Chapter 32

“Here is just as good a place to stop for the night as any, I guess,” Mist said whirling around to look at them. They’d come to a small clearing in the woods. By Rain’s estimate, they’d probably walked another fifteen miles since they came out of the tunnel, which would put them about twenty miles away from Gretchintown. Unless the Mothers found where the tunnel came out and employed some sort of tracking device to chase them down, they should be all right for a few hours.
“Do you think they have hounds looking for us?” Walt asked as Mist set her backpack down on the ground and unzipped it.
“I don’t know, but they’d have to find where the tunnel let out in order for those to be helpful,” Mist reminded them. She pulled out what appeared to be a small popup tent, one like the type Rain had camped in when they were children and had to learn basic survival skills.
“Let’s say they do. How long would it take dogs to find our location?” Adam asked her as Mist set up the tent.
“About half as long as it took us to get here,” she admitted. “I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.” She patted him on the shoulder and walked away, yanking something out of her pocket as she came.
It was a tube of some sort, something Rain didn’t think she’d ever seen before. She cracked open the tube and tossed it back the way they came.
“What is it?” Walt asked her.
“Scent screener. It’ll mask any human smell within a ten mile radius.” Mist seemed satisfied with her work and walked back over to the small tent.
“How many of those do you have with you?” Walt followed her back to the tent. Mist secured one side to the ground while he did the other. It looked like two, maybe three people could fit in there, but not all four of them. That was just as well, though, since Rain knew someone would have to be on look-out the whole time.
“Just one more. We’ll need to put a lot more distance between ourselves and them before we use it. I say we camp here so that we can each get about three hours of sleep, and then get up and get going at first light.”
The rest of them nodded. “It’s getting cold, though,” Rain noted. “I suppose we shouldn’t risk building a fire.” The Mothers certainly didn’t teach how to survive in the woods while hiding from them, but it seemed like common sense that a fire would be a bad idea.
“No, we can. I have a shield for that, too,” Mist said. “Let’s gather some wood. We’ll put it here.” She pointed to a spot several feet away from the tent. It should make it warm in the tent without getting so close that the smoke would fill it. The tent itself wasn't capable of catching on fire. It was bulletproof, too.
“Nobody go too far alone,” Adam said, catching each of their gazes. When he looked at Rain, she nodded, wanting to continue to stare into his eyes but looking away. She liked the way he was taking charge. It was a different side of him than the vulnerable man in the chair, a side that made her breath catch in her throat.
“We shouldn’t need too much wood,” Mist said, already stepping between the trees. Walt went with her, though Rain noticed he went to the right when Mist went to the left, so at least they didn't have to be holding hands while they gathered fuel for the fire.
Rain went after her own armful of wood, wanting to get it gathered and sit down for a while. She needed some water, or at least a hydration pill, and some food would be great. She knew they had nutrition pills, too, but she wanted food. Nutrition pills weren’t much more than fancy vitamins.
“What do you think of those two?” Adam asked, grabbing a thick log off of the ground from between two large oak trees.
“I think… they really like each other,” she said. A long stick between a few rocks stood out to her and she grabbed it, snapping it in half with her boot before putting it on top of her collection.
Adam snickered. “Yeah, I know that. But… do you think they’ll be able to keep their hands off of each other in that tiny tent? With one of us in there with them?”
“Huh?” Rain asked, stopping to stare at him. He was facing away from her, looking for more wood, and when he bent to pick up another piece a noise escaped her lips unlike any she’d heard before.
Hurriedly, Rain turned away, hoping he wouldn’t put two and two together that she had been checking out his backside. She didn’t mean to. But it was about the only part of his body she hadn’t seen since he’d been sitting down when the lights had come on in the IW room. It was a fine ass--the kind that would’ve made any of the other women on their way to IW make those annoying sounds that always drove her crazy when she was headed there herself.
Had she just made that noise herself?
Crouching down to pick up a few last logs, Rain thought she heard a snicker from Adam and then remembered he’d asked her a question. She’d let his nice ass distract her so much that she had forgotten what they’d been talking about.
“I’m just saying, I’m not sure I wanna sleep beside them, that’s all. Not first anyhow. Besides, I’m really not tired.”
“You’re going to take first shift then?” she asked him as they both walked back toward the tent with their arms loaded with wood.
“I think so,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get lucky, and they’ll behave.”
“Maybe so,” Rain muttered, dropping all of her logs. Between the two of them, they had enough for a fire, but they’d need more to toss on throughout the night. “Where did they go?” Rain asked aloud. She couldn’t see or hear either of them.
“I don’t know.” Adam looked a little concerned. “Do you think the stories about loose wildcats in these parts is true, or is that just something the Mothers made up to scare us?”
“No, it’s real,” Rain assured him. She had her own flashtube in her bag; she just hadn’t used it yet because they’d been using Mist’s. Quickly, she dropped down and dug it out while elaborating on her answer to Adam’s question. “There used to be a lot of big cat rescue places in Oklasaw,” she said, her fingers wrapping around the flashtube. She pulled it out of the bag, nerves making her fingers twitch so that she almost dropped it. “After the war, there was no one to take care of them. A lot of them got loose. They ate plenty of the other animals, ones from the zoo, pets, what have you. I think they eventually ran out of food, and a lot of them died, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see some. Surely, that’s not what happened to Mist and Walt.”
“I think we would’ve heard that.”
She agreed. With flashtube in hand, she walked between the trees the way the two of them had gone. She kept the light on low, but if she didn’t see them soon, she’d turn it on bright until she found them. “Mist! Walt!” she hissed between her teeth. “Where are you?”