Chapter 4.10

"Don't fall asleep." I felt Theo shaking me lightly, and I suddenly realised I was dozing. Outside, the sky had brightened a little and I could see the outline of Theos face peering back at me. It must have been just before sunrise.

"We should get going." I tried to say but my throat was sore from the cold and came out as an illegible mumble. Regardless, Theo nodded.

I unhooked my fingers from the mesh, and forced myself to stand, although I couldn't feel my feet. I noticed small smears of blood on my fingers where I'd been resting my weight on the mesh above me. My fingers were too cold to feel pain, I only noticed it because of the sudden release of pressure when we started to move. It was hard to get moving again, it was like my legs wouldn't listen to my brain.

"We must have lost them by now." Theo observed. "We should get out of the water." She scanned the bank for an ideal place to exit, but the sides were too sleep. We followed it around slowly for about ten minutes before the bank was low enough to climb out, but it felt like a lifetime. "I don't hear anything." She observed, and I took her word for it because I didn't have the energy from anything else. Theo went up first, jabbing her feet into the mud to make footholds and using bits of bracken to heave herself up. When it was my turn, Theo and Tommy take one of my arms each and pull me up.

Without another word, Theo rummaged in her rucksack and threw a bundle at each of us. Any modesty we had gone out of the window (I don't think Tommy had any in the first place), we were too cold and tired to be embarrassed as we stripped down into our underwear and replaced the clothes we were wearing with slightly less wet ones from Theo's rucksack.

Even with dry clothes, we couldn't stop our teeth from chattering as the early morning air bit at any exposed skin. The cold had gotten into our bones, no matter how far we walked or how we moved, the cold wouldn't go away.

I couldn't get any more than half awake, so I had to give the map and compass to Theo, and she took over navigating. I trailed after her in a daze. When they spoke, I nodded along even though I couldn't concentrate on their words enough to understand. My mind was cloudy, and my body was cold and numb.

"Ezra?" I realised we'd stopped, and Theo was looking at me for a response. "Are you listening? Are you okay?" Her hand reached out and I was too slow to stop her, "you have a fever. We should stop for a bit." She stated.

I shook my head lightly, but it made the nausea rise in my stomach and my head throb in protest. "If I stop now, I won't want to carry on." I argued. I really wanted to curl into a ball and sleep, but that wouldn't get us anywhere.

Tommy looked pale, and his eyes darted from me to Theo.

Theo bit the side of her lip and jigged restlessly. "At least let my help you." Without waiting for a response, she forced my arm over her shoulder, so I leant on her. I think we travelled like that for a while, but my sense of time was a bit distorted.

At mid-day, she insisted we stop and eat. But I threw it back up before we started moving again, and I started feeling worse than I did before. The bruising had almost covered my hands and I had to lean on Theo more and more to keep upright. At some point, Theo had shown Tommy how to use the map and compass because he'd taken over navigating as Theo was supporting me. For a while, we exited the forest and followed a country lane through an abandoned village, before heading further West and meeting back with the woodland. Tommy wasn't talking as much since the day before, maybe the exhaustion had got to him too, or maybe there was a limit to the amount of useless conversations someone could have in one go.

My sense of time and distance had completely gone by the time we stopped. Tommy called out about something on the map, and Theo lowered me down, so I was sitting with my back against a tree. I watched them talk excitedly, pointing back at the map and then looking around in confusion like they were trying to find something. I didn't care enough to try and follow their words. The next moment, Theo pulled me up "We're almost there." She said, sense of relief notable in her voice, as she hands me the compass. Her stride becomes faster than before, and her head whips around trying to catch sight of a landmark.

"There!" Tommy yelled, pointing off to the left. We looked, and to our left was a small clearing that had almost disappeared amongst the bracken. If you looked close enough, you could see the tips of broken buildings peeking out from the foliage. Rooves have caved in and the brick was almost entirely covered in green moss or vines. When we got closer, we could see that some of the buildings had become swamps, and were filled with dark muddy water, while others barely had their walls left.

"There's nothing here." Tommy stated, dejected. We slowly edge into the village, quietly, as if something might jump out on us.

"Maybe it was a stupid idea to come here." Theo starts to panic, "It was just a stupid game, why did we think it was significant? It was probably Sean's next assignment for you. Why did we come here?" her voice starts to get louder and louder and she circles around the ruins, quite quickly losing her self-control.

I don't think it was though, the compass in my hand started acting erratic, at some point I must have taken it back from Tommy, and I mustered up the effort to stand and followed the compass to one of the houses in the centre with basement doors. The house was one of the more intact buildings, with three of its four walls and half of the roof intact. Glancing in the broken wall it seemed like the foundations hadn't caved in either and the basement was still intact. When I approached the house, the compass needle spun around like crazy and I had a feeling there was a reason for it.

"You two help me open this." I pointed to the rusted doors to the basement, jutting out from the side of the house. Theo and I took one side and Tommy took the other, we tugged with all our might, but it came loose too easily and we stumbled back.

I blinked. We froze. Poking up from the darkness was a gun. Aimed at our faces.