switched, of his hunger for action. But with Alex still healing, Camie scared and broken, and Amy fighting a fresh new catastrophe, Brandon was whom they needed. He was their best chance of feeling safe, of surviving. With Jay they would be one big family of fear, reeking till their stench summoned another one of those abominations.

There's no time Jay had a wisp of air that smelled like Alex, her voice decorating his whenever he said it. There was less of pain and more of desperation, the scar marring her physically an absence in her river of words. Seconds after Brandon had carried a half-conscious Amy in his arms, Alex stood on that leg for the first time. Even ran on it, without limping.