Sarah and Anna are like me. They're quiet. They think a lot.
"I could go for a piece of the lemon meringue pie." Anna whispers the worst thing I've ever heard. My stomach grumbles. I can taste all of the food. The hunger is driving us all insane obviously.
"I could go for the spaghetti from the first day." Sarah rubs her belly.
I laugh, "No the pancakes, bacon and sausage breakfast."
Sarah moans, "Ohhhh cook always whipped me up something she called hollandaise, secretly, to eat my home fries dipped in."
Anna laughs, "You're disgusting."
We pass the camp and the small charred fire that they tried to cover over. I roll my eyes when Sarah points to it, "Hey look a campfire."
"Three guesses who hid that one when we camped here."
Anna laughs, "Oh god I miss him."
Sarah looks confused as she climbs over an old log, "Was it Jake?" We've told her enough that she knows he isn’t great at survival.
"Yup. The branches are leading this way."
We make it into the valley just below the camp by nightfall. We have walked non-stop. I know we are hours from the camp. I see the exhausted looks on their faces and cringe, "We need to keep going. Anna that bone is going to set wrong and you'll never have a range of motion with it."
I don’t know how to set it. It almost looks dislocated. I tied it a sling with strips of my pale blue scrubs, which now comes up to my midriff.
Sarah sniffles a little, "Em I'm so tired."
I rub her arm, "I know. But we have to keep going. We'll be at the first camp in like a few hours. We will get food and a bath."
Sarah looks defeated. She slumps and we continue walking. We look like the infected. We are covered in blood and dirt and our clothes are torn. We even walk like them. I'm going to be pissed if I walk all the way to the camp and end up getting shot.
The forest grows dark. I would be scared if I had even an ounce of common sense left in me.
I have a fever. I know I do. The chills of the soft breeze make my skin hurt. My head is no doubt infected from the filth on the bandage.
I push myself on. One foot in front of the other. Anna is stumbling almost now. I have my arm around her and am pulling her up the hill. My legs burn. My chest aches. I'm coughing from the sickness starting inside of me. My body wants to fight the infection. It's strong from the weeks at the breeder camp but I'm exhausted.
I feel my legs giving way and am about to collapse. My head lifts to the sky and I see an angel of mercy. He is pointing a gun at my head from a bird perch in a tree.
"Halt."
My dry throat barely makes out the slightest of words, "Help. Help us." I hear the croak of it.
He is waving his arms suddenly. The forest comes alive. Torches are brought and arms reach out for me. Anna is gone. Someone is carrying her. Sarah stays at my side. I grab her arm firmly, "You're safe. Find Will and Jake."
Her blue eyes fill with terror as I collapse. I feel fingers grabbing at me but their faces fuzz out. I slip into the darkness.
I hear things. Sometimes it's Sarah and sometimes it's people laughing. I think they're laughing at Sarah. She never leaves my side as far as I can tell. My body isn’t ready to wake up. Something is withholding the waking world from me.
Weird confessions float in the air around my head. Strange things like, "I should have killed you when I had the chance."
"Emma I love you. Please be okay."
"You saved her Em. You did it."
I don’t know if the voices all belong to one person or if they are figments of my imagination. At one point Leo is beside me. He is reading a book sitting in a chair with glasses on. When I look at him he smiles his wolf smile and says, "You never should have left me Emma."
The blackness takes me. It's like I'm on a roller coaster and we keep going in tunnels where I can hear but not see.
I feel something bite into my arm and I scream awake. I'm sitting up and covered in cold sweat. My clothes are gone and a bandage is across my chest. No one is in the tent with me. I look at my arm and nothing is there.
I feel a cold shiver. My arm still hurts. I can't help but wonder if it’s the ghosts of the dead girls. They're pinching me and telling me that I've slept long enough. It's time to wake and stop the breeder farms.
I grab a robe next to my bed and pull it around me. I am thinner again. I sigh. All that eating was for nothing.
I stumble out of the tent. My legs are weak. They feel like sticks. My feet are sore. I look at them surprised. They're covered in bandages. I lift my foot and touch the bandages. My feet sting.
"You were bleeding from everywhere."
I look up to see Will sitting outside of my tent on a chair.
His eyes meet mine and I feel like he knows everything. He can see my soul.
I put my fingers up to my head and wince when I touch the thick bandage I find there.
He stands and walks to me. His body towers over mine.
"You made it back." His words are a whisper suddenly. It's as if he was terrified he would never speak the words and even now they scare him.
I nod once and try to fight the tears that fill my eyes.
He wraps his body around mine and lifts me into him. I feel like it's the safest place I've ever been in my life. My father, my grandparents, my mother, no one has ever made me feel like I do in his arms. It's the safest place in the world.
"You never do that to me again Emma." His words sound wet in the crook of my neck. He's trembling. "You never do that again."
I shake my head. I can never leave him again.
My legs buckle. Partly from lack of strength and partly because I'm emotional. I don’t know where to put all of the emotions. They're everywhere.
He compensates for my lack of strength. His strength becomes mine. He holds me up.
I sob. I sob for the women and girls in the black bags. I cry for the people who have no idea what's going on. The ones who think they're family members are living in a condo and have forgotten about them. Children who have been left to believe their own mothers are living it up with air conditioning in the city, instead of suffering in the woods with them.
I sob because a small shallow part of me misses the food. I will never eat like that again.
I sob because a doctor took my virginity. When Anna explained what had happened to us both, I never cried then. I was strong for Sarah. Now I cry for my loss.
I sob because I never imagined in all my life I would be here in this moment. It's a dream come true.
I feel other arms beginning to hug me. I feel fingers biting into me.
"Emma." I know it's Sarah's voice.
Will is holding me so tightly I can't see anyone. My face is buried in his massive chest. I am breathing him in. It's the sweetest air in the world.
"Emma." I hear Anna scream and another body is crammed into the massive hug.
I tap lightly on his chest. He lets me go a little but not completely. His eyes are red. I don’t see tears. He gives me his smile that makes my insides twist into knots. I turn away from him. His arms stay on my waist. I pull Anna and Sarah into me. We hug and shake.
Sarah snuggles her way into my armpit.
"You smell." She whispers. I laugh into Anna's mass of dark hair. Her and Sarah both look shiny and clean again.
I look down at my dirty skin. "All that work to clean me up and I came back just as dirty as when I left."
Jake walks up with his goofy grin, "I think you're dirtier." I feel Will holding my waist tightly, but I pull away and run to Jake. My robe is flapping. I pull it around me and hug him. His arms sweep me up into his embrace. He kisses my filthy face like he did the other time.
"I missed you Em."
"I missed you too."
"Did you follow the broken branches?"
I laugh in his chest, "Yeah. I did notice you left me nothing. Not a water bottle, nothing."
He pulls me back, "We didn’t know where to put it." I look back at Will. He is smiling with his mouth, but his eyes are aflame. I hug Jake harder and ignore the flames in Will's eyes. I haven’t forgotten the girl in the micro shorts who mauled him like a bear. Or the fact he called me his friend. He has no right to feel slighted by me hugging Jake. I knew him first.
Jake puts an arm around me, "So what's the plan?"
I look at Will, "The other camp. The rest camp." I need to collect my wolf and my friend. I've been gone too long.
Will nods, "Yup. Anna and Sarah should be there anyway. And probably Jake too."
Jake's eyes narrow, "Hey!"
Will smirks, "You have no capabilities here Jakey. You're still healing."
"Anna how's your arm?" I ask.
She moves it gingerly, "Dislocated. No biggie. Still sore but at least it's back in the socket." I gag. She laughs.
Jake leans in and whispers, "Did you really miss both of us or just me?"
I give him a shove.
"We leave today."
Will looks at me and stare for a second, "You sure?"
I nod. He looks at Jake, "Get a couple back packs ready." He looks at Anna, "Go see Lisa at the big tent over there and find out if they have anything they need brought up with us." He looks at Sarah last and smiles, "You find out if any other kids need to come too okay? Ask Marg at the far side."
Everyone looks at each other and leaves.
He looks at me, "You need to put some clothes on."
I look down, "I need to clean up a bit."
He takes my hand and starts through the crowds of people. I see people looking at me when they talk. I feel my face flush. His hand has eaten mine up. My arm burns slightly where he pulls it. We get to a tent with pails and a small hose coiled around the floor. He takes a white sheet and holds it up, "Okay, go hard."
I raise an eyebrow.
"The buckets on the right are clean water. Scrub yourself and I'll hold the sheet up so no one sees you."